Agree 100%. Rey's refusal to let the old die was especially frustrating considering she had *already* turned Ren down in The Force Awakens. Why hit the same plot beat again in the next film? It's an anti-character arc.
Furthermore, at what point does someone realistically refuse an offer to not only rule the galaxy, but to improve it? Luke had the exact same offer from Darth Vadar, and could have done the exact same, tearing down the pre-existing boundaries and setting up a balanced government. But no in both cases because "Hurr Durr, I am a good guy, as such I am immune to both power lust and logic".
I honestly thought that was what they were going to do. :\ p.s. love your channel. saw your dog build tier vid and had a question. Where is our canine support builds vid? ;D
He offered her teaching her about the force. He didnt have anything to tempt here in TLJ, either. The whole plot around her trusting her abuser and kidnaper didnt make a lot of sense.
But Disney has been pushing this lie about letting go of the past since the deep sized the EU. Yet they still turn around and ape off the old at EVERY turn. So yeah they’re full of shit.
StrippedBlackTie Disney has an infinite amount of resources. They don't deserve any breaks or "oh they didn't have a chance to stop it". No there is no excuse. They could have easily said no to the script. Mark Hamill HATED the script day one, and would be enough for me to delay the movie and start over for one. For two they should have had a plan for these films before they even made 7. Rian admitted Disney didn't have a structure and just let JJ and then Rian do whatever they wanted with ZERO oversight. They don't deserve sympathy for purposely not giving a fuck about their brand. Maybe LucasFilm is the one to blame and Disney thought they could handle themselves like with Marvel. But at the end in my eyes whoever is running the show has done a REALLY shitty job with this trilogy so far. I know so many kids who couldn't care less about star wars anymore. It's sad.
TrueUnderDawgGaming ye that line also struck me; its not like the movie gave a real reason for the dark side re-emerging (besides appearantly the universal balance between good and evil ?)
I really wanted to hear that they explained it somehow as that the Rebellion became Anarchistic and basically destroyed everything. Leaving a massive power vacum and massive economic decline that when the New Order popped up and said it was basically the same as the Empire but less murdery then people basically flocked in droves to it while what's left of the rebellion was seen as a terrorist group. The 0.5 Prequel that came out not to long ago perfectly set it all up so that murderous groups of rebels would kill indiscriminately and would just purge Empire allied towns. Hell, it would of been amazing to see Luke knowing that the Dark Side and Light Side are impossible to destroy having it blow up in his face when he tries to teach a new generation of both light and dark side users who could use their inner control to become Grey like in the old republic books.
6 лет назад+25
Joey Enochs what you just described here has a name… P L O T H O L E.
"What's to blame for the resurgence of evil?" (the rise of the First Order).... The corporate decision to just to remake a new empire and rebellion so they could sell Storm Troopers, Tie Fighters, and X Wings in a millennial era reboot. And make them into toys and theme park rides. The existence of The First Order and an under dog rebellion makes ZERO SENSE after the original Trilogy.
Rob Weissman and to add, at least TFA has a time gap excuse. TLJ deliberately SHAT on TFA’s progress! No way should the First Order be on inevitability of controlling the whole galaxy MOMENTS after TFA.
I knew something was wrong the moment Mark Hamill said in an interview Rian was taking Luke in a direction he didn’t agree with, but he tried his best to work with that vision. That right there told me things were going to be bad, but I had no idea until I saw it.
@@Nomadistar His opinion is only as valid as yours or mine. He played a character that he didn't create or write lines for, I honestly couldn't care less what Mark thinks of Luke Skywalker.
@@BabysitterSky Creating the character and writing lines for them has no bearing on how that character is portrayed. Take Heath Ledgers Joker for example. Definitely didn't write the character. Definitely portrayed it with his own character. If you want to completely reboot the series and have a different Skywalker, then great, portray them different, but if it's the same series, with the same actor, you should have consistent characters
Ewan no, but them reaffirming every old motif by falling back on them because they were to afraid to make a movie that was actually different. They just made one that yells, "look how different I am.", while shamelessly being the exact same thing. And if there is development to be had and it is just in then next movie then it is stretching the story so thin that we have an unsatisfactory conclusion to a movie for the sake of the franchise.
And the fans are just gonna hate it even more. The reason that The Last Jedi was hate so much by the audience is not because of some poorly excuse philosophical ideology but rather that it already diverse too much from what they expect. Sure mot people complained about the repetitiveness of Episode 7 but the true is the majority of us can not handle sudden change. From what I can piece together from director interviews, if Disney let Rian Johnson has free reign I think he gonna stick with his vision which no doubts gonna make SW fans hate him even more!
I'm so pissed off by The Last Jedi that I've spent more time watching youtube reviews about it than the duration of the movie itself (very good reviews by the way. Thank you guys for bringing justice so cleverly)
Agreed. After that abortion of a movie I had to give myself that same catharsis. I assume you've found MauLer's review, as well as his exhaustive 4.5h analysis. In case you hadn't run across it, I also found the take down from misanthropony amusing.
@@nickreeve7052 If have the patience to watch a 4.5 hour nitpick session by an english pedant, you are probably the biggest fan of the last jedi but don't want to admit it, you are so desperate to find reasons to hate the film you have to spend hours watching videos of other people desperate to explain why they hate it that result in exhausting marathons of bullshit.
Jarvid Videodram or maybe he wants to hear other people's opinions about why they thought the last Jedi sucked? So he's not allowed to listen to other people's opinions to better formulate guys own? If he loved the last Jedi he wouldn't have watched all those videos to try and convince himself to hate it. Why would anyone do that? He's watching analysis videos for a movie he didn't like so he could understand why he didn't like it
The Last Jedi's problem isn't that it's 'too ballsy'. The film had no balls at all. Leia dies? Nope, saved at the last minute. Finn dies? Nope, saved at the last minute. Rey has an interesting back story that sheds light on her character? Nope. Rey turns to the dark side? Nope, she's perfect. Finn and Rose's mission has important consequences? Nope, it has no impact on the story at all. Poe learns to be a leader? Nope, he's stripped of his position, talked down to and left with nothing to do. Akbar dies heroically and meaningfully? Nope, dies off-screen. Mentioned once in passing. Snoke established as a menacing character? Nope, killed almost immediately. Kylo Ren made redeemable? Nope, turns out he's determined to be as evil as possible without real reason. DJ's views on neutrality explored? Nope, turns out capitalism is just evil. Luke placed in danger? Nope, it was all an illusion. Luke dies meaningfully? Nope, Luke fades away without cause or reason. The story progresses to the next stage of their journey? Nope, at the end of TLJ the heroes are in the same position as they were at the start of the film - on the run from the First Order, except a few extras died in between. Ultimately, The Last Jedi is about nothing, goes nowhere and contributes nothing to the series. As a film it is a storytelling disaster - literally just two and a half hours of stuff happening.
So what you're saying is Disney spending a crap ton of money to take its most venerable franchise and make a host of changes that were sure to be polarizing to its core fanbase...was the safe thing to do?
@ Orion Slaver...Wrong about 1 thing..Kylo is responding to his peers because they fail him..His Master "Uncle" , Luke tried to kill him in his sleep without telling him anything...Snoke shocked the crap out of him for nothing...(he just killed his dad for him) So he wants to kill them for that reason..About Leia, Kylo holds back from shooting...About Luke, lol yea pretty much...Rey spends almost the whole movie swinging a lightsaber at rocks on an Australian Island...Finn and Rose ppl unimportant, get more shine than Luke..or Leia..
Rian Johnson "Let thr past die, kill it if you have to" Disneys first trailer for Episode 9 "hey, remember all these old star wars movies that got you to love star wars?! Well, it's now the entire first half of our trailer!"
@@wm2429 like thats totally not the hack director putting his subvert trope hat on and speaking thru a character thats an expy of the previous bad guy from the more coherent trilogy. Sure, it aint probably aint a moral, because the movie has no balls to follow it through anyways.
CavalierHorseman91 I don’t get how Kylo wanting to burn everything down is a trope subversion. Isn’t that what Anakin wanted to do in the prequels? And nobody calls it a trope subversion in that trilogy
@@wm2429 Thats because everybody already knows going in that Anakin was going to yeet on the Jedi order anyways in the Prequels, like the Originals already told us he will? Bear in mind that Anakin burns down only the Jedi, he joined the Sith afterwards. Kylo said fuck everything, Jedi AND Sith. That you can call a subversion since his motivations are completely fresh in the SW universe, where the status quo is Jedi vs Sith, no third way. Here we had a chance for something really memorable, who knows what fresh stories could have opened up if Rey took Kylos hand? Buuut no, Rian J had to take off his subvert hat and have Rey deny being something interesting a second time.
Had Rey actually taken Kylo's hand and then we cut to credits, I think this mess of an interesting but flawed movie would actually have some REAL hype built up for Ep9. But no, gotta get to salt hoth.
This movie attemps to do what Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords did. And at first I thought it was great because of that. But the game did it so much better, even as incomplete as it was on release. I wish the movie stuck to its guns in the third act, because then I wouldn't have slowly come to realise just how disappointing TLJ really is.
except he's not Revan. Revan was made a good guy and decided that the armies he lead were evil and it was up to him to let them die. The republic didn't change, nothing that Revan likely rebelled against was dealt with and it was still the same. Kylo though realized the flaws in both sides.
Except Lightside was the canon ending. Which is stupid because the Dark Side was not only more interesting. But would have fit later developments more.
I've said it elsewhere and I'll say it again, a character like Kreia, and your interactions with her, from KotOR II is how you do a proper subversion of the light/dark philosophy in Star Wars.
So TLJ could have been an absolute genius movie. Too bad it was filled with so much goofy, boring and cheesy shit. What if Ryan Johnson wanted to create a very dark, subversive movie that gave birth to the Gray Jedi Order, completely eliminating the "good guy / bad guy" concept, but Disney didn't let him, and we are stuck blaming the wrong guy for the shit show that was ultimately given to us? 😱
I don't think the fanbase was ready for it. I absolutely think that was his goal though. And honestly his points about the Jedi and the nature of the force, it not being a superpower, and the flaws of the Jedi are all valid. I think the reason the fanbase reacted the way it did is simply because of the specific way that Luke got to the conclusions. There is a camp of fans that can see Luke being tempted to briefly kill Ben, and then there is one that simply cannot. Both sides have their arguments, but ultimately that one scene takes away the rest of the movie for the camp that can't see him doing it. Even if he redeems himself in the end and is more woke about the Jedi than any Jedi ever has been. Nothing else matters, because to them, their hero has been assassinated. Which is a shame, because humans are so much more nuanced than that. And the direction Rian wanted to take the force/Jedi is desperately needed. Star Wars can't continue relying on nostalgia and fan-service if it is going to stay relevant. Rian recognized that, but unfortunately you cannot work for a large corporation and take risks lol. It's honestly amazing that TLJ even got made given all the risks it took. I think if Rian had written 9 and taken his ideas to conclusion, we'd look at TLJ as the masterpiece of this trilogy.
@@gatorarman12 nah, even on its own it’s dumb. I agree that you can’t keep remaking the old ones. But the premise of the film remains bad and illogical, the plot goes nowhere, the characters are badly writen and the list goes on
What a sad game, so many awesome things about it but it was released to damn broken it got forgotten till people fixed it...loved turning everyone to the dark side especially the handmaiden lol.
Very true. It is entirely possible to make completely new takes on the old story. This movie simply wanted to subverse our vision of the old trilogy... and nothing else. That was my main issue watching the movie. It looks good, even if it doesn't flow well, but ultimately goes nowhere with itself. KOTOR II not only took an entirely new look on the universe (people can live without the Force, Force monsters exist, good and evil aren't as simple as one might think) but expanded the lore in a good way. This movie is a renegade, simply casting off the past away and doing nothing but that.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (I and II) - is a WRPG made by (I) Bioware and (II) by Obsidian ent. Don't confuse with SW: The Old Republic which is a MMORPG by Bioware.
I wasn't able to finish the film. Also, Rose Tico's decision to block Finn's Heroic Sacrifice at the COST OF EVERYONE ELSE'S LIVES was one of the dumbest things I'd ever seen, especially when it's treated like a victory, and Rose's sister, Paige, who sacrificed herself to take out the Star Destroyer in the beginning, would likely have been insulted by the whole thing.
Interesting, but if anyone should have got a dressing down for doing something stupid that cost lives, that character should have. Poe sacrificed many lives for a Pyrrhic victory against the Order. He was immediately chastised and demoted for it. Rose sacrificed hundreds lives to save ONE. What punishment did she face?
I don't think anybody died when the door was blown open, so technically she didn't sacrifice anyone. The Resistance died on the transports that were blown up.
It's makes even less sense when you think about her character. Her sister sacrificed her life for the rebellion and she tazed Finn for wussing out. But then she stops him from saving lives because she fell in love with him after 2 seconds... please...
Though I have my criticisms, I must congratulate you and the Wisecrack team for making the writing seem more intelligent and inspired than it was probably originally intended.
This review - while clearly well presented, well thought our and very clever, manages a positive spin through Jungian thought and deep reading background. All in all a very considered and intelligent review. Sadly, I believe the review to be wasted because all evidence suggests that the film being reviewed (Last Jedi) id not within sight of the intelligence level of this review, not within sight of the quality, the thought, the study, the background, even the writing of this review. I doubt that the makers of Last Jedi, writers, producers, production company (read Johnson, Kennedy Disney) could understand this 401 level review of a less than 101 level production. Sad really - the money spent to make the effects look good was well spent...the production in writing, story development, characterization and surprise subversion was completely over ruled by political correctness, social justice warrior, hyper feminism (a trend in Hollywood recently with the feminization of many great movies from the past - unsurprisingly not as successful as the makers would hope), and 'progressive' leftist social, political, and oppressive agenda which takes away the enjoyment levels of the fans of the original trilogy...
Frank Kopke - I am not so sure - the movie does throw in some dubious tones you're not expecting in a SW movie, like this review points out. It hints at a lot of grey in what used to be simple black and white. And this is good (it's a theme that has been present in popular culture for many years, and SW had been immune to it).
The film actually does try to do what this review suggests IMO. I get the feeling though that where Rian Johnson wanted it to go was at odds with Disney marketers who really want the bad guys to shout and the good guys to hug and that is all. everything about Daisy Ridleys performance suggests she is turning towards the dark side and everything about Adam Drivers suggests he is coming towards the light. the baffling thing about this movie is how it is all walked back at the conclusion leaving us with an unconvincing good guy and an unconvincing bad guy. I would suggest that this is Disney messing around with the artistic visions of many writers on the new films who really see that this is the only way forward for the franchise given the story it has told thus far. The Heros Journey is a little too complex for the mouse. the mouse makes its money pouring schmaltz over the surprisingly complex psycho-mythological narratives of fairy tales after all.
the problem when you try to "subvert expectations" is you end up writing to SPITE the story instead of writing to TELL the story. This is literally the first lesson in writing and its disappointing that highly paid professionals cannot grasp this concept
Well said. RJ did not "progress" the story, or take it in "unexpected" directions...he cut off all the interesting mysteries and story lines JJ set up with TFA. That is just lazy writing. RJ obviously could not come up with anything creative and had little knowledge of SW mythos so he just negated all the questions. I've read fan fiction better than TLJ (and TFA).
This is why Rey's parents being junkies who sold her for drinking money failed because rather than use it to tell a new story they did it just to surprise us and as soon as the scene ended Rey went back to what she was before making the whole thing pointless in the end.
rhizomeman but how did he cut off the things done in TFA. TLJ actually ended up carrying over a lot of elements from the previous films but people like to imagine he subverted for the sake of subverting
@@DerpaTure9503 Kylo lacks a menacing aura that a main villain like Snoke, Vader and Palpatine has, I wouldn't mind Luke having flaws if they made sense and didn't contradict his character from the original trilogy and the thing with Rey that anyone can be great is that it was already established with many Jedi's and Sith's that the force chooses people randomly and bloodlines didn't mean anything all this time so the excuse for Rey falls flat on it's face.
That's pretty much how I saw it. His goal was to use SW as a platform to tell us white--basement-dwelling--sexist--incel fanboys how much he doesn't like us.
@@Jabulaya ray was the only strong female not completely wasted in the films. Phasma played by a terrific actress had less then 4 minutes between both films. roses only impactful part of the last Jedi was keeping Finn from sacrificing himself everything else could be removed. leia had one moment then was out cold. Holdo wasted so much time and energy with the secret plan stuff. its not female characters we hate its wasted characters that we hate. was their a reason they had to destroy Luke's character to have strong females?
And there in lies the reason people are angry. Not that they can't accept a new understanding of the force or we only ever want Skywalkers in our movies. We wanted a gradual moving on from the original trilogy. If Kylo is a representation of the audience and our "worship" of the old trilogy, then the smart and respectful way to handle things, would be for Kylo's whole entire arc throughout the trilogy to be a gradual stepping away from the Vader worship. Thus, we would slowly move on from the OT. Instead we get Kylo worshiping Vader one moment and 5 hours later be like, Vader, Vader who? Essentially telling the audience to get over it. And because the message of Kill the past, is the one given the most emphasis. We the audience are left insulted.
If The Last Jedi ends with Rey joining Kylo Ren, then there would still be some interest in Episode 9. Once Rey rejected Kylo's offer to join him, everything went back to square one, minus all the interesting elements. Why do we care about Star Wars anymore?
Up until she rejected his offer, I was actually thinking Rey would end up as the bad guy and Kylo would've have been the good guy. They could have done some interesting things with both characters that would have justified all of the weird/inconsistent choices in the writting. Too bad. I always liked Kylo even when others were hating on him. I actually think there is potential in Rey too, if they would just do something with her character arc (she is literally the same character at the end of TLJ as she was in the beginning of TFA)
I also thought about the idea of Rey ending up as the evil one. But honestly at that point in TLJ, when she declined... the film had already destroyed so much, (for me) her response didn't even matter. For something totally unrelated: the comments above me have been written 1 hour ago 1 day ago 1 week ago, and 1 month ago. What are the chances of that happening?
*The dark side in the OT:* The quick and easy way to power. *The light side in the OT:* The long, arduous journey, where one must shed their ties to loved ones, and everything else. *Kylo Ren (current dark side):* Trains for decades under two of the most potent teachers in the galaxy, gives up his bonds with his parents in order to become what he perceives to be the strongest version of himself. *Rey (Current light side):* Can do everything she tries better than who we’ve been told are “the most skilled at this thing in the galaxy” on her first try, every time, and literally never trained in any of it.* Why the f*ck do you think Kylo Ren is so many people’s favorite character now? Because we certainly can’t relate to Rey, Rian. We’re not supposed to root against the main god damn character, you and your subversions created the single thing you’re fundamentally not supposed to allow to happen between audiences and a film, to be the only thing that *could* happen between audiences and your film.
Spencer Whiteway Sure that's what they said in the OT, but let's be honest Luke learned about the force for 5 minutes then used it to blow up the death star by hitting and exhaust port that was less than 2 meters wide
I'm really goddamn tired of people blaming TFA's fuck-ups on Rian Johnson. Literally anything to do with Rey's character being OP and unrelatable, or Luke Skywalker being out of character from his past heroic self, or the Resistance being boring or the First Order being a rehash or Phasma being disposable... all of that is a consequence of Abrams' nostalgia-fest of a setup. Johnson had no choice but to stick with that setup in order to make this film.
michael coyle *with Obi-Wan's obvious crucial assist. And Han and Chewie's. And Luke _looks_ very lucky and more like a conduit for the divine will of the Force.
Michael, That's misleading. Even though the force was with Luke he didn't use it, the force itself step up to help. Obroa, even though I agree that the sequel had bad luggage from TFA I don't think Rian had no choice (maybe Disney didn't give him the choice but that is different) Luke could be an hermit without being out of character, Phasma could have had better spotlight, and the resistence didn't need to be trash. The first order is still undoubtedly a rehash though.
654pedro123 The Resistance could have focused on its connection to the New Republic rather than downplaying that in favor of depicting it outright as the reborn Rebel Alliance; but again, that's a legacy of TFA. It and Phasma weren't going to be redeemed unless Johnson actively took the time to improve them, time he chose instead to use on Luke. *Luke* absolutely had no way forward except to be different; as a hermit in the middle of the First Order's ascension, a position he was in *purely* because JJ wanted Old Ben 2.0, Luke had to either be the same exact hero who inexplicably ran out on his friends because plot, or he needed a reason. Johnson gave him a damn good reason.
Well to be perfectly honest, in my humble opinion, of course without offending anyone who thinks differently from my point of view, but also by looking into this matter in a different perspective and without being condemning of one's view's and by trying to make it objectified, and by considering each and every one's valid opinion, I honestly believe that I completely forgot what I was going to say.
Is no one gonna mention Disney execs saying no Rian you can’t have the good guy join the bad guy, that’s too complicated. At least we got knives out, the real Rian Johnson subversion movie
@@mikekasabion well, he couldn't write whatever he wanted. The movie should have standards. Standards dictated by Disney/executives. "You have creativity to write, but must follow our concepts".
@@traskulgo True. But firstly: After the movie came out, Rian still praised it and attacked fans. He didn't seem like someone upset he couldn't write what he wanted too. He also apparently signed on to a trilogy that we'll probably never see. Point is, he seemed happy with the final product. Secondly: The movie still suffered DRASTICALLY at a fundamental level. Just focusing on the subversion and change in the series direction is fine? But you can't ignore the poor comedy, awful scenes, iffy dialogue, messy characters, etc. Sure, the weird flip flop in direction is...weird. But I never really saw Starwars as anything that deep or intelligent in the first place. I had more of an issue with characters such as Rose's, "love/hate" scene, the Holdo maneuver and her excellent leadership skills, etc.
@@traskulgo From what I understand he was given complete creative freedom. We already know they had pretty much no plan when they started this trilogy.
The idea that the light and dark exist in everyone was already at the heart of the OT. The Empire Strikes Back: Luke: "What's in there?" Yoda: "Only what you take with you." It's in there. It's subtle, but it's there. Vader still has light in him and can be turned because no one is pure good or pure evil. The problem is that Rian Johnson doesn't seem to understand anything that isn't explicitly spelled out in dialogue. We win by saving what we love? That was the core of Luke's character in the OT. But thanks for hitting us over the head with it, Rose. Great force users can come from nothing? That was Anakin, the son of a slave. Don't preach at me, tell me a good story with the proper elements and character growth, and I will get the message.
1. In the OT, The Dark Side is always bad. If you have the darkness in you, you have to suppress it. TLJ's theme that you need to learn to live in balance with it. 2. Anakin wasn't a nobody. WTF. He was the Chosen One. He was literally a virgin birth from the Force. He's Space Jesus. 3. You really shouldn't be saying other people don't understand things that are explictily spelled out in dialogue when you yourself seem to think that Anakin was a nobody when the reason they let him become a Jedi in the first place was because he's the chosen one of prophecy trope personified. This seems to be one of the reasons people Dislike TLJ. Not because they didn't understand TLJ. But because they didn't really understand the previous Star Wars movies and therefore don't understand what themes are being subverted.
Skyrim Guard - and who did the force choose to have this chosen one? A nobody! Greatness was born to a slave. Not some powerful force user. And who were the parents of all the other Jedi? Since Jedi are supposed to be celibate, we can assume most of them were also born to non-force using parents. Only Luke and Leia have a force using bloodline. So a powerful force user being born to nobodies is 100% already a thing in Star Wars.
The fact that Jedi do have to continually resist temptations to the dark side proves that both light and dark coexist in everyone. Light and dark are not external things, they are internal. Yoda told Luke that once someone goes down the path to the dark side they cannot be redeemed. Luke proved him wrong - that was the whole point of RotJ, that even in the second most evil person in the galaxy, some light, some love and compassion, still existed.
