Yea. I’ve seen that.
Do you prefer movie criticism, or intellectualising aspects of a movie?
I was totally in favour of both, however, again, it is about creator competition with each other for an audience, therefore the critic has the tangential potential to diminish the work of the intellectual, and visa versa.
In other words, merit, or derision?
I enjoy both. I like RLM in that they have the Reviews (Half in the Bag) which is a completely different beast and standard than the Plinkett deep-dives/fandom entertainment satire/critique mash-ups are. Keeping the criticism and intellectualizations (as you call them) separate. The reviews are far more measured and aimed at a movie-goer, period.
Not really sure what you are getting at, but OK.
I’m still catching up to the present in this thread. Caught to your post just now. I liked that video you linked to, so I watched his video for Last Jedi as well:
Eh I like the ‘ideas’ of the ideas that are continually presented, but I’m not sure that people’s ‘interpretations’ are all that consistent.
For example, of The Force Awakens, the video linked to, thought the ‘absence of love’ was interesting, which is a critique that Red Letter Media had of TFA.
So it then takes TWO films for weird edge lord Sky-stalker to end up asking Cinderella-Mulan to be his ‘Queen’ and they all both look madly confused & exchange sad faces, as usual. The problem is that it isn’t ‘Star Wars subversion’ - it is a move straight out of the Disney playbook for Princes and Princesses. Or one of the endings for KOTOR.
The idea of ‘you know who your parents are, really, and now so do I, so I will tell you about your parents, that you already know - oh they’re junkers btw’… is a bit too ‘you have amnesia’.
I’d like something more dramatic like:
“Your parents were criminals - we (the first order) arrested them. They were ‘friends’ of Han Solo - smugglers of dangerous goods. We SAVED YOU from an existence WORSE than what you have already experienced. It is only because the Resistance existed that you were left on that planet. Han covorted with some of the worst scum in the galaxy, and Leia was too naive to see it. The only reason why you feel a connection to them is because, deep down, you know they ‘created’ who you are; but I KNOW them AND their actions”…
Then leads into the possibility of asking: Was Luke smuggling Force Children!? … and it shall never be directly answered.
Star Wars Episode 9: Think of the Force Children!
So then you have your third film conflict, and you get your Mother TheReysa basically adopting the Force kids & the war orphans, which gives them a reason for existing, and the First Order’s Rule is that ‘You can’t just adopt kids into Religious sects because it is like Slavery’ AND it is ‘Smuggling’
Perhaps it is even 5-6 later and a NEW set of young people are off on adventures, causing all sorts of trouble, and Kylo or Company kills a 17-20 year old Jedi - err the now-grown ‘kids’ from the Casino… and Mother TheReysa is PISSED because they are basically her children… conflict ensues.
Mother TheReysa is like Sniper Wolf from Metal Gear Solid at this point… sort of. Will do anything to protect her cubs. Luke would basically be like her “Saladin. You mean Big Boss.” - Big Boss.
So you have a conflict about the right/wrong things for the right/wrong reasons… or some ‘Grey’ moralising.
To be continued…?
Also, I’m probably not the only one who half-expects Adam Driver to shout “HANNAH!” in every scene.
Very nice. Thanks for sharing that. Aside from the topic of Star Wars, I was always confused by the broad way in which Fascism was used, but it turns out it wasn’t just me, it really is used pretty broadly.
Saw this on Reddit. It makes me laugh.
Does the version you posted have sound? I can’t tell if it’s silent or if there’s just something weird about playing it on my phone.
But if it’s silent, then you should really watch this version:
Very nice. That is indeed way better with sound.
Man, Solo is just being punished because of this movie. Current estimates are that it will lose $80m, despite apparently being decent (like many others, I haven’t seen it yet, since Last Jedi really killed the magic behind the entire franchise). At least the fan ratings for Solo are much higher than the aggregate Last Jedi fan score on RT.
Ha! That’s way better with sound. Mine is just a gif and sadly silent.
Sadley silent*
I loved TLJ and only saw Solo because a friend had a spare ticket to the opening night show. Everything I’d heard and leading up to opening night was mixed. My response coming back was that it was fine - the least ambitious Star Wars movie ever made. Nobody else in my house was interested in going. I don’t think it’s flopping because of TLJ - I think it’s flopping because it was a mess of a movie that was reshot as conservatively as possibly in a very short period of time.
Also less than 6 months after TLJ. Let’s not forget that. There is a semi finite amount of box office out there in a given year. And Disney has already fired several big hits into the theaters, I think the ‘major blockbuster thing every month’ is a bit heavy.
Yeah I remember as a kid, those three years between the original trilogy movies felt like an eternity. Looking back on it though, maybe that was the right way to go.
I can’t remember if I ever responded to this thread. But I’m apparently in the minority on this film. I love it. It’s one of my 2 favorite Star Wars movies (along with Empire). I’ve seen it three times, and it got better each and every time.
Interestingly, I wouldn’t have put it in my top 2 when I saw it the first time. Or the second. But as it gets better every time I watch it, the further up my personal list it goes. I still have some issues with specific scenes (Finn dragging Rose back to base w/o anyone noticing, for example), but that can be said with every Star Wars movie.
I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, of course. But I just can’t understand those who for some reason think this movie ruined the series.
I don’t understand what’s so weird about it, I can easily agree that the movie is far from the worst SW movie ever, that it has great images, etc, I just hate what happens in it. And no amount of analysis, of look at this, the subtext and the text and this other thing here, Ryan is clearly a fan, and this is what SW needs, and it’s a very courageous movie not playing it safe, yadda yadda, will ever make me not hate what I saw.
Well since we’re slinging opinions around with careless disregard of who we might bean with them, I’ll just say that I thought The Last Jedi was Pretty OK. Basically just like every other Star Wars movie I’ve seen since the original trilogy. I just don’t know that I have the capacity to feel strongly about these movies anymore.
I definitely don’t think it ruined the series or anything dramatic. Heck, the fandom survived midichlorians, so I think they can handle some Rian Johnson tomfoolery.
I do think some aspects of The Last Jedi challenged what some fans thought they knew of the franchise’s rules and direction. If you were really invested in the idea of Luke going on to have cool adventures or training a new Jedi order, then Last Jedi was probably pretty upsetting. If you wanted hyperspace rules to be consistent across movies, then Holdo’s maneuver was an unpleasant surprise no matter how neat it looked on screen. If you latched onto Poe and Finn being quippy cool next-gen heroes, their constant fuckups in Last Jedi were a downer. (Especially when the takeaway lesson was that they should’ve done nothing and obeyed their superiors’ secret evacuation plan.) If you really liked Rey before, her big accomplishment here was being a catalyst for Kylo Ren killing Snoke, since her motivating Luke to act would’ve been completely unnecessary if Poe and Finn hadn’t done what they did.
Shrug. I liked it, but I can see how people were put off.