DominicCobb

Shopping Maul said:

I see the supposed rejection of ROTJ’s ‘happily ever after’ as more of a reaction to ROTJ than anything else. People seem to have forgotten what a disappointment that film was, not just to many fans but to folks who were involved in the films. I’m pretty sure that’s why the comics had Luke turn to the Dark Side in the 90s, or why we have a ‘disillusioned Luke in exile’ in TFA with Han having his long overdue death scene. Not everyone left the 1983 Ewok party feeling satisfied. I’m more than happy to see ROTJ as ‘a’ victory and not necessarily ‘the’ victory.

I kinda get what you mean, especially when you consider that it wasn’t until the PT’s ‘chosen one bringing balance to the force’ decontextualization that ROTJ really became the final word in a grand saga. The OT, taken on its on, it’s not unreasonable that there’d be something after.

If ROTJ was happily ever after, the ST is supposed to be what happens after happily ever after, when reality sets in. But instead TROS is just ‘forget that happily ever after, this is the real happily ever after.’ Which is lazy.

Is there anyway we can fit in the message that the fight against evil will always continue or something like that? This is what I’m thinking. Before Palpatine dies we once again hear his line “I’ve been killed before,” or whatever it was. But there has to be some sort of response from Rey along the lines of “we’ll always be there.” Then you cut out the shots of all the star destroyers blowing up around the galaxy. What I’d really want to is instead of a hug party, to have a scene where they come back hugging, get a transmission about the next mission to stop the FO, and then head off. Then the scene with Rey on Tatooine. Don’t know how to do any of this.

Swazzy said:

Broom Kid said:

I don’t agree it undoes ROTJ’s conclusions any more than the onward march of time “undoes” the actions (and the meaning behind the actions) of the people who fought (and died) for things in the past.

When the allied powers won the war and created a peacetime, History didn’t continue with Zombie Hitler reinstating the Axis Powers tenfold and starting World War 3 in the 1970’s

The analogy worked when the OT war was WWI, which was supposedly, infamously, “the war to end all wars.” The ST is then WWII.

It obviously reads like he’s going to tell her he loves her. But the way the movie is, I think we’re to believe that he’s going to tell her he has the force. At first I thought this was a reshoot/reedit thing we’re they cut out his love proclamation and figured people would guess the force thing was what he wanted to say. But my working theory after thinking more about it that he really was going to tell her he had the force, and there’s a deleted scene where they do a fakeout where it seems like he’s going to tell her he loves her but then says he has the force instead. Somehow, that makes more sense to me as an explanation for why it’s like that.

There’s reason to believe this isn’t actually the worst reviewed Star Wars movie (ROTJ and TESB at the time were potentially worse), but that doesn’t really matter. These days the only thing people care about is the score. And this one is a rotten icon (even though it’s on the verge of fresh). These days, that’s a turn off for a lot of moviegoers.

The opening weekend for this movie was never as important as its holiday legs. But the reviews will hurt both. It’s still going to make bank but it won’t be what they wanted.

RogueLeader said:

Also, I know people who didn’t like Rose will probably disagree, but I think Rose was totally mishandled in this film. I was at least expecting for the gang to communicate with Rose more like she’s mission control or something. Rose really should have been with Finn and Jannah (or just cut Jannah) at the end of the film when they get rescued by the Falcon. Rose risked her life trying to save Finn at the end of TLJ, and now Poe is like, “Where’s Finn?” and Rose says, “Oh, he didn’t make it off the ship.” TLJ Rose would have ran out there and said, “I’m not leaving here without you.”
Finn and Rose didn’t even hug at the end either! Fine, you don’t like this kiss in TLJ, but we can’t even get an embrace at the end?

Hard not to take the handling of Rose as a fuck you to Rose. I was willing to accept the first half, unfortunate as it is, when she doesn’t go on the mission. JJ wants it to be about the trio he set up. But the final battle where she does nothing? When they literally have horses and she doesn’t even ride one? The perfect place to at least throw the character a bone but nope.

act on instinct said:

DominicCobb said:

Well yeah, exactly. I was fully expecting Palpatine to just say at the end before he died the same line that he said to Kylo… “I’ve been killed before.” That would have actually made sense. That’s the whole fucking point. You can’t defeat the dark side forever. They completely ignored that. Stupid.

This exactly, also why I really dislike the exchange of “I am all the sith” it felt like another last ditch attempt to tie together all and any loose ends. See? This HAS to be the end of the saga! That was all the sith!

