NeverarGreat

Hal 9000 said:

My early experience with The Force Awakens was somewhat disappointing, as what I was really hoping for was Luke. The film did well capturing the tone and atmosphere of the original trilogy, though without a great deal of mythical substance. However, the film was a fun ride, if not wholly original, and it ended with the promise of a whole lotta Luke in the next movie.

Now that The Last Jedi has come out, after effectively four years or so of building up Luke Skywalker for me, this new film feels like a slap in the face. I do not mean in terms of the film’s quality, but as a deliberate thematic gesture. I question whether this was the right move to make, as it seems obvious Mark Hamill has, though the film is more or less successful in what it seeks to do in this regard. However, it comes across as deeply incongruous with the films that came before, most strikingly with The Force Awakens itself. It is baffling to me, and seems to betray the story that film was trying to set up. I don’t care about Rey’s parents being nobodies; I rather like that decision. I would have liked to see Snoke be tied into the saga at large in some way, but I don’t really have a problem with him being axed, aside from the incongruity with the storytelling of TFA.
Basically, the Luke stuff is very hard to swallow and feels very wrong for a variety of reasons. And the rest of the movie is dominated by SNL-level humor and ‘Droids’ cartoony silliness. Finn and Rose are grating, and BB8 commandeering an AT-ST is almost on the level of C-3PO in the Geonosian droid factory. The pacing and plot structure is all over the place. If I could edit apart the film into Rey’s story and everyone else’s story, I might be able to digest it a little easier. As much as I dislike Yoda’s visuals, his scene is touching, and goes the furthest to help Luke grow in this film. I still do not really understand how the lesson about accepting and learning from failure leads to Luke’s confrontation at the end. Does anyone else? It seems like he is sacrificing himself so the Resistance can escape, but I am straining to connect the dots to form a throughline with Luke.

Also, this movie suffers greatly in my mind by having several too many fakeouts or misdirections. Having what looks like a spaceship turn out to be an iron in the laundry room is one thing, but the movie contains so many of these that it honestly made me feel like a fucking idiot by the end, and left me almost giving up on trying to understand it. After Kylo Ren’s dialogue about letting the past die and the ship being rammed, the clear implication seemed to be that all the main characters aboard were killed in a stunning narrative mood. (Just kidding; here’s BB8 in an AT-ST.) Finn is about to sacrifice himself to save the Resistance. (Just kidding, you silly goose.) Rose dies. (Just kidding, I guess… I honestly forgot she didn’t die until I saw it again because there’s too much of this going on!)

There’s several of these even in the Yoda scene alone: Luke says he’s going to burn the tree down, then hesitates and seems to feel remorse about having wanted to. Then Yoda blows it up and laughs, confirming to Luke that, no, he was actually right in the first place to burn it down. Luke appears to accept this from Yoda, then becomes very defensive for a second about the Jedi texts. Yoda seems to tell Luke that the texts are better off gone, implying Rey already has what she needs without them. (JUST KIDDING; the Jedi texts are aboard the Falcon at the end in a shot I completely missed after seeing the film twice. What does this shot suggest about the Yoda scene, and Luke’s dialogue ABOUT Rey becoming a Jedi??? Does Luke KNOW she has the texts? Does Yoda?)

This movie makes me feel like I am locked in the house of mirrors and the Joker is laughing at me. They won’t even let me read the novelization until late March. Even if someone explains all these things to me in as best a way as can be done, this movie will always be a problem.

I agree with a lot of this, especially the scatterbrained tone. Star Wars has always had a very specific tone and editorial style, and TLJ is definitely the furthest removed from this style. All of the films have a noticeably passive, even documentary style at times. Abram’s filmmaking is somewhat removed from this in his use of quick cuts, closeups and dynamic camera movement, but TFA is still quite restrained in this regard. The Last Jedi by comparison is frenetic in how it slices up scenes to ratchet up the tension, and it breaks the illusion of watching events in a faraway galaxy and instead forces the viewer to confront the film as merely an assemblage of shots intended to show (or even worse, tell) the audience what to feel.

Canto Bight is the most egregious example of this style. I remember during filming how leaked photos showed elaborate streets built on location and a vast game floor filled with a breathtaking array of stunning aliens. I had an immediate sense of place with these photos, a location that promised to linger in the mind just as Cloud City, Dagobah, or even Coruscant lingered long after the movie ended. However, when I saw the finished product I had forgotten this lush environment the moment our heroes left. This is entirely a problem with the style of filming and editing these sequences.

The Luke stuff on the other hand I appreciate. Luke is a disillusioned old man who was failed by the dogmatic Jedi religion and held up as an impossibly godlike figure by the rest of the galaxy; no wonder he left. The beautiful thing about his disillusionment is that it both humanizes him and makes him more like a Zen spiritual guru. His ‘reach out’ joke might have been motivated by a cynicism of everything Jedi, but it also functions as a genuine lesson on not taking one’s teachers too seriously.

