Star Wars VIII: Spoiler Time

Movies
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So Episodes I - III were on TV this weekend and I caught most of them again after not seeing them for quite awhile and they hold up rather well when it comes to motivations and character development in ways this new film really doesn’t IMO.

Whatever you think of Hayden Christensen’s acting ability, his turn toward the dark side is clearly within character. He loses his mother. He is infatuated with Padme. He desperately wants to be recognized by the Jedi Council as a full member. He has visions of the woman he loves dying painfully. He is always somewhat distrusted by the Jedi save Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon. All of this leads to Palpatine’s ability to turn him and it happens clearly when he slices off Dooku’s head while saving the Chancellor even though he hasn’t recognized it yet. When the eventual Emperor offers him the possibility to save Padme through use of the Dark Side of the Force (which is clearly against the Jedi belief that things must die so life can be renewed), that’s the thing that puts him over the top to become Darth Vader. He’s selfish that way partially because he’s done so much for the Jedi Council before that and they’ve shown him zero respect. Yoda seems to know that this was always a possible outcome. He failed to control it (because let’s be honest, people make bad decisions for love), much as he intimates to Luke in the current film.

The thing about those three films that this one sometimes slips up on is there is really strong characterization of all the people involved in this Galaxy redefining fight for control. There are real stakes that are evident beyond just “First Order Bad. Resistance Good.” And yeah, I see that they’re kinda implying more shades of grey in The Last Jedi, especially through the Vegas Planet scene, but it doesn’t hold up so well in a Galaxy where the Force requires balance and there are white and black hats, even when they may change sides eventually as Vader himself did twice.

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This discussion is going off the rails, but I don’t think Anakin’s turn in the prequels is believable. He goes from being conflicted and hesitant, to killing children in a flip of the switch. After that, he tries to justify his massacre with the BS “in my view” speech. It’s dumb.

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Yes. They were not done well in the films.

HOWEVER

That turn is given the care and development it needs in the Clone Wars series. Seriously, the animated show is so much better, on every level, than the prequel films. Anakin’s turn is believable and developed really well there.

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That’s great, but I’m talking about the movies.

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I thought the entire planet was a snow planet. In fact, I thought they were on Hoth. Turns out that the white and the red underneath are salt, which is why there were red crystal salt caves and why the speeder things exposed the red salt when they had their skis down.

I enjoyed the movie, though it was ~ 20-30 minutes too long. I had to primary problems with it:

  1. When everything is URGENT ALL THE TIME OMG WE’RE GONNA DIE then nothing feels urgent at all. I miss the parts from previous movies where they were on some alien planet during “down time” and you got to see the bars, etc. The casino didn’t work for me for that part. Most of the island scenes were pretty, but boring (except the fish nuns and Chewie eating the local fauna). The island scenes were mostly Luke and Rey have the type of fight that 12 yr olds might have. I mean, really… Rey goes all the way out there, finds Luke (who hasn’t seen anybody in years) and he doesn’t even have the decency to be mildly friendly or show some hospitality?
  2. The movie felt extremely claustrophobic to me. When Finn and Rose were marched onto the landing bay with all of the Stormtroopers and walkers, there were a few of the traditional old “grand” shots of an evil army that sort of are the hallmark of the Empire. The Force Awakens handled that aspect of the franchise much better. Extrapolating to the entire movie, the entire thing didn’t feel like Star Wars to me at all. It felt like a generic space sci fi movie.
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I don’t know how you can say that. The Kylo and Ren sideby sad battle was kind of cool, that whole sequences had Jedi and Sith all over it.

This isn’t true either. the Leia floating in space thing not only seemed weird it looked weird too. I don’t think you’re being honest with yourself it there too. It was odd all around but not enough to ruin anything for me.

I felt a lot. Sorry you did not. I also like the characters, as is, so it’s easy for me to feel for them when I already like them. They don’t have to convince me to like them this time around.

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I liked the characters in TFA, which was a hugely superior movie.

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This happens literally today, in the real world, middle class kids going to some psycho groups because they feel isolated, want more acceptance or something. They have a home, loving family, things… not enough. Maybe Kylo isn’t going to be saved. Maybe his fate is worse than Vader’s. Who knows. I am willing to find out though.

I don’t understand this need to know about these villains. We knew nothing about the Emperor or Vader throughout the beginning of the original series. We had one guy with a cool voice and great powers just killing good and bad guys who had an odd obsession to obey an even more mysterious Emperor that you just assumed must be more powerful to explain why Vader even knelt to him.

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I think a big difference is that with the original trilogy, we didn’t have a giant interconnected universe of lore and history. Vader and The Emperor being archetypes with little to no backstory was fine because there was no expectation of a wider media world. Things have changed in the decades. When you present Snoke as a crazy powerful Force user that was likely alive during the past movies, there’s an expectation that the questions that sets up needs answers.