Maybe it’s a reaction to knowing they couldn’t just defeat the Order like the Empire in ROTJ, needed to be distinctly final. But oh man what a ham-fisted fumble we got. I know this is intended for children but I felt like the intelligence level was operating on Nick Jr. scale.

Yeah, I mean maybe that’s the issue, they figured it needed to be simple enough for a kid to understand, and the idea that the fight against evil is a constant, ever vigilant battle is maybe too nuanced. But also, do they really think kids will understand this movie? I barely understood it.

DrDre said:

ZkinandBonez said:

DrDre said:

ZkinandBonez said:

DrDre said:

What is the difference between the ST and a hypothetical sequel to LOTR, where the ring of power in the original story was a fake, such that that another small hero, a Wobbit from Wobbiton, can go on a similar quest to destroy the ring, and Sauron for real this time?

Well, SW isn’t based on a book or a comic or anything like that, so technically there’s no reason why you can’t change things or add to it retroactively. Also the emperor wasn’t really given much importance until the PT expanded his motives and abilities, so considering all that’s been added to the franchise in the decades since ROTJ him coming back really isn’t that strange.

Also I don’t get the whole “it undermines X-plot-point” argument. TROS doesn’s change any of the character stuff that happened in ROTJ, and going with the Middle-Earth analogy; Sauron was killed twice and just because they had to do it again later it didn’t undermine what Isuldur, Elrond, etc. accomplished a few millennia prior to LOTR.

Lack of originality aside, I don’t see how the ST breaks any in-universe logic.

Ehm, I think TROS and its predecessors undermine pretty much the entirety of ROTJ, except for Vader’s redemption.

Well, that’s really the most important thing, which is why I don’t really mind the ST that much. Though I still wouldn’t say the that First Order, Starkiller Base, etc. “undermines” anything so much as its just lazy writing. It works, it’s just underwhelming and something else would have been much more interesting.

For me it undermines everything, because it undoes ROTJ’s conclusions only to give us a very similar story with a very similar ending. What’s to stop Palpatine from coming back again, or another gigantic fleet from being created from nothing?

Well yeah, exactly. I was fully expecting Palpatine to just say at the end before he died the same line that he said to Kylo… “I’ve been killed before.” That would have actually made sense. That’s the whole fucking point. You can’t defeat the dark side forever. They completely ignored that. Stupid.

joefavs said:

What burns me about the lack of any attempt to explain Palpatine’s return is that Rebels actually laid the groundwork for a perfectly acceptable explanation. The blue explosion when Vader chucks the Emperor down the pit in ROTJ looks almost exactly like the smoke effect when Palpatine accesses the “world between worlds” on the show. They absolutely could have used that without getting in the weeds of the specifics of the cartoon, and just had him say that as he was falling he cast himself into the nether regions of the Force and it took some time to find his way back.

Maybe it was just because there were bigger fish to fry for me but I didn’t really mind how they brought him back. So he’s still alive, whatever, it’s Palps, he’s powerful and makes plans, who cares. I actually really liked the imagery to of him strapped into that spindly crane and the spider throne. It all felt very Dark Empire. In general, it felt very much like an EU movie. Which is probably why I didn’t like it, but on some level I actually do appreciate the approach. Problem is really that it doesn’t gel with the last two films.

I also think Snoke should have just been an acolyte who stumbled across Palpatine and fell under his spell rather than a literal puppet. Those two changes would make it fit so much more smoothly in the continuity, but instead they opted to do it in the most inelegant and unconnected way possible.

I get that Palpatine essentially suggests that Snoke was a literal puppet, but to be honest, I think it’s ambiguous enough to just kind of reject that suggestion outright. In my mind, he created Snoke, but Snoke was still a creature with a consciousness of his own. That works fine enough for me.

Hal 9000 said:

The first thing we will discover is which font the title will use.

FONT SPOILERS

Same as ANH/TESB/TFA

I’m willing to guess, considering the RT score, that my prediction is too high.

Broom Kid said:

I disagree that any of these movies have rendered any of the other films pointless, if only because the point of Star Wars has never really been in its plotting. The plotting is a means to get to the themes, and even the bad Star Wars movies are trying to say something, thematically, within their own runtimes. Sequels don’t nullify or make pointless their predecessors. But I think what this movie was trying to say for itself was so confused and honestly, kind of infantile - it’s just hard to get a good hold on what it wants to be AS a story.

