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STAR WARS: LAST JEDI DISCUSSION (OH SO MANY SPOILERS HERE)


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5 hours ago, steve said:
On 12/16/2017 at 1:24 AM, Ace said:

Nobody said "I've got a bad feeling about this". did they?

 

People are speculating that it was BB-8 in the beginning when Poe said, "Positive beeps only" or something like that.

EDIT: Apparently, Rian Johnson confirmed that was it.

That's dumb.

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15 hours ago, just drew said:

Cool moment: Dr. Satler rams into that 1st Order ship with a ship named after the guy who rammed his ship into an Imperial ship in Rogue One. The Raddus.

 

Raddus didn't ram his ship into anything.  It was someone else's hammerhead corvette.

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18 hours ago, EVA said:

So anyone who's not thrilled with Luke's arc in this movie, thank JJ.  But also thank Johnson for turning that character assassination into a really beautiful character arc in the end.

Not to relitgate TFA, but I don’t think the dichotomy is quite that clean. That is, it’s possible sidelining Luke as JJ did was a poor decision, that was then suboptimally salvaged by Johnson. Having seen TLJ again—and really wanting to love, and not just sorta like it—that’s kinda how I feel.

—He is, as he says, one guy with a laser sword, one soldier in a galaxy. The First Order could have been contrived to rise any number of ways without him vanishing.

—But operating with the events of TFA as a given, I still don’t love Luke invading a teenager’s mind, deciding he’s beyond saving, nearly murdering him, then getting punked by said kid with a roof to the head. I know this is years after we last saw him as the young idealist who never thought Vader—who had years of mass murder on his record; he wasn’t just hanging out with a bad guy too much—was beyond redemption, but that is still our last image of him. It’s an inherent weakness, given the time gap, but it’s a weakness nonetheless. We didn’t see him grow/regress into the kind of person capable of making that callous leap.

I think the opposite would have been more consistent: Ben is clearly turning, but Luke is too naive to see it, and the slaughter happens. Or just have him get jaded and burnt out on life as the galaxy’s most dangerous person. He finds you can’t kill your way to balance and peace, and so just checks out. And he’d have been allowed to win without fighting, in the end.

That’s probably enough fanfic for now though. I liked where he ended up, ultimately, and the film in general. I like that it dares to be subversive, and that there’s plenty to talk/think about, which is more than I can say for TFA. But for all I’m glad it attempts, I don’t think it totally succeeds. Felt, at times, less interested in fixing/supplementing/building on TFA than contradicting it. So we’re left with a compelling sand box in the long run, but not much that immediately grabs me.

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I'm really weird about this.  The stuff that went in a new direction I really really liked.  The passing of the torch feeling I really liked.  But I feel like they were kinda stuck cleaning up JJ's mess from TFA and fell into the same trap of pulling too much shot for shot homages to the OT, although I kinda applaud Johnson blowing through the big Empire and Jedi set pieces so JJ has to do something original next movie.  

 

It's weird, but the stuff I didn't like drug down the movie for me, and the really good stuff didn't recover it fully.  

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Just a bit too much fan service for my blood. Luke dying at relative peace, planets away from the action, staring wistfully at two suns? A bit overwrought. Laura Dern seemingly SHOOTING HARD about what an inspiration Carrie Fisher is? Surprised the two didn't come out together during the credits and bow for a curtain call. 

Not to say there wasn't also plenty to like here. But I've never been a die hard Star Wars fan. 

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Was Adam Driver body doubled? Because the body he had in his shirtless scene didn't look like it belonged underneath his oddly un-muscular head.

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I normally zone out during the space battles, but I thought the assault on the dreadnought at the beginning was a fantastic set piece. 

I have a lot of affection for the series, but I'm not a die-hard, so I can get over the new saga not necessarily going in the direction for the characters or universe that I'd like. Considering Rian Johnson had to play it where it lay with how TFA set the board, I thought he made a great film. 

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I need to watch it again, because reflecting on it, there's way more that I liked than not and I should've walked out of the theater feeling more then "meh".  Especially when they actually went and ran the "The Jedi Order was wrong wrong wrong and needs to be burnt to the ground and restarted" storyline that I've been secretly hoping someone would do for years.

I'm kinda hoping though, that IX ends up being more RotS like and sets the table up for next trilogy, and they just let Johnson do his own thing with these characters, because there were really defined character arcs in this, even if Finn's was fucking boring.  There was way more to really like in TLJ than TFA.

