LOL, this thread is great entertainment.
It’s pretty much the same over and over again so I’m not sure why you enjoy that.
Although you like Freddy Got Fingered so maybe that explains it.
I thought Rose Tico was one of the most boringest of the boring which is very bored characters of this movie.
Jay said:
The RT audience score stands at 46%. If it only succeeds as a film with people who watch films for a living, it failed.
A self selecting poll heavily brigaded by angry fans. (Just for comparison, TPM has 55% audience rating). Yeah, no that has no basis in reality.
I’ll take something like Cinemascore over that, which is based on actual market research. They give it an A, so its definitely succeeding with the general public.
LOL, this thread is great entertainment.
It’s pretty much the same over and over again so I’m not sure why you enjoy that.
I am saturated with schadenfreude.
Although you like Freddy Got Fingered so maybe that explains it.
Yeah, 'cause 4/10 = like.
Collipso said:
and you’re doing exactly what jay described. “as it is supposed to be interpreted”. great.Well there is an intended interpretation. Filmmakers don’t just throw stuff on the page and hope it all makes sense (ok some do). You can watch a scene and ask “What is the film TRYING to say here, what is the intent.” And it should be pretty clear.
You can make your own interpretations all you want, thats up to the viewer. If the film has a failing its that so many have taken the wrong ideas from it.
What you’re describing is appreciating a film for what it’s trying to do rather than what it does, which is completely fair. I appreciate Lynch’s Dune and the new Westworld show for their ambition, while still recognizing that what appears onscreen does not really live up to that ambition.
TLJ has great ambitions, and I don’t fault it for that. For example, it allows for sophisticated and mature interpretations on the nature of a worthy sacrifice (Finn/Poe), the correct attitude towards failure (Luke/Rey), and the importance of faith in those wiser than yourself (Poe/Rey). But these are all lessons given by those placed in the story to antagonize our heroes, so the task for a filmmaker is difficult: they must overcome the skepticism of the audience, who identifies with the heroes, and turn them in favor of the antagonists. There is a natural resistance to learning a lesson, for a character in a story but also for an audience member.
When given the choice between learning a hard lesson and choosing an interpretation which allows them to avoid the lesson, they’ll usually take the alternate interpretation. The job of the filmmaker is to make it clear to the audience that the ‘correct’ interpretation is the easiest to accept. The Last Jedi fails to do this, to which multitudes of reviewers can attest.
I’ve heard it said that a filmmaker has just one job to do in making a film - to craft an experience which forces the audience to feel precisely what they intend them to feel, whether that be awe or horror of happiness or sadness, or a combination of any other feelings that these sounds and images can convey. They have the length of the film in which do to this, with every filmmaking trick they can muster. Sure, there are always going to be those people who will find ways to disagree with anything and everything in a movie, but if by the end of the movie a significant portion of the audience (many of whom are devoted fans of the franchise) feel something quite different than the rest, I’m tempted to lay this at the filmmaker’s feet.
You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
Many (if not most) films feature protagonists that have to learn hard lessons. TLJ is not alone in this regard, even among Star Wars films.
Execution aside, the idea that making a hero learn a lesson will alienate the audience isn’t one that really makes sense.
Jay said:
The RT audience score stands at 46%. If it only succeeds as a film with people who watch films for a living, it failed.A self selecting poll heavily brigaded by angry fans. (Just for comparison, TPM has 55% audience rating). Yeah, no that has no basis in reality.
I’ll take something like Cinemascore over that, which is based on actual market research. They give it an A, so its definitely succeeding with the general public.
The debate over the validity of different scores was done to death in the official TLJ review thread, I believe. TLJ fans like to point to the RT critic score while insisting the audience score is gamed. The CinemaScore sampling method is also flawed because it’s mostly conducted close to the premiere and immediately after the audience leaves the theater, which means an audience with a higher number of hardcore fans and lack of time for reflection over what they saw can skew the results.
You can count me among those who enjoy TPM more than TLJ, by the way.
Many (if not most) films feature protagonists that have to learn hard lessons. TLJ is not alone in this regard, even among Star Wars films.
Execution aside, the idea that making a hero learn a lesson will alienate the audience isn’t one that really makes sense.
