Yeah, I couldn’t disagree with your take on TLJ any more than I already do. But I will put aside my feelings, and simply ask you would you would have done, in particular with Luke. I mean, It was already established that Kylo destroyed the Jedi training facility, and that Luke hid himself away from the galaxy and very much didn’t want to be found. What exactly would you have done with that storyline? I think what RJ did what that made more than perfect sense - even if I didn’t need to see the green milk scene, I understood what he was trying to do there. And furthermore, why did Rey have to have some sort of heritage? I think the fact that Rey was a nobody was great - it’s not like there was ever lore established that the force only ran in certain families.
Now, I do agree that overall, the trilogy had issues, and those could have been solved by mapping out some sort of story for the whole trilogy first, and then (in theory) having different directors wouldn’t have been an issue, and going the approach they did take was a problem. But I don’t think TLJ was the entire source of blame even given the haphazard take Disney took on the trilogy.
I don’t think that’s fair. The problem with Abrams imo is that he’s not a writer.
It’s the difference between someone who likes, to use nerd analogy, the underlying fiction and story behind Lynch’s Dune, and those who loved the special effects and Toto soundtrack and weren’t bothered by the rather horrible script.
Or maybe appreciating the foundation vs appreciating the ornaments. Abrams is awesome about appreciating the shape and sound of everything, but he seems to think all plots are contrived and there’s little need for narrative world building or consistency and care mostly about the experience.
Then he should direct music videos and not films. I’d say “or more avant garde stuff, art films or what have you,” but honestly I think you are selling him way too long and his sensibilities are quite shallow. Spielberg without the soul.
There are a million ways to do things other than what Johnson did. Many of them may be more ‘conventional’, and therefore not to Johnson’s taste.
Regarding Luke:
First of all, there’s no hint in TFA that Luke didn’t want to be found. That was Johnson’s reading of it, and completely contradicted the reading one had. What we know is that he disappeared, and left a map to find him. And since the whole point of TFA in terms of the bad guys was them locating Luke (which makes zero sense in terms of TLJ), it’s clear why he wouldn’t want to make it easy to find him.
Some possibilities:
Luke was seriously injured by Kylo, and was unable to face him again in battle. However, he was hiding a macguffin that could help the rebellion win. He hid clues to his location so that only someone with enough ability could find him.
Luke realized that someone was needed to counter Kylo/Snoke and he wasn’t powerful enough. Had he been out in public, he’d be targeted and killed. But if he hid in secret, someone powerful enough and directed by the force would find him and he could train them to be strong enough to counter Snoke/Kylo.
Luke found a secret power font that could make the Sith invincible. This is what corrupted Kylo. He was constantly using all his energy to counter the force of that font, preventing the destruction of the galaxy. He left a map so that only someone other than the Sith could find him.
As you can see, it’s ridiculously easy to come up with ideas that don’t fundamentally change Luke’s character and make him into someone else.
Rey didn’t necessarily have to have some sort of heritage related to the main characters. What Abrams set up is a mystery – a beginning of a story, and there are many satisfying ways to develop and resolve that story. The mystery could be more about why they dropped her off on that planet rather than who they were, or what their individual stories were. They could have been regular people with interesting stories – perhaps bounty hunters, or members of a faction of Jedis that rejected the Jedi council. But Johnson chose to just dump the mystery, which was carefully set up in flashbacks in TFA. Abrams’ attempt to rescue that story by connecting her to Palpatine just makes the whole thing more grotesque.
Not as long as his movies continue to rake in money and he retains a reputation of being very easy to work with. At least, not as far as studios are concerned.
I’m not sure why the conversation always gets brought back to this. Yes, of course studios are going to do whatever makes them money. That’s the bedrock assumption, but it has nothing to do with anything as far as discussions of whether something was done well in someone’s opinion, etc.
Again, disagree. First, if you go to hide in an uncharted area of space - even if you leave a map with someone ‘in case of extreme emergency only’ - you’re pretty much saying you don’t want to be found. Second, his going into exile matches exactly with what both Yoda and Obi-Wan did. I mean, the Empire was going around being dicks to everyone in the universe, and I didn’t see either of them step up and do anything - so why would you think Luke would do that? I think what he did fits in EXACTLY with his character. If you want to believe otherwise, that’s fine. My only reason for arguing this is your opinion doesn’t make mine wrong. And like someone else mentioned above, most of the die-hard fans I know like - if not love - TLJ. Maybe that’s not your experience. But your experience doesn’t define nor represent everyone else. Also, if either of those three story ideas had come to past, I think that would firmly have moved me into the ‘I hate TLJ’ camp, because those are bad.
As for Rey, all we knew about her was that she was left on Jakku. That’s it. If you care why that happened, great. I didn’t. Doesn’t mean I would have hated some background on it, but it wasn’t anything I needed to know to enjoy the movie anymore than I needed to understand the background for the Emperor when watching Empire and RotJ. Again, here, just because you wanted background on her parents and story - and that’s fine, that’s your personal experience - doesn’t mean it was needed for everyone. Or even most.
I will agree trying to retcon the Emperor being Rey’s grandfather was a terrible idea. As was, somehow, like 25% of the second death star surviving and landing on that water planet when we saw it explode into billions of box-sized fragments. And I think the whole trilogy could have been better as a whole if they plotted out the story for the entire trilogy ahead of time. All that said, I loved TLJ and liked the other two movies, and while I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, I will argue with anyone who tries to tell me that I’m wrong in how I saw and experienced the movies.
Eh. Saying a successful director should go make art projects or music videos has about as much thoughtful discussion as pointing out that despite how you or I may feel about him, the guy makes a lot of money for his backers and obviously some portion of the general audience likes his output.