+TheX2k It was. People said Star Wars was dead with each of the prequels, and with the CG Clone Wars movie. But billion dollar franchises don't die. Even if some iteration sucks balls like Joel Schumacher Batman, it will be rebooted again in a decade or so. People say that an entire franchise is "dead" to make their own anger and sadness feel important. It's not enough that they didn't like a movie. Whatever they feel has to be what the other hundred million people that saw it feel. People have to project themselves onto the rest of the world to justify how they feel.
The last half hour of the movie just shows how hypocritical, pointless and without vision the movie truly is. If the filmmakers actually had the balls to tell a controversial, but meaningful story that could stand on its own, I wouldn't be nearly as disappointed. Last year brought us 2 great examples of that, with Logan and Twin Peaks: The Return. But The Last Jedi backpedals on all its supposed themes to the point where they become meaningless and contradictory. It says "let the past die", yet rips off structure and entire scenes from the OT. It promotes heroic sacrifices, only to reject them in the very next scene. It wants to be profound, but is filled with misplaced immature jokes. It plays with lethality of the situations so much that death loses consequence. It teases morally grey character development, until it resets the conflict back into a clear good vs bad division. It tries to seem bold and experimental, but at the end we're back where we started, only with fewer story options for the future and blander characters. The Last Jedi is the definition of insecure edginess. It wants so bad to prove its maturity and artistic legitimacy by ridiculing and destroying the old school aspects of the franchise, but in the end it's just superficial shock value with nothing to say and no imagination of its own, conveniently returning to its predictable safe zone when out of ideas.
It's like the makers of this movie didn't realize that Rouge One was coming out so they thought to themselves: "Everybody complained that The Force Awakens was too much like A New Hope, so this time we will only copy certain sections of Empire and Jedi." But, Rouge One didn't go and straight up copied entire sections of the Original Trilogy (Ironically, since it takes place in the same era) so this whole movie just feels like the saga step backwards after it took a step forward.
if only Rey joined Kylo, it would be interesting plot for episode 9.. everything is crumbling, rebels left alone on crait, luke dies, Kylo Rey ruled, no one in the galaxy cares because 'don't join philosophy' from DJ, these are the points when the past died..
Everything he did would have been fine, if he didn't shit on every single question that the previous movie posed. Like what was the whole point of episode 7 then
What wasn't answered from The Force Awakens? I actually thought Force Awakens was fairly dull, but I don't think it exists solely to ask questions that get answered later.
I dont think it was.. I just pick one thing randomly. In TFA, we are supposed to believe that Luke has left a part of the map that will show is new location, in order to find him, bring him back into the battle. In TLJ, Luke says he came to that nowhere place to die... why leave a part of the map to be found then? I mean, it is inconsistent...
You seem to have completely missed the point of the OT. Luke already WAS the future, he already WAS the change the galaxy and the Jedi Order needed. He was only able to succeed were the old Jedi Order failed precisely because he was something new and different to what had come before. He was literally A NEW HOPE. Obi-Wan and Yodi spent the entire OT telling Luke that he couldn't save Vader and the only option was to kill him. Luke subverted and proved them wrong by doing the exact opposite. The PT only served to further show us how different Luke was to the old Jedi. That's part of the problem with TLJ and blind fanboy defenses of how "too ballsy" it was like this video. It completely disregards what happened in the OT and the PT or twists them to fit the story they want to tell.
No, wisecrack is right, but is not rian johnson problem but Disney and Abrhaman one by going with the "nazi in argentina" idea. By making things equal it undersell luke strugle and give to Rey, who them was supused to somehow make things better than luke by......dunno.
Yang the Magician I don't think Wisecrack was saying the movie failed because it was ballsy but rather because they didn't commit to it. They tried to revolutionize the franchise but at the end just gave up and didn't commit to anything. This combined with bad writing by Rian made the movie bad. The idea was good tho. If there was another writer working on the script TLJ could have been a lot better.
The Sequels be like: "Nah fuck that, Luke is a failure who got nothing done. Forget the Skywalkers and everything they went through to make things right, Rey is the new New Hope who's gonna _really_ bring balance to the Force."
Exactly. They are writing Rey as the change that Luke was supposed to be. They are rehashing the same story beats when what they could have done was continue with Luke as the main character and have him question the ways of the Jedi.
This is a really good analysis. Ever since I watched this horrorshow of a movie, all I could tell myself is "you know what? even with all the flaws, this movie could have been salvaged if at that critical moment, Rey joined Kylo". And now you helped me figure out why I felt this way! :) Incredibly accurate.
That would have been an interesting and non-idiotic subversion of expectations with all kinds of potential to make the rest of the trilogy more absorbing, so naturally there is no way Rian Johnson would have thought of it. Depicting a female character as immoral or imperfect would also not have flied with anyone in charge.
One thing that is overlooked is Snokes line: “Darkness Rises and Light to meet it...” Theres a huge issue with this line. The villain is extraordinarily self aware about his villainy and there is no great purpose or motivation provided for the first order or Snoke. Typically in good films, the villain usually doesnt consider themselves evil or villainous, but is instead truly convinced that theyre doing the right thing. In Rian Johnsons story, Snoke is evil for evils sake and nothing more and nothing deeper. This, in my opinion, is a misinterpretation of what the dark side really is. It’s members arent necessarily evil and only evil- theres real meaning behind it for each member, sith, etc. Once you take the humanity out of a villain and provide them no motivation, meaning, or depth: the audience is left with no theme to connect to. Vader worked because he was multi-faceted: father of the hero, torn between allegiances, former jedi, betrayed Jedi, disrespected by everyone around him (Mace Windu), death of his beloved wife and mother. This gave us something to care about. Most importantly his story was treated with patience and care, giving us even intimate details about who Vader was and why he felt so emotionally connected to the empire. If Ray is a Mary sue- Snoke is the exact inverse except with improbable incompetency and we're. This entire story was extraordinarily poorly planned out. It's a flat out mess.
Ian Hom Not that I disagree with your dislike for the movie, but... I mean, Vader and Palpatine talk about how powerful the dark side is, egg Luke on to give in to anger and hatred. I don’t think self-aware villains are new to the franchise.
As Chad said..... yeah, self aware villains are not new. Sidious knew EXACTLY how far off the deep end he was... and he took pride in that. The dark side has always been stated to be addictive in universe and Palpatine was as sadistic as they came, even if Vader fit the more complex motivations you speak of to the letter. By the same token, though, I direct you to another series that handled this seeming contradiction quite well - Fullmetal Alchemist and specifically Kimblee. The guy were VERY well aware that he was, by the definition of most, evil - a mass murderer and willing participant in state sponsored genocide. That said, he simply didn't think like that himself. His world view was one of cold logic - morality simply didn't exist from where he stood, but that didn't stop him from understanding other people and how they might perceive him. You are on point with it being a problem with the writing, however. The biggest flaw in all of this is we simply don't know anything about Snoke - we have no idea where he came from or what his personal ambitions were, and that's squarely on Disney. More specifically Rian Johnson as there supposedly WAS an intent to flesh Snoke out with time but Rian killed him off pure for shock value.
@@Gouka07 yes, but they have real motivation to join - be it death of a loved one, broken heart, betrayal, etc. 2 movies in and Snoke had no motivation. Ben Solo has no motivation. Maybe some villains are self aware - but what i'm saying is great villains have deep purpose to it than evil for evils sake. Vader was so perfect because we saw 3 prequel movies of his fall to the darkness, and the raw emotions and reasoning behind his decisions and pent up rage . That gave us something to relate to.
@@ianmichael3912 Agreed. They draw their powers from the Dark Side but they do for specific purposes: Palpatine wants to avenge the Sith against the Jedi, bring order to the Galaxy and peace (but on his terms). Darth Vader share his goals, with no family left to protect, supporting his master and keeping the galaxy free of Jedi and peaceful... by whatever means necessary. When he finds out he has a son, his objectives change: still drawn to the addiction of the Dark Side, he wants Luke to become his new partner (because of the Sith Rule) and overthrown the Emperor, shaping the galaxy to their own views, as father and son. But the conflict is there, the light, and its only perceived because of Luke. Maybe Palpatine could be redeemed, but I think he needed some equivalent necessity, like family or loved ones. Snoke exists only to destroy the New Republic, identifies himself as evil (Anakin tought the Jedi were evil as Sith) and his apprentice as well... it's just stupid.
My problem with The Last Jedi is that it goes out of it's way to subvert tropes solely for the sake of subverting them. Subverting a trope only works if the subversion is more entertaining or interesting than the trope it's subverting. To give an example: Imagine you're a kid in the month of December. The entire month your parents have been at you getting something really amazing for Christmas and you're really hyped for it. So the morning of Christmas you open your gifts and it's just socks and underwear. In this scenario, your expectations have definitely been subverted but you're still left with something more mundane and boring than what you originally expected. And that's the problem with this movie. Snoke being killed off with no backstory subverted my expectations but it's still boring and poor writing in my opinion. Rey's parents turning out to be a bunch of hicks who abandoned her is far less interesting than finding out she's related to a previously established Jedi (or any force user). Subverting an expectation with a more mundane answer typically only works when it's being played for laughs. If it's meant to be taken seriously then it just comes off as mundane.
"Rey's parents turning out to be a bunch of hicks who abandoned her is far less interesting than finding out she's related to a previously established Jedi" You'll find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.
That's the reason why I stated this as being "My problem" and not "Everyone's problem". That's one of the reasons I think the Last Jedi is a weak movie. If you think it was a brilliant decision that's your opinion but I think it was a stupid decision that spits in the face of the previous movie.
a ramirez lol Disney has almost nothing to do with Star Wars. And before you start spitting out what I have seen a thousand times before, no Kathleen Kennedy didn't ruin Star Wars and no Rian Johnson did not ruin Star Wars. Nobody said the prequels ruined Star Wars but they have 10x more agenda and are 10x more garbage than the sequels
I think they took the exact opposite lesson from the movie that they should have. The Last Jedi isn't about reconciling the good and the dark no matter how severe the dark is: Rey accepting Kylo's offer to "rule the galaxy" wouldn't have been a reconciliation the film found "good." Rather, ***the film is a rejection of nihilism in the face of complication*** : Del Toro's character is presented as a warning against exactly that course of action. I think it's totally wrong to use him as the spokesperson for the movie-the movie is condemning him! He's a critique of the Han Solo archetype: the nihilists don't have hearts of gold; they're just narcissists. Meanwhile, Luke's embrace of nihilism is clearly a product of his depression. He couldn't reconcile the weight of his failure and the corresponding responsibility, and so he ran off to an island and convinced himself that nothing matters. The Luke-Rey relationship is a mentor-mentee relationship flipped. It's not Leia that inspires Luke to reverse course-it's Rey: it's her passion that finally jolts him back to reality, and it's Yoda's subsequent discussion with him that gets him realigned: We don't have to be able to understand all the nuances-to read all the books-in order to try to do good. We will inevitably fall short of reaching true goodness, true justice, but the hope is that we lay the ground work for the next generation to get a little further towards that ideal. There is one character that consistently is a spokesperson for the movie's philosophy, and, of course, she's omitted from this entire video: It's Rose. Rose is the only character who the movie (1) portrays positively, and (2) doesn't significantly change over the movie. (Finn goes from fighting for Rey to fighting for a cause; Rey goes from needing parental figures to standing confidently on her own; Luke goes from dismissing outright the idea that a hero can save the day to, once again, being the hero that saves the day.) Rose says the line that the movie most clearly endorses: "We're going to win this war not by fighting what we hate, but saving what we love." There is a difference between fighting for your ideals and fighting to defeat your enemy. (If you're fighting for your ideals, you'll lose to your enemy before you lose your ideals; if you're fighting to defeat your enemy, you'll sacrifice your ideals in order to do so.) The Last Jedi argues that the world is complicated. That heroes are fallible. That good intentions can lead to bad outcomes. And that we should stick to our ideals and fight for them, anyway.
"The greatest teacher failure is" That's the message. Not killing the past. The film says to evolve our systems and ideologies, not to burn them down...
The idea is good, but badly executed. You can't introduce such a theme with a never failing Mary sue character. It's even more ridiculous in a meta sense, as nobody has learned anything as they still fight the never ending war and make the same mistakes as their predecessors. They fail, but never learn from it.
@@KomboAndy well because TROS never followed through on it. They have to keep fighting though, that's the idea. Throughout history, every successful revolution requires at least a second revolution in order to reach the goal of the original, due to the emergence of anti-revolutionaries and authoritarians highjacking the new world order that was originally fought for, essentially corrupting the system. Think of the second revolution as a sort of "cleaning up the scraps". Now, did TFA have to make it a 1-1 remake of the OT? No, and I wish JJ had at least a single creative bone in his body.
@@bradneece2409 Yeah, and I think there is a great opportunity in shifting the narrative. They could use it to actually show what it's like after a revolution. To show, how they try to establish order in the aftermath. How the First order is formed. A prequel before VII would put the film in a new context and would give the characters more time to establish and develop them. It would add something instead of repeating it. They could focus more on the characters or different elements then just the war part. They could borrow from the French revolution (like with the jacobines)
@@KomboAndy ikr, that would've been awesome, but it was kinda squandered. Oh well... At least we've got Taika Waititi on the next movie, so there's some hope lol
elcidS15 Well there were some people saying that this movie has better writing than KOTOR I & II. Don't worry I fell out of my chair laughing at the stupidity of that statement too.
The movie is bad because the entire plot revolves around a convoluted, improbable chase scenario. I don't understand why everyone focuses on various subversions of expectations, aborted plot threads etc. when the core of the movie is so idiotic and ill-fitting to the Star Wars universe. Two ships locked in a chase, keeping the very same distance for days? A sidestory which revolves around an improvised heist, relying on finding a single person a few star systems away, all WHILE THE CHASE IS GOING ON? A plot resolution which introduces a secret "twist" which is... hey, let's all use escape pods and hope the people chasing us all suddenly go blind? Since when is using escape pods "a strategy", and not, I dunno, a default procedure when somebody's shooting your ship to shit??
So small ships now have cloaking devices. Kinda goes against the whole SW universe. I haven't seen TLJ, but why not jump to hyperspace and get in front of them? Reading about this doesn't make any sense in the SW universe.
rizon72 Well of course they couldn't just hyperjump in front of them, or launch a few Tie Bombers and just bomb the crap out of them, because... umm.. the giant invisible Force bubble was stopping them!
"What went wrong?" *TLJ begins at the EXACT moment TFA ended* *first words of opening crawl* "The First Order Reigns" I knew from those first words of the opening crawl that something was wrong. Reigns?! How?! Sure, the First Order was a significant threat but they got pretty fucked up with Starkiller base being destroyed (which appeared to be their main headquarters)! How have the other systems not rallied against them by now.
Yeah, but here's the thing: if someone dropped a nuke on DC, would that make the US totally defenseless? Sure, it would put us in short term chaos, but we have 50 other states (DC isn't a state...unfortunately) full of people, plus national guards and military bases everywhere (worldwide) that could put up a hell of a fight. Basically, I feel like The First Order should have been on the ropes. Losing Starkiller base had to have hurt the First Order badly, but then in the next movie it's like they're not affected! EDIT: My other issue with the First Order "reigning" is that they are not a government of any sort. They're just this threat that came out of nowhere. Sure, they're "remnants" of the Empire but the Empire of the OT era had a whole government and bureaucracy (and TAXES) in place to fund themselves.
The Film Whisperer So you’re saying destroying an entire star system didn’t affect the Republic but destroying Starkiller Base destroyed the First Order?
@@andrewlikestrains4138 Of course both events were very significant. But in TLJ, we only see the destruction of the capital as affecting the Republic, but not the fact that The First Order lost what appeared to be their main base. I simply feel that the First Order should have been on the ropes at least. Not defeated, but at least on the ropes. What I'm just a little dumbfounded about is why haven't other planets rallied against the First Order. If someone nuked Washington D.C., putting aside the fact that it wouldn't necessarily destroy the U.S. totally, our allies would certainly rally to our help.
The Film Whisperer your example is better suited for the fact dc would be equivalent to star killer base. Lol the first order destroyed every senate planet... thatd be the equivalent of deleting every UN country and having none of the people left.
I remember seeing this for the first time, disaapointed with what I was watching. Then, the moment Kylo asks Rey to join him, I sat up. "This was where it was all building to!" I was so hyped! But no, she refuses, despite everything in the film saying so far that she should. Instead, the film ends on an overused, childish message of "believe in heroes, protect what you love". Thor Skywalker did a similar video to this, great work Wisecrack!
The main problem as far as I see it: Star Wars is a capital 'S' Saga. A tale of heroes. Other characters gain importance in the Saga by their proximity to the heroes central to it. The new philosophy enforced by the makers of TLJ, 'our conception of classical heroes must be subverted and overcome, for there are no real classical heroes', goes contra to the very fabric of the structure of the previous 7 films as well as rogue one and the various animated features. Thus it fails at being Star Wars. If I crave a steak, I do not care how masterful the pasta dish is supposed to be you are serving me instead. It isn't steak and your pasta is under-cooked.
There in lies the problem, doesn't it? If you argue like this, then you concede that people expecting Star Wars in their Star Wars will not receive what they want. They have to go and be thankful for the old stuff. You won't be selling them the new, and here we are now.
Those who fail to learn from the past are doom to repeat it. You want to destroy the past, yo ignore it and comit mistakes that you could have learn. The past is also a part of yourself, a partof your personality, your lessons, experiences, by saying detroy the past you want to destroy yourself. Also i agree with many, that trying to give all this sicological and filosofical ideas, butifnoring the characters past, their acctions, was literaly, saing that a person change from the morning to the afternoon. Also kill the past, so kill the reason star wars is star wars, dont complain when eveybody leaves
Simple answer; If you wanna make something new, just make something NEW. Why take an old IP and crap all over it. Oh yeah cause merchandising and it's easier to push the Star Wars name instead of creating a new franchise.
I disagree - just make one good movie 》 like revenge of the sith with a decent Anikan, a worthy Vader. Revenge of the Sith is my favorite ( of cause the Originals will always be the best) of the new ones cause it was star wars and it tried to be star wars and it had not so many stupid jokes and the order 66 is still epic. And even the clone wars had a great plot ( a sith overlord manipulating the Republic into a civil war to eliminate the peace keepers 》 7 is a remaster and 8 is ... Just awful.
Because of title 9. If women can't have equality in everything they have to kill something that men have because that's how stupid rich cunts interpret our laws.
While I very much agree with your second point, I am no so stoked about your first one. I don’t consider it shitting on an IP, but rather building upon a universe so as to make very simple stories more fomplex and, I would say, realistic. I really enjoy the deconstruction of dichotomies such as good and evil, and for me this part of the movie could’ve been almost perfect, had they not completely doubled back on everything. Surely such a twist would be problematic to have as canon in the already established philosophical climate of the Star Wars franchise, but that I would also find incredibly interesting; then it would be possible to delve into the problems associated with relativistic viewpoints and so on - like: If there is no good, then what is right to do? At that point it might actually be possible to call doubling back on the deconstruction as the right thing to do, as it could make ordinary life hard to life without any guidelines. Now that would be an interesting dillemama for me: no ultimately right choices, just pros and cons. But it of course does not have to be that way at all; that is simply the route, which I’d prefer.
14:11 This is Neo v. Smith at the end of Matrix: Revolutions: when he realizes he has to stop being "the hero" and surrender, he merges with Smith -- literally bonds with his shadow -- and he becomes part of the whole Matrix and 'the code he carries is reinserted into the Matrix thus reestablishing the prime program' (they restore to factory settings) and Smith is gone, and he teaches the Machines and the humans they have to be together in order to survive.
bricknose yup, throne room is basically like vs The Emperor and Vader. Ach-to is basically Luke and Yoda, even a vision in which h the hero sees their own face... DJ betraying Finn and Rose is basically Lando betraying Han. He recycled as much as JJ did in TFA.
Actually, Jung did not argue for the coexistence of the Shadow and the Ego. He argued that the Shadow must be made conscious so that it can be dissolved under the light of awareness. So the goal is not to learn to live with the Shadow - although that helps, because it stops you from projecting it onto others - but to get rid of and become, indeed, a heroic being, like the Jedi, and like Luke was at the end of ROTJ. I wonder if one reason Rian Johnson stumbled is because he didn't figure out, or Disney has not figured out, where they are going with the metaphysics of Star Wars. I love The Force Awakens, but JJ could have taken Star Wars in any direction he wanted, and he went with a replica of the previous conflict, which is a tough starting point for anyone looking to do something different (but not so different as to alienate the old fanbase).
1. I left a quiet theater walking down a hallway feeling bad and it was silent in the crowd. No cheers, no wow, no that was fun, it was a funeral. 2. A good essay premise with more thought than the director put into it. 3. If I pay that much money and have a bad time it is not a good movie. 4. I could believe the movie was a dream and the Dallas character was in the shower better than I could believe some of the writing in this movie. 5. The best parts for me was any time Yoda was on screen and the Jedi master acted like the student again and it was good, when he kissed his sister on the forehead, and when Luke was willing do help people he cared about. 6. Having an optimistic character who believed even Darth Vader could be redeemed suddenly be willing to murder a nephew over what HE MIGHT do is not Luke Skywalker. I could even explain it in Star Trek terms by saving it makes more sense that this is the Mirror Mirror universe of Star Wars and that is not our Luke Skywalker. 7. I left Incredibles 2 laughing and hoping for a sequel 3, and part of me kind of dreads what they will do next for Star Wars after setting up all kinds of questions and tossing them away as unimportant while focusing on side plots that were not engaging. 8. You don't kill Admiral Akbar off camera. 9. You don't use ships as kamikaze faster than light missiles or the entire chase sequence is useless and tactics in combat would have already emerged differently long ago like detachable warhead warp pylons that could be guided. It was a macguffin. 10. Bad writing is when you have plots develop that require the characters to do dumb things. Example have the Rebel force simply explain the plan she had and entire subplots become moot once her officers understood. As far as I was concerned the movie stumbled everytime it focused on something other than Luke, Yoda, and Leia and I endured the side plots to sell merchandising critter dolls to get back to the main plot line. 11. I do not envy anyone having the burden of fixing all this in the next movie and have the fans care. The Rebel movie was superior. The Solo movie was the result of too many cooks in the kitchen and was not as fun as it could have been. Ending rebel with the moments just before the first movie really worked. This movie got lost trying to push its points without having respect for the characters. If you do not respect beloved characters then you do not respect the fans. It was not Jungian, it was bad writing and directing in the end. There is a difference between good and evil in a person. A hero overcomes and grows, nurtures and seeks to do the right thing while evil only harms, destroys, corrupts, and hurts innocents. There is a real difference and any human is capable of good and evil but can with great effort overcome evil to choose to be good and do good which is a heroic choice. I think the Force could be just an energy and whether good or evil is moot in the physics of the Force, but becomes good or evil by the choices characters make. Aggressive moves in the defense of others is not sith and passivity in the face of evil is not jedi. A good jedi should be like Bruce Lee in a fight being like water but not losing sight of trying to do the right thing no matter the odds and sometimes that takes patience. Keeping your head while all about you are losing their minds is strength not weakness. The real Luke seeing an effect on a young nephew would have been to seek to shield and confront the evil attacking his nephew to protect. This Luke was the Mirror Mirror universe Luke due to bad writing, not understanding the character, and wanting to make points more than being true to the characters that made them beloved to fans in the first place. Or worse understanding the character and not caring about the foundational part that caused fans to care about the character and only about pushing points of view for the sake of the point of view being more important. If you complain as a writer about hubris you are defining hubris in your own script. You might as well be looking in a mirror while writing that line. That was not Luke so much as a surrogate for Kathleen Kennedy and Rian's world viewpoint. That works in a Hitchcock movie where the director is a character in the film in effect. It did not work in this movie. I will not even buy the DVD. It was an aberration. Marvel is successful because they plan out entire plotlines over movies and directors follow those guidelines. If there was no coherent vision for all three movies when the way has been shown then it could be it is more on Kathleen Kennedy than one director, but it is a failure in my mind.
