Sooo … leave it as be?
I guess, given that people have pretty thorough arguments for why they like it. It’s obvious I’m in the minority, so I say leave it as be.
^But, that’s not Luke’s arc in TLJ. That’s the moment it starts, but the overall journey isn’t about Luke overcoming his darkness. In fact, the arc itself is very specifically about why his failures aren’t a regression. I don’t know what to tell you.
I don’t know what to tell you, either. I saw Luke’s failure with Ben as a clear regression. Yoda supports that, saying “young Skywalker, still looking to the horizon.” This implies that Luke hasn’t evolved at all since the beginning of ESB, which seems like the definition of a regression.
When I say “needed to be told this way” I just mean that it’s clearly relevant. A logical next step to take from the OT that is more meaningful than Luke “finding the first Jedi temple” or something. This actually expands upon the themes introduced in those films. TROS is the film that rehashes.
Luke trying to kill Ben isn’t a “logical next step.” Like I said, there are a thousand ways TLJ could have expanded Luke’s character that wouldn’t feel like a regression. He could be tired of the endless cycle of war, and want the conflict to resolve itself. Or he could be scared of Snoke’s power, and worried that he wouldn’t be able to handle the situation. That would be a true evolution of Luke’s character. Instead, Rian chose to repeat a conflict that Luke has already faced.
The filmmakers could’ve given Luke a different motivation for staying on Ahch-To, while not having him be out-of-character, contradictory to his already-established character traits (like redeeming other family members) or undoing his arc from the original trilogy so they can re-do that arc all over again. I mean, why would he be looking for the first Jedi temple, as mentioned by Han in The Force Awakens?
the fact that people think “redeeming family members” is a character trait and not an action of pure good shows that it needed to be told this way xP
it’s not redo-ing a character arc if he learns and develops further than the original lesson
The arc may have a different resolution, but it’s still mostly the same arc. Luke almost kills a family member, but realizes that he shouldn’t kill him. The scenes have different outcomes, but Luke has the same motivation. Luke renounced the darkness within him at the end of ROTJ, it doesn’t make sense for him to repeat the mistake he made with Vader. And I don’t think it “needed to be told this way,” there are a thousand other possible reasons for Luke’s exile that could have actually expanded his character instead of feeling like a regression.
I mean, I’m sure Luke loves all of his students, and in his vision he sees them all dying, so him turning on his saber is him acting instinctually to protect them.
So Luke loves all his students except Ben? Why wouldn’t he talk with Ben, try to reason it out? Instead he instinctually pulls out his lightsaber, as if Ben isn’t Luke’s nephew and close friend. But we’re getting off topic here. I don’t think it’s possible to cut Luke trying to kill Ben without creating even more problems.
I’ve been thinking for weeks that a great final scene would be a redeemed Ben Solo exiling himself on Ach-to. His Tie Fighter burns in the background as he stares out over the sea, then he turns back to see Luke’s ghost, who raises the X-Wing from the water as a token of forgiveness. Iris out on Luke and Ben finally making amends (which was a weird omission for me in the official version). You’d have to cut these beats from the earlier scene with Rey on the island (but I would do that anyway to remove the Palpatine reveal) and Adam Driver would be rotoscoped from the beginning of the Han memory scene.
I think that contradicts the message of TLJ, where you can’t run away from your problems. Instead of exile, a redeemed Ben should travel the galaxy on his own, fighting injustice he comes across and slowly redeeming himself to return to the Jedi and Rey.
I assume you didn’t read the whole thing. He was planning to have the scene end with ghost Luke raising his X-Wing, giving Ben a chance to leave. I personally like the idea, although it seems difficult to rotoscope Ben into those scenes, and cut around Luke’s X-Wing on Exegol.
But if he doesn’t do that, how can he blame himself for what has happened and exile himself? After all, the only failing would be in not seeing the darkness in Kylo to prevent the massacre, and is that really enough? Did he just say ‘well Snoke and Kylo really got me good, time to go die in exile’?
Yeah, it is kind of a Catch-22. But that’s more of a problem with the movie itself, and I’m not sure a fanedit can fix it.
I can’t see a way to navigate this act which remains legible with what we know of Luke from the OT.
Yeah, I think the best option is to just cut Luke trying to murder Ben completely, like DonKamillo did in his Anti-Cringe Cut. But that might not be a popular choice.
Art is subjective. You might think some of this is stupid, I happen to think it’s a masterpiece.
