Yeah, I saw a film called Show Dogs last year and believe me when I say that TLJ looks like The Godfather in comparison.I thought it was bad for a movie I went to the cinema for. If I had watched the trilogy at home I wouldn't have been as harsh, but I wouldn't have given it my full attention either.
Yeah, I expect to go to tons of shit movies (for me) soon enough, but at least then I'm there for my son to have fun so I'll judge the movies based on that instead.
TLJ is far from the worst movie I've ever seen though, I think that title goes to sucker punch or something like that. The whole lot I was with fell asleep due to how boring it was.
Film Star Wars Episode IX The Rise of Skywalker [Theories]
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Exactly. Not only that. They built Palpatine up as the strongest of all time who came back to life. But then he got killed relatively easily after using that ray/ren force connection to rebuild himself to his full self. Would have understood if if Rey defeated the half dead Palpatine the way she did.
The best story would have been for Palpatine to return but though voices in Rey’s head and maybe as a force ghost to try a corrupt her to the dark side.
But the troll thing was a real thing with Rotten Tomatoes. They changed their voting system after TLJ and Black Panther. Those movies were review bombed by people who had largely not seen the movies. Here are the details - https://www.theverge.com/2019/3/7/1...el-bombing-changes-rotten-tomatoes-letterboxd
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/23/...dience-score-reviews-star-wars-captain-marvel
Again, none of this is to suggest that the TLJ was not divisive, it clearly was. However, there is no evidence to suggest that people who liked it were in a 'massive minority' as that poster put it.
The prequels are not more popular than the OG films, no. However, if you follow SW fandom they have gained a large and passionate fanbase over time. This was helped by the success of clone wars. I see no reason why the ST will not follow a similar pattern.
Nope it just served no purpose, lots of people can use the force. Johnsons movie was trying to show anyone can use the force be a hero. As a standalone movie it would be fine but as part of the Skywalker Trilogy its was out of place. Lots of people can use the force, they just had no place in this particular story which is why Johnsons choices pissed off so many.
But my point was it's not necessarily a generational thing, that these characters simply won't stand the test of time like the originals for many reasons that go well beyond that. You seem to agree, so I think we are more or less on the same wavelength.
It would just be nice if they were written as a solid coherant trilogy that both didn't piss on the original trilogy and dealt with all the older characters in the first film and let the new ones take life in the next two. Instead we get a throwback, a boring slogfest devoid of character development, then a throwback to the first throwback. All with generic boring characters. It's a shame, but thankfully over now and all we can hope is future films get better now they are free of the shackles.
No, that it can come from anywhere, and doesn't just have to be passed down generation to generation. Then for the third film they decided to make it an aristocratic battle of the houses.
They changed their voting system when Disney films were getting flack is another way to read that. I'm not saying there isn't an element of racist/sexist sentiment in some people that didn't like the films, but it's entirely unfair and draconian to label all dissent as trolls or "ists". It's silencing all negativity under an umbrella of hate when it's just critiquing a damn film for the most part. That's what they want though, it changes the story from a lot of people don't like this to "Racists/sexists attack Star Wars!" then negativity can be brushed away. That's entirely different topic though.
Even in this thread though people that liked it seem to be in a fair minority. Do you know many people that liked it? I don't. I didn't even hate it, I've defended parts of it, but as part of a trilogy/overarching story it's a shambles. For me it's very rare to find anyone that genuinely likes it.
I should have phrased it better, not anyone could use it but that you didn't have to be a Skywalker or Palpatine etc.. which is fine and hey there were tons of Jedi/Sith who weren't related to either and no one had a problem. The problem is when you throw Skywalkers back into a story about Skywalkers you can't relegate them to the back burner. Either leave them out and begin fresh or finish their story. The minute Ben Solo was confirmed as Kylo, this was a Skywalker story and Johson dropped the ball in that regard.