I enjoyed reading your comment. And, I'm curious what the next Star Wars sequel will be and what ultimately will be The Last Jedi's impact on the Star Wars universe.
I remember walking out of the theater the exact same way you described it. Also, it was really hard to read your comment. Do you think you could edit it and space out the numbers? It was a good read but some spacing would making it much better. :-)
I believe you didn't play KOTOR to see how Jedi order won't move their when there's an apparent threat in the galaxy. Only because they believe there are bigger darkness coming which they have no idea what.
1) That was only your experience. I saw it in three different theaters in three different cities, and left a cheering crowd each time. Too many TLJ haters are exaggerating, if not deliberately lying, about how their viewing went in order to make a dorky point on a dorky message board. 3) By contrast, since I DID have a good time, then it was a good movie 4) I learned long ago that the last people on Earth to try to lecture about "writing" are marginalized social media addicts with no other talent than hurricaning any message board that disagrees with them. Ill believe them when they produce ANYTHING other than a blizzard of whiny posts, not before. Its real easy to pretend to be an expert when you're an anonymous schmuck online. Its a lot harder to prove it.
Luke being disillusioned was fine, it was just the details leading up to it that were poorly handled. There was no reason to have the atrocious scene of him almost killing Ben Solo, they could have gotten to the same place without it. That really betrayed his character.
Yeah, that doesn't really work though since you're the one who randomly showed up to call me fat, mediocre, and devoid of purpose in life. But, again, thanks for playing, Troll. Scurry along now. There are plenty more random people on the internet you can share God's "love" with.
So Ryan Johnson plagiarized the themes of KOTOR II and made a really poor representation of it in a cinema and had the gall to charge entry for it? ok...
I don't think he even knows that exists. Honestly, I think Disney and Kathleen Kennedy looks at people who play Star Wars games with extra disdain and contempt. Viewing us probably in the same light that many people view furries, weaboos, or extreme otakus. That would explain why they immediately killed LucasArts once they took over and why they put so little attention or care on trying to make any other games, just handing all of the game IP rights over to EA. It seems like they just didn't fucking care! It's really baffling to me why Lucas thought Kathleen Kennedy was the one worthy to inherit the franchise. She's running it very quickly into the ground.
It was the higher ups at Disney like Alan Hart who wanted a hack MCU film instead of a SW one. People have to understand that blockbusters are conditioned even more by producers than by directors. Johnson does not have the main blame for this.
Lucasarts shut down because Disney felt it was best off to license their brand to other game developers, so if a game failed like Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi, then the hit would fall squarely on the developer and not the IP owners. It had nothing to do with the disdain the producers had for the EU or the other games, or fans. That would be a ludicrous statement to make.
Trans8010 The IP never sunk even when Lucasarts made bad games because people are rational beings able to understand the nuance of development and artistic design. Also, the statement itself means nothing, that since the games are licenced they cannot be plagiarized. Anything that copies another without giving credit to the creator is plagiarism, period.
TLJ makes me really sad. When I first heard that Force Awakens was coming out I predicted/hoped that it would involve some kind of subversion of the Light Side/Dark Side dichotomy. I thought that such a thing happening would be a great way to actually give the trilogy some worth in the grand Star Wars story. TFA comes out and it's a fun yet pretty disappointing rehash of New Hope. It looked brilliant and it did a good job and getting me excited for the next movie with the super cliffhanger...but it had shallow, god-like characters like Rey and set the new trilogy on a path that had already been tread in the originals, fighting a big scary space Nazi empire. But I have hope. The next movie will give Rey a backstory and she'll train with Luke, which will explain her being so perfect and they'll start subverting the story. Then the TLJ trailer comes out, and I am hyped. "It's time for the Jedi...to end"? Hell yeah. That should be pretty interesting Then I go see the movie....and it does what I wanted...but in all the worst possible ways. Luke could have remained the same hopeful character we all love and become more aware of the problems inherent to the jedi way (considering it basically killed his Dad). But no, Luke milks aliens and is a crabby old hermit who doesn't want to be found despite having left a map in-case people need to find him... Rey could have been trained by Luke and have been given some backstory to show why she's so amazing, or they could have had Rey fail miserably at something, like fighting Kylo, or at least Luke. But no, Rey is just inexplicably god-like enough to scare the crap out of Luke, she beats Luke and like 5 Praetorians with no lightsaber training, she lifts a mountain of rocks like it's nothing, and she is a nobody...whose parents were random drunkards... They could have highlighted the problems with traditional ideas of heroism and valorous sacrifice without making it divisive. But no, we get Leia and Holdo treating Poe like an idiot after he saves everyone, twice. Instead of acknowledging the efficacy of both styles of problem solving (live to fight another day and get the bad guy) we get a confusing mess of symbolism where we have Holdo and Leia castigating Poe for blowing up the baddies while also having Holdo kill herself to blow up the baddies but now it's cool. And I love Rose, but the way they set up her "Save the ones we love" line was new levels of idiotic. So we save the ones we love by ramming their ship, simultaneously dooming your other friends to be killed by a death laser? Genius...
Believe, I don't know about becoming crabby, old...or a hermit...but one thing that has happened is that I've become far better at identifying BS. I'm not some "All new movies suck" hipster or some "Why can't all lead actors be white dudes" racist shmuck. I am a huge fan of Mad Max and I love Fury Road, even though its main character is basically Furiosa, a woman. I loved Rogue One even though it too had a female lead and it was pretty subversive in how it dealt with it's main characters, i.e. killing them all. Same goes for Black Panther, Infinity War, Bladerunner 2049, and all of the other movies that have come out recently that had far more respect for their source material, better characters, more coherent stories, etc. TLJ is the only movie I've really not liked since....the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie with Javier Bardem...but that movie was trash
They say this movie is supposed to be empowering to women, but instead it paints them as enigmatc and distrusting (Holdo) or selfish and stupid (Rose). Yay grrl power!
"A nearly identical fascistic order... so clearly something is wrong..." Yeah, what's wrong is the film-makers are too uncreative and unimaginative to create a conflict that's not directly copied and pasted over from existing Star Wars films.
But .... thats EXACTLY what Rian was pointing out and hoping to move forward from. Its what the potential 'Duel of the fates' script for the last movie would have addressed.
I believe the story was already going bad at Force Awakens, we just didn’t see the cracks until the whole franchise came crashing down. Also, how is it 3 directors can direct a trilogy without a central writer to define the arc
I think it was an utterly pointless star wars movie. It is as you said, it spent the entire movie trying to subvert the tropes of good and evil in star wars, just to lazily revert back to them in the end. What a disappointing movie.
@@marchofthelorex238 Lazy. Cliched. Boring. People disliked the film for genuine reasons. It's so easy to group everyone who didn't like it together and call them bitter fanboys, but that is a lazy argument with zero substance.
@@marchofthelorex238 Ahh, I see. You're one of those people who confuses 'personal opinion' with 'truth'. I could try explaining it again to you, maybe using shorter words? In my experience however, people like you rarely understand that, in the real world, deluded opinion and truth are two different things, so I would probably just be wasting my time. By the way, because you liked TLJ it means that you're a virtue signalling millennial snowflake. I'm absolutely right about that because it's my opinion.
I like your explanation of what Rian was trying to accomplish in the first half of the film. My issues with the film aren't so much what it's trying to do or say but rather how it goes about it. TLJ makes large changes to the OT themes and characters without a graceful transition or any real exploration of the problems in those themes. I loved seeing this version of Luke and it was great acting but we never got a believable explanation for how he got there. It simply tells us that the old ways don't work anymore. It doesn't show how or why or really say anything other than they failed and now must learn from it. How did they fail? What aspects of the jedi led to their vanity? How does the darkside tempt jedi in training? Adam driver does a great job of protraying the struggle in Kylo, but we don't have plausible explanations for Kylo's actions. We see why he'd hate luke and why he'd hate snoke. Now that they're both gone, why does this guy want to rule the universe? I can forgive the plot holes, wasting of time with uninteresting side plots, and disregarding of the general OT ruleset if it means we get a new story that fleshes out something meaningful. This movie hints at that, but lacks substance. To me, the best parts of the movie are Rey's scenes on the island and especially the mirror scene where she's contending with the pull of the dark side. We see how it temps her with what she wants, her struggle with loneliness and her acceptance of who she is. When Kylo tempts her, she's prepared for it because of this scene. That was a great dynamic and it was done in a really cool artistic manner. Time slowing to the point where a reflection reacts after the original was a beautiful way to showcase the sanity reducing nature of loneliness. Adding the snap implied that all senses are effected and we really feel for Rey when she's explaining it to Kylo moments later. Unfortunately, the rest of the movie doesn't hold up. Let's look at the scene where Kylo reveals her heritage. First off, I love the idea of Rey's parents being nobodies. But people keep saying that the moment is brilliantly made better by the subversion of our expectations. TFA shouldn't have build up these expectations in the first place. But it did and Rian has to deal with them. Subverting out expectations here takes us out of the moment. It actually creates a disconnect between the audience and Rey. We want to know who her parents are because the previous movie hints at them being something special. Rey wants to know because she's lonely and they're her freakin parents. When she finds out, its painful that she was abandoned. Subverting our expectation doesn't help us feel Rey's pain or loneliness. It takes us out of the moment and makes us think about our expectations, which are NOT Rey's expectations. Instead of sympathizing with Rey, we're thinking "wtf" in the moment. And after processing it, at best, you can say that it was clever. I'd rather be immersed in the movie, the story and the character. Lets compare it to the ESB scene where they subvert our expectations with Luke being Vader's son. At the end of an emotionally charged fight, Luke has lost his hand and is dangling precariously over an almost literal abyss. We're in tune with Luke here and feeling what he's feeling. Because we're not wondering who Luke's father is, we're not actively waiting for this moment. When Vader tells him, we feel exactly what Luke feels. Disbelief, anger, suffering. Star Wars has always been about immersion. We loved the originals because they made us feel like we really were walking on a moon-sized battle station, and fighting through the mechanical catacombs of a city in the Clouds. It's that immersion into the fantasy sci-fi world that made the OT special. We can forgive just about any flaw if a star wars movie recaptures that element. TLJ doens't even try. Between the marvel style humour that's constantly reminding you that you're a guy in a threatre watching a screen, not coming up with a single novel environment that you'd have to go into the SW galaxy to see, and ungracefully slapping a different take on a beloved character, this movie ultimately fails to immerse us in it's story at some of it's most key moments.
"TFA shouldn't have build up these expectations in the first place. But it did and Rian has to deal with them." Honestly I quite often got the sense that a lot of the subversive stuff in TLJ was Rian pretty much calling JJ Abrams' bluff in regards to all the Mystery Box nonsense he inserted into TFA. "Ooh, who is this mysterious shadowy figure pulling the First Order's strings?" He's a Palpatine knockoff; no amount of backstory can hope to match Ian McDiarmid's glorious performance in the Prequels; dead, move on. "Ooh, who is this girl that's remarkably gifted with the Force, and who were her parents?" Nobody; her parents were nobodies too; the Force doesn't belong to the Jedi, it's a universal constant with which some people are more in tune than others; yes, there's some hereditary traits but even in the days of the Jedi Order, most younglings came from non Force-sensitive families; Also, Rey pretty much coasted by on luck, and her big opponent was wounded and kind of an entitled crybaby. "Ooh, Luke Skywalker's gone into hiding on a distant planet, what has he been doing all this time?" He bailed; he was all like 'blast this karabast, I'm out!' and has been milling about getting high on sloppy green walrus milk; Hell, he was probably contemplating suicide before Rey showed up and killed the mood by shoving his father's tainted lightsaber in his face. Speaking of which, "Ooh, how did Maz Kanata get Anakin's lightsaber?" Who cares? Certainly not Luke; sure, it used to be a treasured relic of his, but now it's a reminder of how flawed the Jedi were; lest we forget, that very same weapon was the instrument of the slaughter of countless innocent lives, including children; of course Luke wouldn't be happy to be given it back. And so on. Having said all of that, I'm not completely sure that hostile defiance towards all the hollow hype-mongering in TFA was necessarily the best approach to take, if indeed that was Rian's intent. However, it was a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario, and if nothing else his "be careful what you wish for" approach to answering such dubious questions was cetainly more interesting than either doubling down on the predictable answers or just giving harmless yet inevitably disappointing alternatives, or even quietly ignoring them.
I disagree that Rian was in a "damned if you, damned if you don't" scenario. Rian subverting the Originals wasn't the problem, it was the way in which he went about it and his rampant backpedaling. Luke could have easily been made to be skeptical of the Jedi's role in the universe while not being a crotchety old pessimist. Rey could have been a nobody but there could have at least been some backstory thrown in to dial down accusations of her being a Mary Sue. They could have proclaimed the efficacy of alternative forms of heroism without simultaneously ridiculing the traditional, more violent forms of heroism. They could have done a subversive story and not figuratively spat in the faces of fans. That probably wasn't their intent...but the backlash to the film is evidence that they failed miserably to do accurate study group testing of the film to see the potential reactions to Rian's decisions. Oh and they could have, at the very least, not reacted to honest criticisms of the film by calling everyone racists/sexists/misogynists/manbabies/etc. That would have gone a long way to preventing the massive split in the SW fandom from occurring.
Midironica One of the things that made me legitimately angry was when Rian tweeted that no matter what he did, the fans would have been split. He hid behind the rhetoric that he wasn't ever going to make everyone happy anyway. Just because he wasn't creative and clever enough to do it doesn't mean that it couldn't be done. And that arrogance is rampant throughout this movie. The notion that you can't do something new in the SW universe while respecting what came before is absolutely ridiculous. And the whole racist and sexist arguments from Disney are so dumb. If they wanted to legitimately explore those themes in SW, they should have actually made them central themes and given them the attention they deserve. Or subtly integrate them into the background of the film like the OT does: empire being homogeneous group of white males with the same accent while the rebels are a diverse group including multiple species and female leadership. But tlj just ham-fistedly shoehorns it into places that distract and detract from the core story. It weakens both the message that they're trying to get across as well as the whole movie.
Very well said; I wasn't enamored with the film, but my actual favorite aspects of it were when he took those "mystery boxes" and just tossed them the hell away. The third act being all "no, don't worry, we're not REALLY changing much about Star Wars!" was what let me down.
Joe N The mystery box is narratively empty anyway, Abrams just asks questions without ever intending to give a meaningful answer to the story. He wrote TFA with a bunch of random questions and mysteries to let people think and let the next guy struggling with them, giving him no answer, because there weren't any. There was nothing else to do than what Johnson did, narratively speaking his answers were the best they could have been to me. I fully agree with FitzyCify's comment here.
To me, the dissonance in this movie became clear in the scene where Rey confronts Snoke. He talks about darkness rising and light meeting it. So he seems to understand that there is a balance that the force will inherently uphold. Yet he then proceeds to behave like your run of the mill dark lord and wants the dark side to wipe out the light, as if he forgot what he just said himself. There would have been a great opportunity for a conflict there that would have had depth: A conflict between a desire for control and a faith in the natural balance of the force. The "natural balance" aspect was represented pretty well by Luke (even though the path by which he got there was out of character), but neither Snoke nor Kylo really represented control, they just represented darkness. Imagine this: After having been rejected as an apprentice by Luke, Rey is brought before Snoke, expecting a standoff. But instead, Snoke offers Rey to teach her in the ways of the Jedi. That would have been a twist I don't think anyone would have seen coming. But it would have set up an ideological conflict with Snoke seeking control over darkness and light, while Luke rejects control or manipulation of both. Kylo and Rey would have been caught in that conflict.
Except that the way the force works is that the Jedi are upholders of the balance and always have been having too many Jedi never caused an inbalance they were literally the upholders making sure no one entity became too powerful so a democracy could thrive, the sith are the lack of balance that absorbs power and throw things askew, look up the failure of the grey Jedi it goes over why the force is the way it is.
Pointless Pelican "Jedi never caused an inbalance" Then why would they have a prophecy about one who would bring balance to the force? The way I understand it, the Sith saw the Jedi as creating an imbalance all along. Of course the Jedi wouldn't see it that way, and it's their perspective that these stories have been told from um until now. If you want to tell a new story that has any degree of depth, you have to challenge or subvert that perspective. And that is exactly what Luke does in TLJ. He disassembles the idea of the Jedi being the great protectors. Which was one of the best parts of the movie in my opinion. And if you take an honest look at the prequel trilogy (particularly Revenge Of The Sith) you can see that he's right. A large part of what tips Anakin over the edge was realizing that the Jedi were willing to abandon their values if they felt it nessecary. And even without taking all that into account, I was mainly talking about what kind of a dynamic it would have taken to make this movie compelling. At least, for me. I described my idea of what would make Snoke a proper antithesis to Luke, thereby setting up a larger conflict. Trying to fully reconsile this movie with the previous lore of Star Wars is a futile mission. Challenging previous notions about the force is the least of it's problems, if that even is one.
This is why i love the prequels is because despite all their flaws they leave the real story underneath everything and you have to dig to get to it, Anakin did not fulfill the prophecy when he killed off all the Jedi, he fulfilled it when he killed Sideus in return of the jedi. I mean if you think about it what about the sith existing screams balance to you? When they hungrily assert dominance over the force and over others ever growing in power until they own the galaxy? That is the mantra of the Sith to gain power untill no one can tell them what to do. Whereas the Jedi enforce freedom in the galaxy making sure everyone has choice. Sorry if i'm not making sense but i'm not very good with words. Here, this is a video going into depth about the grey Jedi the corruptive nature of the darkside where even playing with it can make you lose control and everything that would make a grey area in canon blow a huge plot hole in the original trilogy: ruclips.net/video/6EMc_S_vAsk/видео.html
Pointless Pelican "Anakin did not fulfill the prophecy when he killed off all the Jedi, he fulfilled it when he killed Sideus in return of the jedi." Have you ever entertained the thought that both of these are equal elements of him fulfilling that prophecy? When Anakin died, there were no institutions left on either side that could have sought control or dominance. The influence of the force was, for quiet a while, removed from the affairs of the galaxy, even while Luke was around. The Force played next to no part in politics or power until Kylo Ren came back alongside the First Order. Which is why that point in time is labeled "The Force Awakens", i.e. it needs to find it's balance once more. "Whereas the Jedi enforce freedom in the galaxy making sure everyone has choice." Aside from the fact that "enforcing freedom" is a bit of an oxymoron (I assume you meant "protecting"), you have to note that they do not actually do that, at least not near the end. They meddle in political affairs, wage wars (and if you take the clone wars series into account, they waged war against a democracy) and employ an army of what basically amounts to slave soldiers, even if never framed as such. They have one prime motivation: Defeat the dark side. And the more intense that fight gets, the more they justify their means by their end. Their view of themselves as peacekeepers has pretty much fallen apart by the end. I wasn't talking about Grey Jedi). Balance in the force doesn't have to mean all force users using both sides of the force. And I agree that that wouldn't work. I wasn't suggesting that Snoke should have been someone who used both sides, but someone who sought to bring both light and dark force users under his influence. I would assume that he would have been a fallen Jedi or something similar, thus a dark side user who was still capable of teaching others to use the light. Conflict between darkness and light is inevitable and neverending, since neither side can wipe the other out. But if some could steer both sides of it, they would achieve the greatest amount of control. Just imagine if Palpatine / Sidious had kept the Clone Wars going perpetually, or perhaps as a cold war/uneasy peace. He would have been in charge of both sides, and he would have never had to deal with the Rebellion. He was arguably more powerful during the clone wars than he was as the emperor. My idea of Snoke would have been similar, just taken a good step further.
Garrett Carter would you rather have another Canto Byte? Both of those scenes were great not because of pandering, but because they used nostalgia as a jumping off point.
Yup. It is reverse Ep 5. Ends w/ Battle on White Planet w/ Walkers where Rebels Escape. Then (before that) was a scene of Empire Chasing Rebel Ship(s) w/ Leia in it. Then the Empire is in a Relentless, Film Long Pursuit of said Ship(s) Then was a scene of Luke and Yoda philosophizing about the Force. Ultimately, some non Force Heroes End up at a City Founded by Gambling. Jedi Master and Student Training Luke Ignores doing what Jedi Tradition would dictate that he should do. Big Showdown between Rebel Ship(s) w/ Leia in it and Imperial Fleet. Rebels Escape at some cost.
This is the smartest and most thoughtful critique of TLJ I've seen. I can't help but wonder how it could have turned out if they just went with the moral framework shift, instead of *cough* subverting *cough* it three quarters of the way in.
@Gregory Kelton - could well be, yeah. I think Linkara's AT4W review of the comic version was also pretty good, too, if maybe too gentle on the issues.
I think you have projected your own analysis onto Rian Johnson's intentions. This movie can only WISH it was halfway as intelligent as you're claiming it tried to be. The plain fact, however, is that Johnson wrote a shitty script that delivers a message that is ponderously nihilistic: Nothing means anything means nothing. Doing anything leads to destruction, so just let everything burn because trying to prevent everything from burning is pointless since the past is meaningless and just needs to die and everything burns anyway. That's not a movie made by a man striving for any kind of deep philosophical or psychological commentary. That's just the product of someone who doesn't believe in anything and doesn't give a fuck about anything - which is also why TLJ was such a sloppy directionless mess of a movie - and simply has fun running amok breaking other people's toys for the hell of it.
To call Rian a nihilist is an insult to real nihilists, who simply believe that our social and political institutions are so terrible that they should be destroyed and they reject all laws. A real nihilist does in fact still believe in something.
Exactly. SO it's like let everything die and fade away. Lets join forces to lead a new age of meaninglessness, there's no longer good and bad, there's just do what you want, do it because everything means nothing anyway. So there's no value in anything anymore, you can kill, plunder, and destroy but it's ok. Yet, where does the force end up, doesn't' the force have a say in what happens in the galaxy. What if the end of the Jedi, and the concept of just having everything die and have an age where anything means nothing, was the work of the dark side. What if this whole time the dark side was at work in the shadows directing this orchestra of eradication of all good and justice in the galaxy so that everything means nothing, leaving the door open for someone influenced by the dark side to come in and Take power without anyone standing in their way. That still HAS TO come into play in Star Wars doesn't it.
LordZontar, Exactly. I can't help but wonder, how come the man who made TLJ calls himself a Star Wars fan? Wouldn't it be more honest to openly admit he despises Star Wars?
Rian's next set of movies: Episode 9: The Force Examines itself. Episode: 10: The Force Goes to Therapy, Episode 11: The Force Tries Reiki, Episode 12: The Force has a Mid-Life Crisis.
Sven Servette like literally. At least in retrospect, Jar jar was entertraining. He had value to the plot and continued to have all the way up to the creation of the Empire itself. He was a usable idiot and a classic character in terms of Shakespearean drama. He fit in with the space opera theme. This new bullshit added nothing and took nothing. It was feel good Disney product placement and it's so glaringly obvious that it made me sick the entire film. I miss George Lucas folks this is just tiresome.
@@SeltsamerAttraktor they'll never get it. Consider that we have people in positions of power today pushing for ideologies that killed millions of people last century. Ideologues are *always* able to pass the buck and rationalise problems away.