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JJ will probably have ep 9 end with Rey and Kylo doing the King Arthur vs Mordred finish. He only has two plays: leave intriguing threads dangling without any resolution, and suddenly kill the main characters.

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31 minutes ago, Control said:

Ok, but I can’t be the only one who thought BDT was straight up awful in this. I mean, the character was crap, but he sure didn’t act his way out of it.

Yes there wasn't much there.  It didn't feel like a Star Wars character to me. It felt like a guy out of a comedy like Eurotrip. 

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On 12/15/2017 at 12:29 AM, lostinube said:

I enjoyed that Poe/Finn/Rose's crazy plan didn't end up working unlike most of the time in the series until I realized that their plan led to the loss of all those ships. I mean, Holdo could have told Poe what they were planning to do in the first place too but the direct actions of the heroes leading to the deaths of countless others generally gets overlooked.

I'm glad someone else picked up on this.  Finn, Poe, and Rose almost wiped out the Resistance themselves because Poe can't fucking follow a direct order.  Laura Dern had a plan to save the Resistance, and it would have worked if those three assholes hadn't gone off and fucked up their own half-assed plan.

I like Rian Johnson (watch Brick, it rules), but this movie sucked.  It may not be worse than Phantom Menace, but it's not much better.

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8 hours ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

Yes there wasn't much there.  It didn't feel like a Star Wars character to me. It felt like a guy out of a comedy like Eurotrip. 

I thought his character was completely superfluous tbh. They could have gotten to that ends in 100 different ways that didn't include that stupid ass casino subplot.

I was pretty high on the film coming out of the theater, but having a couple of days to sit on it, the stuff that bothered me actually REALLY bothers me. I get the feeling that I need to limit my rewatches on this one.

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One thing I really liked about the Force ghost/projection stuff in this one is that the physical manifestations of Yoda, and later Luke, have everything to do with who they're appearing before. Yoda looks precisely as he did in Empire because that's the version of him that Luke is most emotionally connected to. Later during the final confrontation, Luke appears to Kylo as his younger self from their time together in training at the temple. It's either because that's how Kylo remembers him best, or it was a ploy by Luke to unnerve him. I'd never really thought about it, but presumably Force ghosts can manipulate their form to whatever they feel like, or  psychically suggest the most appropriate version of their former physical form based on who they're reaching out to. 

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5 hours ago, RandomAct said:

I thought his character was completely superfluous tbh. They could have gotten to that ends in 100 different ways that didn't include that stupid ass casino subplot.

I was pretty high on the film coming out of the theater, but having a couple of days to sit on it, the stuff that bothered me actually REALLY bothers me. I get the feeling that I need to limit my rewatches on this one.

The other thing I felt was a real waste was Gwendoline Christie - I mean, why even cast her as Phasma if she's going to be going Ol' Buckethead through the whole movie and doesn't actually get to act? You could make the argument as with Vader that acting with just your body is harder, but it's not like she had that opportunity.

If the casino planet is supposed to be where arms deals happen, then why doesn't Finn run into Phasma on the casino planet, you know, buying weapons?

It'd make sense if Hux "demoted" her by sticking her on a menial job away from the real action, only for her to run into Finn again and *then* drag him back to Snoke's ship. That puts Finn/Rose on the ship to potentially escape and deal with the tracking system, you bypass the need for BDT's throwaway character, you get a few scenes of Christie chewing up Finn for betraying the Order and getting her into bantha poodoo, and then the arc between the two of them might have, I don't know, mattered. It gives Finn more to do and doesn't piss away yet another excellent actor by wasting her on fan-service garbage lines.

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Why would Phasma be the person to buy arms for the First Order? That seems dumb. It would wind up being a proxy for Hux or some other First Order office type guy.

People really want to stick so much mythology on characters like Phasma and Snoke and elevate them far beyond what their importance was. The talking point of, "why cast Gwendolyn Christie as Phasma if she isn't going to do anything" is dumb. By that logic, why cast anyone into any role? Does it not cross anyone's mind that maybe, just maybe they weren't supposed to be as big as people thought they were going to be and if that's the case then that isn't on the movie or the director or the writer, that's on the viewer for over-inflating someone's importance. 

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Gwendoline Christie isn't even that big of a star.  People are acting like they put Emma Stone or Brie Larson under that helmet.  She will show up with bells on if she gets the call to say 2 lines and get chumped again in Episode IX.  

Which would be hilarious and MUST happen.

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