His idea of letting the past die, being done with the Skywalkers, Palpatines etc.. was fine after the Skywalker story was finished. The fact he was given a story based around them with returning character from the OT and he threw it all away to make the audience feel good about themselves and think "I can be a jedi too" is where he got it wrong. He was given a story with Leia, Luke and Ben set up for key roles and than decided "feck this skywalker thing". A last jedi style movie coming after RoS (without Leia, Ben, Luke) would not have got the same backlash as the Skywalker story would be finished. For better our worse this is a Skywalker/Palpatine story, always has been from the minute George retconned Vader to being Lukes father.
I think you nailed it there. They committed to a story that both didn't need told, they didn't know how to tell and then they attempted to abandon midway through before swerving back and missing the mark entirely.
I think they should have left the Skywalkers out of it or just had Luke in a background/Yoda role. There's nowhere for their story to go, they brought balance to the Force and took out the Jedi/Sith/Palpatine. Now the galaxy can start over. Which seems to be where this trilogy has landed back at. Lucas might have ideas but a lot of his ideas are a bit shit as the prequels proved. They should have jumped way into the future or the past and got away from everything around the OT, given themselves some breathing room. Instead they did the complete opposite and brought even more comparison to the originals on themselves first by remaking them then sacrificing them in the name of their new trilogy.
I would never call someone who didn't like the movie a troll, that's a difference of opinion, and something which is subjective. So there is no right or wrong to that. But things like the RT score were 100% affected by trolls.
I don't know many people in real life who like SW, but online I know many who liked it. I also know many hardcore fans who hated it. So, that's how I view the movie, as a divisive one. It will be interesting to know where it settles in say 10 years time in the rankings of the movies. I suspect, if nothing else, it will come in higher than TFA and TROS.
I watched it just now and really enjoyed it. No Star Wars film will please everyone now, it's just too rooted in it's own nostalgia and opinion of who should be a jedi and who shouldn't that you can't please every fan. But as a story I thought it was very good, some good comedy here and there, very good subplots and character arcs and an fitting ending that left enough hints of how the story would continue whilst wrapping this trilogy up well.
Also liked how Palpatine was actually given some cool moments before he was killed, which we never got to see with Snoke. Here's what I reckon will follow:
Also liked how Palpatine was actually given some cool moments before he was killed, which we never got to see with Snoke. Here's what I reckon will follow:
Rey turns into a Sith, she can't stop it now she's killed her grandfather and that image of her in the whole Darth Maul gig was a prophecy more than a bad dream. Finn has the force, it explains his weird affiliation with Rey, him feeling her in trouble, him being able to hold his own in the first film and other scenes where he literally says "I can feel the force". I reckon he'll get some training before she turns fully dark and they'll continue the franchise from that "balance".
I'd put it above TFA now, but then I don't like TFA either because of reasons I've probably gone over ad nauseum on here. There's only three Star Wars films I don't like and I'm not sure where I'd rank them, probably TFA at the bottom because it started this mess. AotC is an abomination of a film, but at least it works as part of the story. It's harder to rank the ones I don't like than the ones I do! As films the ranking is different than as part of the story.
Rogue One is the tits though. That Vader scene almost makes the bad ones worthwhile.
I mean if we're talking about pointless scenes with people acting out of character... a simple force pull would've done the job, Darth.I'd put it above TFA now, but then I don't like TFA either because of reasons I've probably gone over ad nauseum on here. There's only three Star Wars films I don't like and I'm not sure where I'd rank them, probably TFA at the bottom because it started this mess. AotC is an abomination of a film, but at least it works as part of the story. It's harder to rank the ones I don't like than the ones I do! As films the ranking is different than as part of the story.
Rogue One is the tits though. That Vader scene almost makes the bad ones worthwhile.
It would have, but it wouldn't have been spectacular. Also it's not out of character, he has form for slaughtering groups of people and for showing off needlessly.
It was the "letting them escape with the macguffin" bit that's out of character! Also should've been the main characters he was chopping up. But I was meh on the film, different strokes.
