by "dsigned001 - O.R.C. hunter" (dsigned001)
Published 12/27/2017 at 21:11
by "dsigned001 - O.R.C. hunter" (dsigned001)
Published 12/27/2017 at 21:11
No Tags
STARS: 2
Definitely in the “it was good” camp, but not without its flaws.
Spoiler the first:
Ben Swolo. So the really funny part of this to me is that Kylo Ren reminds me of my brother, both in that my brother is kind of awkward and lanky and also that he is a sometimes whiny manchild.
So I found the shirtless scene kind of funny because of all the things that Kylo’s character is, serious is not something I have been able to attribute to him. He’s a super irresponsible child who doesn’t seem to have any kind of emotional grasp of the weight of his actions. And actually, he’s kind of what Anakin Skywalker from the prequels should have been.
Spoiler the second:
Fuck JJ Abrams. Ok, this one needs some explanation. JJ has this nasty fetish for putting little “question boxes” into his stuff that he has no intention of ever explaining because apparently when he was a kid he decided that not knowing was better than whatever the explanation you could come up with was. The problem is that when you’re making stuff that other people are going to have to explain, and you’re just making shit up, the resulting explanations to bail you out tend to suck. See: smoke monster. This, IMHO is why TLJ basically explains none of the lingering questions we had in TFA: JJ never got there because he doesn’t give a fuck, and so Rian had basically nothing to work with.
I’m in the camp that thinks Snoke’s backstory needs some elucidation in a way that the emperor and Vader never did. The Emperor had a clear backstory: he’s the Emperor. We don’t need to have any more than that because we don’t know any more about anyone else. But in the new movies, we know where basically everyone else is from, and Snoke basically has just appeared out of nowhere. Which makes very little sense in the context of the victory of the rebellion. Why wouldn’t he have taken over the Empire while it was getting its ass kicked? Also, the Empire was a “humans only” outfit, and the emperor fit into this narrative pretty easily. Snoke is not human, and thus his leadership of the “humans only” club would seem to demand an explanation.
Spoiler the third:
Luke wants to end the Jedi. This doesn’t get explained in a satisfactory way, as far as I can tell. Luke’s lost his pupils and is bitter and rationalizing ending the Jedi. But we don’t really get a decent explanation of this rationale: Rey, who knows nothing of the Jedi or the force, refutes his Jedi = failure bit without even the tiniest bit of thought. Surely there’s something more compelling than that?
All in all, it’s not terrible and if you pick over most of the movies with anything finer than a fro pick you’re going to find a lot of stuff you’d rather not think about.
"415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°)" (415s30)
12/27/2017 at 21:46, STARS: 0
There were some good bits but overall I am not pleased
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"average user" (avgusr)
12/27/2017 at 21:54, STARS: 1
Luke wants to end the Jedi because he doubted his own abilities of creating the newest generation of Jedi followers. His doubt and fear led him to try to kill Ben, which ended up becoming a kind of self fulfilling prophecy (Ben turned to the dark side completely due to Luke’s attempt to kill him). Today burned it all down to beaically tell Luke to buck up and be him instead of trying to be the perfect Jedi.
I agree the Snoke thing need some backstory. Where did he come from? With Palpatine and Anakin dead who brought up the Sith? Was snoke a disciple of the Sith? How did he turn Ben? Did they meet?
"Arch Duke Maxyenko, Shit Talk Extraordinaire" (arch-duke-maxyenko)
12/27/2017 at 21:54, STARS: 4
Snoke was actually a tribute to Hue Hefner.
"dsigned001 - O.R.C. hunter" (dsigned001)
12/27/2017 at 21:54, STARS: 1
I was a teenage Star Wars fan when the prequels came out, so maybe I have a low bar for “good”, but I liked it better than TFA, and a lot of the issues with TLJ I feel are really problems with TFA writing checks that were going to be impossible to cash.
"415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°)" (415s30)
12/27/2017 at 22:16, STARS: 0
I don’t even want to talk about the prequels. They should have left it all alone.