Plot is not important in Star Wars, except in this film plot drives everything (infuriating). But that’s not even the problem. You’re right, SW is about the characters and themes. And it’s that very thing that TROS undermines, not the plot. TFA and TLJ told a story that thematically justified the existence of the ST in the context of the larger saga. TROS completely killed that meaning. Those two films still exist as they are as individual films, of course, and nothing can take that away. But as a cap on the story of the ST as a whole, TROS has rendered the endeavor largely pointless.

Broom Kid said:

“Shaky cam” is just a colloquial synonym for “hand-held photography.”

Nobody’s actually shaking the camera, it’s just not stabilized on a dolly or tripod or steadicam machine.

It’s not in this movie, OR in The Force Awakens very much.

This. Shaky cam doesn’t mean moving camera. It’s means handheld photography. And it’s almost entirely absent in the film. In that clip, not a single live action shot is handheld.

RogueLeader said:

I think cutting Rey Palpatine is doable. At the very least, I think you could imply that he “influenced the midichlorians” to create her. Almost like a reverse Anakin. An anti-chosen one. If this was the case, the audience of Sith loyalists would add a lot of weight to that. In my opinion it is better than her being his literal grandchild, and it would mirror Episode I, where Anakin was introduced as the chosen one who was born from the Force.

I still would prefer Rey Nobody, but I think the former idea is doable at least. Just changing/cutting some lines.

It’s preferable, sure, but I think only marginally. I’m really more interested in Rey Nobody but I’m not sure how that’d be accomplished.

Lesser said:

I also have no clue what people are talking about with the shaky cam. In the Poe/Finn Falcon clip that was released people were saying the shaky cam was god awful but I barely noticed until I saw a million posts complaining about JJ’s style, and even now it doesn’t bother me whatsoever.

Yeah I mean, there’s basically no shaky cam in that clip.

I desperately want a good edit of this film, but I struggle to imagine what’d be possible to do, beyond trimming out some minor annoying things. The big problems are things like pacing, and Rey Palpatine. I truly have no idea how you fix either of these, baring the release of some hefty deleted material, which seems somewhat unlikely.

joefavs said:

I don’t know what to do with TROS. The story is worse than the PT but the cast makes it so much more engaging to watch.

This is where I’m at. Depending on which aspect I think about, it’s either better than ROTJ, or worse than ROTS. Will definitely have to sit with it for a good while.

I thought Leia was handled very well actually (for the most part). I think what they did is a far better solution than writing her out entirely. And killing her off halfway through TLJ would have been an absolutely atrocious idea.

I don’t really have the energy to relitigate TFA or TLJ, which is seems like the discussion in this thread is. I also am not really passionate about TROS to argue much about it, so I probably won’t end up saying much. But I will say, the film, at least in my opinion, renders the whole ST essentially pointless, which plain sucks. Otherwise, I’m pretty mixed on the film.

I will say this though… not only does TROS not feature any shaky cam that I can remember, TFA didn’t either. So I’m not sure where people are getting their info from but that’s not something to worry about.

I think the problem is obvious. You’ll notice Trevorrow and Connelly are credited for story. With the drastically short schedule, Abrams essentially had no choice but to inherit much of Trevorrow’s story (because of preproduction work that had already been put in, without enough time to start from scratch). But Trevorrow’s story was broken enough to get him fired, so…

Also, Hamill is definitely wearing a wig (except for when he lifts the X-wing, which I assume Rian shot for Trevorrow).

My review:

We’ll always have The Last Jedi.

Too bad…

Well the ‘For Your Consideration’ tracklist is out there, which means more spoilers are out there. I figured I’d be okay just staying out of the TROS spoilers thread, but if there are people here who wantonly post info from leaks without thinking twice in threads that aren’t about TROS, the chances of seeing something I don’t want to see (leak or not) is very high, so I’ll be taking a break from the forum. If I’m smart, the break will last well past the release of TROS as well.

Sifo Dyas said:

You say the Magnificent seven is not better then the Seven Samurai?

Yes, of course. Most people would agree with this.

Here’s George Lucas on the topic:

As a Western, The Magnificent Seven was a pretty good film. I don’t think it was as interesting or as multi-faceted as Seven Samurai.

Sifo Dyas said:

That Star Wars is not better then the Hidden Fortress?

I never said that and never would.