Yeah, I didn’t get that ‘millennial philosophical musing’ at all. I think the point of the ‘both sides buy guns’ was more for DJ to point out that the weapon dealers weren’t evil - they just went where the money was, and more/less followed the cash. They didn’t get involved with the politics - which was sort of his whole philosophy. Now, you can argue that what he is espousing is a different kind of evil. After all, he may not be taking a side (or ‘not joining’ as it were), but by being non-committal, he is serving a side that does do great evil in the universe. He may not be supporting the First Order, but by not resisting, what he does does, in fact, help them prosper. Or they would have, if not for the ‘hyperspace into the bad guys’ thing didn’t happen at precisely the right (wrong?) moment.
IMO it’s clear to me that at least to some extent Rian was trying to say the sword begs for war.
So the twist at the end is that suiciding the door blaster is wrong because suicide is just “giving in” to the desire to engage with the bad guys on their level. The right move is not to play, or something. Which is exactly what Luke does, essentially refuse to play Kylo Ren’s sword game. The Resistance will win because they refuse to play by the rules that have dominated Star Wars logic, ignoring injustice for the exigencies of the moment (like, in prequel 1, the Jedi just going along with the slave trade). No doubt they’d have spread their new ideas through the galactic social media and cause an uprising of oppressed peoples around the galaxy had RIan been given SW 9 .
When the Rebels are buying X-wings from the galactic trade dicks, they’re just, like, buying into the military industrial complex, man. I mean the reveal was supposed to shock the rubes and audience that they were drinking from the same cup as their enemies. At least that’s the take away i walked out of the theatre with.
I didn’t get that at all. Rose saved Finn because she thinks they’ll win by saving those they love, not destroying those they hate. It’s motivation. Holdo made her suicide run to save the people she loved (if you will) from being destroyed in their unarmed transports. Finn was going to sacrifice himself because he hates the First Order. Again, it’s all about motivation. You fight to save people, not to destroy others. That was the point to me.
That’s definitely possible. TBH i haven’t thought about those scenes enough to say if they’re consistent or not. But we have essentially four rebel suicide scenes:
Space gravity bomber
Warp suicide
Finn up yours
Luke koan master
I’m not sure if these scenes are consistent with the motivation theory. But maybe they are! But i feel like splitting hairs on the Finn vs Warp suicide thing - it feels strange that doing the right thing depends upon what’s in your heart, not what your actions actually are. So warp suicide woman would have been wrong had she suicided with anger in her heart? Or Finn would have been right had he suicided with love? Perhaps…
I think it might be less ‘what’s the motivation for suiciding yourself’ and more ‘motivation for fighting in the first place.’ The Rebellion in general is fighting to save what they love. The First Order is just fighting for, I dunno. Conquest or something. That’s why, sure, taking out the door buster would have been a good result regardless of motivation (although I doubt it saves anyone - just buys more time), but I think it was more the point of understanding why you’re fighting in the first place. And they wanted to ‘save’ a main character. I think that whole ‘Rose saving Finn’ thing was clumsy, awkward, etc, but I understand wanting to get that point across. I think it could have somehow been done better, but it certainly doesn’t ruin the movie for me.
Rose, as far as she knew, also sacrificed everyone in the bunker by stopping Finns last ditch effort to stop the super gun. And she can’t have thought that she and Finn would be ignored by the FO army she crashed them in front of so she sacrificed Finn anyway. An nice line ( but on the level of a fortune cookie if you think about it) set up by really poor plot contrivances.
I don’t know. The whole Rose/Finn thing was weird. Like, when did they become romantically attracted to each other? Was it while BB-8 was clomping around in an AT-ST? Plus, how did they get from their crash site to the front door? Did the First Order just let them walk by? Finally, the whole “That’s how we’ll win” line is undercut by the visual of the First Order blasting the door down in the background. To me, it was all really badly executed.
Moving this post here from the other thread.
The New Yorker had a good essay about the state of the SW universe.