I can see how subversion would have been awesome here, with the right execution. But there were no stakes - why did it need to be subverted? If Rey had a hero's journey in which she MUST let go of the past to succeed, I might have bought into it. But she doesn't, it's just a "here's how it should be" argument, so there's no need for the subversion in the first place. Subverting just for the sake of subverting it, just for the shits and giggles, is pointless, and alienates the fans. Might make RJ feel all giddy to cause a ruckus, but this show meant more to it's fans than for him to just turn it on it's head because he thought it'd be cool. Sad thing is, I would have bought into a trilogy in which "she's a woman and better at feelings that dry crusty grumpy men in bathrobes". I'd have even accepted a darkside Rey who is fighting for the Rebels. But there's no need for Rey in the plot - how does her presence help them defeat the 1st order? It was Poe who destroyed SK base, after Han + Chewy disabled it. She didn't save Han, didn't save Finn, didn't kill Snoke, didn't turn Kylo, didn't bring Luke back - she's like a pinball bouncing against all the more well-established plot points. I so want her to be awesome, but what has she actually done that significantly moved or turned the plot? Poe, Han + Leia moved the plot in TFA, Luke resisted her efforts to move it in TLJ - it's like Disney forgot how to story. This female force isn't very force, and I'm not going to respect a character just because the studio tells me she's the protagonist. Even Luke had to prove himself.
I think they took the exact opposite lesson from the movie that they should have. The Last Jedi isn't about reconciling the good and the dark no matter how severe the dark is: Rey accepting Kylo's offer to "rule the galaxy" wouldn't have been a reconciliation the film found "good." Rather, **the film is a rejection of nihilism in the face of complication** : Del Toro's character is presented as a warning against exactly that course of action. I think it's totally wrong to use him as the spokesperson for the movie-the movie is condemning him! He's a critique of the Han Solo archetype: the nihilists don't have hearts of gold; they're just narcissists. Meanwhile, Luke's embrace of nihilism is clearly a product of his depression. He couldn't reconcile the weight of his failure and the corresponding responsibility, and so he ran off to an island and convinced himself that nothing matters. The Luke-Rey relationship is a mentor-mentee relationship flipped. It's not Leia that inspires Luke to reverse course-it's Rey: it's her passion that finally jolts him back to reality, and it's Yoda's subsequent discussion with him that gets him realigned: We don't have to be able to understand all the nuances-to read all the books-in order to try to do good. We will inevitably fall short of reaching true goodness, true justice, but the hope is that we lay the ground work for the next generation to get a little further towards that ideal. There is one character that consistently is a spokesperson for the movie's philosophy, and, of course, she's omitted from this entire video: It's Rose. Rose is the only character who the movie (1) portrays positively, and (2) doesn't significantly change over the movie. (Finn goes from fighting for Rey to fighting for a cause; Rey goes from needing parental figures to standing confidently on her own; Luke goes from dismissing outright the idea that a hero can save the day to, once again, being the hero that saves the day.) Rose says the line that the movie most clearly endorses: "We're going to win this war not by fighting what we hate, but saving what we love." There is a difference between fighting for your ideals and fighting to defeat your enemy. (If you're fighting for your ideals, you'll lose to your enemy before you lose your ideals; if you're fighting to defeat your enemy, you'll sacrifice your ideals in order to do so.) The Last Jedi argues that the world is complicated. That heroes are fallible. That good intentions can lead to bad outcomes. And that we should stick to our ideals and fight for them, anyway.
Disagree with your reading of the ending. Luke is a literal illusion used to fuel the rebellion. That plays into the broader critique. Ren says he has rejected the past but refuses to spare the rebels. While he may have a more nuanced look at the galaxy, he won’t put his money where his mouth is.
I think that's the whole point! He tries to get Rey on his side, but at the end of the day, he's flying a giant star destroyer, commanding a million literal storm troopers, and is trying to wipe out the last band of rebels. Rey isn't some paragon of good, either. She's just a junker with powers, trying to stop the one person who's trying to kill her friends. Rey is the embodiment of coming to terms with a shadow. She sees she could live outrageously well with someone who gets her at a deep level, but can't because he's a fucking crazy person that killed his parents, and will kill everyone else she knows in the galaxy.
But that simplistic characterization is exactly what I THOUGHT the film was going to get away from. Ren is pure evil, but it would have been more interesting if he wasn't
Yup. Ren is all talk when it comes to "killing the past". Once his offer is turned down he goes right on ahead with installing himself as leader of the space Nazis and continuing the subjugation agenda.
The elephant in the room that you’re missing is that Rian took it upon himself to present a solution where there was no problem. Star Wars was so beloved because the characters were beloved. To come in with a baseball bat and smash it all because you don’t like it is stupid. I have no problem with introducing a whole new paradigm, but to do it by betraying Luke’s character is self-indulgent and completely out of touch. I don’t have time to propose all the possible ways I could think of to pull off the paradigm shift without performing a script jihad, but suffice it to say, I’m sure it’s in the hundreds. This idiot, Rian, and KK have betrayed the fan base. Now they reap the consequences of the backlash. So be it
Of course there was a problem, there was nowhere to go. It was a basic hero story that was really good for 1 film, and sorta OK for 3 films (the first 3). After that you have to do something new or not make new films at all.
@@lenks0 Expect there were multiple directions they could've taken, just look at all the lore that was abandoned in the Eu. Sure the whole premise of good vs evil would be the same but I don't see that as being an issue as there would still be multiple directions in terms of story that could've been told
I agree, there was no problem, there was no need to "kill the past" in order to move on to the future. I think people would have loved moving on and meeting new characters and exploring more of that universe.
+Dan Rebeiz I like your points, they make me think. I feel I disagree with only the beginning, in that there was “no problem”. The story is nice, but trite. Like we’re talking down to our audience (made up of a ton of kids alongside us adults) with this whole “light side vs. dark side” business. Even as a child I considered right and wrong, and knew that it wasn’t so binary. Like the video says it divides you from yourself, and it ignores a “good” person’s capacity for evil even as they address an “evil” person’s capacity for good. I like introducing a grey area for this generation to consider? I like us thinking beyond heaven and hell when we discuss morality in some of our new shows and movies lately. Let’s not limit it to “adult” programs and thus underestimate our audience.
Crammit huh? “George Lucas” has the right to destroy him? What year is it? Ha ha ha. Newsflash: George Lucas sold the rights to Star Wars to Disney. Perhaps you missed the news while walled into your tinfoil bunker. Lol!
Exactly. From the morals to the plans of each and every character. It seems like nothing follows a consistant flow and so many things are apposed against themself.
Princess Leia is about to die. But then she doesn't. But then she does. But then she comes back to life and flies back to the spaceship. But then she slips into a coma. But then she just wakes up from the coma. But then she probably dies in the next movie's crawl.
This movie has the worst case of Bipolar Disorder I've ever seen. Every single element keeps flip-flopping on each other so much that there's literally no order or consistency at all!
THANK YOU! Finally someone who gets it. That turning point that you are talking about in the movie is exactly where I got turned off in the theater. It flip-flops too much and doesn't have the balls to actually go through with its ideas. Just when I thought that Kylo Ren was going to become an interesting character and that him and Rey will form a new alliance that will define this new generation of Start Wars.... Nope... Same old storytelling again...
One of many truly stupid things about TLJ is that Luke Skywalker was already ridding the Jedi order of its old dogmatic ways in the EU. For Rian Johnson to DESTROY such a wonderful character for his failed vanity project was completely unnecessary and comes off as mean spirited to say the least.
One of the most egregious failures to meet its own theme was when Luke said something akin to "The Force is more than just moving rocks" and yet the heroic movement is her using it at that 'base' level in the climax, saving all 10 or so of them, with absolutely no internal struggle to speak of (as she was never at risk of turning, she though she was going to turn Ren).
@Tanuvein - That HAD to be deliberate, of course. Use of irony. And it's not moving rocks, really - it's WHY you move them. Being aware of the little pebbles that can start an avalanche (like a hasty plan to find a codebreaker, find the WRONG codebreaker, and nearly end up losing the whole Resistance, whilst a QUIETER plan - theoretically, at least, could save it. If the crew does not mutiny... ahem)
Kroft talks about Movies lol! It was ok... But I'm not a complete star wars fan... All i want is a good story... My only problem with it is the boring casino scenes...
Find the balance. Everything can't be an answer. There are some good things at the very least. If the new ways don't work for you, the past is always available. (I mean the old Star Wars films)
Why they just didn't adapt Timothy Zahns trilogy of books. Admiral Thrawn was an awesome villain and the whole story made more sense than what we have now
It wouldn't have worked because the original actors had aged too much to fit the timeline of the books. And there was no way Disney was going to make a new Star Wars trilogy that replaced Fisher, Hamill, and Ford with different people.
Also, they completely changed Luke’s character into who Mark Hamil called Jake Skywalker since he was so far removed from the character we met and spent so much time with in the previous trilogy and had established his personality and beliefs very firmly without actually giving a believable and viable explanation what happened or why he is so drastically different. What made Luke want to murder a young innocent no different than he was when he went thru his own temptations and possible danger he could become to everyone and would spare the life of a known mass murderer in his father? There is no explanation at all and were just to automatically accept this complete change without context? It causes this aspect to overshadow everything else and instead of inviting speculation by presenting it as a mystery to be answered later, the attempted murder is presented as the explanation of his character shift when it’s that particular action that is the mystery that should have been presented as the subject of speculation.
I assumed Luke was off on some spirtitual mission that may or may not have succeeded, or that he had actually gone to the darkside after perhaps glorying too much in saving the universe back in his youth. But instead we get this craven cowardly rendition of Luke. Would this same man have staged an ambush on Jabba's palace, or placed himself in the hands of his father in the possibly vain hope of redeeming him? Makes no sense really.
there was an interview where Mark Hamil seems pissed about what they did to his character, he explains the story the books leds during this time period, what he thinks they should have done instead, and now all of the sudden is a shill for the politics that led to this shit hole of a movie
The whole origin of the conflict doesnt hold together. Luke said that Leia blamed Snoke's influence, but how and when exactly, we will never know since there is no real reason to explain a dead dude's story one movie later. If someone couldve helped young ben solo to resist the dark side, that is luke. But lets kill the kid instead lol, sounds the most logical outcome
They pointed out the luke thing outright at the beginning. My freind said that he didnt like it because "it didnt have enough blood". I dont why that matters I just think its funny.
6 лет назад
Obi-Wan was also completely different in Revenge of the Sith and New Hope. So what? People change.
Yes! That would have been amazing! Albeit they might have had to find a younger Mark Hamill look alike to play Luke, but storywise it would have been amazing.
6:31 Rian changed the meaning of force balance. George’s intention was that the light side was the natural state of the force and that the darkside was a corruption, a cancer. And like a cancer, can return over and over. That’s why it’s an everlasting battle. Rian portrayed light and darkness were two sides of a coin. One side creates the other, etc. This wasn’t part of George’s plan and so it reaaaally doesn’t fit and makes the Jedi look super bad as a result.
Rian changed...? No, make no mistake my fellow fan...Rian, ruined & disregarded, to subvert our expectations, of a good Star Wars movie! That is all! It really is that simple...BUT, no-one will believe it!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah but...Luke said that and in the end changed his mind about it...so Rian didn't change anything, he just portrayed a Luke Skywalker who was wrong and in grief about what happened
Rian didn't exactly come up with the idea that Light and Dark are a balance. That theme has been explored before in the EU. KOTOR2 does a much better job of deconstructing some established ideas of the lore with an interesting character and at the same time doesn't shit all over Star Wars while doing so.
"The most morally ambiguous moment in any Star Wars film." Unlike Cassian Andor killing his informant as a simple diversion so he could escape, or Lando giving up an old friend to the empire in order to give the people that depend on him a feeling of safety. But hey, DJ said some stuff, so he's the most morally ambiguous. No matter that whatever he said didn't affect the movie at all.
But Lando was forced by evil, full of regret, and then worked with the rebels, that's a low moment and a noble desire to protect his people, not a cynical dismissal of the entire conflict
I really disliked that scene, because it is well established in Star Wars source material that Seinar Fleet Systems manufacture the TIE series of fighters, and Incom Corporation manufacture X-Wings. Apart from both ships being available to purchase by people with enough money , for example planetary defence fleets, but the First Order has been hiding in the Unknown Regions, but there are also laws against the First Order being sold weapons or weapons components. To get around this, Seinar sent a subsidiary into the Unknown Regions to work with the First Order in secret. So apparently some random guy set up business relations with a faction in hiding, has acquired ships that are being sold directly to the First Order, and is also selling another company's ships at the same time, and is somehow making all this a lucrative business strategy. Sure. But how does that make the water muddy? He is purchasing ships and selling them. The Resistance and the First Order might be buying stuff from the same person, but they are different products from different manufacturers. Either my disdain for Ryan Johnson and this movie has blinded me, or Ryan Johnson made a space opera set in the Star Wars universe, and didn't consider any material already made about the universe before creating his script. Or maybe he did, but just really wanted a moment where the audience gasps when they are told that both sides have ships they use, and some guy happens to sell both.
In ESB Lando was under the impression that Han and company were just being used as the bait for the trap for Vader to capture Luke and they they weren't in any danger. I didn't fully realize this until a recent viewing of the movie. Lando says to Han and Leia "They [the empire] don't want you, they're after someone named Skywalker" And later he says to Vader something like [in regard to Vader taking Leia and Chewie] "That wasn't part of our deal, nor was handing Han over to this bounty hunter." Lando got played.
I hate the "whack-a-mole" aspect of Johnson's interpretation of "balance" more than anything. If you follow that logic Snoke arose because of Luke and the lack of a dark side balancing force. He may have been a nobody but the dark side needed a vessel so it empowered him. When Snoke died Luke had to commit force suicide to prevent another Snoke. Now Rey is balancing Ren because "reasons." There's no need to train, struggle, overcome, etc because whether Rey succeeds or fails another balancing force will appear, probably Broom Boy. There's nothing to pull for, no victory to hope for. The best case scenario is that Rey kills Ren and then immediately commits suicide to end the constant rebalancing. It makes Star Wars a hopeless universe of endless cycles and nothing new, no end game. It frustrates me that there are so many people who blindly support TLJ without seeing how bleak and uninteresting Johnson's origin for Rey and Snoke makes the SW universe. I didn't have theories. I'm not made because it didn't play out a certain way. I'm just mad about how it played out.
Great post. I see it posted a lot here, but (and I hope I don't sound like a broken record) Knights of the Old Republic 2 seems to have at least played this idea of "whack-a-mole" better. I don't think the idea of the force trying to balance itself, is necessarily is wrong since there is a clip of George Lucas even saying that the events of the galaxy seem to repeat over time: hero getting their hand cut off, hero born in some outer rim desert planet, dark always rising to challenge the light, etc. At least Kreia in KoTOR 2 saw that Jedi and Sith conflict would lead to an endless cycle of genocide and warfare and tried to kill the force itself. There are faults in her actions and it may be a case of a broken clock being right twice a day, but we are left with few options. Another option I would argue, is that what Kylo said was right: "let the past die". Kill the past, not necessarily through murder but do not spread the Jedi or Sith teachings, the problem is this may require book burnings (thanks Yoda!) and suppression of ideas and free speech. Even if you mess up, someone is apparently going to rise up and counter it. You make a great point as to why this a bleak and unsettling concept for anyone in the Star Wars galaxy. It also takes away much of the tension as a film because things will always get better and then worse. A more troubling concern is that will planet destroying weapons eventually the Star War galaxy will wither away till all the habitable planets are gone since the dark side will always rise. I don't see Rey's motivation for keeping the cycle going.
F Baxter I really don't mind playing around with stuff a little in the EU. There's so much wiggle room in there. I just got this impression that they inserted the self balancing force thing in there so Disney can have infinite storylines. It's just a bummer because the heroes never have a happily ever after.
Remember that it was the middle chapter, not the final. The final conclusion to that concept, the answer still has time to be answered and should be answered in episode 9. I believe that the moral in TLJ was that extremism is not beneficial. That sith and Jedi are wrong and the way of the grey jedi might be what Rey and those who follow her must choose to balance the force.
Part of that is because in reality there never is a completely happy ending. There will always arise another problem. The original trilogy caps off with the destruction of the Empire, but as seen throughout human history, the resulting power vacuum always results in others rising to take that spot. The idea of the Force balancing was already somewhat established in the prequels with the prophecy.
I felt from the day I watched it in theaters that it was designed basically to completely ignore everything that had just been set up for this trilogy for no real reason other than to subvert expectations, which isn't necessarily a bad thing if it is done well. However, there is a reason that most stories tend to play out along familiar paths and that is because they work and are easily understandable without needing to watch a dozen different videos and read a dozen different interviews to know what the story is supposed to mean. That aside, TLJ also had so many plot holes and bad character logics that just hurt the entire experience.
Just saw this and I 100% agree with this guy, the whole movie is basically projected bad guy, but actually the realist and the one who wants to be a hero, but is actually a hypocrite in a way.
Another big problem, that is highlighted through the clips shown in this video, is that Rian's ideas are conveyed to us not through the story, but a bunch of speeches. The heroes that we met in TFA - Rey, Finn and Poe - just get constantly lectured by everyone else - Luke, Leia, Snoke, Kylo, Rose, Benecio Del Toro. A lot of the time the substance of these speeches overlaps between completely different characters. It's like they're all reading from Rian's The Last Jedi Cliff Notes or something. It's all so on-the-nose, preachy and devoid of genuine character. I'm all for films having themes, but the handling of them in this film is clunky as hell.
I went in on Day 1 expecting a 10/10 as the reviews had said. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine Rian Johnson had created a franchise killer that was actually worse than Phantom Menace. I left the theatre more angry than I had ever been after watching a movie.
Saaaame. I was so excited. It’s sad because even if the rise of skywalker is a 10/10 SW movie, the trilogy is still 6/10. And if it’s a 7/10, than the trilogy is a 4/10.
I remember the early buzz was "as good as ESB." But......not. even. close. Worst entry in the entire franchise. It's an insulting movie that only gets worse on repeat viewings. The Ewok tv specials were better.
J Fett alright I wouldn’t go that far. The Ewok TV movies are pretty bad haha. I mean the holiday special is unwatchable. But yeh definitely the worst movie that was released in theaters
That's why I am boycotting all future Star Wars productions by Disney until they get some top notch screenwriters in on the game. Maybe CHristopher Nolan could do something interesting with the franchise.
Kotor 2 did the morally grey area way better than anything else I‘ve seen from Star Wars and yet, not many seem to talk about or even care. And it also had one of the most deep characters (Kreia) in Star Wars history! Here‘s a rundown of her beliefs and character with spoilers of course: Kreia or Darth Treia was once a powerful Jedi who later turned to the dark side only to be betrayed and left in between the dark & light. While talking about her past as a Sith she says, "To be united by hatred is a fragile alliance at best." Anyway, she grew to hate the force for what it did and would continue to do to the galaxy with “good” always fighting “evil” & people suffering in between the two. Sometimes there would be times where the “good guys” ruled the galaxy and vice versa. Later on, she goes on to say, “A Jedi without the force is weaker then someone who has lived without it.”-Kreia This quote should have made me realise sooner, that what she was working toward throughout the entire game was to do something with the force; perhaps change it. But instead she tries to destroy the force all together, no more Jedi nor Sith, nor “good” vs. “evil” only what is/was able to remain without it. I wish that there were more characters like Kreia who really got people thinking, or changing their perceptions on what truly is good or evil. And I doubt that Obsidion Entertainment will get chances quite like this in the future. P.S......Sorry for the wall of text. And please correct me if I’m wrong it’s been a while.
Thank you for mentioning Kreia. For anyone wondering, there is an awesome 2 hour long video explaining her philosophy in details /watch?v=-Z0S0Z8lUTg Just throving some UNEXPECTED SUBVERSIVE IDEAS!!! is never enough, one also have to make a good work of it.
Problem is that Rian spent too much script time telling the audience that this Star Wars universe will no longer rehash the original Star Wars trilogy, rather than creating a story that simply did that without any posturing. TLJ is a Star Wars film written by a weak-willed scaredy-cat without cinematic study.
The old saying "Show, don't tell." never rang more true than with this movie. Old sayings never die. By trying to kill the past, Rian Johnson confirmed the knowledge of the past.
What's worse... Rian _did_ rehash the OG Star Wars with walkers assaulting a a rebel base, and the protagonist going to a remote planet to study under a master and going into a "mystic cave" to have a vision.
It just makes me sad really. They could have been so much more. Star Wars has such a rich history, in pop culture and in-universe lore. They made some decent characters, and as seen, have had access to the original cast, so why did they fail so poorly in the the writing. How did the same company that produced Rouge One, a spin-off, get such a poor team for the primary films. It seems the best content since the original trilogy has been the side media: Books, shows, games. At least there's Fallen Order & The Mandalorian for now. I can only hope and assume that side content will continue to persevere with quality.
Agree 100%. Rey's refusal to let the old die was especially frustrating considering she had *already* turned Ren down in The Force Awakens. Why hit the same plot beat again in the next film? It's an anti-character arc.
How is that the same plot beat when Kylo Ren had nothing to tempt her with in TFA?
to make room for a 3rd movie. if JJ Abrams continues that plotline
Furthermore, at what point does someone realistically refuse an offer to not only rule the galaxy, but to improve it? Luke had the exact same offer from Darth Vadar, and could have done the exact same, tearing down the pre-existing boundaries and setting up a balanced government.
But no in both cases because "Hurr Durr, I am a good guy, as such I am immune to both power lust and logic".
I honestly thought that was what they were going to do. :\
p.s. love your channel. saw your dog build tier vid and had a question. Where is our canine support builds vid? ;D
He offered her teaching her about the force.
He didnt have anything to tempt here in TLJ, either. The whole plot around her trusting her abuser and kidnaper didnt make a lot of sense.
Disney :"Let the past die",
Makes a han solo prequel the next year
Rian Johnson decided that. Bob Iger isn't going around writing the scrips for every movie Disney makes.
Krombopulos Michael , Disney execs would have read that script a million times
Disney: "Let the past die"
Makes two movies that ripoff entire scenes/plot points from the Original Trilogy
But Disney has been pushing this lie about letting go of the past since the deep sized the EU. Yet they still turn around and ape off the old at EVERY turn. So yeah they’re full of shit.
StrippedBlackTie Disney has an infinite amount of resources. They don't deserve any breaks or "oh they didn't have a chance to stop it". No there is no excuse. They could have easily said no to the script. Mark Hamill HATED the script day one, and would be enough for me to delay the movie and start over for one. For two they should have had a plan for these films before they even made 7. Rian admitted Disney didn't have a structure and just let JJ and then Rian do whatever they wanted with ZERO oversight.
They don't deserve sympathy for purposely not giving a fuck about their brand. Maybe LucasFilm is the one to blame and Disney thought they could handle themselves like with Marvel. But at the end in my eyes whoever is running the show has done a REALLY shitty job with this trilogy so far. I know so many kids who couldn't care less about star wars anymore. It's sad.
Rian Johnson *Hits blunt: what if we make the new movie about subverting expectations so much that we subvert the subversions we created.
This is my favorite comment.
D&D did the same as well
Disney: Dew it!!
"We could call it Subverseception..." *hits blunt again*
Wouldn't this bring it back to the original expectations again?
Snoke to Ben: "You're no Vader."
Me: And you're no Palpatine either.
LMAO 😂😂😂
Snoke would've been like "yeah, I'm his master"
Oh snap
speaking of star wars being creatively bankrupt - the emperor is back............................