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And yet, those are classic, unforgettable characters, and I literally can barely dredge up any recollection about whatever movie character we’re discussing here.

I agree. While Anakin’s turn is more dumb, I think Luke Skywalker’s moment of doubt when he flipped on his light saber over Kylo’s bunk to be pret-tay dumb in its own right.

Luke was playing the cranky old recluse just to play the cranky old recluse. It was an entirely unbelievable characterization. The entire island scene, and Skywalker as a whole, was a waste. I’d have preferred they get to the island and found Luke had already ‘become one with the Force’ than for him to portray an unbelievable crank and then die of holographic exhaustion.

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But they haven’t changed for everyone. The only difference for me between the original trilogy and the new series was the prequel which I didn’t find worthwhile at all. I mean I thought Anakin’s story was so badly shown we were better off without it. I didn’t find the prequels believable at all. If your’e talking about stories outside the movies, I don’t know those stories. I watch Star Wars movies… that’s about it.

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Outside media, or just within the movies. It’s all connected either way. Just going by the movies, Snoke was doing what during the original trilogy? The guy was apparently a super-powerful Force practitioner during a time when the Empire was purging the galaxy of competitors? Just within the past two movies, Snoke was communicating and corrupting Ben while Luke was training him how?

These are things that start to add up when you make these huge franchise films.

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I guess the way that I think of it is that the galaxy is a huge place so not only is it possible, but likely that all the super villains that we see in our slice of the galaxy are just underlings to more powerful people.

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It is entirely possible to create a satisfying answer to that question.

It just hasn’t been shown in the movies.

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They keep talking about balance in this movie. I assume he showed up shortly after Luke ascended to his master status or whatever. I also thought it made sense Luke had to go because Snoke was gone. They’re the past though. Kylo and Rey, this is their time.

You say huge franchise, but it’s what… 8 movies, and the prequel didn’t really do all that much, at least for me, to explain the universe.

I think there are a number of folks out there reading wikis, comics, books, playing star wars games and watching a few tv series that might be the ones that are least satisfied. I watched 7 movies, and three of them were crap, so no. 8 I am pretty happy with, as well as the remaining 5. I know they’re not perfect. I didn’t think the original was either though so there’s that.

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This exactly. If you make a franchise universe of movies, you need to be prepared to explain contradictory stuff.

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I liked this movie a lot, but these films will never be truly great as long as Disney is exerting creative control over the directors.

The original movies were made by a Kurosawa fan (and his collaborators) attempting to emulate his work and interpret the Samurai epics into a grand space opera. Disney could give 0 shits about auteur directors getting a chance to make Star Wars great. They want to build rides and toys. This is why Lord and Miller got the boot. This is why Edgar Wright got the boot from Ant man. They are building franchises, not classics. Cut the corners off and put them on the branded Lego toys.

You could see that Rian Johnson was trying to do something interesting, destroying the past and all that. I love Kylo Ren as a character, he is unpredictable, unhinged and vastly different than both Vader and Snoke. The throne room scene was so cool, the colors, the action, the betrayal.

Snoke was attempting to play poker with Rey and Ben, and Ben is that guy at the table who doesn’t fully understand the rules, great to have around as a disruption, but not so great when he goes “all in” and it backfires.

I also loved Poe Damerons arc in this, great in a cockpit, bad at the helm. Loved that it came full circle.

As much as I liked the Rose and Finn plot, it was just done in such a clunky way. The prequels got into this a bit, about how the empire started as “the good guys” protecting the Galaxy from the Robot armies of the trade federation. The casino planet expounded on this a bit. Your average middle or upper class citizen doesn’t hate the Empire. Alderaan was an accident, and Terrorists destroyed 2 military bases.

I think that they were trying to do something like this with the message, which was great in the end bit, but lost in the plot in the middle. The code breaker should have betrayed them immediately. It would have had a bigger impact and cut down on the runtime.

Rose should have gone full Epinine and died. Would have had so much greater impact on Finn. She basically sacrifices herself like her sister did, but didn’t die for reasons?

Again this was way better than TFA to me, as new and interesting things happened in it.

They really need to cut down on the humor though. Not everyone can be Han ok?

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As far as the galaxy is concerned, Luke died fighting off the first order single-handedly with his awesome Jedi powers to buy the Rebellion time to escape. The only one who knew he was an illusion is C3PO, that’s why Luke winked at him.

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Edgar Wright may not have been cut out to direct a big studio movie. I think you’re way off because the people working on the Marvel films are all rather well-known and yet often came up as indie directors that made a splash. They definitely have creative control that is only partially being contained by Disney in the sense that their movies must fit into the larger canon.

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I thought they had pretty heavy presence about how thing had to go with Marvel. Maybe I am misremembering because there is so much out there. but was that an issue with Adam Warlock?