Will give it a wee read later thanks. Makes you wonder if that's Disney's problem all over and why you've got all of these soulless, but technically brilliant, remakes coming out recently as well.
Film Star Wars Episode IX The Rise of Skywalker [Theories]
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran hold a long overdue conversation about United's awful league form with 1 win in 7. They discuss a disappointing draw at Bournemouth, a not so disappointing draw against Liverpool and a crushing defeat at Chelsea - Is time nearly over for Erik Ten Hag?
Then in a special second half of the pod, Nik welcomes Natalie ( https://twitter.com/natalie_17) to discuss the fortunes of Manchester United Women as they booked a place in the FA Cup Final after a historic first ever win vs. Chelsea.
No problem. Hope you find it interesting.
Regarding the bold part: If you just meant the live-action Disney movies then it's because of their launching of Disney+ and Walt Disney Co.'s coordinated push to secure 'current' - AKA 'Brand Spanking New! Honest! We Swear!' (which is also sort of true since their target is young kids who've not necessarily seen the old versions) - content for that platform within the increasingly competitive proprietary streaming marketplace.
If you meant the general reboot/remake/reimagining trend then that's a very very long and complicated story.
They delivered it horribly because of how we last saw Luke and no filler in between. The current version made no sense. If Luke became like this after the events during the EU arcs I would understand due to the constant turmoil or if we knew more about what has happened in between episodes 6 and 7 e.g. constant wars, losing friends, people turning, new empires arising, 1st order etc. It seemed to jump straight from Luke redeeming Vader to being ready to kill a young lad. As if his very next major challenge he just did a complete 180
The first film handled that stuff pretty badly I guess. We had the Empire still being the empire with a new darth vader, palpatine and death star with no particular explanation of how they came about. Rey's place and origin in the world was MYSTERIOUS as a replacement for having a place and origin in the universe. Luke, Han and Leia's story was kind of brushed over without much detail. Han and Leia seemed to have reverted back to where they started in a new hope as a smuggler and leader of the resistance. Luke was MIA - for reasons.
I was very surprised by Luke's change when i saw the second film so I wont argue that it wasn't a departure for the character. But i thought it was an interesting one and i think the end of the film kind of tied it back together to fitting him.
To be fair, he wasn't ready to kill Ben. That's why he didn't do it. He was already lowering his saber by the time Ben turned around.
TLJ seemed to make the point for Luke's "change" pretty clearly, didn't it? He was a victim of his own hubris - he set up a Jedi camp, thinking he could be another Yoda, only to end up creating another Vader. And not just that, but he created a Vader out of his own nephew and briefly considered killing him. So, much like Yoda at the end of ROTS, he seals himself off from the world and basically becomes a hermit.
But then by the end of the movie, Rey's convinced him to come back and fight for the Resistance, and he sacrifices himself to save them. One of the criticisms of TROS that I never understood was this idea that Luke had suddenly "changed" from TLJ, when he hadn't. He completed his arc at the end of TLJ - he was at peace with the Force again, he was happy to be a Jedi again - and that's exactly where we picked up in the last movie.
He drew his lighsaber so the intent was there. It was a reflex action not befitting of the calm, reasoned Jedi Master he should be by now. Would Yoda react like this?
I agree with much of what you said in terms of his exact reasons but at the same time, he should always anticipate the lure of the darkside, since his own father fell to it, despite having Obi Wan as a mentor.
Yoda also had his fair share of failures including count dooku (his best student) who also fell to the darkside and tried to kill him and terrorised the galaxy with the clone wars. Anakin also fell, which didn't lead Obi Wan to think of killing him. He at least tried to reason with him and talk him out of it.
Luke just seemed to have given up the very first time one of his students fell to the darkside. it seemed a bit weak.
Seems to me people overrate how "good" Luke was in the OT. He sensed good in Vader but that didn't stop him from damn near killing him. Ultimately he didn't but that doesn't mean he had forever conquered all dark impulses, or he was therefore destined to be some zen Jedi Master ever after. Then when he doesn't sense that same good in Ben, he falters for a moment.
I think it's fine as a character development but it isn't served by the way it was portrayed. Partly because of the effect the decision to hide him away for no given reason in TFA had and partly because the flashbacks in TLJ were arguably more to do with establishing perspective on Kylo Ren's character than explaining Luke's "change".
I think it's fine as a character development but it isn't served by the way it was portrayed. Partly because of the effect the decision to hide him away for no given reason in TFA had and partly because the flashbacks in TLJ were arguably more to do with establishing perspective on Kylo Ren's character than explaining Luke's "change".