That’s not what NeverarGreat said. Luke learned plenty of lessons in the OT and he’s universally loved because of that arc. What some of us aren’t buying is his need to learn this particular lesson and that Rey was the one to teach it. Same thing with our other heroes.
MTFBWY…A
Like Ben Kenobi ran off to a desert planet when everything went to hell?
maybe watch rots again?
Like Ben Kenobi ran off to a desert planet when everything went to hell?
maybe watch rots again?
Yeah, Obi Wan needs to watch over Luke, but what is Yoda’s excuse for not sticking around trying to kill Palpatine? Not like the guy is heavily guarded all the time. 😉
Where were you in '77?
Although you like Freddy Got Fingered so maybe that explains it.
Yeah, 'cause 4/10 = like.
When you give Freddy Got Fingered a 4/10, yes, you like it. That’s 4 too high, at minimum.
Like Ben Kenobi ran off to a desert planet when everything went to hell?
maybe watch rots again?
Hard pass.
You can count me among those who enjoy TPM more than TLJ, by the way.
I understand this must be a low bar for you, but what do you enjoy about TPM?
I know you aren’t asking me but there is plenty to enjoy about tpm. Plenty of isolated things. That doesn’t mean they come together to form a good whole.
Although you like Freddy Got Fingered so maybe that explains it.
Yeah, 'cause 4/10 = like.
When you give Freddy Got Fingered a 4/10, yes, you like it. That’s 4 too high, at minimum.
Sounds reasonable.
You can count me among those who enjoy TPM more than TLJ, by the way.
I understand this must be a low bar for you, but what do you enjoy about TPM?
There’s plenty technically wrong with TPM (wooden acting, sometimes questionable dialog, pacing issues, etc.), any scene with a Gungan ranges from weak to annoying, and midi-chlorians should have been left on the cutting room floor, but it managed not to ruin characters I care about while at the same time introducing me to new ones I like. And more than anything else, it reinforces the idea that training, dedication, and mindfulness are essential to gaining insight into the Force and expanding your powers, even if you’re Space Jesus.
TLJ is a great technical achievement that trashes the characters and lore I care about while failing to advance the new characters that TFA couldn’t get me to care about in the first place. And it throws a couple new terribly written characters in the mix just for fun.
The bottom line is I can ignore what I don’t like about TPM and enjoy the rest. TLJ doesn’t allow me to do that because the parts I don’t like involve main plot points and main characters, and the rest isn’t interesting enough to hold my attention.
MTFBWY…A
NeverarGreat is bringing up some great points. I think the very fact that so many people (at least that I have talked to) thought that Rose crashing into Finn made no sense proves this. Because they felt (as well as I) that the movie set them up for Finn making a successful sacrifice.
That’s just how they interpreted the scene, as well as how I did. Doesn’t make it more right than an alternate interpretation, but that is kind of how movies work. They are meant to provoke different opinions from people and readings of the same material.
The Last Jedi in my opinion, for that scene, presented it in a manner that set us up to be angry and puzzled with Rose’s decision. Just my reading of the scene.
I think most disagreements over TLJ originate from people presenting their interpretations of certain scenes as the only valid—and therefore obvious—interpretations, with any interpretations running counter to theirs being completely wrongheaded.
I’m not trying to say every scene has only one proper interpretation, but rather that your preconceptions of how the story should go color how you interpret a scene. Knowing this is Star Wars and the heroes don’t die, Finn’s life is never at risk and there is not chance of him destroying the weapon because he has to live for the next film. That is a Star Wars Trope. So watching that scene and expecting to see Finn die is not a reasonable expectation of the scene. The purpose of that scene was to show that during the course of this film, Finn went from trying to save Rey to trying to save the Resistance. He has gone from a runaway Stormtrooper to a full on Rebel. That was his character arc. Rose helped him on the arc and then rescued him when the arc was complete. The details in the movie back this up. A speeder needs speed to do damage. One of the things to notice is that his speeder is moving slower in the growing force of the beam. Finn is on a pointless suicide mission because he wants to save the day. When you look at all the things in the movie that indicate it is pointless, Rose saving him becomes very natural. It isn’t the only interpretation, but it is the one that fits what we see, his story arc, and what is normal for Star Wars.
