Well that was …shit!
Yes Hot Rod! Haven’t seen you in years mate!
It was a bit shit wasn’t it?
joefavs said:
The best analogy I can come up with is that if these movies were Beatles albums, TFA is A Hard Day’s Night and TLJ is the white album.Great analogy!
Agree. Except I love both those albums.
I’ll definitely see TLJ again but can’t see it growing on me.
I wish I could have been one of those people who loved The Last Jedi but I wasn’t.
The Luke/Rey/Kylo stuff was good (a few bum notes but generally good).
The Finn/Rose plot thread was particularly bad (like, prequel-level bad).
Everything else was just kind of lame.
(For the record, and for those who don’t know me, I’ve been a member of OT.com for 12 years and used to post regularly. Yes I’m mostly an OT fan, and no, I’m not a prequels fan, but I really enjoyed TFA and saw it 4 times on the big screen so I’m not a ‘screw this new disney stuff’ kind of guy either… it’s just that TJL was, in my opinion, a poor movie on some really basic levels like storytelling, characters, dialogue…)
A forum post can’t express how I feel about this. She was an inspiration and fueled my imagination in childhood and beyond. RIP Carrie and thank you.
“I think i’ll call you… hmmm… Vaaader. Yes, Vader”
Want to read the most bat shit crazy (and clearly wrong) theory about who Rey really is?
Here you go:
Luke is definitely standing in front of a very old grave.
I was wondering about that myself. Seen it 4 times and still couldn’t quite tell if it was a grave or just a crooked rock.
Edit: deleted accidental double post
I just saw TFA for the fourth time. This time on 70mm IMAX (I’ve also seen it in IMAX 3D, digital 2d and regular 2d).
4 viewings and I still really love it.
None of the things people (including me) have previously grumbled about bothered me. I even didn’t mind the Rathtars this time 😃
Being as familiar with the beats of the film as I now am, watching it was a similar experience to when I watch the OT… I know what’s coming next and happily go long for the ride.
Some new observations:
I don’t get people who say the music is weak. To me it’s a great mix of familiar and new. Rey’s theme is great, the strings that come in when Han dies are great, and there are some really nice big sweeping moments throughout, coupled with some lovely tender bits. The score pulls off the neat trick of being its own thing but still being undeniably a Star Wars score. And there are a couple of the themes stuck in my head right now.
The editing. It’s fast, frenetic and full of energy. I love it. It drags me into the film and won’t let go. People who complain about the editing are free to have their own opinion but I disagree with it (and in some cases I think they might not know what’s meant by ‘editing’, and are complaining about something else).
Rey… After 4 viewings I’m pretty sure that Rey is Han and Leia’s daughter. The way Han looks at her, the way he feels bad (or guilty?) when she says she “never thought there was this much green in the whole galaxy”, the way Leia hugs her instead of Chewie, the way Kylo Ren reacts to news of a girl helping BB-8 escape (“what girl?!”)… My theory is that Ben Solo had a younger sister and when he went bad they hid Rey to stop it from happening to her too.
This would make Kylo Ren and Rey equals. They are both the grandchildren of Darth Vader. Maybe the fact that one is good and one is bad is what’s meant by ‘balance to the force’.
For the most part IMDB is pretty much on point when it comes to Star Wars reviews.
Hmmm…
TPM 6.5
AOTC 6.7
ROTS 7.6The rent isn’t the only thing that’s too damn high.
ROTS is kind of too high but TPM and AOTC are about right. Those two weren’t that bad. Watch a few of IHE’s Search For The Worst videos and you’ll see what genuinely terrible movies are.
AOTC not that bad?
6.7 is generous.
I’m not sure I want to see a young han solo movie.
No. I eat meat. The effort of our ancestors should be respected. They didn’t bring us to the top of the food chain so that we will eat grass now. They would surely curse the vegetarian idiots.
Not sure if troll or idiot.
Actually, sure that both.
Definitely both.
I love my greens. Nutri-bullet every morning bitches.
Well, this thread dried up.
I guess now the holidays are over the film students had to go back to class.
Which ones? I’m not really familiar with anything outside of the main saga.
(and Clone Wars which doesn’t deserve a poster)
And I still have no idea who the Han Solo looking guy is, or where he appears in the movie. I’m surprised there isn’t a really misleading foreign poster with a buff Wicket carrying an older Cindel off in his arms! 😉
Given that the first ten minutes are about as cheery as Alien 3, I’m amazed little kids could get in to see the movie overseas.
I’ve never seen this… not sure if I can handle it now. Looks weird.
Nobody has ever seen a Star Wars movie without a John Williams score so I guess this is a first for us all! We’ll have to wait an see. No doubt opinions will be mixed.
