This podcast is almost as long as the film but vastly, vastly more enjoyable. Thanks guys.
On one hand, the characters say “Forget the past”. Ren, Yoda and Luke say it itself. On the other hand the movie can’t past behind the old icons, must repeat circumstances and characters. Heres the new Lando, but is called Benicio del Toro. Heres the new city in the clouds. Heres the new Hoth, but is salt, taste it.
Should we forget the past or not?
Is a contradiction so fundamental, like a Che Guevara t-shirt or somebody owning the rights of Che Guevara.
Capitalism, Oh!
One area where I agree with Tom on the podcast is that I miss the way droids used to work. They were effectively “alive”—they were sentient and had personalities—but they were still a strange kind of second-class citizen in the galaxy. It wasn’t always clear if their limitations were innate or imposed, but there was a fuzzy logic to it that made them interesting.
Now as Tom also points out, the prequels tossed all that out the window entirely. So I don’t hold it against The Last Jedi one bit. But I share Tom’s nostalgia.
Where is Leporello here?
We must talk space opera here.
I don’t think they have totally removed the common men from this space opera in particular. They have reintroduced “red shirt” characters, and Finn and that Rose girl are the red shirt. Is weird because the robots where more obviously “inferior” to their owners.
Finn is heroic in a Leporello way. He is the first to escape, but he is also the first to suggest a suicide mission. Is weird, but also what normal people do and how they operate. I can’t claim to understand it.
You have to show the past, otherwise there would be nothing to forget. Besides, Star Wars fans would find the similar scenes in the past no matter what, because there were already eight movies and who knows how many games, books and TV shows.
P.S: I’m with Christien on this one, I absolutely loved the movie, even loved the scenes he didn’t. I think, it’s much better than TFA.
Wait, so Benicio del Toro is in this movie, and he plays a character named Benicio del Toro? Dude’s just coasting at this point huh?
As expected, it was a difficult podcast.
I’m on Team Dingus, and I hope that someday Tom will understand what Luke brushing off his shoulder was about.
However, when the argument broke down to two ships chasing after each other in a straight line…
The difference is that’s one scene, not a whole movie. And the Star Destroyer catches Leia! Her smaller ship can’t outrun their bigger one.
In theory, I like the idea of structuring a movie around a chase. But the setup for it in TLJ was just so contrived.
But even if I grant the premise for the benefit of the plot, it still doesn’t work because we’re constantly cutting away to Rey or Finn, which undermines the tension that a chase is supposed to have.
Contrast against Empire where Han Solo is also being chased and can’t jump to light speed … the chase doesn’t last the entire time Luke is on Dagobah. Han uses cleverness to get away and hide, which gives them a breather while we cut away to Luke. Why would I be on the edge of my seat about the Resistance getting caught by the First Order if the movie feels it’s a good time to cut away to a Leprechaun stuffing quarters in BB8?
I blame the movie for not making this more clear, but I think Tom is wrong that Rose prevented Finn from saving everyone. Poe tells everyone to break off because he can see it’s not going to work. And as Finn approaches, his ship is being torn apart by just the edges of the big laser beam. I think it was supposed to be apparent that Finn’s not going to be able to destroy it and is just throwing his life away for nothing. I guess they couldn’t make that too obvious or it would have been harder to bait the audience with the “black guy dies heroically” trope.
If you’re right, that makes Finn pretty darn dumb! He’s going to fly into the giant cannon just because?
But you’re right that the movie doesn’t make it clear. There’s a lot of stuff that’s not clear in the movie because Rian Johnson is a pretty terrible director. :(
-Tom
You can tell he’s a terrible director because if you listen to the podcast, Tom explains the bad things are his fault, and the good things, well Tom says Rian didn’t understand them.
I do wonder who came up with the red plumes from the surface of not-Hoth and those rickety skimmer things. Those were pretty cool. Must have been leftovers from the part of his brain that wrote and directed Brick! :)
-Tom
Yeah, I got that too. What surprises me is that those who object to a good guy winning because he can suddenly punch harder because he’s gooder don’t like this moment. I don’t know if I made this point on the podcast, but I was dreading Finn succeeding in this moment, because of this very reason. So some dude can fly into a cannon in an old ship when everybody else has been blown away…just because he wills it?
I think Rose saving him is quite simple. She is saving him because she knows how shit works. She’s a mechanic. She knows he would not succeed and thus saves him. She also understands the concept of fodder, and has proven she’s done with that. And I really kind of like that. I don’t think it’s random. Cobbling together some kind of romantic thing between them is random, but that’s not.
Finn is a janitor. He may have all kinds of other motivations and a sincere desire to save the day, but that doesn’t mean he can save the day. I think Rose knows that, and figures saving him to be a priority.
-xtien
“She was more interested in protecting the light than she was appearing a hero.”
If this was still the original movies, Finn crashing into the big ass cannon would’ve destroyed it. In these movies, it’d do nothing…
So, in hindsight, waiting decades to see how little Luke, Leia, and Han had accomplished in 30 years and them having pretty much zero shared screen time ever again equals critical and box office gold. Good to know. Aspiring scribes and filmmakers take heed.
I’ve thought the opposite is true. The smaller ship, if it wasn’t damaged, should outrun the bigger one, because it’s fast and manoeuvrable, meanwhile the bigger one is slow and cumbersome. Hence, Millennium Falcon outmanoeuvre several Star Destroyers in ep 5.
Speaking of ep 5, I don’t understand why people have issues with fuel and maximum effective range of space ships in this movie. We have Star Destroyer that dump its garbage before going to light speed in ep 5, so these ships clearly consume something for energy and trying to minimize their fuel consumption.
Yeah, between the ship melting, the way Finn is mirroring Poe’s fuckups, and the way Rose is established in Canto Bight, particularly with the “now it’s worth it” at the end of the escape, I don’t think there’s much room for confusion. (Having seen it twice now, I think the escape/stampede is the one genuine mistep in the movie. It goes on for way too long, and even that is worth it for the characterization it gives Rose/Important Message.)
Man, I loved this movie. Now i just have to find the energy to listen to grandpa Tom kvetching about the kids doing Star Wars wrong for two hours.
Depressing.
Aw, give him a break, Tom. He’s just an ex-stormtrooper. They’ve never been the sharpest guys in the room. He might have been aiming at that giant laser, but he’s never gonna hit it.