On a related note, JEJ's voice in the new film was the best bit by far
I'm more or less not bothered about the rest of the film, it did nothing really to annoy me and was perfectly watchable. It was a good film. Except a stormtrooper for some reason being blinded by sand getting kicked in his face. That ending though fixed a lot of the damage done to Vader in the prequels. It at least made him look like a terrifying killing machine even if he yet again let things slip through his big useless robot hands. He's not the best at the whole capturing or retrieving lark. Great at slaughtering groups and altering deals though. The film was worth it just to get that step between Anakin in the prequels and Vader being a big scary monster. Felt like it gave something back to the overall story with that scene.It was the "letting them escape with the macguffin" bit that's out of character! Also should've been the main characters he was chopping up. But I was meh on the film, different strokes.
On a related note, JEJ's voice in the new film was the best bit by far
Has anyone seen the videos of someone pretending to be George Lucas reacting to this abomination? He's brilliant!
I've watched a few vids of Mark Hamill talking about the sequels, too. It's sad to see how disappointed he was in them as you can tell he really cares about Luke and they straight up butchered him.
I've watched a few vids of Mark Hamill talking about the sequels, too. It's sad to see how disappointed he was in them as you can tell he really cares about Luke and they straight up butchered him.
In all likelihood you watched an out of context interview with him that was edited to suit an agenda.Has anyone seen the videos of someone pretending to be George Lucas reacting to this abomination? He's brilliant!
I've watched a few vids of Mark Hamill talking about the sequels, too. It's sad to see how disappointed he was in them as you can tell he really cares about Luke and they straight up butchered him.
I have no idea of his true feelings on TLJ, but I would not believe anything that comes from that dark corner of YouTube.
Edit: I'm talking about Mark Hamill, I know the Lucas thing is fake.
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It's a deepfake parody.
I was talking about Mark Hamill.
Jenny Nicholson puts it well: 'I think the worst thing a franchise ending can do is make you feel kind of stupid and embarrassed for being so excited about it in the first place.' (at 1:03:30)
For me, this ranks with Attack of the Clones at the bottom of the list. A waste of time that scuppered the films that came before it.
In retrospect they should have decided to make a standalone film of the original cast first, establishing the universe, and then gone on to another trilogy of characters within that universe.
In retrospect they should have done a lot of things, though. I still mostly love TLJ and enjoy TFA (with questions and doubts) but now they lead nowhere. Solo and Rogue One were grim and not very interesting to me, so that leaves 2 of 5 Disney films to like.
The prequels are can't be salvaged. They don't fit the original trilogy. Revenge of the Sith is just about okay, since it contains most of the story and our hopes had been withered by that time, anyway.
So that leaves the original trilogy - and the worst thing about all the films that have come since is how much they remind me of much much was not quite right in the originals. I still love them but the 'lore' is held together with sticky tape and hope and what could be dismissed as mistakes made in the rush of creating films no-one was expected to be making now have the weight of the all other films pressing down on them.
What Star Wars can offer is what Noel Gallagher described on seeing the first Star Wars as a child: 'Pure wonderment'. But there's not much wonderment in a couple of hours of disjointed scenes of frantic activity where the actors sometime seem to be acting different roles than the ones they ended up being given in the edit.
For me, this ranks with Attack of the Clones at the bottom of the list. A waste of time that scuppered the films that came before it.
In retrospect they should have decided to make a standalone film of the original cast first, establishing the universe, and then gone on to another trilogy of characters within that universe.
In retrospect they should have done a lot of things, though. I still mostly love TLJ and enjoy TFA (with questions and doubts) but now they lead nowhere. Solo and Rogue One were grim and not very interesting to me, so that leaves 2 of 5 Disney films to like.
The prequels are can't be salvaged. They don't fit the original trilogy. Revenge of the Sith is just about okay, since it contains most of the story and our hopes had been withered by that time, anyway.
