Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Episode VIII

This video shares the same point about ‘yes, and’…

I just can’t forgive JJ for the MIRV Death Star whose explosions you can see across the galaxy AND see coming before it hits. I know i’m count rivets but that’s not even trying to put even the slightest bit of sci in the fi.

OTOH i’m 100% fine with Ewoks. The only thing i dislike about ROTJ is the weird soap opera camera they used.

If you’re interested, there is actual precedent for it being “space bullets” in the SW universe. Lucas’ explanation for the twelve parsec thing figures in; essentially, the reason ships have to make the “calculations to jump to light speed” are so they can figure out fast, non linear routes that avoid obstacles.

In that case, how would you know whether or not something else had floated in the way? How would nearby ships not at some point crash into each other at ‘Light Speed’? Is the computer model THAT good?

I mean, I can imagine the idea that a sensor dish could pick up whether or not you were about to ‘Warp’ into a physical object upon re-entry out of a ‘Space-Corridor’… Hyper-Space (more than 3 dimensions).

To be honest, I’ve never given it that much thought - other than that Faster than Light (Hyper-Space) travel would mean ‘Folding 3D distance’, and Light Speed would mean traveling AS light - but light bounces off surfaces…

As I said, I cannot envision a situation where a computer could read and calculate all the unknown dynamic moving objects, unless a sensor-snapshot was taken beforehand of the large area between the two points … like… that seems too complicated to rely on. And Hyper-Space is Faster Than Light - different dimension.
The Event Horizon version seems to be most ‘rudimentary’.

Eh, perhaps we’re thinking too much about it.

Maybe now a couple of ships will destroy entire fleets, and ‘The Star Wars’ will no longer happen, as fleets are afraid to move, and the galaxy enforces strict speed regulations.

Pax Galactica!

Guys, what if GRRM had written Ep VII, VIII, IX? How great would that have been?

You mean… that wasn’t Peter Dinklage???
I thought they made him look taller using special effects… you know, like in Lord of the Rings. I thought it was a sequel!

star-wars-the-last-jedi-luke-skywalker

The other joke being that George (they’re) GRRRRReat…Martin frosties would never finish the Trilogy, and HBO’s dipping quality…

I have no idea how any of it would work. Just pointing out that the idea already existed within the framework of the universe. It’s all woo-woo space magic to me, and I’ve never cared a ton for super internal consistency, strict continuity, or system building in Star Wars; I just enjoy the mythological aspect of it all. SW has always been so lightweight that I’ve never assumed it ever needed to feel grounded. That’s probably why I mostly skipped the EU; much of it always felt like generic sci-fi or war stories, which seemed to be missing the point.

Then you wouldn’t like Legend of the Galactic Heroes?

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P.S I bet hyper-space is achieved in Star Wars by a Michael Fassbender Engine.

I think I have a slightly lower opinion of the structure of the film (I’d say it’s “unconventional” insofar as it’s “not good”), but basically I feel you man, I’m in the same boat. I’m done trying to convince people or argue about it, but I’m no closer to understanding its harsher critics.

Over here like:

WHY DID YOU SAY THAT NAME!!

As I griped upthread, it’s the nihilism. Nothing mattered, why care.

I didn’t like that one bit. It felt like an unnecessarily mean gesture by the filmmakers.

And for similar reasons, I don’t like that the New Trilogy took the Original Trilogy’s characters and made them shabby failures. Han is a deadbeat dad with money problems whose wife kicked him out. Leia has alienated the movement that she once led. Luke brought disaster on himself by trying to murder his nephew and became a bitter hermit running away to die alone. The New Republic so many people died to create by defeating the Sith was slaughtered wholesale because none of them could be bothered to notice that a goddamn planet was being turned into a gun that shot stars at things. These people are failures who pissed away their potential and turned galactic-level success into nothing that mattered. Oh, and Admiral Ackbar sat too close to the window, the poor bastard.

All right, but unless I am misremembering, haven’t you also complained about Rey as a Mary Sue, someone who is just natively good at everything she puts her hand to? In my mind, Luke, Han and Leia are shown to be more complex characters because they don’t have it all together, and each has screwed up in some fairly fundamental ways. I already mentioned how it makes sense to me that Luke might not make a great teacher, but it also makes sense that Han, the scoundrel, the smuggler, might not make a very good father. And Leia, who is so good at firing up insurrection and overthrowing an empire might not be so skilled at running a government. These seem like natural extensions of characters we are familiar with, to my way of thinking, and not a betrayal of them.

True. I have characterized her as a Disney Princess with a lightsaber.

Those are valid character arcs and would have been interesting stories to tell, but those stories were hand-waved away. To me it felt more like sweeping the old away so the new and (purportedly more) marketable can take their place, goodbye tired old fanbase, hello new generation of DISNEY SW fans. That desire wasn’t even subtly referenced in the film, that was the overt theme.

Seems to be the theme of a lot of things, including history.
As there are now few living servicemen and women, even World War 2 feels swept aside in favour of (for lack of a better word) ‘World War 2 fandom’.