But here is where and why ROTJ is the oddball. Luke has faced Vader and lived. He starts out the story by rescuing Han. Jabba and his main henchmen and hangers on are all dead. Luke has mastered the powers and skills that Yoda taught. Luke is at the top of his game. He is the last Jedi (save Yoda on Dagobah). He turns himself in to Vader rather than risk his friends. He starts of determined not to fight. Why does he fight? The Emperor taps into his failings. The ones we’ve spent two movies dealing with. He incites Luke to draw and fight. That and Vader doing the same thing a little while later prove that Luke is not the poised Jedi Knight he is pretending to be. ROTJ shows that Luke is not perfect, but the overall impression is that he is now a full Jedi Knight. But he has a lot to learn yet. But now he has no teacher. The cracks showed on the Death Star. So when years later he establishes a Jedi school and half his students turn and kill the other half, Luke’s wave of success crumbles and his failings show for all to see. Just because they are nicely hidden in ROTJ does not mean they are not there. Many fans have speculated that he almost turned to the dark side - that he actually drew on the dark side to defeat his father. He has his father at his mercy and he hears the Emperor urge him to finish him and listens to something else that makes him stop and throw down his light saber (something he evidently did in a more permanent way after the fall of his school).
But to say that ROTJ clearly shows a changed Luke ignores all the flaws that the movie shows are clearly still there. The Luke of ROTJ is riding a wave of success and has matured, but those old tendencies to defeatism and recklessness are still there. Rian tapped into all the complexities of Luke from the OT when crafting the story for TLJ. If you gloss over the flaws that ROTJ shows are still there, or just ignore those parts of the movie, you get Luke the epic Hero. Luke the Legendary Jedi Knight. When you dig you find Luke the person and that person would do exactly what JJ and Rian have said he did. Even Mark Hamill has fallen for Luke the Hero. But once he got past the surface and realized what the story did, he agreed with it.
ROTJ is the aberration in Luke’s journey because it was his greatest success. His flaws were under control.
Well this is where it gets really interesting for me, because I actually think Luke’s actions in RoTJ are morally bankrupt. The essence is fine - Luke realises that he is a liability and turns himself in so that the mission can proceed. That stuff is great.
But the details ruin it for me. Luke says to Leia “if I don’t make it back, you’re the only hope for the Alliance”. This is arrogant nonsense. As I mentioned earlier, Luke is nothing but a liability. Furthermore his showdown with Vader/Palpatine has no bearing on the mission or the war.
Then he states that his mission is to try and turn Vader back to the ‘good side’. This is selfish in the extreme. Vader is a war criminal, a profoundly evil man. While it might be a nice idea for Luke personally, Luke’s primary focus should have been a) getting out of the way (which he stated) and b) taking down the Emperor even if it’s by way of making sure Palps is on the Death Star when it goes boom. That would be a noble mission and a very worthy one. Instead Luke’s spoken stance is “while you guys fight for the galaxy’s freedom I’m gonna go save my war-mongering dad”.
I will never understand the ethics of what goes down on the Death Star. Luke, a man who has killed countless enemy numbers and to great applause, suddenly decides that total pacifism is the key here - and only because he selfishly wants daddy to turn good. While people are fighting and dying all around him for the cause of freedom against a brutal dictatorship, Luke is hiding under a stairwell refusing to fight. After losing his temper and (rightfully IMO) beating Vader to a pulp, Luke throws his weapon aside and proudly declares his own enlightenment. Again, an actual war is being waged outside, and Luke is busy congratulating himself on his personal spiritual victory. He doesn’t challenge the Emperor. He doesn’t attempt to address the carnage being wrought by the Death Star or at least get Palpatine in a headlock and force him to recall his forces. No, he just stands there and boasts “I am Jedi”. Great. Meanwhile the actual galaxy is being saved by Chewbacca who has had the foresight to hijack a Scout Walker. Give that Wookiee a medal please!
So Luke gets fried and Vader, seeing his own flesh and blood in danger, kills the Emperor. Suddenly killing the bad guy becomes a viable path to enlightenment. Uh, okay. Vader and Luke hold hands and all is wonderful.