This is back to Michael Bay criticism as far as I’m concerned. We may not like Transformers, but it took a few movies for that bloom to come off the rose.
Ok, what would be thoughtful to you, then? I guess I don’t see how a response to “he doesn’t understand narrative but he can put on a good display” isn’t “thoughtful” when it points out that maybe other forms of video art that don’t rely on narrative might be a better fit for him.
The “it makes money” argument to me is just saying, “everything is subsumed to the dictates of capital, suck it,” which is true but beside the point. Then these threads might as well just be posts of numbers, who made the most money is the best, fin. But nobody here actually believes that (well, maybe, I have my doubts about some folks).
Oops, sorry, I misread the tone of what you wrote, then.
Personally, I think The Last Jedi left the seeds for a perfectly good finale (in fact, it sort of looks like Treverrow had a decent start on one), it’s just that Abrams wasn’t interested in cultivating those seeds. So (to awkwardly continue the metaphor) he mulched some of what was there into the soil, transplanted new stuff in from a different climate, and just hoped it would take root. Anyway, I don’t think you can lay much of that on Rian Johnson’s movie. But I do agree that by swinging back to Abrams, very particularly, to follow up Johnson, Disney set up the problem. Which is another way of saying they needed a coherent vision they didn’t have.
This is a good observation. Abrams understands the language of spectacle. But that’s not the same as understanding the structure of good narrative. And it’s why he is a good choice to kick something off, but probably not to finish it. I feel like that’s borne out in his other works.
I would argue that the First Order was nowhere near as dominant as the Empire. It’s hard to argue because the First Order changed sizes based on what was needed at that particular moment. Nevertheless, when the Jedi Council dispersed, there was no Rebellion yet. The Jedis had to run for their lives. This wasn’t the case by any means here – Luke disappeared just because he felt guilty and sad. He was the opposite of heroic, and that’s a big deal, because when we left him, he was very heroic.
But here’s where the dialog breaks down. The Star Wars prequels are so bad that there’s really no ability to bring them as proof of anything IMO. It’s like quoting fan fiction to support a position on LOTR. Star Wars, at this point, is far more bad stuff than good (again, IMO). It’s a reverse turd-sandwich, with the prequels and sequels forming the outer turd bread, while the good stuff is on the inside. And so, there’s no real need or drive for me to discuss it. Star Wars is completely dead to me at this point. There was a hope of resurrecting it with TFA, but TLJ killed it, and ROS is just more dancing on the grave – in fact, I haven’t seen it, nor do I want to. I don’t consider any of the movies past the original 3 as worthwhile (and Jedi wasn’t that amazing either).
Not dismissing a successful director’s output as “Spielberg without the soul” just because you don’t like it? Maybe go into some specifics instead of vague reductionist phrases?
I can offer one. JJ Abrams seems to dismiss script logic in favor of setting up bits of emotional impact, like the Chewbacca fake-out or the science teacher’s murder in Super 8. The scenes carry a ton of weight at first, but are ultimately meaningless in the moments directly after because Abrams isn’t concerned with following through on consequences. This often is at odds with the way humans expect stories to work with setups and payoffs that exist in the internal logic of the movie.
I think that’s why I liked RoS more than most - I responded more to the emotional beats than the actual story. I mean, I even was sort of able to accept (as much as I don’t want to) 25% of the exploded death star somehow surviving the explosion we all saw, and landing intact on another planet in the same system. It was completely ridiculous and stupid, but the emotional beats worked for me, so I just accepted it.
I’ve offered specifics in this very thread, although I know it’s been a long one. Here’s one, and it’s not even really necessarily a narrative-based objection: the man treats space (as in volume, not like, outer space) as though it’s scene changes in a stage play. There’s no sense of depth to anything, and traversals are seemingly effortless. It’s part of how “weightless,” consequenceless, just about everything is in his world, every world he touches, which you also touched on from another angle. Spielberg was also a “successful” director, making mass-appeal stuff, but his stuff, light as it mostly was, just didn’t have the same kind of forgettable, styrofoam core Abrams’s stuff does.
Well, they were dominant enough to build the Death Star 3.0, and then use it to wipe out the entire system that the New Republic was based in. And yes - when we left Luke, he was heroic. People - and circumstances - change. Plenty of people and characters start off one way, and end up going the other way. Sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently.
As for the prequel trilogy, I recently rewatched them (gotta do something during the lockdown), and they were better this time - at least for me - by paying more attention to what Palpatine was doing to destroy the Republic from within vs the rise and fall of Anakin. Still not awesome stories, but made it at list a little more tolerable to watch while waiting around for the good scenes.
I think I would be much more open to the sequels (and prequels) if the originals weren’t so darn good. If it was all just fantasy crap, I wouldn’t mind whatever they did to it. The fact that the first 2 movies were so special, and the other stuff repeatedly tries and fails to live up to their standards, make it so I can’t enjoy any of the newer movies. I’m liking KOTOR though. And X-Wing/Tie fighter were awesome.
How often do you rewatch the movies? They’re not that good. The dialogue and acting isn’t any better, and in some cases, cringeworthy (“But I want to go to Toshii station to pick up some power converters!!!”). But for the time, especially, the worlds they built were great. I’d say the special effects made those movies far more than the story or acting did.
I just rewatched the originals with my kids, and I think the first 2 really hold up. A small chunk of the dialog isn’t great, but it’s not bad either. Fortunately, the actors rebelled against Lucas’ most awkward lines. In fact, I think that’s one of the secrets to those movies’ success. Lucas was surrounded by people who were better than him at many aspects of movie making, and he listened to them. The pacing is awesome; the action; the world-building; the characters themselves were interesting and enjoyable. Also, the plot for the most part made sense within the constructed universe. Jedi was when those things started breaking down.