I get what you're saying but I wonder if the lack of a mentor is the reason why Luke didn't become the reasoned Jedi Master that you speak of. Yoda and Obi Wan had them when they grew up but after the events of the OT there's nobody there to really guide Luke further.
This.
I'd like to pretend the new trilogy never happened. Gimmicks and fancy CGI cannot make up for appalling storytelling. I absolutely detest Rey's character, hate how they wasted Adam Driver's talents and cringe at how they revisited Palpatine. I just don't like them.
The last four episodes of Clone Wars S7 make for a better movie than the new trilogy, and Rey isn't half as good a female protagonist as Ahsoka Tano.
I agree with Yagami about Luke not being consistent. As for your response, shouldn't the movie take the audience through a convincing character journey so that the older Luke's actions feel consistent with his changed personality? I was never convinced that he had enough reason to change his core principles, either. In fact, giving up on Ren for such silly reasons undermines the character of a man who put his lightsaber away in the middle of a fight with Vader because he wouldn't give up on his father.
Don't they constantly speak to him as force ghosts to provide him guidance?
Yes! And they failed to do this hence why I too did not like or fully understand why Luke had become like this.
That was after much provocation by the Emperor slaughtering his friends within eyesight. Not the same. Also vadar had only the tiniest speck of light amongst a galaxy of darkness and Luke still wasn't willing to fight until provoked. He was also provoked later during the fight by Vadar threatening his sister. Vadar is a master of Dun Moch which is basically psychological warfare. He was understandably pushed over edge and was in the midst of a full scaled fight.
You are right in that he was susceptible to the lure of the darkside and was not a zen master. But again this could be because he was still a kid and basically a padawan
Yeah but maybe Luke kept ignoring them and they were unable to slap some sense into him?
It's funny that we have to come up with all these excuses when all they had to do is a little better writing and story telling.I know
I agree with all this, but these seem to be the most contentious issues with the trilogy for fans. Sadly, they were the only interesting parts of the new films, and the third film just reflects the panic that set in at Disney in response to it. Everything else was too safe and incredibly dull because of it.
Holy shit there are people actually defending the depiction of Luke in TLJ.
Luke's arc was complete at the end of ROTJ. Why they decided to make another arc from him in TLJ (and make an extremely poor and unconvincing case for it) is beyond me. Rey desperately needed the arc - not Luke. If Rian Johnson was going for a different take on the end of the heroes journey tale it fell badly flat. It was clear, at least to me, that they had no idea what to do with the character other than they needed him "out of the way" in order to focus on the new younger guys who they NEEDED to sell the toys.
What even was the message in the film? It seemed to be "sacrificing yourself for a cause is bad!" Then "sacrificing yourself for a cause is good!" Then "bad" then "good" again, imply that there was shades of grey in this universe when canonically it has been spelled out that in that universe "good" and "evil" are real, tangible things, then have a big fake out death that ended up being a death anyway
Literally the only way you can like or appreciate that film is as a parody deconstruction of itself, and somehow that feels off - the awful prank call at the minute sets the tone as basically being more space balls than anything else.
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Does there have to be a greater message to Luke's story in the sequel trilogy? Why can't Luke just be a hermit because that's what happened to him? Does his arc in the sequel trilogy need to be some kind of timely allegory for something that happens in the real world? He was just damaged from what he experienced during the war in the original trilogy, and then he became further damaged and self-effacing after accidentally playing a role in his nephew becoming a powerful fascist. So he buggered off to the far side of the galaxy out of shame and that was that. I'm pretty sure that was in George Lucas' own hypothetical sequel draft as well?
I don't think the sequel trilogy was necessary at all (for a dozen reasons), but hey, Disney fancied eking out a billion more dollars so we ended up with it, and it wasn't too bad overall. What they did with Luke was interesting enough for me - it wasn't exactly groundbreaking in the world of cinema to have a tortured former hero slowly brought back onside by a young enthusiastic apprentice (it's basically a trope, as far as I'm concerned). But I thought it was cool to see Luke presented as a flawed, lonely human being, rather than the demi-god he's written as in Return of the Jedi & The Force Awakens.