At best you could argue that Luke inadvertently prevented Palpatine’s possible escape from the Death Star. But that was just a lucky consequence of Vader’s sudden sense of paternity. Luke’s actions had no bearing on the war. For all the build-up, for all the ‘that boy is our last hope’, Luke was pointless (outside of recruiting the Ewoks). If anything the idea of training a new Jedi Order - ie a bunch of guys who aren’t allowed to fight and could turn irreversibly evil at the drop of a hat - is ludicrous. The idea of Luke even becoming a legend for his actions on Death Star II is laughable.
The only thing Luke has going for him at this point is his unwavering dedication to family over doctrine. Remove that and you’re not left with much.
Well, I disagree with you strongly about all this.
First, Luke saves the strike team. By linking with the Ewoks, it leads to the eventual success. Without the Ewoks, the mission would have been a failure. Palpatine had planned for a strike team and had countered it, but he failed to counter for the Ewoks. Second, Luke confronting the Emperor ensured he remained on the Death Star. And if he killed the Emperor, the war was virtually over. And his insistence on not fighting was mostly against his father. In the end he threw down his light saber because he had tapped into the dark side, seen how tempting it was, and rejected fighting and anger as a way to win the day. And while Palpatine’s focus was on Luke, he wasn’t paying attention that the strike team had planted explosives and the only thing protecting him from the Rebel plan was about to go poof. While Palpatine was focused on Luke, his death was approaching. Luke took the Jedi path of non-violence to face Palpatine. Palpatine tries to kill him and it is the one thing that could trigger Vader to turn back to Anakin. This is one place where I think the PT made the OT more powerful. We know he lost Padme (something that could have always been guessed at with Luke and Leia being orphans from a young age) and he does not stand by to watch his son die.
And the entire redemption is that at the core, a person can find good even after horrible actions. In Star Wars we get the Dark Side which entices and temps, but in reality, power can corrupt. You call Vader a war criminal, and a profoundly evil man, but is that true? He is Palpatine’s lackey. He acts on his masters orders. He is a slave of Palpatine as much as he was a slave to Watto. Not that he is innocent by any means, or that he would not have been held accountable for his actions, but the point was his soul/spirit/force energy. Luke was able to redeem his father. Had he lived he would have been executed by the Rebels, but his sacrifice was heroic. Luke’s actions were heroic. It is an epic end to that part of the story. Luke saves his father who at the end killed the Emperor. And all the bad guys die. Ultimately Luke’s efforts are the key to the Rebel victory. They had hoped to catch the Emperor on the station and for him to die there, but Luke proved how easy it would have been for him to escape. That he did not was all on Luke. I’m sure the legend in universe got spun a bit. But the result is the Luke’s actions resulted in the Emperor’s death. Without Luke the strike team would not have succeeded and the Emperor would not have died. Luke’s journey then was not about the war.
Interesting how you have pointed out that even in ROTJ, Luke wasn’t as concerned with the Galaxy as the he was with the Jedi. That idea is echoed in why he is in self exile on Ach-To. In ROTJ, Luke goes to do what Yoda and Ben want him to do. None of them said anything about the Empire/Rebellion conflict. He doesn’t do it quite the way they think he should, but he goes all the same. He wants to save his father, they want him to destroy the Emperor. Nothing about helping the Galaxy. His attitude remains unchanged in TLJ. He has put down the saber after the fall of Kylo and his instructions to Rey (including in the deleted scenes) echoes the teachings of Yoda. Not to interfere. Luke is intent on letting the Jedi die. Yoda influences him to see otherwise. Rey has already taken the sacred texts. Yoda makes him see that she will be a Jedi and that if he thinks there are failures, he’d better go to her and fix it. For the first time since TESB, Luke acts to save his friends rather than follow the old Jedi teachings. Your point leads to interesting ideas.
NeverarGreat is bringing up some great points. I think the very fact that so many people (at least that I have talked to) thought that Rose crashing into Finn made no sense proves this. Because they felt (as well as I) that the movie set them up for Finn making a successful sacrifice.
That’s just how they interpreted the scene, as well as how I did. Doesn’t make it more right than an alternate interpretation, but that is kind of how movies work. They are meant to provoke different opinions from people and readings of the same material.
