Have another review why don’t you?
Bluddy
1574
I agree that it was put to pretty good use in TLJ, but it also automatically had the subtext of subversion and callback to the first movie, and it’s just not how you do that kind of thing. They didn’t just set up that Rey had mysterious parents – they also set up the fact that they told her to stay there, and she waited for them endlessly and felt there was some kind of important reason that she needed to stay there. That was a huge part of her character motivation in the first movie. Saying her parents weren’t important simply didn’t cover up the hole of that mystery box – it just kicked it to the curb disrespectfully.
This is very similar to how TLJ treated Luke – he was just a puppet to fill a role, without regard to his character motivations, which have been deeply explored in previous films. It’s another thing that could have been done well. Luke could have come to the conclusion that both the Jedi and the Sith needed to end – that they were feeding each other. But instead, he only wants the Jedi to end, while the Sith he created goes around wrecking the galaxy – a galaxy that contains his sister, which we’ve seen his deep connection to. None of that makes any sense. I would have loved it if he trained Rey but his secret plan was to wipe out both the Jedi and the Sith, and even that this plan had ultimately corrupted him and turned him to the dark side (he could have been the big bad of movie 3!). That would have been awesome. What we got instead was empty crap.
Hey I didn’t know Popular Mechanics did movie reviews!
This gets at the difficulty of writing characters. Humans are not always rational or consistent, but in a fictional format irrationality or a momentary lapse of reason is open to the critique of inconsistency, and genre fans in particular will zero in on perceived inconsistency like a heat-seeking missile. It’s a fine line to walk. Of course, most characters in fiction – even good ones – have nowhere near the depth and unpredictability of actual humans. What we’re accustomed to is more like a kind of elegant clockwork in a fictional machine, memorably portraying a few colors in the spectrum of human behavior, rather than a simulacrum of a true person in all its splendor and chaos (which entity is anyway too large and messy to fit within the constraints of most storylines). Hamlet I think is one of the few characters in fiction who approach the richness of an actual human, and he’s kind of a shitshow, albeit an unbelievably articulate and witty one. (He also actually does something completely crazy and illogical, rather than just pondering it (Hi, Polonius!), thereby triggering the chaos and carnage of the fifth act.)
All of that said, you make a good case for that Luke bit.
CraigM
1577
That is true, and TLJ moves that character arc forward. But not in the happy ‘you’re Luke’s daughter’ way everyone expected. She got an answer, but it wasn’t one she wanted. But it was realistic. Sometimes people in real life get unsatisfying answers/ conclusions to things in their life. It was thematically resonant, and more powerful than the easy expected answer.
Strongly disagree. The answer being nobody, so you decide who you want to be is as respectful a treatment of any of the hooks from TFA.
Because it took it seriously.
I saw one of the reviews for TRoS mention Rey being even more powerful than in the last movie where she floated half a mountain worth of boulders. So hopefully they explain a year later, with maybe lots of training from ghost Jedi, how that happens. :)
Well, in one certain Star Wars game, a certain apprentice uses the force to make a Star Destroyer crash.
Baldi is some weird ass game that became popular with Young People YouTube for… some reason. All the kids know Baldi if they watch YouTube. Target certainly carries them, but all I can find is the bully.
Honestly it’s probably dead by now, since they just got toys on the shelves. In June all the kids were playing Baldi on the playground. Running around hiding notebooks and slapping rulers. Now, I don’t even know.
There’s a Minecraft version of it too, btw. Which my kids have, and play with other kids.
Bluddy
1581
Empire: “Luke, I am your father. Search your feelings.” “Nooooo!”
Jedi: “Well actually, your father was nobody. Who cares about your father anyway?”
Good writing. Because that’s life sometimes.
Yeah, those were the movies we were talking about, Empire and Jedi. Good call.
Buy a massive IP that’s beloved by millions. Create a series of new films with no fucking plan ahead of time. 3 different writer/directors to each go their own way. At least that was their “plan” initially. It crashed and burned on them and this is the desperate attempt by J.J. to clean it up.
People slam Kennedy and yea she needs her fair share but I’m laying this ultimately at Iger’s feet. He should have mandated and actually story plan with consistent writing before a scene was shot. He didn’t. Just get it going and we’ll figure it out as we go along…
rei
1584
Anakin birth spoiler from comics:
So the SW comics somehow made Palps use his Dark Side to inseminate/influence Anakin’s mom Shmi which led to that “immaculate” birth so he’s not a fully “product of the force.” I don’t know when they did this, if this was a setup for this latest trilogy/last movie but WTF. “It was the plan all along” levels of nonsense.
CraigM
1585
What @divedivedive said. Also that you think how they are written is at all comparable shows you to be not worth arguing with. Besides
Empire: definite retcon Obi Wan as unreliable narrator, as it directly contradicts what he told Luke
Jedi: oops, accidental incestuous kiss in last movie due to another retcon!
But go ahead, have your premade conclusions drawn. You are entitled to your opinion about the movies. Just don’t go pretending they are some objective fact. Because while dunking on some of the dumber takes is easy, it isn’t particularly satisfying.
SlyFrog
1586
No, Johnson obviated it - you don’t actually need a Death Star, as you can just jump ships through solid objects and destroy them. So from this point forward, they’ll just jump unmanned ships through planets. Not sure why they ever bothered with that Death Star building stuff.
But it looks like they’re missing :P
Eh, this is almost the same issue I had with Ghostbusters 2016 reviews and discussion. They toxicity of some people made it impossible to discuss the movie without having that larger fan issue crop up every time. Sometimes a movie sucks, just based on its own stuff. The story blows, the dialogue is dumb, characters act inconsistently, the editing is shit, whatever. You couldn’t mention any of that without someone lumping you in with the MRA idiots.
Here, the review just ascribes intent to JJ, Terrio, and Disney. That they bowed to toxic fans. Maybe, or maybe they felt like they were course-correcting after Rian’s movie didn’t follow any of the obvious setups in TFA. There’s no reason to assume Disney was all, “Let’s pander to anti-Rose assholes.”
SlyFrog
1589
Rian Johnson - crazy manic pixie girl who’s just so random, he just does random things, he doesn’t know what he’s going to do, he’s just so random!
CraigM
1590
Perhaps, I haven’t seen the movie yet so can’t judge if their ‘pandering to toxic fans’ refers to the worst actors, or merely those who disliked the new films.
I was, however, reacting to those here who immediately celebrated this, such as ascribing this as ‘those who like the original trilogy’. That I will not put on with. Because it is, at best, ignoring those who liked the OT and also liked the new film. And also from the past I know many of those critical here accept certain framings. And the Rey framings in particular piss me off.
Because the conversation about Rey is, if not toxic, at least toxic adjacent. And like hell am I about to let the ‘Rey is a Mary Sue because she can do things’ stand from those who venerate the OT and ignore how Luke is at least as competent with less internal justification.
You seem awfully fired up about the way this movie was made, but the bottom line here is that JJ had to choose to live with The Last Jedi, which seems most fans disliked, or he had to sort of brush it aside. What I’m reading says he did the latter for the most part, and that lines up with expectations of most fans.
You can get all crazy about framing of certain new characters and society at large in 2019, but that doesn’t change the fact that The Last Jedi wasn’t what a majority of fans were looking for in Star Wars.
Well, regardless of intention, the movie panders to the complaints about TLJ so hard, it should’ve been subtitled “The Monkey’s Paw”.
It’s giving those people exactly what they wanted, and it’s so, so bad.