You're half the man he was
Snoke is Palpatine, or a vessel for Palpatine
"What's to blame for this re-emergence of evil?
Bad writing.
TrueUnderDawgGaming ye that line also struck me; its not like the movie gave a real reason for the dark side re-emerging (besides appearantly the universal balance between good and evil ?)
I really wanted to hear that they explained it somehow as that the Rebellion became Anarchistic and basically destroyed everything. Leaving a massive power vacum and massive economic decline that when the New Order popped up and said it was basically the same as the Empire but less murdery then people basically flocked in droves to it while what's left of the rebellion was seen as a terrorist group. The 0.5 Prequel that came out not to long ago perfectly set it all up so that murderous groups of rebels would kill indiscriminately and would just purge Empire allied towns.
Hell, it would of been amazing to see Luke knowing that the Dark Side and Light Side are impossible to destroy having it blow up in his face when he tries to teach a new generation of both light and dark side users who could use their inner control to become Grey like in the old republic books.
Joey Enochs what you just described here has a name… P L O T H O L E.
José Juvenal Dávila I do write a lot. I wonder if I could remake the story and post a video about my own cannon and how it fixes everything.
The destruction of the Expanded Universe.
Snoke gets Darth Mauled before we know anything about him. In other words, he gets Darth Mauled.
😅😅
Snoke was a dimestore palpatine to begin with. I wish he stayed dead. And palpatine too for that matter...
Maul's actually a pretty compelling character if you watch The Clone Wars and Rebels.
@@danmenard6917 But not in the movies.
At least we got to see Maul be badass before he got chopped in half.
"What's to blame for the resurgence of evil?" (the rise of the First Order).... The corporate decision to just to remake a new empire and rebellion so they could sell Storm Troopers, Tie Fighters, and X Wings in a millennial era reboot. And make them into toys and theme park rides.
The existence of The First Order and an under dog rebellion makes ZERO SENSE after the original Trilogy.
Rob Weissman agreed. Fighting the EXACT same war after 30 years! Everything achieved, even character development! Han just being a smuggler again.
Rob Weissman and to add, at least TFA has a time gap excuse. TLJ deliberately SHAT on TFA’s progress! No way should the First Order be on inevitability of controlling the whole galaxy MOMENTS after TFA.
Lol look up Thrawn
So after return they were premature with the added celebration
@@NoobNoobNews murderrobble?
I knew something was wrong the moment Mark Hamill said in an interview Rian was taking Luke in a direction he didn’t agree with, but he tried his best to work with that vision. That right there told me things were going to be bad, but I had no idea until I saw it.
No, shyte! What the Fudge would Mark Hamil know about Luke or Star Wars? ...............Oh, wait............
Agreed Neil
@@Nomadistar His opinion is only as valid as yours or mine. He played a character that he didn't create or write lines for, I honestly couldn't care less what Mark thinks of Luke Skywalker.
@@BabysitterSky but the new movies still suck, regardless of Hamil's opinions.
@@BabysitterSky Creating the character and writing lines for them has no bearing on how that character is portrayed. Take Heath Ledgers Joker for example. Definitely didn't write the character. Definitely portrayed it with his own character. If you want to completely reboot the series and have a different Skywalker, then great, portray them different, but if it's the same series, with the same actor, you should have consistent characters
If you are going to act like you are throwing the old stuff away at least have the balls to stick with the change at the end of the movie.
The story isn't over yet.
Ewan the movie sure is though.
Just because they went back on "let the first order kill and enslave everyone" doesn't mean they went back on everything.
Ewan no, but them reaffirming every old motif by falling back on them because they were to afraid to make a movie that was actually different. They just made one that yells, "look how different I am.", while shamelessly being the exact same thing. And if there is development to be had and it is just in then next movie then it is stretching the story so thin that we have an unsatisfactory conclusion to a movie for the sake of the franchise.
And the fans are just gonna hate it even more. The reason that The Last Jedi was hate so much by the audience is not because of some poorly excuse philosophical ideology but rather that it already diverse too much from what they expect. Sure mot people complained about the repetitiveness of Episode 7 but the true is the majority of us can not handle sudden change. From what I can piece together from director interviews, if Disney let Rian Johnson has free reign I think he gonna stick with his vision which no doubts gonna make SW fans hate him even more!
I'm so pissed off by The Last Jedi that I've spent more time watching youtube reviews about it than the duration of the movie itself
(very good reviews by the way. Thank you guys for bringing justice so cleverly)
Agreed. After that abortion of a movie I had to give myself that same catharsis. I assume you've found MauLer's review, as well as his exhaustive 4.5h analysis.
In case you hadn't run across it, I also found the take down from misanthropony amusing.
It's why I boycott Solo and every other new Disney Star Wars movie. Let the box office take down this devastation of a once beloved story universe.
@@nickreeve7052 and the 2 hour bonus video hidden in the description of part 3.
@@nickreeve7052 If have the patience to watch a 4.5 hour nitpick session by an english pedant, you are probably the biggest fan of the last jedi but don't want to admit it, you are so desperate to find reasons to hate the film you have to spend hours watching videos of other people desperate to explain why they hate it that result in exhausting marathons of bullshit.
Jarvid Videodram or maybe he wants to hear other people's opinions about why they thought the last Jedi sucked? So he's not allowed to listen to other people's opinions to better formulate guys own? If he loved the last Jedi he wouldn't have watched all those videos to try and convince himself to hate it. Why would anyone do that? He's watching analysis videos for a movie he didn't like so he could understand why he didn't like it
The Last Jedi's problem isn't that it's 'too ballsy'. The film had no balls at all.
Leia dies? Nope, saved at the last minute.
Finn dies? Nope, saved at the last minute.
Rey has an interesting back story that sheds light on her character? Nope.
Rey turns to the dark side? Nope, she's perfect.
Finn and Rose's mission has important consequences? Nope, it has no impact on the story at all.
Poe learns to be a leader? Nope, he's stripped of his position, talked down to and left with nothing to do.
Akbar dies heroically and meaningfully? Nope, dies off-screen. Mentioned once in passing.
Snoke established as a menacing character? Nope, killed almost immediately.
Kylo Ren made redeemable? Nope, turns out he's determined to be as evil as possible without real reason.
DJ's views on neutrality explored? Nope, turns out capitalism is just evil.
Luke placed in danger? Nope, it was all an illusion.
Luke dies meaningfully? Nope, Luke fades away without cause or reason.
The story progresses to the next stage of their journey? Nope, at the end of TLJ the heroes are in the same position as they were at the start of the film - on the run from the First Order, except a few extras died in between.
Ultimately, The Last Jedi is about nothing, goes nowhere and contributes nothing to the series. As a film it is a storytelling disaster - literally just two and a half hours of stuff happening.
So what you're saying is Disney spending a crap ton of money to take its most venerable franchise and make a host of changes that were sure to be polarizing to its core fanbase...was the safe thing to do?
@ Orion Slaver...Wrong about 1 thing..Kylo is responding to his peers because they fail him..His Master "Uncle" , Luke tried to kill him in his sleep without telling him anything...Snoke shocked the crap out of him for nothing...(he just killed his dad for him) So he wants to kill them for that reason..About Leia, Kylo holds back from shooting...About Luke, lol yea pretty much...Rey spends almost the whole movie swinging a lightsaber at rocks on an Australian Island...Finn and Rose ppl unimportant, get more shine than Luke..or Leia..
Poe stays inside the ship with Leia 2nd half of the movie...and then stays in a cave then the ship again the last few mins of the movie
You are wrong about 1 thing. Rey is swing her lightsaber at rocks on Skellig Michael Island in Ireland.
Orion Slaver nicely put. The most successful thing the last Jedi did was be a complete disaster.
Rian Johnson "Let thr past die, kill it if you have to"
Disneys first trailer for Episode 9 "hey, remember all these old star wars movies that got you to love star wars?! Well, it's now the entire first half of our trailer!"
it's almost like rian johnson didn't make the ninth movie
It’s almost like the bad guy said that and it wasn’t meant to be the moral of the movie
@@wm2429 like thats totally not the hack director putting his subvert trope hat on and speaking thru a character thats an expy of the previous bad guy from the more coherent trilogy. Sure, it aint probably aint a moral, because the movie has no balls to follow it through anyways.
CavalierHorseman91 I don’t get how Kylo wanting to burn everything down is a trope subversion. Isn’t that what Anakin wanted to do in the prequels? And nobody calls it a trope subversion in that trilogy
@@wm2429 Thats because everybody already knows going in that Anakin was going to yeet on the Jedi order anyways in the Prequels, like the Originals already told us he will? Bear in mind that Anakin burns down only the Jedi, he joined the Sith afterwards. Kylo said fuck everything, Jedi AND Sith. That you can call a subversion since his motivations are completely fresh in the SW universe, where the status quo is Jedi vs Sith, no third way. Here we had a chance for something really memorable, who knows what fresh stories could have opened up if Rey took Kylos hand? Buuut no, Rian J had to take off his subvert hat and have Rey deny being something interesting a second time.
Had Rey actually taken Kylo's hand and then we cut to credits, I think this mess of an interesting but flawed movie would actually have some REAL hype built up for Ep9. But no, gotta get to salt hoth.
iT's SaLt
Yep, this is true. And no need for Deus ex Palpatine.
I heard that the ending were different than the director's concept because Disney asked, don't know, but... It's quite possible...
Henrique Souza I think there’s definitely some studio mandates. Like Rian Johnson previous films never have this much comedy beats.
J Truts completely agreed
This movie attemps to do what Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords did. And at first I thought it was great because of that. But the game did it so much better, even as incomplete as it was on release. I wish the movie stuck to its guns in the third act, because then I wouldn't have slowly come to realise just how disappointing TLJ really is.
Kylo Ren < Kreia
Andres Arancio Kylo Ren a cheap version of Darth Revan
KOTOR 2 is the best Star Wars story ever made
except he's not Revan. Revan was made a good guy and decided that the armies he lead were evil and it was up to him to let them die. The republic didn't change, nothing that Revan likely rebelled against was dealt with and it was still the same.
Kylo though realized the flaws in both sides.
Except Lightside was the canon ending. Which is stupid because the Dark Side was not only more interesting. But would have fit later developments more.
I've said it elsewhere and I'll say it again, a character like Kreia, and your interactions with her, from KotOR II is how you do a proper subversion of the light/dark philosophy in Star Wars.
Agreed
Kyle katarn too
So TLJ could have been an absolute genius movie. Too bad it was filled with so much goofy, boring and cheesy shit.
What if Ryan Johnson wanted to create a very dark, subversive movie that gave birth to the Gray Jedi Order, completely eliminating the "good guy / bad guy" concept, but Disney didn't let him, and we are stuck blaming the wrong guy for the shit show that was ultimately given to us? 😱
that would certainly subvert my expectations
Still a bad movie.
No one can deny Rian's skills he just poorly miscalculated TLJ
I don't think the fanbase was ready for it. I absolutely think that was his goal though. And honestly his points about the Jedi and the nature of the force, it not being a superpower, and the flaws of the Jedi are all valid. I think the reason the fanbase reacted the way it did is simply because of the specific way that Luke got to the conclusions. There is a camp of fans that can see Luke being tempted to briefly kill Ben, and then there is one that simply cannot. Both sides have their arguments, but ultimately that one scene takes away the rest of the movie for the camp that can't see him doing it. Even if he redeems himself in the end and is more woke about the Jedi than any Jedi ever has been. Nothing else matters, because to them, their hero has been assassinated. Which is a shame, because humans are so much more nuanced than that. And the direction Rian wanted to take the force/Jedi is desperately needed. Star Wars can't continue relying on nostalgia and fan-service if it is going to stay relevant. Rian recognized that, but unfortunately you cannot work for a large corporation and take risks lol. It's honestly amazing that TLJ even got made given all the risks it took. I think if Rian had written 9 and taken his ideas to conclusion, we'd look at TLJ as the masterpiece of this trilogy.
@@gatorarman12 nah, even on its own it’s dumb. I agree that you can’t keep remaking the old ones. But the premise of the film remains bad and illogical, the plot goes nowhere, the characters are badly writen and the list goes on
KOTOR II (with extra content mods) did the “nuance in Star Wars” thing 8 billion times better than Rian could ever dream of.
What a sad game, so many awesome things about it but it was released to damn broken it got forgotten till people fixed it...loved turning everyone to the dark side especially the handmaiden lol.
I think these meditations work far better as side stories than in the main sequence of films. KotOR 2 remains my favorite piece of EU content.
Very true.
It is entirely possible to make completely new takes on the old story.
This movie simply wanted to subverse our vision of the old trilogy... and nothing else.
That was my main issue watching the movie. It looks good, even if it doesn't flow well, but ultimately goes nowhere with itself.
KOTOR II not only took an entirely new look on the universe (people can live without the Force, Force monsters exist, good and evil aren't as simple as one might think) but expanded the lore in a good way.
This movie is a renegade, simply casting off the past away and doing nothing but that.
knights of the old republic
there good but somethings have not aged well but i would recommend or watch a lets play to see if it is for you.
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (I and II) - is a WRPG made by (I) Bioware and (II) by Obsidian ent. Don't confuse with SW: The Old Republic which is a MMORPG by Bioware.
I wasn't able to finish the film. Also, Rose Tico's decision to block Finn's Heroic Sacrifice at the COST OF EVERYONE ELSE'S LIVES was one of the dumbest things I'd ever seen, especially when it's treated like a victory, and Rose's sister, Paige, who sacrificed herself to take out the Star Destroyer in the beginning, would likely have been insulted by the whole thing.
People do dumb things for love. She was being selfish, which made it interesting.
Interesting, but if anyone should have got a dressing down for doing something stupid that cost lives, that character should have. Poe sacrificed many lives for a Pyrrhic victory against the Order. He was immediately chastised and demoted for it. Rose sacrificed hundreds lives to save ONE. What punishment did she face?
I don't think anybody died when the door was blown open, so technically she didn't sacrifice anyone. The Resistance died on the transports that were blown up.
It's makes even less sense when you think about her character. Her sister sacrificed her life for the rebellion and she tazed Finn for wussing out. But then she stops him from saving lives because she fell in love with him after 2 seconds... please...
ok...would you rather...watch TLJ or BvS:DoJ?
Though I have my criticisms, I must congratulate you and the Wisecrack team for making the writing seem more intelligent and inspired than it was probably originally intended.
This review - while clearly well presented, well thought our and very clever, manages a positive spin through Jungian thought and deep reading background. All in all a very considered and intelligent review. Sadly, I believe the review to be wasted because all evidence suggests that the film being reviewed (Last Jedi) id not within sight of the intelligence level of this review, not within sight of the quality, the thought, the study, the background, even the writing of this review.
I doubt that the makers of Last Jedi, writers, producers, production company (read Johnson, Kennedy Disney) could understand this 401 level review of a less than 101 level production. Sad really - the money spent to make the effects look good was well spent...the production in writing, story development, characterization and surprise subversion was completely over ruled by political correctness, social justice warrior, hyper feminism (a trend in Hollywood recently with the feminization of many great movies from the past - unsurprisingly not as successful as the makers would hope), and 'progressive' leftist social, political, and oppressive agenda which takes away the enjoyment levels of the fans of the original trilogy...
I genuinely thought this comment was satire but I think you're just an edgelord chud
Kekoapono hahaha, bravo madam
Frank Kopke - I am not so sure - the movie does throw in some dubious tones you're not expecting in a SW movie, like this review points out. It hints at a lot of grey in what used to be simple black and white. And this is good (it's a theme that has been present in popular culture for many years, and SW had been immune to it).
The film actually does try to do what this review suggests IMO. I get the feeling though that where Rian Johnson wanted it to go was at odds with Disney marketers who really want the bad guys to shout and the good guys to hug and that is all. everything about Daisy Ridleys performance suggests she is turning towards the dark side and everything about Adam Drivers suggests he is coming towards the light. the baffling thing about this movie is how it is all walked back at the conclusion leaving us with an unconvincing good guy and an unconvincing bad guy. I would suggest that this is Disney messing around with the artistic visions of many writers on the new films who really see that this is the only way forward for the franchise given the story it has told thus far. The Heros Journey is a little too complex for the mouse. the mouse makes its money pouring schmaltz over the surprisingly complex psycho-mythological narratives of fairy tales after all.
the problem when you try to "subvert expectations" is you end up writing to SPITE the story instead of writing to TELL the story. This is literally the first lesson in writing and its disappointing that highly paid professionals cannot grasp this concept
Well said. RJ did not "progress" the story, or take it in "unexpected" directions...he cut off all the interesting mysteries and story lines JJ set up with TFA. That is just lazy writing. RJ obviously could not come up with anything creative and had little knowledge of SW mythos so he just negated all the questions. I've read fan fiction better than TLJ (and TFA).
@@Caravaggio44 Not only did he fail to do anything creative, the story literally ends EXACTLY how it begins: with the Resistance on the run.
This is why Rey's parents being junkies who sold her for drinking money failed because rather than use it to tell a new story they did it just to surprise us and as soon as the scene ended Rey went back to what she was before making the whole thing pointless in the end.
rhizomeman but how did he cut off the things done in TFA. TLJ actually ended up carrying over a lot of elements from the previous films but people like to imagine he subverted for the sake of subverting
@@DerpaTure9503 Kylo lacks a menacing aura that a main villain like Snoke, Vader and Palpatine has, I wouldn't mind Luke having flaws if they made sense and didn't contradict his character from the original trilogy and the thing with Rey that anyone can be great is that it was already established with many Jedi's and Sith's that the force chooses people randomly and bloodlines didn't mean anything all this time so the excuse for Rey falls flat on it's face.
It's kind of interesting how many Ideas were brought up in the film.
But none of them work, because Rian wasn't interested in telling a story.
That's pretty much how I saw it. His goal was to use SW as a platform to tell us white--basement-dwelling--sexist--incel fanboys how much he doesn't like us.
@@zacharyhutchison4006 I hate any man who comments adversely on my lifestyle and forces me to think outside the lens I view my life through.
@@Jabulaya So a critic then? I hate pretentious people.
@@Jabulaya ray was the only strong female not completely wasted in the films. Phasma played by a terrific actress had less then 4 minutes between both films. roses only impactful part of the last Jedi was keeping Finn from sacrificing himself everything else could be removed. leia had one moment then was out cold. Holdo wasted so much time and energy with the secret plan stuff. its not female characters we hate its wasted characters that we hate. was their a reason they had to destroy Luke's character to have strong females?
@@Jabulaya I hate sanctimonious, disingenuous cucks.
You don't have to kill the past to make progress.
you don't kill it, you learn from it
And there in lies the reason people are angry. Not that they can't accept a new understanding of the force or we only ever want Skywalkers in our movies. We wanted a gradual moving on from the original trilogy. If Kylo is a representation of the audience and our "worship" of the old trilogy, then the smart and respectful way to handle things, would be for Kylo's whole entire arc throughout the trilogy to be a gradual stepping away from the Vader worship. Thus, we would slowly move on from the OT. Instead we get Kylo worshiping Vader one moment and 5 hours later be like, Vader, Vader who? Essentially telling the audience to get over it. And because the message of Kill the past, is the one given the most emphasis. We the audience are left insulted.
"Building the future AND keeping the past alive are one and the same thing."
Hideo Kojima
"If a temple is to be erected, a temple must be destroyed."
Nietzsche
@Baraka Nietzsche is eternally recurring.
If The Last Jedi ends with Rey joining Kylo Ren, then there would still be some interest in Episode 9. Once Rey rejected Kylo's offer to join him, everything went back to square one, minus all the interesting elements. Why do we care about Star Wars anymore?
Up until she rejected his offer, I was actually thinking Rey would end up as the bad guy and Kylo would've have been the good guy.
They could have done some interesting things with both characters that would have justified all of the weird/inconsistent choices in the writting. Too bad. I always liked Kylo even when others were hating on him. I actually think there is potential in Rey too, if they would just do something with her character arc (she is literally the same character at the end of TLJ as she was in the beginning of TFA)
You know why she messed everything up? She's a fucking Mary Sue. Even worse than Alice from Resident Evil.
I also thought about the idea of Rey ending up as the evil one. But honestly at that point in TLJ, when she declined... the film had already destroyed so much, (for me) her response didn't even matter.
For something totally unrelated: the comments above me have been written
1 hour ago
1 day ago
1 week ago, and
1 month ago. What are the chances of that happening?
Alex Chia
Because... Feminism. Or something.
No genuine fan of Stars wars does. This new trilogy is a Mary Sue Space chronicles.
I just feel like this whole new trilogy has no lovable and memorable characters.
I shed a tear when the Elite Praetorian Guards were murdered by Rey and Kylo. Damn those beautiful red-armored bastards.
I think Kylo will be the only one that's really remembered from the sequels
@@buzzkill753 I can see that.
Dude, come on, Kylo is amazing, Poe and Rey are pretty good, Finn could be awesome but just fell off the wagon
What about C-3PO though????
*The dark side in the OT:* The quick and easy way to power.
*The light side in the OT:* The long, arduous journey, where one must shed their ties to loved ones, and everything else.
*Kylo Ren (current dark side):* Trains for decades under two of the most potent teachers in the galaxy, gives up his bonds with his parents in order to become what he perceives to be the strongest version of himself.
*Rey (Current light side):* Can do everything she tries better than who we’ve been told are “the most skilled at this thing in the galaxy” on her first try, every time, and literally never trained in any of it.*
Why the f*ck do you think Kylo Ren is so many people’s favorite character now? Because we certainly can’t relate to Rey, Rian. We’re not supposed to root against the main god damn character, you and your subversions created the single thing you’re fundamentally not supposed to allow to happen between audiences and a film, to be the only thing that *could* happen between audiences and your film.
Spencer Whiteway Sure that's what they said in the OT, but let's be honest Luke learned about the force for 5 minutes then used it to blow up the death star by hitting and exhaust port that was less than 2 meters wide
I'm really goddamn tired of people blaming TFA's fuck-ups on Rian Johnson. Literally anything to do with Rey's character being OP and unrelatable, or Luke Skywalker being out of character from his past heroic self, or the Resistance being boring or the First Order being a rehash or Phasma being disposable... all of that is a consequence of Abrams' nostalgia-fest of a setup. Johnson had no choice but to stick with that setup in order to make this film.
michael coyle *with Obi-Wan's obvious crucial assist. And Han and Chewie's. And Luke _looks_ very lucky and more like a conduit for the divine will of the Force.
Michael, That's misleading. Even though the force was with Luke he didn't use it, the force itself step up to help.
Obroa, even though I agree that the sequel had bad luggage from TFA I don't think Rian had no choice (maybe Disney didn't give him the choice but that is different) Luke could be an hermit without being out of character, Phasma could have had better spotlight, and the resistence didn't need to be trash. The first order is still undoubtedly a rehash though.
654pedro123 The Resistance could have focused on its connection to the New Republic rather than downplaying that in favor of depicting it outright as the reborn Rebel Alliance; but again, that's a legacy of TFA. It and Phasma weren't going to be redeemed unless Johnson actively took the time to improve them, time he chose instead to use on Luke. *Luke* absolutely had no way forward except to be different; as a hermit in the middle of the First Order's ascension, a position he was in *purely* because JJ wanted Old Ben 2.0, Luke had to either be the same exact hero who inexplicably ran out on his friends because plot, or he needed a reason. Johnson gave him a damn good reason.
"That's not how the Force works!" - Nicely sums up the entire film.