The Last Jedi in my opinion, for that scene, presented it in a manner that set us up to be angry and puzzled with Rose’s decision. Just my reading of the scene.
I think most disagreements over TLJ originate from people presenting their interpretations of certain scenes as the only valid—and therefore obvious—interpretations, with any interpretations running counter to theirs being completely wrongheaded.
I’m not trying to say every scene has only one proper interpretation, but rather that your preconceptions of how the story should go color how you interpret a scene. Knowing this is Star Wars and the heroes don’t die, Finn’s life is never at risk and there is not chance of him destroying the weapon because he has to live for the next film. That is a Star Wars Trope.
Someone seems to be conveniently forgetting The Phantom Menace.
You probably don’t recognize me because of the red arm.
Episode 9 Rewrite, The Starlight Project (Released!) and ANH Technicolor Project (Released!)
Jay said:
The RT audience score stands at 46%. If it only succeeds as a film with people who watch films for a living, it failed.A self selecting poll heavily brigaded by angry fans. (Just for comparison, TPM has 55% audience rating). Yeah, no that has no basis in reality.
I’ll take something like Cinemascore over that, which is based on actual market research. They give it an A, so its definitely succeeding with the general public.
The debate over the validity of different scores was done to death in the official TLJ review thread, I believe. TLJ fans like to point to the RT critic score while insisting the audience score is gamed. The CinemaScore sampling method is also flawed because it’s mostly conducted close to the premiere and immediately after the audience leaves the theater, which means an audience with a higher number of hardcore fans and lack of time for reflection over what they saw can skew the results.
You can count me among those who enjoy TPM more than TLJ, by the way.
Many (if not most) films feature protagonists that have to learn hard lessons. TLJ is not alone in this regard, even among Star Wars films.
Execution aside, the idea that making a hero learn a lesson will alienate the audience isn’t one that really makes sense.
That’s not what NeverarGreat said. Luke learned plenty of lessons in the OT and he’s universally loved because of that arc. What some of us aren’t buying is his need to learn this particular lesson and that Rey was the one to teach it. Same thing with our other heroes.
The validity of a score that invites people to leave their opinion is only as valid as the source of the opinions. If a group engages in the process of loading such a score with bad reviews then it will be falsely low. It can just as easily be falsely high. In the case of TLJ, we know that there was an effort to bring down the score of the film. But in any case, the accuracy is in question. Rotten Tomatoes is only a vague indicator of quality. It is not a random poll of people who viewed the movie and so should not be considered in any way accurate.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the critic reviews are 90%. The audience reviews are at 46%. 73% of Google users liked it. The Roger Ebert site gave it 4 of 4. Amazon reviewers gave it 3 1/2 stars out of 5. It has 5.5k up votes on YouTube out of 7.5k votes. It has 4 out of 5 stars on Google Play. And it has a 85 on Metacritic. To me that says the 46% on Rotten Tomatoes is a false outlier. A proper audience appreciation score would be between 70% and 80%.
NeverarGreat is bringing up some great points. I think the very fact that so many people (at least that I have talked to) thought that Rose crashing into Finn made no sense proves this. Because they felt (as well as I) that the movie set them up for Finn making a successful sacrifice.
That’s just how they interpreted the scene, as well as how I did. Doesn’t make it more right than an alternate interpretation, but that is kind of how movies work. They are meant to provoke different opinions from people and readings of the same material.
The Last Jedi in my opinion, for that scene, presented it in a manner that set us up to be angry and puzzled with Rose’s decision. Just my reading of the scene.
I think most disagreements over TLJ originate from people presenting their interpretations of certain scenes as the only valid—and therefore obvious—interpretations, with any interpretations running counter to theirs being completely wrongheaded.
I’m not trying to say every scene has only one proper interpretation, but rather that your preconceptions of how the story should go color how you interpret a scene. Knowing this is Star Wars and the heroes don’t die, Finn’s life is never at risk and there is not chance of him destroying the weapon because he has to live for the next film. That is a Star Wars Trope.
Someone seems to be conveniently forgetting The Phantom Menace.
Sounds like the right move to me. 😉
You can count me among those who enjoy TPM more than TLJ, by the way.
I understand this must be a low bar for you, but what do you enjoy about TPM?