So, for me, 'tis sort of strange to see people who take firm interest in WWII, but I have a living 93 year old grandmother who can remember being in the Women’s Auxiliary on the AA guns - and that’s her story - her war was quite ‘sanitised’ as a result of perspective.
There are a few bits here and there about the Americans landing and there being a lot of American men everywhere, but that’s it. She hasn’t written a book or anything, and once she is gone, it will be up to future historians to decide how they will interpret the subject.

Gen X are perfectly content at making money off WWII legacy and anguish, and taking greater liberties with the conflict, the by-product is that it keeps the millennial generation content via belief of meaning… and, no, I’m not talking about spoofs or parodies… I’m talking more about ‘Theme-Parking’; making something both serious, straight-laced, but also goofy entertainment at the same time - ‘Camp’. Like Westworld -‘WarWorld’.

For Star Wars, a lot of people invested themselves and their meaning in it over the course of 40 years, to then be told that they’re sexist, mysogynist, unwelcome, nerds, subhuman creatures, and that the answer is ostensibly to ‘get with the programme!’

The problem with the anguish that people feel over the new movies, is that they were written, and therefore DESIGNED that way. The human brain isn’t as good at discerning ‘reality’ as we believe it does, so when people see live-actors arguing or threatening each other, a part of the brain doesn’t know that it is fake. The rational mind kicks in and says “Dismiss what you are seeing”… but then some of the stresses or worries still linger.

The problem with ‘discussing’ new Star Wars is that the people who got a dopamine thrill out of it are saying to critics: “Your physical instincts and reaction to the material is wrong!” which is the same as a prude parent saying “You better not vomit! Especially in my car!” to a person who has motion sickness or food poisoning.

At some point, younger generations will see Wold War 2 through the lens of ‘fantasy’, or primarily a form of self-gratifying narrative, if they don’t already. Then, the secondary aspect is to think “What if that actually had real consequences?” and act according to it - in a ‘rationalised form of emotional display’.

It is like the difference between those who SAW 9-11 on the Television as it happened (I did), and young people who are now, say, 16-21, who, even now, who’s frame of reference for it would have been taught at school, or via reading about it in the history book.

Time really is relative. History and fiction are at times twinned and inseparable entities, as the outcome of one gives rise to the other.

There is no evidence that TLJ substantially impacted Solo’s box office. Solo’s issues are the decidedly tepid reviews and the lack of being a compe,lling blockbuster on the heels of Avengers.

That’s a really interesting idea. It’s like asking for ‘safe’ danger.

All right. Let’s get back to this, now that it’s the weekend and I’m dunk - drunk? - no, DUNK enough to tolerate a Last Jedi discussion.

(Hopefully I will remember this one.)

Oh, I can get way meaner about nerd culture. (Also, this was hot off the news of Kelly Marie Tran being hounded off social media by the incel shitlord brigade, so I was in a mood.)

Generally though, I feel that people need to get over the fact that a movie not giving you what you wanted does not make it bad. A blockbuster movie being kind of a bummer, where people spend most of its time fucking up is pretty refreshing in a way.

  • once the first jump fails to shake the first order, and the fallout from the initial assault shakes out, the plan is basically to do the same thing Rose and Finn are doing, just at a particular point with an abandoned rebel base.

  • Yeah. And? Seriously. And? People fucking up and learning from it is a viable storytelling tactic.

  • A major point of the Canto Bight sequence is Finn going from caring about his friends to caring about the larger ideological struggle - “You were always scum” - “Rebel scum”. I seriously can’t picture a better illustration of the CLASS WAR aspect of this than this.

  • I genuinely don’t know what you’re reffering to here, and I watched it within the last couple of weeks. Are you sure Benicio del Toro didn’t do the gagging?

  • I think it’s fine for a blockbuster to be depressing. (It’s kinda complex, but characters is how people relate to stories - Lois and Clark making out as basically the ashes of the 9/11 victims floats around them in Man of Steel is not ok - but simultaneously, I don’t thik the transports being blown out of the sky hits as hard as the carbonite-frozen Han being carted off in frozen carbonite)

Basically, Gamergate. And any nerd space where straight white dudes are no longer the default. And you can draw a straight line from that to Trump,.

If you want the psychology laid bare:
https://twitter.com/samsykesswears/status/870337061210923008

That said, doesn’t make me particularly enthusiastic about buying a ticket to the next installment, either.

It doesn’t make it good either.

This!!

When people complain about what they wanted a movie to be, I tune it out. IT isn’t your movie or your characters or your franchise. If you don’t like the direction, don’t buy a ticket.

Valid criticisms (of which TLJ certainly deserves some) are complaining about how the choices that were made weren’t backed up. Not the choices they didn’t make.

IT is a thin line between those 2 lines of criticism, but when you are talking about a work of art, such as a film, it is hard to criticize what isn’t there.

Fuck Picasso, he has sold out, I only liked the blue paintings he did, what is with all of this red crap about circus performers lately?! Go back to painting homeless people Pablo! The circus people got to him man, it is all about clowns and acrobats now! This PC culture (PRO-CIRCUS) is RUNNING RAMPANT!!! And talk about color schemes, all in red?! Did he forget his roots? He meets a girl, and suddenly all of his paintings are happy crap about dancing women and harlequins?!?!

Outrageous.