I for one am moderately intrigued.

Hal 9000 said:

I do like how the prequels’ themes tied into TLJ somewhat. It does a good job of making them feel worthwhile without referencing them specifically, namedrop of Darth Sidious being the sole exception.

I think this is why Luke’s story is so polarizing - his Jedi school devolved into an institution similar to the old Jedi Order, with Luke becoming a metaphorical Abraham who for a brief moment was willing to sacrifice his own family for this dogma. For those who think the ideas underlying the prequels had merit, this is a strong theme. For those who discard these ideas and think the Jedi are the only guardians of light full stop, I can see how this version of Luke would disappoint them.

KILLOFFPOE said:

ChainsawAsh said:

More like an incomprehensible hatchet job, but I guess if it floats your boat…

(literally) nothing happens in the Space Chase storyline.

A movie made of only the Rey/Luke/Kylo scenes would probably work just fine.

Except that you rob their actions of any wider context.

Usually I’d let this stuff slide, but it’s hard to ignore since this movie goes into so much more detail about the fuel calculations and the strategy of the whole thing. Like, give me ships going ‘pew pew’ at each other with space fairy tale logic or give me Timothy Zahn-style military sci-fi with a consistent set of rules, but don’t give me the military sci-fi with fairy tale logic.

AndersonCouncil said:

NeverarGreat said:

My biggest issue, other than the fragmented storylines, was that the starship chase and Godspeed Maneuver™ made little tactical sense.

Why couldn’t the First Order simply swarm the capital ship with TIE fighters until it went down? Why are all the ships traveling at a fixed speed? Why hasn’t anyone else used the Godspeed Maneuver™ as a weapon? It seems like a hyperdrive would be one of the most deadly weapons in the galaxy if just any ship could do this.

Oh, and I don’t care if Phasma stays or goes.

Absolutely! I was thinking this as well. If going to hyperspace can be done even with a ship in the way then surely the Rebels could have just used this method to destroy either of the Death Stars no? At least the first one as it had no shield generator to protect it.

Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense. The only thing I can think of is that this Republic ship is even larger than any ship the Rebellion ever had, and if Hyperdrives get exponentially more dangerous the more mass is moving through Hyperspace, it might only become a danger with very large capital ships. And at that point, the waste of such a ship would be widely considered too great a cost for a suicide maneuver.

As for the issue of why the First Order is slowly running them down rather than destroying them with TIEs, perhaps the reason could be that Snoke wanted Leia alive so she could personally surrender to him, and he would also suspect that she would be the most likely person to have the location of Luke. This could be easily communicated in the crawl, and that way the First Order would just blockade the Resistance base until after most of the island scenes and when Leia decides to launch her attack.

Putting my Starlight Project Part 2 Ideas here for now:

While the Force Awakens was a flawed film, it only required a modest restructure to improve the story immensely. The Last Jedi, while it ascends to greater heights, has some deeper structural issues. For example, there is absolutely no time-jump between movies, and immediately starts with a ticking clock that leaves no room for intervening character growth.
This edit, while not solving the time-jump issue, will at least allow for a more leisurely pace at the beginning of the story. Here is how it could begin:

The FIRST ORDER reigns.
Having destroyed the
Republic capitol, General
Hux has surrounded
the Resistance base and
awaits the surrender of
Leia Organa.

Leia, now the leader of the
defeated Republic, still hopes
for the return of the Last Jedi,
and is secretly preparing her
forces for a final desperate
attack against the ascendant
First Order.

Meanwhile, in deep space
aboard his massive command
ship, Supreme Leader Snoke
prepares to receive Kylo Ren,
son of the Republic and heir
to Snoke’s dark throne…

We open on Kylo Ren facing the wrath of Snoke, and after he smashes his helmet in frustration we cut to Rey giving Luke the lightsaber. The Ahch-to scenes are brought to the front of the film for the most part, with Rey’s communication with Kylo being the only cross-cutting. Now Rey is on the island for an undetermined amount of time, just like Luke’s training on Dagobah. Near the end of Luke’s lessons, we return to the Resistance plot and Poe’s attack on the Destroyer. From there the story progresses as usual, with some cuts or additions for time. The Canto Bight section is quite problematic however, and there will probably be more substantial changes to that section. The final act is excellent, and should require little to no change.

A whole lot of adults watched the Phantom Menace multiple times in the theater, believing that it was simply amazing but finding more problems with each viewing. But by the time AOTC came out, most people knew that the movies were hot garbage. I know I did, and I was still a kid. I remember going to ROTS out of morbid curiosity.

This trilogy is nowhere near that level.

Killing a student who had turned to the Dark Side is a very Jedi thing to do, from a prequel point of view. Even Obi-wan in ROTJ was saying that Luke needed to kill Vader, and Yoda said that there was no coming back after beginning the dark path. Sure, Luke seemed to grow beyond that in ROTJ, but the concept of killing a relative lost to the Dark Side was the primary conflict of that movie. I think he genuinely wrestled with that question, even at the end. To consider that he could return to that state of mind in a moment of weakness isn’t beyond the pale to me at all.