I thought the messages and themes in The Last Jedi were pretty consistent, to be honest. "Let the past die" is easy enough to understand and it's a shame Disney didn't take that lesson and move forward with it. "Don't kill what you hate, save what you love" is also easy enough to work out, especially when applied to Finn's mini-arc within the movie. And "We are what they grow beyond", a beautiful line about older generations watching younger kids grow up, caps off one of my favourite scenes in the entire saga. All in the dialogue, all attached to the individual plot threads in the story, all pretty easy to parse out and take home.
Over time I've mostly settled on the opinion that, while I think it's a brilliant Star Wars movie, it's not an absolute masterpiece or anything (Rian Johnson has done better movies). Still, it's an awesome blockbuster that's a gorgeous sight to behold sometimes, rich and exciting in equal measure, and gives itself enough space to be self-aware and play around within the boundaries of franchise filmmaking. It's not perfect but it's a pretty great version of what it tries to be. Not my favourite Star Wars film (which remains as The Empire Strikes Back) but I feel better for it existing than it not doing.
It plays around with quite a few themes but the two messages I would say the film ultimately commits to are a) that heroes can come from anywhere and b) stories matter, films matter and Star Wars matters.
There are a lot of valid criticisms to level at TLJ but I wouldn't have thought not being about anything is one of them. If anything it's focused on underlying meaning and meta-narrative to a fault, with that oh so very long Canto Bight sequence really only existing to play off different themes and ideas rather serving any actual plot purpose.
"underlying meaning and meta-narrative" - it didn't have an underlying meaning. It didn't know what its underlying meaning was. It seemed more to me that it was obsessed with the chain of command at the beginning too - heavily implying to the audience that Poe was in the wrong, with the characters and writer clearly assuming WE agreed with that assumption through Leia and Holdo's interaction (the I like him bit). How does the "heroes can come from anywhere" message tie in with a chain of command? It's absolute nonsense. And that 'plan'.... it contradicts itself instantly. "Oh no they have a hyperspace tracker! How is that possible?!??! Oh yeah but he's a ring that can track someone across a galaxy so I know Reys safe". There's zero intelligence or continuity to the film. The hyperspace suicide itself was unbelievably stupid to use as a plot device. Why was it not done before", why didn't they just hyperspace through the death star in Star Wars New Hope? I realise it's not supposed to be intelligent with its space physics but it has to at least be consistent or it breaks immersion - I've got the Expanse and Leviathan Waks for serious space physics but it's still a strange decision.
There's a lot I'd like to pick out from what you wrote but I'll start here. Does there have to be a greater message to Luke's story? Yes. Yes, yes yes. It's supposed to be the 8th movie in a series, not a standalone film (which is how it felt to me). It' conveniently forgets that Luke has ALREADY had those themes of temptation explored - and passed. It basically nullifies the entire Star Wars trilogy by virtue of its existence canonically, and completely misunderstands the character to begin with. It needed a Deus Ex Machina to make any sense (what the feck even was that sacrifice at the end? At no point was that 'plan' ever explained, it relied on -Rey- lifting a bunch of rocks, and becoming the demigod character every sequel fan was so happy Luke was not).
I won't go in to the Canto Blight sequence and the heavily implied racism that involved downplaying Finns role so they could sell it to the Chinese, along with his size being shortened on the Chinese poster.
The movie was an absolute mess. It was Spaceballs 2 not Star Wars 8. It was a beautifully polished turd. I'm not surprised George Lucas was offended by the existence of the film. The Phantom Menace was twice as good.
The universe that Star Wars presents is a fairy tale. It's shown that "good" and "evil" are real, tangible things. I don't think Rian understands what a Fairy Tale is, and it's a shame because he is a clever director (if a bit campy with his writing). If he'd really had some balls though, he would have had Rey turn to the dark side.
No, the actual reason Disney wanted the past to die is to sell more toys. Because it's clear that George Lucas still maintains a percentage of the merchandise, so they don't WANT kids buying their Lukes, their Leia's and their Chewy's. So the past HAD to die.
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Steady on old chap.
You seem to be picking one random plot thread that doesn't have anything to do with a given theme and using it to argue that the theme (or any theme) doesn't exist anywhere else in the film. Which is a bizarre way of analysing a film. You could literally deny any film ever made has any meaning whatsoever using that method. "How can power be a theme of The Godfather when the bit where Michael gets married has nothing to do with power? Clearly it doesn't know what its message is."
The tangent you went off with about hyperspace has nothing to do with whether the film has a message either, so I'm not sure why you brought it up other than it being a random plot point you don't like.