- Qui-Gon (my favorite Jedi)
- Palpatine (my favorite character in the whole saga)
- 3PO (unlike his terrible jokes from AotC, I think his humor works pretty well in TPM)
- The pod race (and the Tusken Raiders in particular…biggest laugh by far when I saw it in the theater)
- Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon vs. Darth Maul
- John Williams doing some of his best work
- Interesting plot (some people hate all the exposition and politics, but being a fan of Palpatine, I find the maneuvering and manipulation entertaining and TPM does a good job of setting up exactly how he came to power)
- Feels like Star Wars to me (totally subjective, of course)
There’s plenty technically wrong with TPM (wooden acting, sometimes questionable dialog, pacing issues, etc.), any scene with a Gungan ranges from weak to annoying, and midi-chlorians should have been left on the cutting room floor, but it managed not to ruin characters I care about while at the same time introducing me to new ones I like. And more than anything else, it reinforces the idea that training, dedication, and mindfulness are essential to gaining insight into the Force and expanding your powers, even if you’re Space Jesus.
TLJ is a great technical achievement that trashes the characters and lore I care about while failing to advance the new characters that TFA couldn’t get me to care about in the first place. And it throws a couple new terribly written characters in the mix just for fun.
The bottom line is I can ignore what I don’t like about TPM and enjoy the rest. TLJ doesn’t allow me to do that because the parts I don’t like involve main plot points and main characters, and the rest isn’t interesting enough to hold my attention.
I started to write up a bunch of stuff but it got too long. I’ll just say that I agree there’s good stuff in TPM, I consider it the best prequel. And I’ll leave it there.
NeverarGreat is bringing up some great points. I think the very fact that so many people (at least that I have talked to) thought that Rose crashing into Finn made no sense proves this. Because they felt (as well as I) that the movie set them up for Finn making a successful sacrifice.
That’s just how they interpreted the scene, as well as how I did. Doesn’t make it more right than an alternate interpretation, but that is kind of how movies work. They are meant to provoke different opinions from people and readings of the same material.
The Last Jedi in my opinion, for that scene, presented it in a manner that set us up to be angry and puzzled with Rose’s decision. Just my reading of the scene.
I think most disagreements over TLJ originate from people presenting their interpretations of certain scenes as the only valid—and therefore obvious—interpretations, with any interpretations running counter to theirs being completely wrongheaded.
I’m not trying to say every scene has only one proper interpretation, but rather that your preconceptions of how the story should go color how you interpret a scene. Knowing this is Star Wars and the heroes don’t die, Finn’s life is never at risk and there is not chance of him destroying the weapon because he has to live for the next film. That is a Star Wars Trope.
Someone seems to be conveniently forgetting The Phantom Menace.
Who dies in that one? The only main character to die in their own trilogy was Padme. Each trilogy has a trio of characters with some side characters. Obi-wan, Anakin, and Padme in the PT. Luke, Leia, and Han in the OT, Finn, Rey, and Poe in the ST. The Jedi mentor has died in each trilogy (Qui-gon, Obi-wan, Luke). Other characters die (Darth Maul, Mace and most of the Jedi, Jango Fett, most of the fighter pilots in ANH, Boba Fett, Jabba). But many others live. But the main trio will live to the end of the trilogy. And R2 and 3PO are around to the very end. People die when it is important to the story that they die.
NeverarGreat is bringing up some great points. I think the very fact that so many people (at least that I have talked to) thought that Rose crashing into Finn made no sense proves this. Because they felt (as well as I) that the movie set them up for Finn making a successful sacrifice.
That’s just how they interpreted the scene, as well as how I did. Doesn’t make it more right than an alternate interpretation, but that is kind of how movies work. They are meant to provoke different opinions from people and readings of the same material.
The Last Jedi in my opinion, for that scene, presented it in a manner that set us up to be angry and puzzled with Rose’s decision. Just my reading of the scene.
I think most disagreements over TLJ originate from people presenting their interpretations of certain scenes as the only valid—and therefore obvious—interpretations, with any interpretations running counter to theirs being completely wrongheaded.