"SVTyler" (svtyler)
12/27/2017 at 22:22, STARS: 2
He’s a super irresponsible child who doesn’t seem to have any kind of emotional grasp of the weight of his actions. And actually, he’s kind of what Anakin Skywalker from the prequels should have been.
Nail on the head and that’s why I really like the concept of Kylo Ren, making him flawed adds dimension to the character and makes him more interesting than if he were just Darth Vader 2.0, which is what I think a lot of people wanted. If he comes off as a whiny, emotional, immature manchild it’s
because
he’s a whiny, emotional, immature manchild, not because he’s a poorly-written character.
I’m in the camp that thinks Snoke’s backstory needs some elucidation in a way that the emperor and Vader never did
This is the thing that’s most bothered me about the new trilogy, there’s this First Order that’s super-powerful and super-evil, led by a super-powerful and super-evil Supreme Leader, and they both just kind of
appeared
with no real explanation. I get that the movies are all like three hours long but there’s gotta be some places you can trim the fat to fit in a few minutes of exposition beyond “here’s the bad guy”.
Luke wants to end the Jedi. This doesn’t get explained in a satisfactory way, as far as I can tell.
I thought the movie did a decent job explaining it, Luke is demoralized and haunted by his failures as the leader of the Jedi Order, first in making the decision to kill Kylo, then the subsequent destruction of the temple and the capture/murder of other trainees. As a result, he is for all intents and purposes the last Jedi, with no trainees and no facilities and no credibility considering he’s responsible for all three of those things. He knows that since he wants no part of the Order that essentially condemns it to nonexistence since no one else can take up the mantle, and also explains why he’s hesitant to train Rey because he doesn’t feel he has the ability to train another extremely raw, extremely powerful trainee.
I actually really liked what they did with Luke for the same reason I like Kylo Ren, the whole ‘last shining hope that leaps in to save the day in the darkest hour’ trope that’s common in fantasy and sci-fi films is so overdone that it’s nice to find a more flawed, realistic depiction of a hero that doesn’t conform to the stereotype. Granted, a lot of people think this is character assassination of Luke based on his character in the original trilogy, but overall I liked the direction they went with Luke.
"HammerheadFistpunch" (hammerheadfistpunch)
12/27/2017 at 22:22, STARS: 2
That explains the robes and syphilis
"Chuckles" (chucklesw37)
12/27/2017 at 22:24, STARS: 1
I thought it was a great movie and very visually stunning. I understand that it’s divisive, but I loved it as a whole. The revelation that Rey’s parents were nobody was the best possible outcome IMO. Not to say that it was perfect, but no Star Wars movie is perfect.
"Mr. Ontop, No Strokes, No Smokes...Goes Fast." (twostrokesmoke)
12/27/2017 at 22:40, STARS: 0
I’m surprised that they didn’t have a scene in it where Chewy was piloting the Falcon through the plot holes.
"jimz" (jimz)
12/27/2017 at 23:02, STARS: 1
I’m in the camp that thinks Snoke’s backstory needs some elucidation in a way that the emperor and Vader never did.
no. backstories/origin stories suck. honestly, what happened at the end of Return of the Jedi left a power vacuum in the Empire and it doesn’t need much storytelling to explain how someone could have stepped into that void.
"His Stigness" (HisStigness)
12/28/2017 at 17:04, STARS: 0
Wow, I thought I was reading something I wrote. Abrams totally fucked this whole trilogy with his stupid little “mysteries.” I think every problem with VIII can be placed on Abram’s shoulders. There is nothing wrong with Rey being a “nobody,” or Snoke being a random evil dude, but when you purposely make a bigger deal than there is, there’s a problem.
And I know Johnson is having to cover for Abrams, but saying we didn’t know anything about the Emperor so therefore no Snoke background is fine, is bullshit. First off we have the Abrams in the last one, and he also gave him a name. And he came out of nowhere. The Emperor was the emperor of an Empire which had been around for a long time as far as we knew, so of course we weren’t itching to know who he was, it didn’t matter.
I liked the movie for the most part, but now I really hate VII.