So that leaves the original trilogy - and the worst thing about all the films that have come since is how much they remind me of much much was not quite right in the originals. I still love them but the 'lore' is held together with sticky tape and hope and what could be dismissed as mistakes made in the rush of creating films no-one was expected to be making now have the weight of the all other films pressing down on them.
What Star Wars can offer is what Noel Gallagher described on seeing the first Star Wars as a child: 'Pure wonderment'. But there's not much wonderment in a couple of hours of disjointed scenes of frantic activity where the actors sometime seem to be acting different roles than the ones they ended up being given in the edit.
Well, he was already using the force to keep the door shut to prevent them escaping, not sure if he can do several force powers at the same time?
There was a good film waiting to be made as the sequel to TLJ.
It would have dealt with Rey and Kylo's continuing light/dark struggles (when I heard the title I expected Rey to say, towards the end of the film, something like '...and I am the heir of Luke Skywalker' at the moment when the conflict resolves). There'd be no emperor but they might have explored his old haunts in search of answers and found a flickering evil still lurking there. Perhaps they were once guarded but the chaos of the war has left them open again.
There was plenty of room for a Kylo-Hux conflict about their post-Snoke direction and that would have allowed the Knights of Ren to be more than a group of thugs. As the apprentices who once escaped with Kylo, they could have doubts about Kylo's killing of Snoke and his feelings towards Rey, with Hux working on those doubts to bring Force users on to his side. That would still leave room for Pryde (Richard E. Grant is great) to be Kylo's trusted subordinate.
Kylo and Pryde (with maybe some Knights) versus Hux and the Knights who see Kylo as a traitor.
A less hare-brained chase across the galaxy would have allowed Rey, Finn, Poe and Rose (who should have been with them) to interact more. We've had glimpses of what might have been with Finn and Poe, Finn and Rey, Finn and Rose, and Finn and Poe again - I really like the characters and they're well acted - but we end the series with no-one really seeming to know anyone else except maybe Finn and Rey. With Rose going with the others, Billie Lourd's character could have had a bit more to do, also.
It's probably not a popular idea but I'd have had Leia's death in the crawl, working with the audience's knowledge of Carrie Fisher's death, and begin with a funeral briefly told in fade-ins and fade-outs. Maybe Kylo could be waiting in anguish for it to finish so he could get back to being the bad guy. Carrie Fisher would then appear only as a ghost, which might have made her scenes less disconcertingly odd.
It would have dealt with Rey and Kylo's continuing light/dark struggles (when I heard the title I expected Rey to say, towards the end of the film, something like '...and I am the heir of Luke Skywalker' at the moment when the conflict resolves). There'd be no emperor but they might have explored his old haunts in search of answers and found a flickering evil still lurking there. Perhaps they were once guarded but the chaos of the war has left them open again.
There was plenty of room for a Kylo-Hux conflict about their post-Snoke direction and that would have allowed the Knights of Ren to be more than a group of thugs. As the apprentices who once escaped with Kylo, they could have doubts about Kylo's killing of Snoke and his feelings towards Rey, with Hux working on those doubts to bring Force users on to his side. That would still leave room for Pryde (Richard E. Grant is great) to be Kylo's trusted subordinate.
Kylo and Pryde (with maybe some Knights) versus Hux and the Knights who see Kylo as a traitor.
A less hare-brained chase across the galaxy would have allowed Rey, Finn, Poe and Rose (who should have been with them) to interact more. We've had glimpses of what might have been with Finn and Poe, Finn and Rey, Finn and Rose, and Finn and Poe again - I really like the characters and they're well acted - but we end the series with no-one really seeming to know anyone else except maybe Finn and Rey. With Rose going with the others, Billie Lourd's character could have had a bit more to do, also.
It's probably not a popular idea but I'd have had Leia's death in the crawl, working with the audience's knowledge of Carrie Fisher's death, and begin with a funeral briefly told in fade-ins and fade-outs. Maybe Kylo could be waiting in anguish for it to finish so he could get back to being the bad guy. Carrie Fisher would then appear only as a ghost, which might have made her scenes less disconcertingly odd.