I agree. I personally like Trevorrow’s script, except for Rey kissing Poe. I’m not really a Reylo, so the idea of Ben being mostly evil before the voice of Leia convinces him to sacrifice himself isn’t a big turn-off for me. I actually prefer Trevorrow’s take on Ben’s redemption to JJ’s version. It isn’t “dumb” or “stupid” for me. If Trevorrow’s script was the version that was produced, I think I would be mostly happy with the sequel trilogy.
Lest we forget, the concept art for TFA was far more interesting than what we got, so it’s really difficult to even speculate on the look of the final result.
The TFA art is illuminating as well, because you have, for instance, let’s say five or so distinct concepts for what kind of planet Jakku might be. So even if the film did completely follow through with a cool piece of art it necessarily will not be able to satisfy every concept.
Yeah, but the concepts we’ve seen so far look pretty faithful to Trevorrow’s script. Remember that the art of TLJ was almost exactly like the theatrical movie, and no matter what your opinions on that movie are you have to agree it looks awesome. And I don’t just like the script because of the cool visuals, I like it because of the characters and the plot too. The plot of TROS is a hot mess, and no amount of editing would be able to fix it in my opinion. So I think this version of IX would be much better than the theatrical version.
I’m kinda confused, because the art makes it looks like the film would have indeed been “epic” and possibly “oversized” and “bloated.” TROS seems much more restrained in comparison, for better or worse.
I understand what you mean. I guess the reason I prefer Trevorrow’s version to JJ’s version isn’t because it’s smaller, but because it’s more character focused. Every main character gets a coherent arc. Rey becomes a master of the Force, able to wield both light and dark, and begins training the next generation of Force users. Kylo becomes stronger and stronger in his quest for power, but as a result he becomes a machine, alienated from the living world. Finn uses his experience as a defecting stormtrooper to rally support on Coruscant, turning the tide of the war and destroying the First Order from within. All the character arcs in Trevorrow’s version are so much stronger than in JJ’s version, which sidelines the characters to focus on the big dumb action.
There are so many things about this art and the story that goes with it that I don’t like. It is missing the epicness of the rest of the saga.
I actually had the opposite feeling. I prefer character focused, dramatic stories over a thousand Death Stars vs ten thousand spaceships. Bigger isn’t always better, and I feel like Trevorrow’s version of IX would have been much more emotionally satisfying than the oversized, bloated finale we got.
I don’t know how true this is, but one of the actors who played one of the Knights of Ren said they saw an ending where Rey dies and Ben takes on the Skywalker name. Could be false, but if true, there may be a very unlikely chance this ending makes the deleted scenes release.
It was confirmed false. That guy didn’t even play a Knight of Ren, he was making it up.
We need to recognize both sides have a small group of outspoken idiots and a majority of normal people who just have different tastes.
I think the majority of normal people don’t have a side at all, and aren’t really engaged in this conversation, because they honestly don’t think about it to that extent once they’re done watching it. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that either. They watch the thing, they like parts of it, dislike others, and either they’re happy with their experience or they’re not. The majority of normal people just move onto the next thing at that point. They never join a side.
I understand the inclination to minimize the more unsavory aspects of online film discussion but in my experience, continually characterizing the sort of fighting, bad-faith arguing, and proxy/stand-in projection that occurs as being somehow anomalous or not representative is… inaccurate.
The “outspoken idiots” aren’t really a small group. Maybe they’re not the majority, but the margin is pretty slim, and more often than not they’re steering the ship.
I disagree. Most people see a movie and then either had a good time or a bad time. Yes, they’ll probably stop thinking about it once they get to their cars unless they really liked it, but they still had an opinion. You don’t have to argue online to have an opinion about something. Most won’t bring it up unless it gets brought up, then they might say their small opinion and move on without thinking about it again. That’s “a side”, even if not a passionate opinion.
It’s just the people who get really angry over trivial things such as this are more likely to rage about it online (keep in mind, I’m not addressing that towards anyone here, but the folks involved in those clickbait YT or saltier than crait).
100% agreed. It’s okay to have opinions on movies, but raging about them endlessly online is never healthy.
Yeah, one of my big complaints with the movie is how processed and unnatural it looks. Hopefully a regrade can fix that.
Stumbled across an interesting find today. Someone tweeted two photos today related to TROS. One photo is of JJ on a set from production that seems to have been cut from the final film, and the second photo is a piece of concept art similar to that set depicting a scene where Kylo interrogates a captive Chewbacca. The similarities between the set and the room seem to indicate that a scene between Kylo and Chewbacca was actually filmed. Hopefully if this is true, we’ll get this deleted scene on the home release.
