Qt3 Movie Podcast: Star Wars: The Last Jedi

Rian Johnson takes up the baton. Kellywand snatches it from him and does a few laps with the Last Jedi synopsis.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2017/12/18/qt3-movie-podcast-star-wars-last-jedi/

I was fine with BB8 attacking in the walker because, while I agree that droids like C3PO are the peasant bystanders, droids like R2D2 and BB8 are more like the hero’s pet. That scene was the equivalent of the hero being surrounded by bandits and at the last minute his faithful dog bounds in and attacks to let him get away.

I don’t think this will actually be the last Jedi.

EDIT: Dingus said one too many “I”s.

That was an epic opsis.

<3;;;

Now I’ll have to watch this movie, just so that I can listen to this podcast.

I was near tears a couple of times.

That’s never stopped me! Heck I can’t remember the last time I had already seen the movie before I listened to the podcast. Though there have been times I’ve gone back and listened again after I saw the movie, like with Drive Angry.

I would recommend watching the movie before listening to the opsis. There is also a nice payoff if you suffered through Justice League.

More than one, I would say. That’s the real surprise.

-xtien

“Good guys. Bad guys. Made-up words.”

Maybe my kids will actually retain something enjoyable/memorable from TLJ if I let them listen to the op-sis. They couldn’t have cared much less about the movie as we walked out on Friday night. Shame, my daughter especially loved Force Awakens.

I’m not through the episode yet but I also object to the dismissal of Kylo and Rey’s connection as “butt dialing” and saying there’s no meaningful connection there. That was the heart of the movie for me.

Chris’ and Dingus agree. There was no butt dialing.

Dingus is right- the cellphone is not a third party.

Butt dialing is the act of being put unwittingly into a cell phone conversation with someone, usually to awkward effect. I stand by my characterization of the Kylo/Rey conversations as “telepathic butt dialing”! It certainly fits Rian Johnson’s trend toward adding phone references to the Star Wars universe. If you’re going to hold for Hux with an “H”, a little butt dialing isn’t out of place.

-Tom

“Be careful you don’t choke on your aspirations.”

But be careful to aspirate, or you might choke.

I thought this was pretty cool: The Metacritic Twitter account just gave the QT3 Movie Podcast a shout-out! :)

I can’t wait to listen to the episode tonight!

That is pretty damn cool. Someone needs to let Metacritic know that it’s ien not ian.

The Triumphant Return of Beep-Boop!

You know, Marvel Cinematic Universe (and Joss Whedon personally) had killed movies. Now every movie has to be full of wisecraking cynical jokers with a sensitive soul deep inside. Even freaking Not-Emperor makes a dumb joke by punching Rey with her lightsaber. Maybe Luke tries to copy Yoda but this doesn’t work.

Anyway, to real points. I liked the movie as not very offensive dumb epic - just following the model Lucas invented (and thus killed movies back in 70’s turning everything into a blockbuster). I only have couple of strong thoughts on the discussion:

  1. Technobable. It’s not bad on itself. It could even work with Star Wars - even New Hope had some of it with all the Death Star hatch explanation. However it means there are rules in the universe. There’s Force for the cases when it doesn’t work. So it was OK to suddenly end up in Star Trek when they explained shield/tracker/fuel thing. They did it well. Then they ruined it by explaining that you can hyperspace through enemy fleet even while you’re shot at. So all those smaller ships that died could have kamikazed into all those star destroyers. Argh.

  2. Rey being nobody is fine. First trilogy made a point of Anakin coming from nowhere to restore the balance of the force. The universe was too full of boring senile Jedis. Thanks to Palpatine genius balance was over-restored (or perhaps it’s due to only 2 Siths existing balanced by 2 Jedis in hiding). By the time of 7 episode Sith were in the lead for so long that the Force had buffed Rey into a Jedi.

  3. There’s much in the movie left to a headcanon, everything can be explained if you think about it. Like Falcon, being a rust bucket in Luke’s youth, can still do something against military aircraft - it’s probably because the world is almost post-apocalyptic, First Order mostly uses old equipment like those walking tanks. However huge portions of the movie are dedicated to some unimportant stuff. This whole Not-Yoda videostream and casino planet sequences feel tacked on. Same with Leia immortality. Especially glaring with dark side mirror and Rey - by the way, who is she talking to in that scene? A lot of things happen but none of this feels deep. I agree with Tom: it looks like they went into some new direction with all that talk about Jedi have to die and Rebels buying weapons from bad guys. But they don’t walk nearly enough on this path. Sad!