Nah the door's just jammed, he does a load of other force shenanigans (throwing people up and down, pulls a load of guns towards him) but the guy is just standing at the door for like 30 seconds holding an external hard drive from 2002 going "take it! Someone take it!". Darth just carries on chopping wood!
I thought the idea was that he was using the force to shut the door, hence why when he finally kills everyone the door opens with no problem.
I never realised that before but you’re probably right
Reflect on what? What would be good for him to learn?
I can go along with that - pre-occupied with force door-not-quite-shutting. If Padme had lived, that door would've shut good.
We just watched the despecialized first movie. Great craic.
Surely now the whole saga qualifies as despecialized
Happy new year, everyone! May we continue arguing over intellectual property for the rest of the decade.
)Probably. But at least there was not a crap cgi addition in sight.
Two decent movies, the last one being in 1980. Then a string of disappointments or average-at-best films. I don't get why this franchise still has fans.
I dunno, man! He seems pretty hurt about the way they treated Luke in the sequel trilogy. "That's not my Luke"
Apparently people like hate watching it and shouting at each other.
For me no doubt, complete pile of piss film with a director trying to be clever by none stop subverting expectations, it's a fecking mess. Nothing is a surprise by the end because everything is a "gotcha" moment. It's wank.
Just watched Rise of Skywalker and it's my fave in the trilogy by a mile, felt almost sorry for Abrams having to clean up such a clusterfeck of a second movie but he did a cracking job I thought. Kylo's redemption story worked great, Palpatine was magnificent and scarier than ever and Rey being of that family explains so so much.
Couple of moments I'd have like to skip (like force healing a saber through the bread basket) but all in all a proper Star Wars movie where I genuinely cared about the characters and their stories.
Good way to explain that movie is there's like a really famous song that's been covered faithfully, reverently by thousands of top-level artists across a myriad of genres, and then the ten thousandth person covers it but with weird instruments randomly thrown in and some of the lyrics wailed strangely but also gets a huge corporate marketing push and a subsection of the populace who happens to not mind the departure tries to dissipate the cognitive dissonance by rationalizing it as 'bold' and 'intellectual' on the back of that corporate influence.
The general public who didn't like that movie are subconsciously picking up on certain extremely questionable technical elements. On a technical level the debate is whether RJ thought he was making a successful subversive/deconstructive but still within a properly-constructed popular narrative, or whether he only ever intended to slyly mock convention.
A vast majority of evidence indicates the former, that he thought he was making/made a Sixth Sense type of deconstructive crowd-pleaser. Most of that evidence are the elements where he's clearly going for emotion A or mechanism B, but fails spectacularly because he's left out/deformed rudimentary parts. Secondary evidence comes from the fact that all he's ever done is collage genre convention. It'd be weird for him to claim 'guys, you know I did it on purpose'.
The Redlettermedia fellows put it as something like 'written by a high schooler, but kind of a smart one' and they were close. If you know what you're looking for, then it looks like either one of two things: it could look like a screenplay someone with heaps of talent but who had never learned how to write one. What it unfortunately really looks like however, is a screenplay by someone who'd studied a bit about how to write one decided to flip every newly learned conventional technique on their side, 'just because' and then declared it brilliant. And you laugh along with them in the beginning because maybe once upon a time you did it too - as any of us in any field are wont to do when we're learning the ropes - but then you realize they're serious. It looks....unmaliciously unawarely stupid. A kind way of putting it might be 'departure for departure's sake'.
