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Post #1260423

Author
DrDre
Parent topic
Episode VIII : The Last Jedi - Discussion * SPOILER THREAD *
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1260423/action/topic#1260423
Date created
18-Dec-2018, 3:18 PM

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

rodneyfaile said:

Haarspalter said:
So Star Wars is now a learning-lessons-about-life-meta-documentary which uses a fictional space fantasy fairy tale as a backdrop some old bearded guy invented in the 70s?

Meh.

Star Wars should be about escapism, not realism.

Sounds like you didn’t understand the other movies either.

I don’t understand why this is needed. I didn’t like TLJ for a whole host of reasons, but I’m not going to tell you you don’t understand Star Wars for liking what I consider to be a deeply flawed film, that puts a post-modern perspective on a modern myth, by turning the saga into a meta commentary on itself, and has the characters in the mythology question the merits of their own reality. You might just accept that Star Wars is different things to different people. It’s fine that you consider TLJ a great film, and you’ve stated the reasons why, but many others including myself feel the ST and particulary TLJ weakens the overall saga, and its mythology as a whole for the reasons stated above, and the fact that it resets the galaxy to an Empire vs rebels conflict without proper context, or explanation to give us an alternate reality version of the OT, where great effort is taken to push a number of new characters to the foreground at the expense of the old.

Forgive me if I only focus on this paragraph, but after reading it I felt a couple of things needed to be answered. First, this is a new trilogy and it is supposed to focus on new characters and push the old into supporting roles. That was the vision of it from the get go. That is what Lucas told Hamill 30 years ago. The role we see for Luke, Han, and Leia is exactly what it is supposed to be. This is not their time any longer. That is the entire point of setting it 30 years later. Each trilogy is a different era of a much larger story. The OT is the core story - the rebellion and redemption. It is the classic myth in origin. The PT is the back story, the history. It is stilted and old fashioned in tone and depicts the events before and during the fall. The ST is now the new generation. This is Rey, Poe, Finn, and Kylo’s story. Han, Luke, and Leia are old people passing on the torch and sharing their wisdom. It is not their trilogy so the new characters are supposed to be pushed to the foreground at their expense. This is not Heir to Empire where the old group were still in their prime.

This is where what I keep talking about with expectations comes in. Just from that one sentence that you ended that paragraph with I can see you expected a new trilogy with the old characters and that was never the plan. Lucas never intended the third trilogy to be about 3 old farts saving things again. They were supposed to be the familiar faces to introduce the new heroes, and that is exactly what we got. In all the old myths and legends, there are sequels for a new generation where the old heroes are the ones who have become the mentors to the new heroes. Coming into this trilogy with any expectations for the cast of the OT to have big roles was setting yourself up for disappointment. It was never going to happen. That was the books of the EU (now Legends). This is something new. Something to bind the other 6 films together and bring the saga to a conclusion. This is a new tale of good vs. evil with something else to say. I think the point will be clear when IX comes out. But it is obvious from the way you describe what you didn’t like about TLJ that you had expected something different and a lot of your dislike lies in that. You have made some other really good points, but every time I read your posts on TLJ, it comes back to what about Luke, Han, and Leia you didn’t like and how it didn’t meet your expectations. And what you don’t like about their part in the ST is that they were derailed from where we left them in ROTJ by what happened to Ben Solo/Kylo Ren. That was the core of TFA and TLJ and as I understand it, George Lucas’s treatment for the ST.

As for the familiar feel to the two sides, that is often the way of history. Abrams did the setup and yet the ire is aimed at Johnson. Abrams failed to give us the little details Lucas loved to throw in to paint the picture. But we are stuck with what Abrams left us with in TFA. But it also isn’t that unreasonable. There has to be some conflict (it is called Star Wars after all) and making a weak republic and eliminating its government and fleet were a simple way to start the story. Abrams could have done better setting things up, but in the end, both Abrams and Johnson are focusing on the things that really matter - the characters that take us to the end of the Saga. What that end will be we don’t know and can only guess at this point.