Well to be perfectly honest, in my humble opinion, of course without offending anyone who thinks differently from my point of view, but also by looking into this matter in a different perspective and without being condemning of one's view's and by trying to make it objectified, and by considering each and every one's valid opinion, I honestly believe that I completely forgot what I was going to say.
something something something darksied...
good one
there's sincerity in your words that moved me to tears.
you are going to change the world!
Copypasta...
K Ogbonna ...
...you make some very startling points, maybe you should run for government office...I got some things to think about now.
Is no one gonna mention Disney execs saying no Rian you can’t have the good guy join the bad guy, that’s too complicated.
At least we got knives out, the real Rian Johnson subversion movie
You’re gonna blame this on the Disney execs?? Uh, rian wrote this buddy.
@@mikekasabion well, he couldn't write whatever he wanted. The movie should have standards. Standards dictated by Disney/executives.
"You have creativity to write, but must follow our concepts".
@@traskulgo True. But firstly: After the movie came out, Rian still praised it and attacked fans. He didn't seem like someone upset he couldn't write what he wanted too. He also apparently signed on to a trilogy that we'll probably never see. Point is, he seemed happy with the final product.
Secondly: The movie still suffered DRASTICALLY at a fundamental level. Just focusing on the subversion and change in the series direction is fine? But you can't ignore the poor comedy, awful scenes, iffy dialogue, messy characters, etc. Sure, the weird flip flop in direction is...weird. But I never really saw Starwars as anything that deep or intelligent in the first place. I had more of an issue with characters such as Rose's, "love/hate" scene, the Holdo maneuver and her excellent leadership skills, etc.
@@pagatryx5451 WDYM by ‘and attacked fans’.
@@traskulgo From what I understand he was given complete creative freedom. We already know they had pretty much no plan when they started this trilogy.
The idea that the light and dark exist in everyone was already at the heart of the OT. The Empire Strikes Back: Luke: "What's in there?" Yoda: "Only what you take with you." It's in there. It's subtle, but it's there. Vader still has light in him and can be turned because no one is pure good or pure evil. The problem is that Rian Johnson doesn't seem to understand anything that isn't explicitly spelled out in dialogue. We win by saving what we love? That was the core of Luke's character in the OT. But thanks for hitting us over the head with it, Rose. Great force users can come from nothing? That was Anakin, the son of a slave. Don't preach at me, tell me a good story with the proper elements and character growth, and I will get the message.
1. In the OT, The Dark Side is always bad. If you have the darkness in you, you have to suppress it. TLJ's theme that you need to learn to live in balance with it.
2. Anakin wasn't a nobody. WTF. He was the Chosen One. He was literally a virgin birth from the Force. He's Space Jesus.
3. You really shouldn't be saying other people don't understand things that are explictily spelled out in dialogue when you yourself seem to think that Anakin was a nobody when the reason they let him become a Jedi in the first place was because he's the chosen one of prophecy trope personified.
This seems to be one of the reasons people Dislike TLJ. Not because they didn't understand TLJ. But because they didn't really understand the previous Star Wars movies and therefore don't understand what themes are being subverted.
Skyrim Guard - and who did the force choose to have this chosen one? A nobody! Greatness was born to a slave. Not some powerful force user. And who were the parents of all the other Jedi? Since Jedi are supposed to be celibate, we can assume most of them were also born to non-force using parents. Only Luke and Leia have a force using bloodline. So a powerful force user being born to nobodies is 100% already a thing in Star Wars.
Skyrim Guard - to clarify- I didn’t say Anakin was a nobody. I said he was an example of greatness that came from nothing.
The fact that Jedi do have to continually resist temptations to the dark side proves that both light and dark coexist in everyone. Light and dark are not external things, they are internal. Yoda told Luke that once someone goes down the path to the dark side they cannot be redeemed. Luke proved him wrong - that was the whole point of RotJ, that even in the second most evil person in the galaxy, some light, some love and compassion, still existed.
This. This.
Star Wars - "Mr. Lucas.... I don't feel so good."
Lee Bays yes! xD
I thought Lucas kill Star Wars with the prequels?
+TheX2k
It was. People said Star Wars was dead with each of the prequels, and with the CG Clone Wars movie. But billion dollar franchises don't die. Even if some iteration sucks balls like Joel Schumacher Batman, it will be rebooted again in a decade or so. People say that an entire franchise is "dead" to make their own anger and sadness feel important. It's not enough that they didn't like a movie. Whatever they feel has to be what the other hundred million people that saw it feel. People have to project themselves onto the rest of the world to justify how they feel.
With awesome characters like Wui Gon, Tyranus and Grievous?, i don't think so
With the snap of my fingers, I can make half of all fan boys cry.
The last half hour of the movie just shows how hypocritical, pointless and without vision the movie truly is. If the filmmakers actually had the balls to tell a controversial, but meaningful story that could stand on its own, I wouldn't be nearly as disappointed. Last year brought us 2 great examples of that, with Logan and Twin Peaks: The Return. But The Last Jedi backpedals on all its supposed themes to the point where they become meaningless and contradictory. It says "let the past die", yet rips off structure and entire scenes from the OT. It promotes heroic sacrifices, only to reject them in the very next scene. It wants to be profound, but is filled with misplaced immature jokes. It plays with lethality of the situations so much that death loses consequence. It teases morally grey character development, until it resets the conflict back into a clear good vs bad division. It tries to seem bold and experimental, but at the end we're back where we started, only with fewer story options for the future and blander characters.
The Last Jedi is the definition of insecure edginess. It wants so bad to prove its maturity and artistic legitimacy by ridiculing and destroying the old school aspects of the franchise, but in the end it's just superficial shock value with nothing to say and no imagination of its own, conveniently returning to its predictable safe zone when out of ideas.
Nice summary
It's like the makers of this movie didn't realize that Rouge One was coming out so they thought to themselves: "Everybody complained that The Force Awakens was too much like A New Hope, so this time we will only copy certain sections of Empire and Jedi." But, Rouge One didn't go and straight up copied entire sections of the Original Trilogy (Ironically, since it takes place in the same era) so this whole movie just feels like the saga step backwards after it took a step forward.
Are you a movie critic lol spot on.
if only Rey joined Kylo, it would be interesting plot for episode 9..
everything is crumbling, rebels left alone on crait, luke dies, Kylo Rey ruled, no one in the galaxy cares because 'don't join philosophy' from DJ,
these are the points when the past died..
Perfectly stated.
Let the past die!
Film Scroll: "A long time ago, in a galaxy far away..."
If you're not with me then you're my enemy!
@@DerpaTure9503 Forgive me but what does ST stand for?
@@DerpaTure9503 ah thanks
Everything he did would have been fine, if he didn't shit on every single question that the previous movie posed. Like what was the whole point of episode 7 then
What wasn't answered from The Force Awakens? I actually thought Force Awakens was fairly dull, but I don't think it exists solely to ask questions that get answered later.
To make a shit ton of money and reassert the value of Star Wars as an IP while setting up a bunch of new characters.
slamandjam2 the last jedi was a really good film. Not sure what people are complaining about?
I dont think it was.. I just pick one thing randomly. In TFA, we are supposed to believe that Luke has left a part of the map that will show is new location, in order to find him, bring him back into the battle. In TLJ, Luke says he came to that nowhere place to die... why leave a part of the map to be found then? I mean, it is inconsistent...
They had nothing interesting with Snoke.
Rian Johnson didn't want to make a Star Wars movie. Unfortunately, he was making a Star Wars movie.
That's a great way of putting it.
@@tomgnau Except it's a lie.
You seem to have completely missed the point of the OT. Luke already WAS the future, he already WAS the change the galaxy and the Jedi Order needed. He was only able to succeed were the old Jedi Order failed precisely because he was something new and different to what had come before. He was literally A NEW HOPE.
Obi-Wan and Yodi spent the entire OT telling Luke that he couldn't save Vader and the only option was to kill him. Luke subverted and proved them wrong by doing the exact opposite. The PT only served to further show us how different Luke was to the old Jedi.
That's part of the problem with TLJ and blind fanboy defenses of how "too ballsy" it was like this video. It completely disregards what happened in the OT and the PT or twists them to fit the story they want to tell.
No, wisecrack is right, but is not rian johnson problem but Disney and Abrhaman one by going with the "nazi in argentina" idea.
By making things equal it undersell luke strugle and give to Rey, who them was supused to somehow make things better than luke by......dunno.
Yang the Magician I don't think Wisecrack was saying the movie failed because it was ballsy but rather because they didn't commit to it. They tried to revolutionize the franchise but at the end just gave up and didn't commit to anything. This combined with bad writing by Rian made the movie bad. The idea was good tho. If there was another writer working on the script TLJ could have been a lot better.
Yang the Magician You basically saying Luke undermining the value of jedi in TLJ was the right thing. Therefore widecrack is right
The Sequels be like: "Nah fuck that, Luke is a failure who got nothing done. Forget the Skywalkers and everything they went through to make things right, Rey is the new New Hope who's gonna _really_ bring balance to the Force."
Exactly. They are writing Rey as the change that Luke was supposed to be. They are rehashing the same story beats when what they could have done was continue with Luke as the main character and have him question the ways of the Jedi.
This is a really good analysis. Ever since I watched this horrorshow of a movie, all I could tell myself is "you know what? even with all the flaws, this movie could have been salvaged if at that critical moment, Rey joined Kylo". And now you helped me figure out why I felt this way! :) Incredibly accurate.
That would have been an interesting and non-idiotic subversion of expectations with all kinds of potential to make the rest of the trilogy more absorbing, so naturally there is no way Rian Johnson would have thought of it. Depicting a female character as immoral or imperfect would also not have flied with anyone in charge.
One thing that is overlooked is Snokes line: “Darkness Rises and Light to meet it...” Theres a huge issue with this line. The villain is extraordinarily self aware about his villainy and there is no great purpose or motivation provided for the first order or Snoke. Typically in good films, the villain usually doesnt consider themselves evil or villainous, but is instead truly convinced that theyre doing the right thing. In Rian Johnsons story, Snoke is evil for evils sake and nothing more and nothing deeper. This, in my opinion, is a misinterpretation of what the dark side really is. It’s members arent necessarily evil and only evil- theres real meaning behind it for each member, sith, etc.
Once you take the humanity out of a villain and provide them no motivation, meaning, or depth: the audience is left with no theme to connect to. Vader worked because he was multi-faceted: father of the hero, torn between allegiances, former jedi, betrayed Jedi, disrespected by everyone around him (Mace Windu), death of his beloved wife and mother. This gave us something to care about. Most importantly his story was treated with patience and care, giving us even intimate details about who Vader was and why he felt so emotionally connected to the empire.
If Ray is a Mary sue- Snoke is the exact inverse except with improbable incompetency and we're.
This entire story was extraordinarily poorly planned out. It's a flat out mess.
Ian Hom Not that I disagree with your dislike for the movie, but... I mean, Vader and Palpatine talk about how powerful the dark side is, egg Luke on to give in to anger and hatred. I don’t think self-aware villains are new to the franchise.
As Chad said..... yeah, self aware villains are not new. Sidious knew EXACTLY how far off the deep end he was... and he took pride in that. The dark side has always been stated to be addictive in universe and Palpatine was as sadistic as they came, even if Vader fit the more complex motivations you speak of to the letter. By the same token, though, I direct you to another series that handled this seeming contradiction quite well - Fullmetal Alchemist and specifically Kimblee. The guy were VERY well aware that he was, by the definition of most, evil - a mass murderer and willing participant in state sponsored genocide. That said, he simply didn't think like that himself. His world view was one of cold logic - morality simply didn't exist from where he stood, but that didn't stop him from understanding other people and how they might perceive him.
You are on point with it being a problem with the writing, however. The biggest flaw in all of this is we simply don't know anything about Snoke - we have no idea where he came from or what his personal ambitions were, and that's squarely on Disney. More specifically Rian Johnson as there supposedly WAS an intent to flesh Snoke out with time but Rian killed him off pure for shock value.
💯
@@Gouka07 yes, but they have real motivation to join - be it death of a loved one, broken heart, betrayal, etc. 2 movies in and Snoke had no motivation. Ben Solo has no motivation. Maybe some villains are self aware - but what i'm saying is great villains have deep purpose to it than evil for evils sake. Vader was so perfect because we saw 3 prequel movies of his fall to the darkness, and the raw emotions and reasoning behind his decisions and pent up rage . That gave us something to relate to.
@@ianmichael3912 Agreed. They draw their powers from the Dark Side but they do for specific purposes: Palpatine wants to avenge the Sith against the Jedi, bring order to the Galaxy and peace (but on his terms). Darth Vader share his goals, with no family left to protect, supporting his master and keeping the galaxy free of Jedi and peaceful... by whatever means necessary.
When he finds out he has a son, his objectives change: still drawn to the addiction of the Dark Side, he wants Luke to become his new partner (because of the Sith Rule) and overthrown the Emperor, shaping the galaxy to their own views, as father and son. But the conflict is there, the light, and its only perceived because of Luke. Maybe Palpatine could be redeemed, but I think he needed some equivalent necessity, like family or loved ones.
Snoke exists only to destroy the New Republic, identifies himself as evil (Anakin tought the Jedi were evil as Sith) and his apprentice as well... it's just stupid.
My problem with The Last Jedi is that it goes out of it's way to subvert tropes solely for the sake of subverting them. Subverting a trope only works if the subversion is more entertaining or interesting than the trope it's subverting. To give an example: Imagine you're a kid in the month of December. The entire month your parents have been at you getting something really amazing for Christmas and you're really hyped for it. So the morning of Christmas you open your gifts and it's just socks and underwear. In this scenario, your expectations have definitely been subverted but you're still left with something more mundane and boring than what you originally expected. And that's the problem with this movie. Snoke being killed off with no backstory subverted my expectations but it's still boring and poor writing in my opinion. Rey's parents turning out to be a bunch of hicks who abandoned her is far less interesting than finding out she's related to a previously established Jedi (or any force user). Subverting an expectation with a more mundane answer typically only works when it's being played for laughs. If it's meant to be taken seriously then it just comes off as mundane.
"Rey's parents turning out to be a bunch of hicks who abandoned her is far less interesting than finding out she's related to a previously established Jedi"
You'll find that many of the truths we cling to depend greatly on our own point of view.
That's the reason why I stated this as being "My problem" and not "Everyone's problem". That's one of the reasons I think the Last Jedi is a weak movie. If you think it was a brilliant decision that's your opinion but I think it was a stupid decision that spits in the face of the previous movie.
100% agree - it could of been so interesting instead we got a pair of socks... and not colourful ones
Yes, but Disney wanted to destroy the Lucas SW in order to create their own.
a ramirez lol Disney has almost nothing to do with Star Wars. And before you start spitting out what I have seen a thousand times before, no Kathleen Kennedy didn't ruin Star Wars and no Rian Johnson did not ruin Star Wars. Nobody said the prequels ruined Star Wars but they have 10x more agenda and are 10x more garbage than the sequels
This is the most astute Star Wars analysis I've ever heard and you actually found a good use of TLJ rather than just ridiculing it. Excellent video.
I still like shitting on it. It is a bad movie.
I think they took the exact opposite lesson from the movie that they should have. The Last Jedi isn't about reconciling the good and the dark no matter how severe the dark is: Rey accepting Kylo's offer to "rule the galaxy" wouldn't have been a reconciliation the film found "good." Rather, ***the film is a rejection of nihilism in the face of complication*** : Del Toro's character is presented as a warning against exactly that course of action. I think it's totally wrong to use him as the spokesperson for the movie-the movie is condemning him! He's a critique of the Han Solo archetype: the nihilists don't have hearts of gold; they're just narcissists. Meanwhile, Luke's embrace of nihilism is clearly a product of his depression. He couldn't reconcile the weight of his failure and the corresponding responsibility, and so he ran off to an island and convinced himself that nothing matters. The Luke-Rey relationship is a mentor-mentee relationship flipped. It's not Leia that inspires Luke to reverse course-it's Rey: it's her passion that finally jolts him back to reality, and it's Yoda's subsequent discussion with him that gets him realigned: We don't have to be able to understand all the nuances-to read all the books-in order to try to do good. We will inevitably fall short of reaching true goodness, true justice, but the hope is that we lay the ground work for the next generation to get a little further towards that ideal.
There is one character that consistently is a spokesperson for the movie's philosophy, and, of course, she's omitted from this entire video: It's Rose. Rose is the only character who the movie (1) portrays positively, and (2) doesn't significantly change over the movie. (Finn goes from fighting for Rey to fighting for a cause; Rey goes from needing parental figures to standing confidently on her own; Luke goes from dismissing outright the idea that a hero can save the day to, once again, being the hero that saves the day.) Rose says the line that the movie most clearly endorses: "We're going to win this war not by fighting what we hate, but saving what we love." There is a difference between fighting for your ideals and fighting to defeat your enemy. (If you're fighting for your ideals, you'll lose to your enemy before you lose your ideals; if you're fighting to defeat your enemy, you'll sacrifice your ideals in order to do so.) The Last Jedi argues that the world is complicated. That heroes are fallible. That good intentions can lead to bad outcomes. And that we should stick to our ideals and fight for them, anyway.
"The greatest teacher failure is"
That's the message. Not killing the past.
The film says to evolve our systems and ideologies, not to burn them down...
The idea is good, but badly executed. You can't introduce such a theme with a never failing Mary sue character. It's even more ridiculous in a meta sense, as nobody has learned anything as they still fight the never ending war and make the same mistakes as their predecessors. They fail, but never learn from it.
@@KomboAndy well because TROS never followed through on it. They have to keep fighting though, that's the idea.
Throughout history, every successful revolution requires at least a second revolution in order to reach the goal of the original, due to the emergence of anti-revolutionaries and authoritarians highjacking the new world order that was originally fought for, essentially corrupting the system. Think of the second revolution as a sort of "cleaning up the scraps".
Now, did TFA have to make it a 1-1 remake of the OT? No, and I wish JJ had at least a single creative bone in his body.
@@bradneece2409 Yeah, and I think there is a great opportunity in shifting the narrative. They could use it to actually show what it's like after a revolution. To show, how they try to establish order in the aftermath. How the First order is formed. A prequel before VII would put the film in a new context and would give the characters more time to establish and develop them. It would add something instead of repeating it. They could focus more on the characters or different elements then just the war part.
They could borrow from the French revolution (like with the jacobines)
@@KomboAndy ikr, that would've been awesome, but it was kinda squandered. Oh well...
At least we've got Taika Waititi on the next movie, so there's some hope lol
@@bradneece2409 Yeah I'm pretty hiped!
So basically, the thing that KOTOR 2 did ages ago and much better.
yup
No. KotOR2 did it better.
elcidS15 That’s what he said
Charles Patsch My B. I accidentally read that as “ages ago BUT much better” for some reason.
elcidS15 Well there were some people saying that this movie has better writing than KOTOR I & II. Don't worry I fell out of my chair laughing at the stupidity of that statement too.
The movie is bad because the entire plot revolves around a convoluted, improbable chase scenario. I don't understand why everyone focuses on various subversions of expectations, aborted plot threads etc. when the core of the movie is so idiotic and ill-fitting to the Star Wars universe. Two ships locked in a chase, keeping the very same distance for days? A sidestory which revolves around an improvised heist, relying on finding a single person a few star systems away, all WHILE THE CHASE IS GOING ON? A plot resolution which introduces a secret "twist" which is... hey, let's all use escape pods and hope the people chasing us all suddenly go blind? Since when is using escape pods "a strategy", and not, I dunno, a default procedure when somebody's shooting your ship to shit??
McFly you do realise the escape ships had cloaks right ??
MegaCoupie Yes. And magical singing Christmas elves, too.
McFly They literally had a cloaking device so the first order couldn't see them
So small ships now have cloaking devices. Kinda goes against the whole SW universe. I haven't seen TLJ, but why not jump to hyperspace and get in front of them? Reading about this doesn't make any sense in the SW universe.
rizon72 Well of course they couldn't just hyperjump in front of them, or launch a few Tie Bombers and just bomb the crap out of them, because... umm.. the giant invisible Force bubble was stopping them!
"What went wrong?"
*TLJ begins at the EXACT moment TFA ended*
*first words of opening crawl*
"The First Order Reigns"
I knew from those first words of the opening crawl that something was wrong. Reigns?! How?! Sure, the First Order was a significant threat but they got pretty fucked up with Starkiller base being destroyed (which appeared to be their main headquarters)! How have the other systems not rallied against them by now.
Ahem. Recall one of the most memorable scenes of TFA? The Galactic Senate - i.e. the Republic's entire government - being destroyed?
Yeah, but here's the thing: if someone dropped a nuke on DC, would that make the US totally defenseless?
Sure, it would put us in short term chaos, but we have 50 other states (DC isn't a state...unfortunately) full of people, plus national guards and military bases everywhere (worldwide) that could put up a hell of a fight.
Basically, I feel like The First Order should have been on the ropes. Losing Starkiller base had to have hurt the First Order badly, but then in the next movie it's like they're not affected!
EDIT: My other issue with the First Order "reigning" is that they are not a government of any sort. They're just this threat that came out of nowhere. Sure, they're "remnants" of the Empire but the Empire of the OT era had a whole government and bureaucracy (and TAXES) in place to fund themselves.
The Film Whisperer So you’re saying destroying an entire star system didn’t affect the Republic but destroying Starkiller Base destroyed the First Order?
@@andrewlikestrains4138 Of course both events were very significant. But in TLJ, we only see the destruction of the capital as affecting the Republic, but not the fact that The First Order lost what appeared to be their main base.
I simply feel that the First Order should have been on the ropes at least. Not defeated, but at least on the ropes.
What I'm just a little dumbfounded about is why haven't other planets rallied against the First Order. If someone nuked Washington D.C., putting aside the fact that it wouldn't necessarily destroy the U.S. totally, our allies would certainly rally to our help.
The Film Whisperer your example is better suited for the fact dc would be equivalent to star killer base. Lol the first order destroyed every senate planet... thatd be the equivalent of deleting every UN country and having none of the people left.
I remember seeing this for the first time, disaapointed with what I was watching. Then, the moment Kylo asks Rey to join him, I sat up. "This was where it was all building to!" I was so hyped!
But no, she refuses, despite everything in the film saying so far that she should. Instead, the film ends on an overused, childish message of "believe in heroes, protect what you love".
Thor Skywalker did a similar video to this, great work Wisecrack!
Subverted your expectations that's what he wanted to do.
The main problem as far as I see it: Star Wars is a capital 'S' Saga. A tale of heroes. Other characters gain importance in the Saga by their proximity to the heroes central to it. The new philosophy enforced by the makers of TLJ, 'our conception of classical heroes must be subverted and overcome, for there are no real classical heroes', goes contra to the very fabric of the structure of the previous 7 films as well as rogue one and the various animated features. Thus it fails at being Star Wars. If I crave a steak, I do not care how masterful the pasta dish is supposed to be you are serving me instead. It isn't steak and your pasta is under-cooked.
You can go back and eat your Empire Strikes Back steak whenever you feel like, yo
There in lies the problem, doesn't it? If you argue like this, then you concede that people expecting Star Wars in their Star Wars will not receive what they want. They have to go and be thankful for the old stuff. You won't be selling them the new, and here we are now.
disney wants to let the past die?
"those who don't know their past have no future" r.i.p. star wars
Those who fail to learn from the past are doom to repeat it.
You want to destroy the past, yo ignore it and comit mistakes that you could have learn.
The past is also a part of yourself, a partof your personality, your lessons, experiences, by saying detroy the past you want to destroy yourself.
Also i agree with many, that trying to give all this sicological and filosofical ideas, butifnoring the characters past, their acctions, was literaly, saing that a person change from the morning to the afternoon.
Also kill the past, so kill the reason star wars is star wars, dont complain when eveybody leaves
Need I remind you who said that ? The bad guy.