Jeffrey Wells has a nice blog post about it
http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2018/06/a-religion-thats-begun-to-lose-its-faith/
Every time Jeffrey Wells pops up, I think of this:
Lo and behold, he’s still obsessed with fat people. Seriously, what is this garbage?
http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/2018/06/jurassic-horror-wasnt-on-screen/
I couldn’t ignore the fact that Jabba #1’s reactions were extremely coarse and downmarket. I was reminded of those close-ups of Collisseum cheap-seat serfs watching Christians get eaten in Cecil B. DeMille‘s The Sign of the Cross. Every time a person got eaten by a dinosaur, Jabba #1 went “oooh, hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo!” Movies like Fallen Kingdom are obviously made with this kind of person in mind. She really loved the huge alligator-like dino that leapt out of the sea to eat a squealing 20something guy who was trying to climb into a hovering helicopter — “Eeeeee-hee-hah-hah!” Anything and everything that happened of a stupid or low-rent or pandering nature, Jabba #1 was in movie heaven.
They didn’t do it right. It came o\ff very weird and sudden like.
I think even people who like these movies, really enjoyed them, can admit there are flaws. There little comedic side adventure was fine and it was okay it was pointless but that last bit in the salt was just… odd.
While I didn’t hate TLJ, there were parts of it I just didn’t like. Maybe that subliminally effected me, but I never really had the big desire for a Solo movie. I am sure at some point I will see it, but right now there is no real interest there.
We and your 18 year old and Telefrog’s wife are in this together.
edit: Scuzz too.
The non-hater gang. People who don’t hate TLJ, but for them it dispelled some of the magical allure of the franchise and made it feel less special. I’ll probably see every Star Wars movie eventually, but a release isn’t an event like it once was, after TLJ.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I came to realize just how much the trio meant to me. Luke probably more than most, because he was the main character from the first trilogy.
And the new ones just turns them from the people who saved the Galaxy to the people who tried to save the Galaxy, but ultimately couldn’t even save their family, much less the Galaxy.
And if you’re fine with that, great, but for me, they took away the characters I loved and given me new ones who don’t live up (and never can, I’m not exactly 6 anymore). And I came to realize that without the characters that I loved, I don’t much care about SW.
Just so I’m clear here, those of you who feel disillusioned by The Last Jedi, were you mostly onboard up until this point? So the prequels didn’t shake your faith at all?
And I’m asking as a dude who didn’t even hate the prequels, I just felt kind of meh about the whole thing. Same as I do for the new movies, really.
I’d rather re-watch Episode 1 (Jar-Jar, pod racing and all) , then see episode 8 ever again.
Seriously who wanted to see Luke milk a ocean cow? And then drink it on the spot. Who wanted that?
I like prequels. Sure they are flawed, but I was a 12 year old kid when Phantom Menace came out, I already loved the original trilogy back then, and seeing young Obi-wan and that amazing Duel of the Fates fight was a treat. Second film had that incredible colliseum fight, which is something I have ALWAYS wanted to see in a Star Wars film. Plus Padme was simply the most beautiful girl I have ever seen :)
And Revenge of the Sith was genuinely good film. I remember the chills when order 66 was executed to this day.
Meanwhile I still loathe TLJ.
The prequels shook my faith that there would ever be another decent SW movie and that the originals had been anything more than a lucky break, but they didn’t make me rethink my love of the originals, they didn’t make me leave the theater sad…
Perhaps it is a clever metaphor for the new multiple film series’ (/serieses)…
Pretty much my reaction. I tapped out during the sequels, and when TFA occurred, realized it was a recycled, blander, blatant toy-marketing version of the first movie (like Abrams did with my far more beloved Star Trek) and thought, “Well, they needed to reboot this after the boring vanity project/cash grab that was the prequels…this thing was flawed, let’s see what happens”.
The they did blue milk, and delivered an incomprehensible (at times) script, and I said to myself,“OK, time to check out again, probably for good this time”.
I would say it’s a combination of two things:
- The prequels felt more like standalone stories. They were set before the OT, so you could ignore them and still ignore the original movies. But with the new trilogy, I agree with DarthMasta: It took Luke and made him into a bitter old man who had given up on life. In that way, I felt like it ruined the OT more than the prequels ever could.
(And I’m not sure about the “hopeful” ending of The Last Jedi. So now kids can dream about being a Jedi? That’s what Luke was doing during the OT, and TLJ showed him as disillusioned. I don’t get how that gels with, “Well, Luke was old and broken down…but maybe it will be different for YOU!”)
- The prequels made me give up hope of ever seeing the VII-VIII-IX trilogy. The Disney buyout brought that hope back. And then TLJ said, “You should destroy everything you loved. Here, we’ll start by destroying Star Wars for you.” They gave me hope, then discarded it.