You misunderstand me. I did not expect the old guard to be the focus of this story, but I don’t like the idea of turning the old crew into a bunch of losers, such that the new guard can shine by comparison. The entire outcome of the OT and much of the character arcs therein were undone without much context or explanation to reset the story to a highly similar premise of Empire vs rebels/Jedi vs Sith. That to me is not natural story progression, but a soft reboot.

It was explained, multiple times in both movies or shown in various ways. The crux is the fall of Ben Solo, which happened off screen. Luke vanished, Han and Leia broke up and went back to what they were good at. With Kylo and the Knights of Ren, the First Order rose and took the old Empire tech and improved on it and developed a new super weapon. About the only thing missing is any clear details about the new Republic, but they are wiped out in TFA. If you need to have everyone in the same place as 30 years ago or super detailed reasons why they aren’t, then you expect them to be main characters still instead of supporting characters. I can understand being critical of the film, but many of your points are based of a false assumption that the old cast is still the focus. This trilogy belongs wholly to the younger cast.

I don’t expect everyone to be in the same place, but I did expect an original story, that builds on what previous films established. In stead much of what was built has been broken down to give us something very similar. This might make money sense, since it’s the perfect way to maintain brand recognition by keeping the galaxy locked into an Empire vs rebels state, but in my view it doesn’t make much story sense. Palpatine was unique in the sense, that he alone through cunning was able to destroy a Republic that had stood for at least a thousand years. Snoke is just some random guy, who somehow seduced Ben Solo and essentially rebuilt the Empire in the unknown regions, while the Republic was looking the other way for plot convenience, and used a superweapon to turn back the clock some 35 years. No more explanation required according to the current creators. The fact that such a scenerio is possible, and we can point to real world examples to fill in the blanks, doesn’t mean it makes dramatic or story sense. It just seems like lazy writing, and makes the ST feel tacked on.

It is not just real world examples. Where we were at the end of ROTJ was the death of the Emperor. No more, no less. We have nothing of the story from there to TFA. In TFA, the Hosnian system housing the Republic Senate and the only fleet the new Republic has is destroyed. The First Order has yet to be shown occupying a single planet. We have setup the conflict and there are three players, not two. There is the First Order - the agressive invader. There is the Resistance - in the spirit of the old rebellion who has been trying to keep the First Order out. And then there is the Republic. That has yet to play any role. We don’t know what is left, what the mindset is, who they might side with, or anything. Yes their government and their fleet are gone, but the planets that had joined can reform the government. Some planets might welcome the First Order with open arms, some might fight to the bitter end. We don’t know, but your argument ignores all of them. In the OT, all these planets were part of the Empire. They were occupied. Only a few resisted and helped the Rebellion. The game, while on the surface has some similarity, is different. You are equating the situations in the OT and ST and ignoring the differences. In the OT, the death of the Emperor was a big deal that sealed the fate of the Empire. In the ST, the death of Snoke means nothing to the worlds of the Republic. How those republic worlds react is what will set the Trilogies apart. How the conflict between Rey and Kylo plays out will as well. Your comparison of the two trilogies is over simplistic. Had Lucas been doing this trilogy, I bet the story would be largely the same, but I bet the movies would be shorter and they would have more clues as to the wider galactic situation. Abrams really robbed us of that. TLJ had no reason to expand on it. Any lazy writing lies with Abrams. And even though I have not read a single add on book that might expound on any of this, I can still see many possibilities and a variety of larger pictures from what we do know (both what was in the films and the few deleted clips). I don’t see it as simple as a reset to exactly what we had in the OT. I can see the similarities in the presented story, but the wider story is very different and the ramifications of that change everything.

It wasn’t Abrams that took the New Republic out of the equation, seemingly gave the FO unlimited resources, and turned the Resistance into rebels again. That was all on Johnson. TFA ended with both the FO and the Republic having suffered major losses in personel and equipment. This left Johnson with a ton of possibilities to take the conflict in any other direction than simply rehashing Empire vs rebels. Guerilla warfare, terrorism, outright chaos, and a race for control of the remaining resources were all possibilities, but Johnson opted for the least original one, where a small band of rebels again has to fight a seemingly insurmountable force. For me personally the moment when the Resistance referred to themselves as rebels for the first time was the moment when I felt something was amiss, and cemented the idea that we would get a “what if” version of the OT rather than an original story.