I for one can’t imagine it ‘feeling like star wars’ without the music, but I’m game to give it a go.
cough cough
Does that not feature the theme? (I haven’t seen it),
It does, but the arrangement of it, and the score in general were one thing negative reviews of the TCW movie seemed to harp on.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5chHfK6sCc
It’s a bit of a mess to be fair. If you’re going to use the theme, just use it, don’t mess it up.
I guess it’s supposed to sound more ‘military’.
Yet another parallel to the OT that just seems lazy to me. In order to continue on his path to the Dark Side, Ren had to confront his father, and instead of saving him, kill him.
Ugh.
Yeah, I do see your point (even though i don’t mind it myself).
How about if there was an in-story explanation that stopped it being a parallel for the sake of it and made it into a plot point? For example, what if Ren himself believed that this was something he had to do, specifically because it was something that had gone before (presumably he’s aware that Luke is Vader’s son). Would the characters in the movie acknowledging the mirrors of history make you ok with it? (just asking - personally I would like to see the characters acknowledge the similarities).
because TFA negates the victories and outcomes of the original trilogy
Disagree. If for no other reason that we haven’t seen how everything happened or what will happen going forward.
This has become the fallback position for things that aren’t adequately explained in TFA.
Based on what we know now, the Republic has been crippled — if not destroyed — because they failed to maintain vigilance against the same type of enemy they encountered in the past, Leia is running the Rebellion (excuse me, the Resistance) from a basement, and Han is a loser who went back to smuggling because apparently he couldn’t cut it as a hero and father. And Luke is Ben now, except he has a sad, so he went to Ireland on holiday.
I actually like that these heroic characters went on to experience tragedy in their lives after experiencing both crushing defeats and epic highs, but it seems to be in service to the retread rather than genuine storytelling. What I didn’t see, what there wasn’t enough of, was HOW and WHY these characters we love ended up as they did. Punting it to the next installment is lazy, and I bet we don’t get answers to a lot of these questions.
And Jay, I also provided a serious response to the “Bad Parents” thing, you may have missed that.
For what it’s worth, I also assumed failed parenting played a major role in Ren’s situation. You don’t stab your dad through the chest with a lightsaber without holding some serious resentment toward him, and it’s not hard to picture a nomad like Han having difficulty settling down and raising a kid.
When Kylo is reading Rey’s mind, he says “You see Han Solo as the Father you never had… he would have only disappointed you”, so there is definitely an element of bad parenting (or perceived bad parenting). But I’m not sure the blame for the entire state of the galaxy can be put on Han and Leia (as a few people have suggested). That’s like blaming Hitler’s Dad for the holocaust, while ignoring all the political, economical and historical factors that played a role.
To me, the idea that after the joyous victory of ROTJ, events, politics, and plain old human nature have led to a repeat of history is quite an interesting one. Haven’t we all experienced that in our own lives to some degree? Don’t we all ‘become our parents’ in some ways, even when we swear we never will? And on a global scale, it certainly seems to be true that “We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.”
If Star Wars was originally a reaction to the vietnam war (at least in part), doesn’t the idea that history has a habit of repeating itself feel like a fitting theme for a new ‘War on Terror’ era Star Wars movie.
I realise I’ve gone quite deep. I’m just typing stream of conscience. But it’s food for thought.
I see so much being made out of the fact that TFA takes so much of its story beats and imagery from the first Star Wars movie, but never really much discussion about the context in which it does so. TFA focuses on protagonists who are living in the shadow of larger than life figures.
Rey has a Rebel Pilot doll. Kylo Ren seeks to follow in Darth Vaders footsteps. All of them have missing parent figures. There’s that wonderful scene where Fin recognizes Han as a war hero, and Rey recognizes him as a smuggler. Heck, at one point in the movie there’s a shot that frames the deactivated R2-D2 as a rather imposing and statuesque figure over the smaller BB-8. All of this colors the new character’s decisions and attitudes in a way that isn’t seen in the original trilogy.
This is a lovely way of looking at it.
Some of the concept art in the Art Of Star Wars book is a little bit creepy. There was definitely a WWII influence of the look and feel of the Empire from the beginning.
I’m always amused when I spot actors who played imperials in the OT playing Germans in WWII movies, or Russians in Cold War movies. Talk about typecasting!
Alec Guinness playing the title role in Hitler : The Last Ten Days is way too creepy though.
Here’s another one I noticed recently when ‘escape to victory’ was on TV over christmas…
https://mikestakeonthemovies.files.wordpress.com/2015/07/max-von-sydow-in-victory.jpg"
(By the way, pardon my ignorance but is there a guide thread on how to do simple things like embed an image?)