This second viewpoint falls a bit in the realm of taste and it's where a lot of the argument fuel comes from. It's like being taught to fold a paper crane and while your patient teacher watches on, you decide to fold the wings and tail a bit different but feel it's 'bold' and 'original' and 'fresh'. Or baking a cake and it looks pretty good but the inside layers are a bit uneven and the filling is all over the place and the person goes 'Pollock'. You smile and go 'okay', but you have questions. 'If you want the 'Holdo moment' to really work you realize you have to do _________ right?' If you really want Leia Poppins to work on the broadest scale of audience possible you realize you have to do ________, right?' 'See here where you've tried to join narrative X and narrative Y but they run in series not in parallel; you actually want the latter specifically so that you can pull in Z later on, but right now you don't have that; are you sure this is what you want to do? It looks like you do because you do have Z'
Maybe another analogy is a classic car put together with hundreds(?) of small joining elements missing. Yours truly at the car show is all ooh and aah. Car experts are like, ummm....
Very technical things are flat out missing from that movie.
Kiiiind of none of those are arcs. They're maybe half.
The term is a bit of a misnomer based on its offshooting from 'narrative arc' and the fact that the vast majority of fiction/fictionalized characters admittedly are most easily visualized by drawing 'parabolic' lines. There are 'flat arcs' too, where the character doesn't change and the narrative 'twists' around them. (This is where the smart-ass kid in class points out everything is relative and doesn't that mean they're twisting around the narrative, too)
The actual active ingredient in a 'character arc' is a minimum dual-strand braid. (And if it's functioning properly it turns into this almost tangible, writhing 'physical' thing. Shit gets weird. Also, there are vast schools of thought and thousands of pages of thought on how many strands there are)
Here's a quick example using one of yours: Rose hates stormtroopers. Loathes them. Not only wants to kill every last one but is also stupid sexy good at it. Devoted her entire life - sacrificed a marriage proposal from a high-value suitor - to getting badass enough to do liquefy any stormtrooper on sight, meets Finn (and maybe her heart melts but she can't show it. Or she absolutely does not trust him but is ordered not to kill him) All that plus what you posted = a 'character arc'. (And from there you'll get people who are like but what about The Lie and The Wound and The External Want and Internal Need no it's just The Want and the Need Blah Blah Blah) It's that initial two-strands interacting that makes the arc curve as it progresses. The mechanism isn't like curving bow wood or even like drawing a roller-coaster but like this. The magic - if there is any - happens when you start twisting that braid together. And then those braids together. It's easy to see how the above example can tie in with Finn's braid. (and to be fair, it could be argued that Johnson tried to do this) From there it can get as complex as the writer is able.
The poster you replied to is right (but for the wrong reasons). There are no 'proper' (to hell with the rules!) arcs in the ST. What little there is, is threadbare. Always always minimum two-strands.
All that being said, there will be someone who's like, 'You idiot, what you just described is character motivation, which is completely separate from arc.' That's when you point to movies like this one and say, these characters all 'undergo change', why are so many viewers unsatisfied?
Also, this intertwining isn't always a conscious process. But in mass-market popular fiction it most often is.
Neither does he. Cardinally, neither does Kathleen Kennedy. But that's a whole other matter.
Technically to do what you posted requires a fair bit to a lot of setup for it to work properly. Also takes about forty minutes screentime. The primary reason is pretty simple: in order for that 'inspiring' moment to work you have to dig a deep hole for the protagonist(s). The slightly more secondary reason it takes time is that you also ideally have to weave it in with other characters arcs. A distant third is that it's relatively difficult to come up with a non-cheesy 'arc' for this type of moment. Hard enough that if you keep working at it too long, this minor character suddenly starts having a bigger role and stuff starts getting crowded. Long story short, doing this properly is hard enough that there are people who will just go, 'Sheesh, this is too much work I'll just have the moment where they all show up. Boom, cavalry's here. Chills everytime.'
Conversely you could do it with less time, but that's when you venture into too fast/didn't feel like Star Wars/you-know-what-it-feels-like-it-feels-like-Transformers-omg-you're-right territory.
This is a transcript of George Lucas, Steven Speilberg and Lawrence Kasdan brainstorming The Raiders of the Lost Ark. Really good example of how the process is a mix of throwing out ideas and then trying to weave them together believably. It's quite long but a fun read.