My point, such as it is, is that The Last Jedi is clearly not this high minded work that you think it is. It has logical inconsistencies literally from scene to scene and imparts some extremely mixed messages to the viewers pretty much directly. It can only be enjoyed as a 4th wall breaking parody and if that's your thing, fine, but it was an awful decision to make that movie the penultimate episode in a series of 9.
Who said it was a high-minded work? It's a Star Wars film. We're not talking about great art here. It's something designed to be understood by actual children.
But a film doesn't have to be particularly high-minded to have themes and meanings. Most films can pull together some sort of theme, even braindead blockbusters and kids' films. And in the case of TLJ it's pretty explicit about some of the things it's trying to say, while it clearly plays around with other ideas in an (arguably too) arch way. The consistency of the plot doesn't have much to do with it really, not least because there hasn't been a Star Wars film yet with an entirely consistent plot. That doesn't mean they're all completely meaningless.
But if you somehow missed literally all of that (and all the many pieces by critics and fans discussing what the film was about) and think there's literally nothing under the surface of the film then that's fine too. Nobody is forcing you to watch it. But you did ask what it's message was, so..... *shrugs*
I didn't miss anything, the message was just so garbled by extremely bad writing, inconsistencies and riddled with plot holes that it was painful to watch. It's ending was over reliant on Deus ex machina and every character 'travels at the speed of plot'. I feel like somehow people that didn't enjoy the Last Jedi get sort of victim blamed - that I was intelligent enough to "get it". I completely understand what was going on.
The return of the elixir was never made as part of the heroes journey in the movie, if was subverted by Rian and Luke had to redo his heroes journey - literally taken almost verbatim from this https://thewritepractice.com/return-with-the-elixir/ but it really made no sense to make Luke redo a heroes journey at ALL if you were going to make the movie pass a baton on to Rey who badly needed something other than her "50 shades of Rey" moments in the film to begin her OWN heroes journey. But she never did.
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You keep mentioning plot holes, inconsistencies, characters travelling at the speed of plot like that has anything to do with what we're talking about. You asked what the message of the film was, not whether the plot made sense. All of that is irrelevant.
Literally nobody said you weren't intelligent enough to understand TLJ. But you asserted that there was no message in a film when literally just googling "The Last Jedi themes" would bring you to piles of articles and fan fourms discussing all the messages you don't think are there. And the one potential theme you singled out ("sacrificing yourself for a cause is good/bad") isn't one those discussions would see as much more than peripheral at very best.
How you square your reading of the film with other peoples' is your own business though. I'm only responding because you asked what the message was and suggested a theme that most people would say is pretty irrelevant to the overall film, which suggests that you didn't particularly get the film. That isn't an attack on your opinion though, I couldn't care less whether you like the film or not. I'm certainly not "victim blaming" because we're talking about a harmless children/family film here, not something that could possibly have done any actual harm whatsoever to a grown and emotionally stable adult.
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If you can overlook the plot holes and inconsistencies and simply enjoy the themes (which googling the last jedi as you suggest ends up with more heated debates and generally yet more confusion to be honest) then fine, power to you, but you can't say people don't "get" the film because they can't quite agree with the whole "letting the past die" message that's actially specifically cited by the director himself.
Rian doesn't seem to really know how to present that message. Rian says himself “For me, I always think that if you’re cutting off the past, you’re fooling yourself and you’re just burying it somewhere where it’s always going to come back. And the only way forward is where Rey actually lands, which is to build on the past". But she doesn't. There's like 12 people left alive at the end of the film. What is it implying that she is going to build, were Rian to make the third movie instead of J.J.? The implication is heavy that it's more a fourth wall breaking rebuild - that it's destroying Star Wars itself to rebuild the franchise. The reason I pick apart the plot so much is because first and foremost it's supposed to be a movie, not an observation on movies themselves.
I'll leave it at that though mate I try to be glad that people enjoyed the film because as you mention it's really a personal and subjective issue anyway, it just sort of surprises me to the point of astonishment that people look past it's pretty obvious flaws - so I end up talking for days about it to rationalise how, lot of boring pub conversations I've had
I like arguing about this film more than I actually like this film anyway so I ain't judging.If you can overlook the plot holes and inconsistencies and simply enjoy the themes (which googling the last jedi as you suggest ends up with more heated debates and generally yet more confusion to be honest) then fine, power to you, but you can't say people don't "get" the film because they can't quite agree with the whole "letting the past die" message that's actially specifically cited by the director himself.