Delicieuxz said:
It must be hard for those two to know that they’re responsible for the troubles now facing everyone - though the movie doesn’t acknowledge this. They had a son, and whoops, all the rebels victories are now undone and everything is right back to where they were.If you have read some of the expanded literature out there, The republic is certainly the major power in this time, the first order is a fringe organisation who have territory. They pretty much have that single star destroyer, which is itself illegal under some embargo. The ‘resistance’ is a Private Military Corps funded by leia outside of the Republic to monitor the First Order becuse the New Republic is apparently ignorant of the First Order, or unwilling to aknowlege their rising power
This is the first time I’ve actually seen the set-up explained clearly. I get it now. Thanks.
But I have to say, that did not come across clearly in the film.
Framing a shot because it looked good in another movie is not the same as trying to evoke the same feelings as the shot’s inspiration.
The parallels to Nazism in TFA are pretty clear, however.
A little too clear I would say. I have no issue with the first Order (or the Empire) being portrayed as nazi-like, but the whole red banners thing was a little to obvious, IMO. It took me out of the movie momentarily.
I think Abrahms got the tone mostly right, the dialog and acting is good, but it’s like an amalgamation of situation reprisals from the original trilogy. So I think it’s an OK fan homage, but not an authentic part of the Star Wars story.
I don’t take TFA to be an canon part of the SW saga, because its construction and meaning is, frankly, derivative and absurd.
The film is wilfully uncaring of its constant recasting of setups, imagery, scenarios, banters from the original SW trilogy. And as the film doesn’t take itself to be an equal part of the SW saga, but rather a homage to it, neither do I take it as being a believable entry.
A lot of The tone of TFA is well done, and very much Star Wars, unlike the films of the prequel trilogy. A lot of the dialog makes sense, and the acting is pretty good. But it’s all used to recreate facsimile experiences and imagery from the original trilogy. It’s playing pretend.
The Nazi imagery scenes in TFA were beneath anything Star Wars, and the film jumped the shark at that point. Also, Hans supposed death was silly in so many ways: On a bridge over a chasm, mimicking the Luke and Vader scene at Cloud City in ESB… father facing his son, who is literally a Vader wannabe… the beam of light on them, which fades as the son makes his attack…
Also, TFA is flagrantly nerdy (the light saber hilt, the Vader wannabe, the contrived Han death - which Harrison always wanted, the mega weapon plot device, and more), while the original SW saga is not.
Overall, I found TFA to be a decent watch, but it also hurt me a bit to watch, because it used the classic characters, their actors, and did so much right - but in the end it doesn’t have the sincerity or integrity of the original trilogy, and is clearly a homage to the original Star Wars saga, and not a part of it.
Have you seen the early TFA storyboards in the ‘art of’ book which show an intro shot that was going to mimic the famous star destroyer shot from ANH?
Right or wrong, I think that a sequel made 30 years later by a director (ad team) who were a teenagers or younger when the OT came out, was inevitably going to be an homage to some degree.
Despite that, I found your post very interesting, because you’ve given a valid reason for why the retreading of old ground didn’t work you. Even though it didn’t bother me, I absolutely can see your point and understand why as a result you might not choose to consider it canon. Something about the points you’ve raised (or the way you’ve raised them) rings truer to me than ‘it’s a rip off, waaaaaahhhh’.
The basis for all the trouble of TFA is that Han and Leia were bad parents… and somehow that one thing resulted in a reset of everything to Episode IV’s state, so that all the same motions could be gone through again - yet the main characters in TFA don’t notice that they’re just doing all the same things all over again.
I didn’t take ‘bad parenting’ from the film, but the fact that history is repeating itself… surely that’s an intentional message. History repeats itself in reality too. I think “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it” is a pretty cool theme for a sequel trilogy.
Also. before watching TFA, I started to watch Episode 2 of the prequel trilogy, thinking I would enjoy it while passing some time. I ended up shutting it off because it was just crap. I hadn’t seen any of it in years, and before putting it on, I thought it couldn’t be as bad as my memory was suggesting to me. Man, my memory knew what it was talking about. For the short time I watched it, Episode 2 was abysmal, like a half-assed clumsy children’s cartoon, made by people who didn’t know that making something nonsensical and flamboyant doesn’t amount to quality children’s programming.
I’ve only seen AOTC once, in the cinema when it first came out, but I’m glad to learn that my memory also knows what it’s talking about 😃
Another thought: what happened to the CGI Tarkin rumours? Do we know if that’s happening?
I’ve seen three Star Wars films without Williams. Two with no crawl.
Which ones? I’m not really familiar with anything outside of the main saga.
“A long time ago, in a galaxy, far, far away” should be required for every Star Wars film, however.
Agree!