I’m not trying to say every scene has only one proper interpretation, but rather that your preconceptions of how the story should go color how you interpret a scene. Knowing this is Star Wars and the heroes don’t die, Finn’s life is never at risk and there is not chance of him destroying the weapon because he has to live for the next film. That is a Star Wars Trope.
Someone seems to be conveniently forgetting The Phantom Menace.
Who dies in that one? The only main character to die in their own trilogy was Padme. Each trilogy has a trio of characters with some side characters. Obi-wan, Anakin, and Padme in the PT. Luke, Leia, and Han in the OT, Finn, Rey, and Poe in the ST. The Jedi mentor has died in each trilogy (Qui-gon, Obi-wan, Luke). Other characters die (Darth Maul, Mace and most of the Jedi, Jango Fett, most of the fighter pilots in ANH, Boba Fett, Jabba). But many others live. But the main trio will live to the end of the trilogy. And R2 and 3PO are around to the very end. People die when it is important to the story that they die.
Well I guess what he means is that even though Qui-Gon is the mentor, he’s also the closest thing to a main character in that movie. However due to the film’s prequel nature, we can all pretty much assume how it’ll play out for him anyway, so you’re basically right.
NeverarGreat is bringing up some great points. I think the very fact that so many people (at least that I have talked to) thought that Rose crashing into Finn made no sense proves this. Because they felt (as well as I) that the movie set them up for Finn making a successful sacrifice.
That’s just how they interpreted the scene, as well as how I did. Doesn’t make it more right than an alternate interpretation, but that is kind of how movies work. They are meant to provoke different opinions from people and readings of the same material.
The Last Jedi in my opinion, for that scene, presented it in a manner that set us up to be angry and puzzled with Rose’s decision. Just my reading of the scene.
I think most disagreements over TLJ originate from people presenting their interpretations of certain scenes as the only valid—and therefore obvious—interpretations, with any interpretations running counter to theirs being completely wrongheaded.
I’m not trying to say every scene has only one proper interpretation, but rather that your preconceptions of how the story should go color how you interpret a scene. Knowing this is Star Wars and the heroes don’t die, Finn’s life is never at risk and there is not chance of him destroying the weapon because he has to live for the next film. That is a Star Wars Trope. So watching that scene and expecting to see Finn die is not a reasonable expectation of the scene. The purpose of that scene was to show that during the course of this film, Finn went from trying to save Rey to trying to save the Resistance. He has gone from a runaway Stormtrooper to a full on Rebel. That was his character arc. Rose helped him on the arc and then rescued him when the arc was complete. The details in the movie back this up. A speeder needs speed to do damage. One of the things to notice is that his speeder is moving slower in the growing force of the beam. Finn is on a pointless suicide mission because he wants to save the day. When you look at all the things in the movie that indicate it is pointless, Rose saving him becomes very natural. It isn’t the only interpretation, but it is the one that fits what we see, his story arc, and what is normal for Star Wars.
Others have already explained why the opposite interpretation is also valid, so I won’t rehash that. If it were as clear as you suggest, viewers would be more uniform in their interpretation.
As far as Star Wars tropes and “what is normal for Star Wars”, the director doesn’t get to subvert expectations in one scene and then fall back on tropes in the next. In New Star Wars, vessels can hyperjump into other vessels to destroy them and characters can develop Force sensitivity into Yoda powers within weeks. Why should I expect anything I’ve seen before to hold up in this new universe?
Jay said:
The RT audience score stands at 46%. If it only succeeds as a film with people who watch films for a living, it failed.A self selecting poll heavily brigaded by angry fans. (Just for comparison, TPM has 55% audience rating). Yeah, no that has no basis in reality.
I’ll take something like Cinemascore over that, which is based on actual market research. They give it an A, so its definitely succeeding with the general public.
The debate over the validity of different scores was done to death in the official TLJ review thread, I believe. TLJ fans like to point to the RT critic score while insisting the audience score is gamed. The CinemaScore sampling method is also flawed because it’s mostly conducted close to the premiere and immediately after the audience leaves the theater, which means an audience with a higher number of hardcore fans and lack of time for reflection over what they saw can skew the results.
You can count me among those who enjoy TPM more than TLJ, by the way.
Many (if not most) films feature protagonists that have to learn hard lessons. TLJ is not alone in this regard, even among Star Wars films.