Rian doesn't seem to really know how to present that message. Rian says himself “For me, I always think that if you’re cutting off the past, you’re fooling yourself and you’re just burying it somewhere where it’s always going to come back. And the only way forward is where Rey actually lands, which is to build on the past". But she doesn't. There's like 12 people left alive at the end of the film. What is it implying that she is going to build, were Rian to make the third movie instead of J.J.? The implication is heavy that it's more a fourth wall breaking rebuild - that it's destroying Star Wars itself to rebuild the franchise. The reason I pick apart the plot so much is because first and foremost it's supposed to be a movie, not an observation on movies themselves.
I'll leave it at that though mate I try to be glad that people enjoyed the film because as you mention it's really a personal and subjective issue anyway, it just sort of surprises me to the point of astonishment that people look past it's pretty obvious flaws - so I end up talking for days about it to rationalise how, lot of boring pub conversations I've had
I mean, fair enough. You seem to be bringing up this "It's Spaceballs 2" line quite a lot, so I guess you made your mind up about the movie a while ago, and that's fine. I love Star Wars a lot as a saga but, like, it's a piece of entertainment that's created without any of my input, so I don't really see it as anything more than something to enjoy. I love it but I don't take anything personally. It's why Luke's role in The Last Jedi was just a nice little change for me - it was just a hypothetical scenario that they ran with and created some interesting scenes out of. It didn't need to have real-world implications and it didn't really need to represent anything greater, it was just a particular path they went down with the story and that was that.
Just for the record, I was kinda disappointed by The Last Jedi on a first watch. I thought it was pretty good but I didn't enjoy it as much as some movies in the saga. But then I watched it again about 6 months after release and everything clicked a lot better for me. Bits and pieces of it are pretty clumsy and the stuff with Luke & Rey is miles stronger than the scenes on Canto Bight, for instance, but as an experience, as a story, and as a journey to another universe, it was immersive, fun, and it even had a bit of an internal discussion about its place in the world as the penultimate instalment of a massive saga. Imperfect and rough around the edges, sure, but I think that describes basically every Star Wars movie.
As you said yourself, they're fairytales set in space that are geared towards families, so they're gonna be these big, dumb, lore-heavy, lumbering things that aim to please as many people as possible and sell merchandise. It's no different to the MCU, Harry Potter, the Middle Earth movies, the Fast & Furious movies, etc. If you judge fictional stories by their logical inconsistencies and plot holes then you're never really going to enjoy yourself. That's not really criticism or critique, it's just going over a script with a red pen. You could break any story in half by picking at it. "Why did the super powerful Empire leave a vulnerable hole in the Death Star? And why is the hole not mentioned until the third act of the movie? Erm, deus ex machina! Erm, plot hole!" You see what I mean? It's joyless.
Just sticking with your argument that they only wanted the past to die so they could sell new toys - this is literally what Star Wars has always been. Boba Fett was literally only put into Empire Strikes Back to sell action figures - he turns up on screen for all of 30 seconds and his only memorable line of dialogue is to scream as he's thrown into a monster pit in the next movie. Star Wars has always been about selling action figures. If you think Disney are the first people to turn Star Wars into a product then where the feck have you been? And to look at another major franchise, Captain America grabbing Thor's hammer in Endgame has already been turned into a Funko Pop and a dozen other action figures, so I guess the writers only did that to sell toys too?
Everything is a product. Everything is part of a machine. This isn't a new thing that only Disney have done.
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thank you twitter for giving me these 2 very real and broadly shared opinions
No no berba, thank you!
Who in their right minds think Rise of Skywalker is good!?
Rogue One is my favourite from the Disney released and is a solid film. Force Awakens is decent as it basically copies ANH, the others are shit. The entire sequel trilogy is all over the place, incoherent & unnecessary.
Still hoping Disney wake up & give Filoni creative control over Star Wars.
Still hoping Disney wake up & give Filoni creative control over Star Wars.
That's my take too, Rogue One by far the best of the Disney films and imo right up there alongside Empire and RotJ. Force Awakens suffered from a bad final act, the other films were an incoherent mess. I appreciate Solo trying to do something different, but they fecked that up.
sums up what is wrong with the new ones, if he thinks plot can only be propelled by mystery
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Is he on drugs there?
Sums up what is wrong with a lot of the things he's worked on. I mean all of Lost is essentially an exercise is mysteries being piled on top of mysteries at the ultimate cost of clear storytelling and the overall audience experience.
Agreed, its why all the projects he is involved with fall apart after the first act when you have to start paying off the mystery.