That set actually was in the movie though, in the scene where Finn and Poe rescue Chewie. The Twitter account you got that from is one of the #ReleaseTheJJCut people, so you probably shouldn’t trust them.
On the topic of deleted scenes, I really hope the Oracle scene gets released on home video. It sounds like one of the best scenes from the movie, if it hadn’t been cut. This really weird creature called the Oracle, which lives on Mustafar, calls Kylo out on his feelings for Rey. The concept art book had a screenshot from the scene, and it looks finished enough to place into a fan edit seamlessly. I just hope it doesn’t have a time-code.
I misunderstood oojason, and lost my cool. We sorted it out, but I want to apologize to him here as well, as I painted him as being unfair, and snarky, which he wasn’t.
I also apologized to him in a PM, and I want to apologize here as well. oojason is one of the best members on this website, and I didn’t mean any disrespect towards him. It was all a big misunderstanding.
It seems like I dislike this movie for the same reason that many people like it: the underlying message of hopelessness.
Luke is actually a depressed hermit instead of a noble hero. Sacrificing yourself for the greater good is actually not a good thing. It doesn’t matter if the Resistance loses and everyone dies, because some Harry Potter cosplayers will rise to defeat whatever fascist government is in charge at that point. For a franchise all about heroism and the light beating the dark, TLJ sure loves to portray heroism as the wrong choice every time. I used to love this movie because of the subversions, but now that I think about it I realize that the subversions actively harm the thematic structure of the saga.
Not really.
Everything you’ve mentioned is more of a TROS criticism, if anything. TLJ says the opposite about pretty much all of your points. Which is interesting.
Really? In my opinion TROS was binary good-evil to a fault. It seems crafted to be the polar opposite of TLJ’s unsympathetic portrayal of heroism. I wish they took the middle ground. You can have the heroes go through a moral crisis without showing heroic sacrifice as a bad thing.
Did you even bother to read the rest of what I said? You may not interpret it as hopelessness, but I did. The underlying message that there will always be fascist governments and heroic sacrifices are pointless in the greater scheme of things seems overly calculating and depressing to me.
It seems like I dislike this movie for the same reason that many people like it: the underlying message of hopelessness.
Luke is actually a depressed hermit instead of a noble hero. Sacrificing yourself for the greater good is actually not a good thing. It doesn’t matter if the Resistance loses and everyone dies, because some Harry Potter cosplayers will rise to defeat whatever fascist government is in charge at that point. For a franchise all about heroism and the light beating the dark, TLJ sure loves to portray heroism as the wrong choice every time. I used to love this movie because of the subversions, but now that I think about it I realize that the subversions actively harm the thematic structure of the saga.
Well said Dr Dre. Anecdotal evidence is never gonna get us anywhere in figuring out the majority opinion on this movie. I’m not even sure if there is a majority opinion when it comes to TROS. Some people love it, some people hate it, and some people are completely indifferent towards it. It’s like the audience reception to TLJ on steroids.
That’s not the same thing. He just trusts critic scores more than audience scores, because critics are typically more reliable. It’s not a bias issue at all. If you don’t think RT audience scores are subject to brigading and tampering, you obviously haven’t seen all the textless 1 star reviews for TLJ. I know you say you aren’t arguing with him, but pointing out something like that and claiming that it’s hypocrisy sounds a lot like an argument.
Okay, sorry, thought you were arguing with him. If you weren’t, I’m sorry.
He wasn’t talking about the critic score, he was saying that the audience score is unreliable. The critic score is typically more reliable than the audience score. That’s a generally accepted fact, it’s not a checkmate that invalidates his argument.
I agree that Luke was the only good character in the sequel trilogy, but I do feel like they took his character too far. I’m not saying Luke isn’t allowed to make mistakes, but I don’t think Luke from ROTJ would go to die on an island the instant something bad happened. He always seemed more hopeful than Obi-Wan or Yoda. I enjoyed Luke’s character arc, but I found it hard to accept that this is the same Luke from the OT, and I understand the complaints of those who felt they ruined his character.
Someone posted a YouTube video with the links to The Phantom Edit, Attack of the Phantom (an edit of Attack of the Clones made by the same guy who made The Phantom Edit), and Backstroke of the West (a bootleg copy of Revenge of the Sith with infamously awful subtitles). I can’t link the video here, but you can find it by searching “phantom edit download links” on Google.