Execution aside, the idea that making a hero learn a lesson will alienate the audience isn’t one that really makes sense.
That’s not what NeverarGreat said. Luke learned plenty of lessons in the OT and he’s universally loved because of that arc. What some of us aren’t buying is his need to learn this particular lesson and that Rey was the one to teach it. Same thing with our other heroes.
The validity of a score that invites people to leave their opinion is only as valid as the source of the opinions. If a group engages in the process of loading such a score with bad reviews then it will be falsely low. It can just as easily be falsely high. In the case of TLJ, we know that there was an effort to bring down the score of the film. But in any case, the accuracy is in question. Rotten Tomatoes is only a vague indicator of quality. It is not a random poll of people who viewed the movie and so should not be considered in any way accurate.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the critic reviews are 90%. The audience reviews are at 46%. 73% of Google users liked it. The Roger Ebert site gave it 4 of 4. Amazon reviewers gave it 3 1/2 stars out of 5. It has 5.5k up votes on YouTube out of 7.5k votes. It has 4 out of 5 stars on Google Play. And it has a 85 on Metacritic. To me that says the 46% on Rotten Tomatoes is a false outlier. A proper audience appreciation score would be between 70% and 80%.
Without knowing how they weigh their scores, they’re all suspect. It’s my understanding that RT doesn’t include 1-star reviews in their average, for example. MetaCritic is just a composite of critics’ reviews. We’re talking about audiences here though, not critics. Looking at user reviews that are less prone to gaming, you cited Amazon (70%), YouTube (73%), and Google Play (80%). Not exactly stellar numbers, but decent enough for a Star Wars movie that’s not in the OT.
MTFBWY…A
NeverarGreat is bringing up some great points. I think the very fact that so many people (at least that I have talked to) thought that Rose crashing into Finn made no sense proves this. Because they felt (as well as I) that the movie set them up for Finn making a successful sacrifice.
That’s just how they interpreted the scene, as well as how I did. Doesn’t make it more right than an alternate interpretation, but that is kind of how movies work. They are meant to provoke different opinions from people and readings of the same material.
The Last Jedi in my opinion, for that scene, presented it in a manner that set us up to be angry and puzzled with Rose’s decision. Just my reading of the scene.
I think most disagreements over TLJ originate from people presenting their interpretations of certain scenes as the only valid—and therefore obvious—interpretations, with any interpretations running counter to theirs being completely wrongheaded.
I’m not trying to say every scene has only one proper interpretation, but rather that your preconceptions of how the story should go color how you interpret a scene. Knowing this is Star Wars and the heroes don’t die, Finn’s life is never at risk and there is not chance of him destroying the weapon because he has to live for the next film. That is a Star Wars Trope. So watching that scene and expecting to see Finn die is not a reasonable expectation of the scene. The purpose of that scene was to show that during the course of this film, Finn went from trying to save Rey to trying to save the Resistance. He has gone from a runaway Stormtrooper to a full on Rebel. That was his character arc. Rose helped him on the arc and then rescued him when the arc was complete. The details in the movie back this up. A speeder needs speed to do damage. One of the things to notice is that his speeder is moving slower in the growing force of the beam. Finn is on a pointless suicide mission because he wants to save the day. When you look at all the things in the movie that indicate it is pointless, Rose saving him becomes very natural. It isn’t the only interpretation, but it is the one that fits what we see, his story arc, and what is normal for Star Wars.
Others have already explained why the opposite interpretation is also valid, so I won’t rehash that. If it were as clear as you suggest, viewers would be more uniform in their interpretation.
As far as Star Wars tropes and “what is normal for Star Wars”, the director doesn’t get to subvert expectations in one scene and then fall back on tropes in the next. In New Star Wars, vessels can hyperjump into other vessels to destroy them and characters can develop Force sensitivity into Yoda powers within weeks. Why should I expect anything I’ve seen before to hold up in this new universe?
These two complaints are ridiculous. First, a vessel hyperjumping into another vessel (or planet) was established in ANH. “That will end your trip real quick”. Second, Rey’s force powers were developed in TFA. Every single one she picked up after “seeing” Kylo Ren do it. She really didn’t pick up anything new in TLJ. So neither complaint is accurate for TLJ.