The good guy (Rey) actually told him that would be a mistake and rejected him
@Ryan and made a better more entertaining job of said solo prequel than they did the main event. Ahahahaha.
Simple answer; If you wanna make something new, just make something NEW. Why take an old IP and crap all over it.
Oh yeah cause merchandising and it's easier to push the Star Wars name instead of creating a new franchise.
Because if Rian Johnson made this movie without stamping "Star Wars" on it, it would have grossed 50 million dollars.
I disagree - just make one good movie 》 like revenge of the sith with a decent Anikan, a worthy Vader. Revenge of the Sith is my favorite ( of cause the Originals will always be the best) of the new ones cause it was star wars and it tried to be star wars and it had not so many stupid jokes and the order 66 is still epic. And even the clone wars had a great plot ( a sith overlord manipulating the Republic into a civil war to eliminate the peace keepers 》 7 is a remaster and 8 is ... Just awful.
Because of title 9. If women can't have equality in everything they have to kill something that men have because that's how stupid rich cunts interpret our laws.
Rian Johnson is female? Huh. Didn't realize that.
While I very much agree with your second point, I am no so stoked about your first one.
I don’t consider it shitting on an IP, but rather building upon a universe so as to make very simple stories more fomplex and, I would say, realistic. I really enjoy the deconstruction of dichotomies such as good and evil, and for me this part of the movie could’ve been almost perfect, had they not completely doubled back on everything. Surely such a twist would be problematic to have as canon in the already established philosophical climate of the Star Wars franchise, but that I would also find incredibly interesting; then it would be possible to delve into the problems associated with relativistic viewpoints and so on - like: If there is no good, then what is right to do? At that point it might actually be possible to call doubling back on the deconstruction as the right thing to do, as it could make ordinary life hard to life without any guidelines. Now that would be an interesting dillemama for me: no ultimately right choices, just pros and cons.
But it of course does not have to be that way at all; that is simply the route, which I’d prefer.
14:11 This is Neo v. Smith at the end of Matrix: Revolutions: when he realizes he has to stop being "the hero" and surrender, he merges with Smith -- literally bonds with his shadow -- and he becomes part of the whole Matrix and 'the code he carries is reinserted into the Matrix thus reestablishing the prime program' (they restore to factory settings) and Smith is gone, and he teaches the Machines and the humans they have to be together in order to survive.
For not being interested in repeating what came before, Rian sure did repeat a lot of what came before.
bricknose yup, throne room is basically like vs The Emperor and Vader. Ach-to is basically Luke and Yoda, even a vision in which h the hero sees their own face... DJ betraying Finn and Rose is basically Lando betraying Han.
He recycled as much as JJ did in TFA.
Actually, Jung did not argue for the coexistence of the Shadow and the Ego. He argued that the Shadow must be made conscious so that it can be dissolved under the light of awareness. So the goal is not to learn to live with the Shadow - although that helps, because it stops you from projecting it onto others - but to get rid of and become, indeed, a heroic being, like the Jedi, and like Luke was at the end of ROTJ.
I wonder if one reason Rian Johnson stumbled is because he didn't figure out, or Disney has not figured out, where they are going with the metaphysics of Star Wars. I love The Force Awakens, but JJ could have taken Star Wars in any direction he wanted, and he went with a replica of the previous conflict, which is a tough starting point for anyone looking to do something different (but not so different as to alienate the old fanbase).
Nope. I don't give Disney or Ryan Johnson this much credit.
1. I left a quiet theater walking down a hallway feeling bad and it was silent in the crowd. No cheers, no wow, no that was fun, it was a funeral.
2. A good essay premise with more thought than the director put into it.
3. If I pay that much money and have a bad time it is not a good movie.
4. I could believe the movie was a dream and the Dallas character was in the shower better than I could believe some of the writing in this movie.
5. The best parts for me was any time Yoda was on screen and the Jedi master acted like the student again and it was good, when he kissed his sister on the forehead, and when Luke was willing do help people he cared about.
6. Having an optimistic character who believed even Darth Vader could be redeemed suddenly be willing to murder a nephew over what HE MIGHT do is not Luke Skywalker. I could even explain it in Star Trek terms by saving it makes more sense that this is the Mirror Mirror universe of Star Wars and that is not our Luke Skywalker.
7. I left Incredibles 2 laughing and hoping for a sequel 3, and part of me kind of dreads what they will do next for Star Wars after setting up all kinds of questions and tossing them away as unimportant while focusing on side plots that were not engaging.
8. You don't kill Admiral Akbar off camera.
9. You don't use ships as kamikaze faster than light missiles or the entire chase sequence is useless and tactics in combat would have already emerged differently long ago like detachable warhead warp pylons that could be guided. It was a macguffin.
10. Bad writing is when you have plots develop that require the characters to do dumb things. Example have the Rebel force simply explain the plan she had and entire subplots become moot once her officers understood. As far as I was concerned the movie stumbled everytime it focused on something other than Luke, Yoda, and Leia and I endured the side plots to sell merchandising critter dolls to get back to the main plot line.
11. I do not envy anyone having the burden of fixing all this in the next movie and have the fans care. The Rebel movie was superior. The Solo movie was the result of too many cooks in the kitchen and was not as fun as it could have been. Ending rebel with the moments just before the first movie really worked. This movie got lost trying to push its points without having respect for the characters.
If you do not respect beloved characters then you do not respect the fans. It was not Jungian, it was bad writing and directing in the end. There is a difference between good and evil in a person. A hero overcomes and grows, nurtures and seeks to do the right thing while evil only harms, destroys, corrupts, and hurts innocents. There is a real difference and any human is capable of good and evil but can with great effort overcome evil to choose to be good and do good which is a heroic choice.
I think the Force could be just an energy and whether good or evil is moot in the physics of the Force, but becomes good or evil by the choices characters make. Aggressive moves in the defense of others is not sith and passivity in the face of evil is not jedi. A good jedi should be like Bruce Lee in a fight being like water but not losing sight of trying to do the right thing no matter the odds and sometimes that takes patience. Keeping your head while all about you are losing their minds is strength not weakness. The real Luke seeing an effect on a young nephew would have been to seek to shield and confront the evil attacking his nephew to protect.
This Luke was the Mirror Mirror universe Luke due to bad writing, not understanding the character, and wanting to make points more than being true to the characters that made them beloved to fans in the first place. Or worse understanding the character and not caring about the foundational part that caused fans to care about the character and only about pushing points of view for the sake of the point of view being more important.
If you complain as a writer about hubris you are defining hubris in your own script. You might as well be looking in a mirror while writing that line. That was not Luke so much as a surrogate for Kathleen Kennedy and Rian's world viewpoint. That works in a Hitchcock movie where the director is a character in the film in effect. It did not work in this movie. I will not even buy the DVD. It was an aberration. Marvel is successful because they plan out entire plotlines over movies and directors follow those guidelines. If there was no coherent vision for all three movies when the way has been shown then it could be it is more on Kathleen Kennedy than one director, but it is a failure in my mind.
I enjoyed reading your comment. And, I'm curious what the next Star Wars sequel will be and what ultimately will be The Last Jedi's impact on the Star Wars universe.
I remember walking out of the theater the exact same way you described it. Also, it was really hard to read your comment. Do you think you could edit it and space out the numbers? It was a good read but some spacing would making it much better. :-)
I believe you didn't play KOTOR to see how Jedi order won't move their when there's an apparent threat in the galaxy. Only because they believe there are bigger darkness coming which they have no idea what.
1) That was only your experience. I saw it in three different theaters in three different cities, and left a cheering crowd each time. Too many TLJ haters are exaggerating, if not deliberately lying, about how their viewing went in order to make a dorky point on a dorky message board.
3) By contrast, since I DID have a good time, then it was a good movie
4) I learned long ago that the last people on Earth to try to lecture about "writing" are marginalized social media addicts with no other talent than hurricaning any message board that disagrees with them. Ill believe them when they produce ANYTHING other than a blizzard of whiny posts, not before.
Its real easy to pretend to be an expert when you're an anonymous schmuck online. Its a lot harder to prove it.
When a wall of text gets this many likes, wisecrack, pay attention.
Luke being disillusioned was fine, it was just the details leading up to it that were poorly handled. There was no reason to have the atrocious scene of him almost killing Ben Solo, they could have gotten to the same place without it. That really betrayed his character.
This really made me appreciate TLJ more and it helped me to also see Rian Johnson's nuanced brillian....nah, I still hate that movie.
I'm neither fat, nor mediocre, and I have never once said that I have nothing to live for. But thanks for playing, troll.
Yeah, that doesn't really work though since you're the one who randomly showed up to call me fat, mediocre, and devoid of purpose in life. But, again, thanks for playing, Troll. Scurry along now. There are plenty more random people on the internet you can share God's "love" with.
I don't think his daddy played with him much.
Lol, whoever that was trolling just removed all his/her comments! XD
I hadn't noticed, but that's funny. Packing up shop is the more honorable thing to do when you show up randomly to attack someone on the internet.
So Ryan Johnson plagiarized the themes of KOTOR II and made a really poor representation of it in a cinema and had the gall to charge entry for it? ok...
I don't think he even knows that exists. Honestly, I think Disney and Kathleen Kennedy looks at people who play Star Wars games with extra disdain and contempt. Viewing us probably in the same light that many people view furries, weaboos, or extreme otakus. That would explain why they immediately killed LucasArts once they took over and why they put so little attention or care on trying to make any other games, just handing all of the game IP rights over to EA. It seems like they just didn't fucking care! It's really baffling to me why Lucas thought Kathleen Kennedy was the one worthy to inherit the franchise. She's running it very quickly into the ground.
It was the higher ups at Disney like Alan Hart who wanted a hack MCU film instead of a SW one. People have to understand that blockbusters are conditioned even more by producers than by directors. Johnson does not have the main blame for this.
Lucasarts shut down because Disney felt it was best off to license their brand to other game developers, so if a game failed like Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi, then the hit would fall squarely on the developer and not the IP owners. It had nothing to do with the disdain the producers had for the EU or the other games, or fans. That would be a ludicrous statement to make.
Trans8010 The IP never sunk even when Lucasarts made bad games because people are rational beings able to understand the nuance of development and artistic design. Also, the statement itself means nothing, that since the games are licenced they cannot be plagiarized. Anything that copies another without giving credit to the creator is plagiarism, period.
My comment wasn't directed to you, but Koven.
TLJ makes me really sad. When I first heard that Force Awakens was coming out I predicted/hoped that it would involve some kind of subversion of the Light Side/Dark Side dichotomy. I thought that such a thing happening would be a great way to actually give the trilogy some worth in the grand Star Wars story.
TFA comes out and it's a fun yet pretty disappointing rehash of New Hope. It looked brilliant and it did a good job and getting me excited for the next movie with the super cliffhanger...but it had shallow, god-like characters like Rey and set the new trilogy on a path that had already been tread in the originals, fighting a big scary space Nazi empire. But I have hope. The next movie will give Rey a backstory and she'll train with Luke, which will explain her being so perfect and they'll start subverting the story.
Then the TLJ trailer comes out, and I am hyped. "It's time for the Jedi...to end"? Hell yeah. That should be pretty interesting
Then I go see the movie....and it does what I wanted...but in all the worst possible ways.
Luke could have remained the same hopeful character we all love and become more aware of the problems inherent to the jedi way (considering it basically killed his Dad). But no, Luke milks aliens and is a crabby old hermit who doesn't want to be found despite having left a map in-case people need to find him...
Rey could have been trained by Luke and have been given some backstory to show why she's so amazing, or they could have had Rey fail miserably at something, like fighting Kylo, or at least Luke. But no, Rey is just inexplicably god-like enough to scare the crap out of Luke, she beats Luke and like 5 Praetorians with no lightsaber training, she lifts a mountain of rocks like it's nothing, and she is a nobody...whose parents were random drunkards...
They could have highlighted the problems with traditional ideas of heroism and valorous sacrifice without making it divisive. But no, we get Leia and Holdo treating Poe like an idiot after he saves everyone, twice. Instead of acknowledging the efficacy of both styles of problem solving (live to fight another day and get the bad guy) we get a confusing mess of symbolism where we have Holdo and Leia castigating Poe for blowing up the baddies while also having Holdo kill herself to blow up the baddies but now it's cool. And I love Rose, but the way they set up her "Save the ones we love" line was new levels of idiotic. So we save the ones we love by ramming their ship, simultaneously dooming your other friends to be killed by a death laser? Genius...
Midironica
Very well pointed out major flaws. I rarely am angry after seeing a movie, after TLJ I was.
Believe,
I don't know about becoming crabby, old...or a hermit...but one thing that has happened is that I've become far better at identifying BS. I'm not some "All new movies suck" hipster or some "Why can't all lead actors be white dudes" racist shmuck. I am a huge fan of Mad Max and I love Fury Road, even though its main character is basically Furiosa, a woman. I loved Rogue One even though it too had a female lead and it was pretty subversive in how it dealt with it's main characters, i.e. killing them all. Same goes for Black Panther, Infinity War, Bladerunner 2049, and all of the other movies that have come out recently that had far more respect for their source material, better characters, more coherent stories, etc.
TLJ is the only movie I've really not liked since....the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie with Javier Bardem...but that movie was trash
They say this movie is supposed to be empowering to women, but instead it paints them as enigmatc and distrusting (Holdo) or selfish and stupid (Rose). Yay grrl power!
Or getting everything handed to them by life (Rey).
"A nearly identical fascistic order... so clearly something is wrong..." Yeah, what's wrong is the film-makers are too uncreative and unimaginative to create a conflict that's not directly copied and pasted over from existing Star Wars films.
But .... thats EXACTLY what Rian was pointing out and hoping to move forward from. Its what the potential 'Duel of the fates' script for the last movie would have addressed.
Exactly! Thank you!
I believe the story was already going bad at Force Awakens, we just didn’t see the cracks until the whole franchise came crashing down.
Also, how is it 3 directors can direct a trilogy without a central writer to define the arc
This. It's clear there is no arc and never was.
It was over for the moment I realized it was HACKKKKKK of DEATH STAR III
Interesting themes, terrible execution.
Trust me, I know all about terrible execution.
*Movie has few bad dialogues*
"GOD WHAT A TERRIBLE MOVIE THAT WAS!!!!!!!!!!"
And now we have Disney shit. Thanks.
Very bad with an axe i guess
Михаил Пашковский the entire script is crap
All the dialogue was terrible. The story was great but some of the acting and all of the dialogue hurt so much.
Except it dose not have interesting themes. All of this was in Kotor 1-2 and they were done much better.
So no idea and horrible execution.
I think it was an utterly pointless star wars movie. It is as you said, it spent the entire movie trying to subvert the tropes of good and evil in star wars, just to lazily revert back to them in the end. What a disappointing movie.
They didn’t, though?
I think some of the "fans" are the disapointment. Their lack of imagination begs the question what is wrong with them.
@@marchofthelorex238 Lazy. Cliched. Boring. People disliked the film for genuine reasons. It's so easy to group everyone who didn't like it together and call them bitter fanboys, but that is a lazy argument with zero substance.
@@vaguelyawareofstuff2955 It happens to be the truth though. So lazy argument or not that is just how it is.
@@marchofthelorex238 Ahh, I see. You're one of those people who confuses 'personal opinion' with 'truth'.
I could try explaining it again to you, maybe using shorter words? In my experience however, people like you rarely understand that, in the real world, deluded opinion and truth are two different things, so I would probably just be wasting my time.
By the way, because you liked TLJ it means that you're a virtue signalling millennial snowflake.
I'm absolutely right about that because it's my opinion.
December 2019 and I still can't get over how bad it was.
Garret Woodside me2
Elena Monfils yeet
same. whenever i see tlj it hurts
and I'm still paying for therapy
It's getting worse
I like your explanation of what Rian was trying to accomplish in the first half of the film. My issues with the film aren't so much what it's trying to do or say but rather how it goes about it. TLJ makes large changes to the OT themes and characters without a graceful transition or any real exploration of the problems in those themes. I loved seeing this version of Luke and it was great acting but we never got a believable explanation for how he got there. It simply tells us that the old ways don't work anymore. It doesn't show how or why or really say anything other than they failed and now must learn from it. How did they fail? What aspects of the jedi led to their vanity? How does the darkside tempt jedi in training? Adam driver does a great job of protraying the struggle in Kylo, but we don't have plausible explanations for Kylo's actions. We see why he'd hate luke and why he'd hate snoke. Now that they're both gone, why does this guy want to rule the universe?
I can forgive the plot holes, wasting of time with uninteresting side plots, and disregarding of the general OT ruleset if it means we get a new story that fleshes out something meaningful. This movie hints at that, but lacks substance. To me, the best parts of the movie are Rey's scenes on the island and especially the mirror scene where she's contending with the pull of the dark side. We see how it temps her with what she wants, her struggle with loneliness and her acceptance of who she is. When Kylo tempts her, she's prepared for it because of this scene. That was a great dynamic and it was done in a really cool artistic manner. Time slowing to the point where a reflection reacts after the original was a beautiful way to showcase the sanity reducing nature of loneliness. Adding the snap implied that all senses are effected and we really feel for Rey when she's explaining it to Kylo moments later.
Unfortunately, the rest of the movie doesn't hold up. Let's look at the scene where Kylo reveals her heritage. First off, I love the idea of Rey's parents being nobodies. But people keep saying that the moment is brilliantly made better by the subversion of our expectations. TFA shouldn't have build up these expectations in the first place. But it did and Rian has to deal with them. Subverting out expectations here takes us out of the moment. It actually creates a disconnect between the audience and Rey. We want to know who her parents are because the previous movie hints at them being something special. Rey wants to know because she's lonely and they're her freakin parents. When she finds out, its painful that she was abandoned. Subverting our expectation doesn't help us feel Rey's pain or loneliness. It takes us out of the moment and makes us think about our expectations, which are NOT Rey's expectations. Instead of sympathizing with Rey, we're thinking "wtf" in the moment. And after processing it, at best, you can say that it was clever. I'd rather be immersed in the movie, the story and the character.
Lets compare it to the ESB scene where they subvert our expectations with Luke being Vader's son. At the end of an emotionally charged fight, Luke has lost his hand and is dangling precariously over an almost literal abyss. We're in tune with Luke here and feeling what he's feeling. Because we're not wondering who Luke's father is, we're not actively waiting for this moment. When Vader tells him, we feel exactly what Luke feels. Disbelief, anger, suffering. Star Wars has always been about immersion. We loved the originals because they made us feel like we really were walking on a moon-sized battle station, and fighting through the mechanical catacombs of a city in the Clouds. It's that immersion into the fantasy sci-fi world that made the OT special. We can forgive just about any flaw if a star wars movie recaptures that element. TLJ doens't even try. Between the marvel style humour that's constantly reminding you that you're a guy in a threatre watching a screen, not coming up with a single novel environment that you'd have to go into the SW galaxy to see, and ungracefully slapping a different take on a beloved character, this movie ultimately fails to immerse us in it's story at some of it's most key moments.
"TFA shouldn't have build up these expectations in the first place. But it did and Rian has to deal with them."
Honestly I quite often got the sense that a lot of the subversive stuff in TLJ was Rian pretty much calling JJ Abrams' bluff in regards to all the Mystery Box nonsense he inserted into TFA.
"Ooh, who is this mysterious shadowy figure pulling the First Order's strings?" He's a Palpatine knockoff; no amount of backstory can hope to match Ian McDiarmid's glorious performance in the Prequels; dead, move on.
"Ooh, who is this girl that's remarkably gifted with the Force, and who were her parents?" Nobody; her parents were nobodies too; the Force doesn't belong to the Jedi, it's a universal constant with which some people are more in tune than others; yes, there's some hereditary traits but even in the days of the Jedi Order, most younglings came from non Force-sensitive families; Also, Rey pretty much coasted by on luck, and her big opponent was wounded and kind of an entitled crybaby.
"Ooh, Luke Skywalker's gone into hiding on a distant planet, what has he been doing all this time?" He bailed; he was all like 'blast this karabast, I'm out!' and has been milling about getting high on sloppy green walrus milk; Hell, he was probably contemplating suicide before Rey showed up and killed the mood by shoving his father's tainted lightsaber in his face. Speaking of which,
"Ooh, how did Maz Kanata get Anakin's lightsaber?" Who cares? Certainly not Luke; sure, it used to be a treasured relic of his, but now it's a reminder of how flawed the Jedi were; lest we forget, that very same weapon was the instrument of the slaughter of countless innocent lives, including children; of course Luke wouldn't be happy to be given it back.
And so on.
Having said all of that, I'm not completely sure that hostile defiance towards all the hollow hype-mongering in TFA was necessarily the best approach to take, if indeed that was Rian's intent. However, it was a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" scenario, and if nothing else his "be careful what you wish for" approach to answering such dubious questions was cetainly more interesting than either doubling down on the predictable answers or just giving harmless yet inevitably disappointing alternatives, or even quietly ignoring them.
I disagree that Rian was in a "damned if you, damned if you don't" scenario. Rian subverting the Originals wasn't the problem, it was the way in which he went about it and his rampant backpedaling.
Luke could have easily been made to be skeptical of the Jedi's role in the universe while not being a crotchety old pessimist.
Rey could have been a nobody but there could have at least been some backstory thrown in to dial down accusations of her being a Mary Sue.
They could have proclaimed the efficacy of alternative forms of heroism without simultaneously ridiculing the traditional, more violent forms of heroism.
They could have done a subversive story and not figuratively spat in the faces of fans. That probably wasn't their intent...but the backlash to the film is evidence that they failed miserably to do accurate study group testing of the film to see the potential reactions to Rian's decisions.
Oh and they could have, at the very least, not reacted to honest criticisms of the film by calling everyone racists/sexists/misogynists/manbabies/etc. That would have gone a long way to preventing the massive split in the SW fandom from occurring.
Midironica One of the things that made me legitimately angry was when Rian tweeted that no matter what he did, the fans would have been split. He hid behind the rhetoric that he wasn't ever going to make everyone happy anyway. Just because he wasn't creative and clever enough to do it doesn't mean that it couldn't be done. And that arrogance is rampant throughout this movie. The notion that you can't do something new in the SW universe while respecting what came before is absolutely ridiculous.
And the whole racist and sexist arguments from Disney are so dumb. If they wanted to legitimately explore those themes in SW, they should have actually made them central themes and given them the attention they deserve. Or subtly integrate them into the background of the film like the OT does: empire being homogeneous group of white males with the same accent while the rebels are a diverse group including multiple species and female leadership. But tlj just ham-fistedly shoehorns it into places that distract and detract from the core story. It weakens both the message that they're trying to get across as well as the whole movie.
Very well said; I wasn't enamored with the film, but my actual favorite aspects of it were when he took those "mystery boxes" and just tossed them the hell away. The third act being all "no, don't worry, we're not REALLY changing much about Star Wars!" was what let me down.
Joe N The mystery box is narratively empty anyway, Abrams just asks questions without ever intending to give a meaningful answer to the story. He wrote TFA with a bunch of random questions and mysteries to let people think and let the next guy struggling with them, giving him no answer, because there weren't any. There was nothing else to do than what Johnson did, narratively speaking his answers were the best they could have been to me. I fully agree with FitzyCify's comment here.
To me, the dissonance in this movie became clear in the scene where Rey confronts Snoke.
He talks about darkness rising and light meeting it. So he seems to understand that there is a balance that the force will inherently uphold.
Yet he then proceeds to behave like your run of the mill dark lord and wants the dark side to wipe out the light, as if he forgot what he just said himself.