My ideas are in the Fanedit thread for now, but I couldn’t wait to post the new topic. 😃

Rhindle said:

Ironically, I think the prequels can be greatly improved with fan edits, but I don’t think there’s any way to fan-edit out the objectionable stuff in this one to make it better.

Wait, switch that, reverse it.

Still true - and I’m thinking The Last Jedi has a lot of that going on as well.

The issue for me is that we now get a sanitized vision of the galaxy where we don’t really see those class divisions between droid and human society that were extremely clear throughout the PT and OT. I’m left wondering if this is because the Clone Wars are a distant memory (and thus people really don’t view droids with suspicion anymore), or whether the filmmakers just forgot.

I’d recommend checking out the latest version of Restructured. It pushes the Ilenium plot point until the very end of the movie, and all that is necessary to remove it for good is to reinstate the Ackbar scene in its place.

At least here it’s explicit - the entire trilogy is a game of Exquisite Corpse.

But that’s also a wonderful opportunity for interpretation and re-imagining. Not even George Lucas can claim ownership of this sprawling and contradictory set of tales formerly known only as Star Wars.

With my biggest issue being the fragmentary storyline, I’d like to see an edit where the First Order is still hunting for the Resistance base at the start of the film. This would require using a modified version of TFA Restructured, where they never learn of the Ilenium system in the first place.

With this change, I could frontload The Last Jedi with Luke and Rey material, picking up right where we left off in the previous film. There would be more time to breathe (and reach out!) in this part, now that there’s less of a ticking clock Resistance plot to draw us away from Rey’s journey. It could be implied that she spends a great deal of time on the island trying to get information from Luke and learning things on the way.

Near the end of her time on the island, we’d introduce the Resistance as the they try to evacuate their base. The slow, illogical cat and mouse fuel plot can then be reduced. Rose and Finn still travel to Casino planet, but only because Rose knows from experience that their hacker can be found there.

The rest of the movie plays out pretty much as it is. I agree that some of the humor is too much even for Star Wars, like the AT-ST. It should be quite grim after the Casino planet.

Broom boy should probably stay. It’s just a great moment.

Collipso said:

If Luke went to the island to die why was there a map?

Maybe they suspected that Luke was looking for the First Jedi Temple, and the Church of the Force was the first group that actually figured out where that temple might be.

Luke need not be involved in the map’s creation.

Collipso said:

Is there a repeated Poe shot? The one that he looks over to the hole in the oscillator. Is that the same one used for when he’s looking at the Starkiller’s laser?

I think so.

Originally I had used the shot of the female pilot reacting to an explosion (which I think fits better), but I suppose it was too obvious a repeat if the original scene was going to be played verbatim. I think some editing could be done to put her reaction back in the Starkiller firing and simply remove that reaction from the original scene.

Whenever I get that deleted scene from SirRidley that should be the only thing I have to do, unless I’m missing anything.

Yeah, it even manages to subvert the fact that it’s a middle chapter, and that’s wonderful. I am so glad that there are few obvious paths forward in this galaxy, because that means that whatever comes next will be different than any previous Star Wars movie.

It could go anywhere, with any time jump. There’s room for our heroes to have years of adventures before facing the final chapter.

She may not get a hero’s death, but she certainly got a hero’s life in this, and I’m so much happier for it.

I’ve read tons of reactions to this movie and the one thing that people who hate it all seem to agree is terrible is the ‘Space Leia’ moment. People who like the movie largely don’t mention it.

I don’t know what that means.

For the record, I thought that did look a little weird, but I ended up quite enjoying it.

My biggest issue, other than the fragmented storylines, was that the starship chase and Godspeed Maneuver™ made little tactical sense.

Why couldn’t the First Order simply swarm the capital ship with TIE fighters until it went down? Why are all the ships traveling at a fixed speed? Why hasn’t anyone else used the Godspeed Maneuver™ as a weapon? It seems like a hyperdrive would be one of the most deadly weapons in the galaxy if just any ship could do this.

Oh, and I don’t care if Phasma stays or goes.

Just got back from seeing this.

My overriding thought from beginning to end: This is an absolutely Exquisite Corpse.

Rian takes JJ’s entry, laughs at it, and savagely ends the two most useless characters while finishing the trilogy in one movie, giving Abrams nowhere to go if he attempts to make a ROTJ lookalike.

Sure, I could pick apart the logical gaps in the spaceship pursuit and the Godspeed Maneuver™, but that’s for a future fanedit.

This movie is multiple main course meals, and for that alone it’s worth putting up there with the Original Trilogy.

They are a single adjustment, yes. But I would have to fine-tune this using a lot more frames before I’d be happy with it.