There would have been a great opportunity for a conflict there that would have had depth: A conflict between a desire for control and a faith in the natural balance of the force.
The "natural balance" aspect was represented pretty well by Luke (even though the path by which he got there was out of character), but neither Snoke nor Kylo really represented control, they just represented darkness.
Imagine this: After having been rejected as an apprentice by Luke, Rey is brought before Snoke, expecting a standoff. But instead, Snoke offers Rey to teach her in the ways of the Jedi.
That would have been a twist I don't think anyone would have seen coming.
But it would have set up an ideological conflict with Snoke seeking control over darkness and light, while Luke rejects control or manipulation of both. Kylo and Rey would have been caught in that conflict.
rockyblacksmith that I could have got on board for.
Except that the way the force works is that the Jedi are upholders of the balance and always have been having too many Jedi never caused an inbalance they were literally the upholders making sure no one entity became too powerful so a democracy could thrive, the sith are the lack of balance that absorbs power and throw things askew, look up the failure of the grey Jedi it goes over why the force is the way it is.
Pointless Pelican
"Jedi never caused an inbalance"
Then why would they have a prophecy about one who would bring balance to the force?
The way I understand it, the Sith saw the Jedi as creating an imbalance all along.
Of course the Jedi wouldn't see it that way, and it's their perspective that these stories have been told from um until now.
If you want to tell a new story that has any degree of depth, you have to challenge or subvert that perspective.
And that is exactly what Luke does in TLJ. He disassembles the idea of the Jedi being the great protectors.
Which was one of the best parts of the movie in my opinion.
And if you take an honest look at the prequel trilogy (particularly Revenge Of The Sith) you can see that he's right.
A large part of what tips Anakin over the edge was realizing that the Jedi were willing to abandon their values if they felt it nessecary.
And even without taking all that into account, I was mainly talking about what kind of a dynamic it would have taken to make this movie compelling. At least, for me.
I described my idea of what would make Snoke a proper antithesis to Luke, thereby setting up a larger conflict.
Trying to fully reconsile this movie with the previous lore of Star Wars is a futile mission.
Challenging previous notions about the force is the least of it's problems, if that even is one.
This is why i love the prequels is because despite all their flaws they leave the real story underneath everything and you have to dig to get to it, Anakin did not fulfill the prophecy when he killed off all the Jedi, he fulfilled it when he killed Sideus in return of the jedi. I mean if you think about it what about the sith existing screams balance to you? When they hungrily assert dominance over the force and over others ever growing in power until they own the galaxy? That is the mantra of the Sith to gain power untill no one can tell them what to do. Whereas the Jedi enforce freedom in the galaxy making sure everyone has choice.
Sorry if i'm not making sense but i'm not very good with words.
Here, this is a video going into depth about the grey Jedi the corruptive nature of the darkside where even playing with it can make you lose control and everything that would make a grey area in canon blow a huge plot hole in the original trilogy: ruclips.net/video/6EMc_S_vAsk/видео.html
Pointless Pelican
"Anakin did not fulfill the prophecy when he killed off all the Jedi, he fulfilled it when he killed Sideus in return of the jedi."
Have you ever entertained the thought that both of these are equal elements of him fulfilling that prophecy?
When Anakin died, there were no institutions left on either side that could have sought control or dominance.
The influence of the force was, for quiet a while, removed from the affairs of the galaxy, even while Luke was around.
The Force played next to no part in politics or power until Kylo Ren came back alongside the First Order. Which is why that point in time is labeled "The Force Awakens", i.e. it needs to find it's balance once more.
"Whereas the Jedi enforce freedom in the galaxy making sure everyone has choice."
Aside from the fact that "enforcing freedom" is a bit of an oxymoron (I assume you meant "protecting"), you have to note that they do not actually do that, at least not near the end. They meddle in political affairs, wage wars (and if you take the clone wars series into account, they waged war against a democracy) and employ an army of what basically amounts to slave soldiers, even if never framed as such.
They have one prime motivation: Defeat the dark side. And the more intense that fight gets, the more they justify their means by their end. Their view of themselves as peacekeepers has pretty much fallen apart by the end.
I wasn't talking about Grey Jedi). Balance in the force doesn't have to mean all force users using both sides of the force. And I agree that that wouldn't work.
I wasn't suggesting that Snoke should have been someone who used both sides, but someone who sought to bring both light and dark force users under his influence. I would assume that he would have been a fallen Jedi or something similar, thus a dark side user who was still capable of teaching others to use the light.
Conflict between darkness and light is inevitable and neverending, since neither side can wipe the other out. But if some could steer both sides of it, they would achieve the greatest amount of control.
Just imagine if Palpatine / Sidious had kept the Clone Wars going perpetually, or perhaps as a cold war/uneasy peace. He would have been in charge of both sides, and he would have never had to deal with the Rebellion. He was arguably more powerful during the clone wars than he was as the emperor.
My idea of Snoke would have been similar, just taken a good step further.
"Ryan isn't interested in recycling old Star Wars"
And yet he directly rehashed the Emperor scene from Return and the aesthetic of Hoth battle.
Garrett Carter don't forget the throne room scene from return of the jedi or dicount dagobah
Garrett Carter o
Garrett Carter would you rather have another Canto Byte? Both of those scenes were great not because of pandering, but because they used nostalgia as a jumping off point.
Yup. It is reverse Ep 5.
Ends w/ Battle on White Planet w/ Walkers where Rebels Escape.
Then (before that) was a scene of Empire Chasing Rebel Ship(s) w/ Leia in it.
Then the Empire is in a Relentless, Film Long Pursuit of said Ship(s)
Then was a scene of Luke and Yoda philosophizing about the Force.
Ultimately, some non Force Heroes End up at a City Founded by Gambling.
Jedi Master and Student Training
Luke Ignores doing what Jedi Tradition would dictate that he should do.
Big Showdown between Rebel Ship(s) w/ Leia in it and Imperial Fleet. Rebels Escape at some cost.
He didn't mean "interested in recycling" but "interested in" period.
This is the smartest and most thoughtful critique of TLJ I've seen. I can't help but wonder how it could have turned out if they just went with the moral framework shift, instead of *cough* subverting *cough* it three quarters of the way in.
@Gregory Kelton - could well be, yeah. I think Linkara's AT4W review of the comic version was also pretty good, too, if maybe too gentle on the issues.
I think you have projected your own analysis onto Rian Johnson's intentions. This movie can only WISH it was halfway as intelligent as you're claiming it tried to be. The plain fact, however, is that Johnson wrote a shitty script that delivers a message that is ponderously nihilistic: Nothing means anything means nothing. Doing anything leads to destruction, so just let everything burn because trying to prevent everything from burning is pointless since the past is meaningless and just needs to die and everything burns anyway.
That's not a movie made by a man striving for any kind of deep philosophical or psychological commentary. That's just the product of someone who doesn't believe in anything and doesn't give a fuck about anything - which is also why TLJ was such a sloppy directionless mess of a movie - and simply has fun running amok breaking other people's toys for the hell of it.
Yep. Pretty much this. They give Rian way too much credit.
To call Rian a nihilist is an insult to real nihilists, who simply believe that our social and political institutions are so terrible that they should be destroyed and they reject all laws. A real nihilist does in fact still believe in something.
69mrbrightside691 Well, as a nihilist, I thought it was shit.
Exactly. SO it's like let everything die and fade away. Lets join forces to lead a new age of meaninglessness, there's no longer good and bad, there's just do what you want, do it because everything means nothing anyway. So there's no value in anything anymore, you can kill, plunder, and destroy but it's ok.
Yet, where does the force end up, doesn't' the force have a say in what happens in the galaxy. What if the end of the Jedi, and the concept of just having everything die and have an age where anything means nothing, was the work of the dark side. What if this whole time the dark side was at work in the shadows directing this orchestra of eradication of all good and justice in the galaxy so that everything means nothing, leaving the door open for someone influenced by the dark side to come in and Take power without anyone standing in their way. That still HAS TO come into play in Star Wars doesn't it.
LordZontar,
Exactly. I can't help but wonder, how come the man who made TLJ calls himself a Star Wars fan?
Wouldn't it be more honest to openly admit he despises Star Wars?
Rian's next set of movies:
Episode 9: The Force Examines itself.
Episode: 10: The Force Goes to Therapy,
Episode 11: The Force Tries Reiki,
Episode 12: The Force has a Mid-Life Crisis.
It needed more Jar Jar
at least then they could use Jar Jar as a scape goat
Somehow, it would have been an improvement
I think Rian Johnson was made the critic's punching bag
JarJar is a massive improvement over Rose.
Sven Servette like literally. At least in retrospect, Jar jar was entertraining. He had value to the plot and continued to have all the way up to the creation of the Empire itself. He was a usable idiot and a classic character in terms of Shakespearean drama. He fit in with the space opera theme. This new bullshit added nothing and took nothing. It was feel good Disney product placement and it's so glaringly obvious that it made me sick the entire film. I miss George Lucas folks this is just tiresome.
I am so sick of that stupid word, “subversion.”
"Subversion" has completely ruined 2019
Subversion = sub version, IE inferior
I think I am going to “subvert” my kids Christmas and take a dump in the stocking. Like Disney I think I am brilliant.
After watching The Last Jedi I now know that 'subverts expectations' actually means 'massive disappointment.'
TLJ is so subversive that it subverts its own subversions.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi - What Went Wrong?
Beats me: the 2016 Ghostbusters did SO well with the same formula of flipping off the audience.
It will take them a while to finally get it. Up next is Terminator.
@@SeltsamerAttraktor they'll never get it. Consider that we have people in positions of power today pushing for ideologies that killed millions of people last century. Ideologues are *always* able to pass the buck and rationalise problems away.
Rian Johnson wanted to subvert expectations, except he subverted literally every expectation and I felt like he was trolling us.
He subverted the expectation that a move should be good.
he subverted the expectation of subverting expectations
Rob Schneider is, “The Last Jedi”
-Rated Derp Derpa Derp
Produced by Happy Madison!
I can see how subversion would have been awesome here, with the right execution. But there were no stakes - why did it need to be subverted? If Rey had a hero's journey in which she MUST let go of the past to succeed, I might have bought into it. But she doesn't, it's just a "here's how it should be" argument, so there's no need for the subversion in the first place. Subverting just for the sake of subverting it, just for the shits and giggles, is pointless, and alienates the fans. Might make RJ feel all giddy to cause a ruckus, but this show meant more to it's fans than for him to just turn it on it's head because he thought it'd be cool.
Sad thing is, I would have bought into a trilogy in which "she's a woman and better at feelings that dry crusty grumpy men in bathrobes". I'd have even accepted a darkside Rey who is fighting for the Rebels. But there's no need for Rey in the plot - how does her presence help them defeat the 1st order? It was Poe who destroyed SK base, after Han + Chewy disabled it. She didn't save Han, didn't save Finn, didn't kill Snoke, didn't turn Kylo, didn't bring Luke back - she's like a pinball bouncing against all the more well-established plot points. I so want her to be awesome, but what has she actually done that significantly moved or turned the plot? Poe, Han + Leia moved the plot in TFA, Luke resisted her efforts to move it in TLJ - it's like Disney forgot how to story. This female force isn't very force, and I'm not going to respect a character just because the studio tells me she's the protagonist. Even Luke had to prove himself.
She saved the whole Resistance at the end though, and did it by NOT joining Kylo, then. And did it for FRIENDSHIP, something Kylo had cast aside.
I think they took the exact opposite lesson from the movie that they should have. The Last Jedi isn't about reconciling the good and the dark no matter how severe the dark is: Rey accepting Kylo's offer to "rule the galaxy" wouldn't have been a reconciliation the film found "good." Rather, **the film is a rejection of nihilism in the face of complication** : Del Toro's character is presented as a warning against exactly that course of action. I think it's totally wrong to use him as the spokesperson for the movie-the movie is condemning him! He's a critique of the Han Solo archetype: the nihilists don't have hearts of gold; they're just narcissists. Meanwhile, Luke's embrace of nihilism is clearly a product of his depression. He couldn't reconcile the weight of his failure and the corresponding responsibility, and so he ran off to an island and convinced himself that nothing matters. The Luke-Rey relationship is a mentor-mentee relationship flipped. It's not Leia that inspires Luke to reverse course-it's Rey: it's her passion that finally jolts him back to reality, and it's Yoda's subsequent discussion with him that gets him realigned: We don't have to be able to understand all the nuances-to read all the books-in order to try to do good. We will inevitably fall short of reaching true goodness, true justice, but the hope is that we lay the ground work for the next generation to get a little further towards that ideal.
There is one character that consistently is a spokesperson for the movie's philosophy, and, of course, she's omitted from this entire video: It's Rose. Rose is the only character who the movie (1) portrays positively, and (2) doesn't significantly change over the movie. (Finn goes from fighting for Rey to fighting for a cause; Rey goes from needing parental figures to standing confidently on her own; Luke goes from dismissing outright the idea that a hero can save the day to, once again, being the hero that saves the day.) Rose says the line that the movie most clearly endorses: "We're going to win this war not by fighting what we hate, but saving what we love." There is a difference between fighting for your ideals and fighting to defeat your enemy. (If you're fighting for your ideals, you'll lose to your enemy before you lose your ideals; if you're fighting to defeat your enemy, you'll sacrifice your ideals in order to do so.) The Last Jedi argues that the world is complicated. That heroes are fallible. That good intentions can lead to bad outcomes. And that we should stick to our ideals and fight for them, anyway.
Disagree with your reading of the ending.
Luke is a literal illusion used to fuel the rebellion. That plays into the broader critique. Ren says he has rejected the past but refuses to spare the rebels. While he may have a more nuanced look at the galaxy, he won’t put his money where his mouth is.
I think that's the whole point! He tries to get Rey on his side, but at the end of the day, he's flying a giant star destroyer, commanding a million literal storm troopers, and is trying to wipe out the last band of rebels. Rey isn't some paragon of good, either. She's just a junker with powers, trying to stop the one person who's trying to kill her friends.
Rey is the embodiment of coming to terms with a shadow. She sees she could live outrageously well with someone who gets her at a deep level, but can't because he's a fucking crazy person that killed his parents, and will kill everyone else she knows in the galaxy.
But that simplistic characterization is exactly what I THOUGHT the film was going to get away from. Ren is pure evil, but it would have been more interesting if he wasn't
Liam Pezzano No.
Yup. Ren is all talk when it comes to "killing the past". Once his offer is turned down he goes right on ahead with installing himself as leader of the space Nazis and continuing the subjugation agenda.
one of the best points ive seen. he's perpetuating the cycle, not breaking free from it despite what he may think.
The elephant in the room that you’re missing is that Rian took it upon himself to present a solution where there was no problem. Star Wars was so beloved because the characters were beloved. To come in with a baseball bat and smash it all because you don’t like it is stupid. I have no problem with introducing a whole new paradigm, but to do it by betraying Luke’s character is self-indulgent and completely out of touch.
I don’t have time to propose all the possible ways I could think of to pull off the paradigm shift without performing a script jihad, but suffice it to say, I’m sure it’s in the hundreds.
This idiot, Rian, and KK have betrayed the fan base. Now they reap the consequences of the backlash. So be it
Of course there was a problem, there was nowhere to go. It was a basic hero story that was really good for 1 film, and sorta OK for 3 films (the first 3). After that you have to do something new or not make new films at all.
@@lenks0 Expect there were multiple directions they could've taken, just look at all the lore that was abandoned in the Eu. Sure the whole premise of good vs evil would be the same but I don't see that as being an issue as there would still be multiple directions in terms of story that could've been told
I agree, there was no problem, there was no need to "kill the past" in order to move on to the future. I think people would have loved moving on and meeting new characters and exploring more of that universe.
+Dan Rebeiz I like your points, they make me think. I feel I disagree with only the beginning, in that there was “no problem”. The story is nice, but trite. Like we’re talking down to our audience (made up of a ton of kids alongside us adults) with this whole “light side vs. dark side” business. Even as a child I considered right and wrong, and knew that it wasn’t so binary. Like the video says it divides you from yourself, and it ignores a “good” person’s capacity for evil even as they address an “evil” person’s capacity for good. I like introducing a grey area for this generation to consider? I like us thinking beyond heaven and hell when we discuss morality in some of our new shows and movies lately. Let’s not limit it to “adult” programs and thus underestimate our audience.
Crammit huh? “George Lucas” has the right to destroy him? What year is it? Ha ha ha. Newsflash: George Lucas sold the rights to Star Wars to Disney. Perhaps you missed the news while walled into your tinfoil bunker. Lol!
This is my main problem with the movie. Every single thing that happens is immediately reversed.
Exactly.
From the morals to the plans of each and every character. It seems like nothing follows a consistant flow and so many things are apposed against themself.
Princess Leia is about to die. But then she doesn't. But then she does. But then she comes back to life and flies back to the spaceship. But then she slips into a coma. But then she just wakes up from the coma. But then she probably dies in the next movie's crawl.
This movie has the worst case of Bipolar Disorder I've ever seen. Every single element keeps flip-flopping on each other so much that there's literally no order or consistency at all!
can we just take a moment and reflect on how Mark Hamill is sitting at 8:24
Ouch. Worse than Tonight Show 77.
Hiddenfinger b Damn he legit looks like Jabba The Hut sitting like that
Ouch
I think that's exactly what he's doing - taking a moment and reflecting
THANK YOU! Finally someone who gets it. That turning point that you are talking about in the movie is exactly where I got turned off in the theater. It flip-flops too much and doesn't have the balls to actually go through with its ideas. Just when I thought that Kylo Ren was going to become an interesting character and that him and Rey will form a new alliance that will define this new generation of Start Wars.... Nope... Same old storytelling again...
you just knocked it OUT OF THE PARK !!
One of many truly stupid things about TLJ is that Luke Skywalker was already ridding the Jedi order of its old dogmatic ways in the EU. For Rian Johnson to DESTROY such a wonderful character for his failed vanity project was completely unnecessary and comes off as mean spirited to say the least.
Black and white melt into grey
Till every truth is stripped away
When nothing's wrong nothing's ok
Everyone has been betrayed
One of the most egregious failures to meet its own theme was when Luke said something akin to "The Force is more than just moving rocks" and yet the heroic movement is her using it at that 'base' level in the climax, saving all 10 or so of them, with absolutely no internal struggle to speak of (as she was never at risk of turning, she though she was going to turn Ren).
@Tanuvein - That HAD to be deliberate, of course. Use of irony. And it's not moving rocks, really - it's WHY you move them. Being aware of the little pebbles that can start an avalanche (like a hasty plan to find a codebreaker, find the WRONG codebreaker, and nearly end up losing the whole Resistance, whilst a QUIETER plan - theoretically, at least, could save it. If the crew does not mutiny... ahem)
What Went Wrong? -EVERYTHING
Kroft talks about Movies the movie is great. It's one of the best star wars movies next to the empire strikes back.
No, the answer is “nothing.”
Kroft talks about Movies lol! It was ok... But I'm not a complete star wars fan... All i want is a good story... My only problem with it is the boring casino scenes...
What went wrong? SJWs and feminism happen wrong.
Find the balance. Everything can't be an answer. There are some good things at the very least. If the new ways don't work for you, the past is always available. (I mean the old Star Wars films)
Why do these people not just write their own stories instead of destroying actual good stories?
Yeah, I have been thinking the same. Why destroy Star Wars and make it into something different, make something new instead and don't ruin anything.
@@phantorang Exactly, like its just so sad.
$
Last Jedi was good. I enjoyed the movie 😊
Because it's fucking Disney. that's why.
Why they just didn't adapt Timothy Zahns trilogy of books. Admiral Thrawn was an awesome villain and the whole story made more sense than what we have now
Because they'd have to pay royalties and so wouldn't be getting *all* the money.
It wouldn't have worked because the original actors had aged too much to fit the timeline of the books. And there was no way Disney was going to make a new Star Wars trilogy that replaced Fisher, Hamill, and Ford with different people.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi - What Went Wrong?
- Everything !
d d legit he didn’t even type in all caps it’s just trash
@@lorealiiiii
oh damn , sorry about that brother , my english is "rotten" at times: I deleted that stupid comment !
krix pop nah it’s good completely agree this trilogy sucks! after return of the jedi nothing is cannon to me :)
sadly, nothing did...if we look at it from the Rat's point-of-view! It is ALL, working as intended.....No, really!!
@d d LMAO, u r almost cute >..>why don't u calm down? Or, do you not practice what you preach? What I figured.
Also, they completely changed Luke’s character into who Mark Hamil called Jake Skywalker since he was so far removed from the character we met and spent so much time with in the previous trilogy and had established his personality and beliefs very firmly without actually giving a believable and viable explanation what happened or why he is so drastically different. What made Luke want to murder a young innocent no different than he was when he went thru his own temptations and possible danger he could become to everyone and would spare the life of a known mass murderer in his father? There is no explanation at all and were just to automatically accept this complete change without context? It causes this aspect to overshadow everything else and instead of inviting speculation by presenting it as a mystery to be answered later, the attempted murder is presented as the explanation of his character shift when it’s that particular action that is the mystery that should have been presented as the subject of speculation.
I assumed Luke was off on some spirtitual mission that may or may not have succeeded, or that he had actually gone to the darkside after perhaps glorying too much in saving the universe back in his youth. But instead we get this craven cowardly rendition of Luke. Would this same man have staged an ambush on Jabba's palace, or placed himself in the hands of his father in the possibly vain hope of redeeming him? Makes no sense really.
there was an interview where Mark Hamil seems pissed about what they did to his character, he explains the story the books leds during this time period, what he thinks they should have done instead, and now all of the sudden is a shill for the politics that led to this shit hole of a movie
The whole origin of the conflict doesnt hold together. Luke said that Leia blamed Snoke's influence, but how and when exactly, we will never know since there is no real reason to explain a dead dude's story one movie later. If someone couldve helped young ben solo to resist the dark side, that is luke. But lets kill the kid instead lol, sounds the most logical outcome
They pointed out the luke thing outright at the beginning. My freind said that he didnt like it because "it didnt have enough blood". I dont why that matters I just think its funny.
Obi-Wan was also completely different in Revenge of the Sith and New Hope. So what? People change.
In conclusion, they should’ve just did the Thrawn trilogy.
Yes! That would have been amazing! Albeit they might have had to find a younger Mark Hamill look alike to play Luke, but storywise it would have been amazing.
I would like it ... But they would have fail, even if they made a good job we would have been disappointed
mcu rox
but lucas film sux
Even if they failed, it would be okay. Jacen Solo is fifty times better then Kylo, and Jaina is 50 times better then Rey.
Shoving contrived plot twists down our throats that don't work isn't a good thing. Shocker, I know.
I definitely agree with this in relation to rose and finn's little ending.
6:31 Rian changed the meaning of force balance. George’s intention was that the light side was the natural state of the force and that the darkside was a corruption, a cancer. And like a cancer, can return over and over. That’s why it’s an everlasting battle.
Rian portrayed light and darkness were two sides of a coin. One side creates the other, etc. This wasn’t part of George’s plan and so it reaaaally doesn’t fit and makes the Jedi look super bad as a result.
Rian changed...? No, make no mistake my fellow fan...Rian, ruined & disregarded, to subvert our expectations, of a good Star Wars movie! That is all! It really is that simple...BUT, no-one will believe it!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah but...Luke said that and in the end changed his mind about it...so Rian didn't change anything, he just portrayed a Luke Skywalker who was wrong and in grief about what happened
Michu I’d agree with you, but I see lots of people saying the two sides of the coin theory now. That was the audience take away.
Rian didn't exactly come up with the idea that Light and Dark are a balance. That theme has been explored before in the EU. KOTOR2 does a much better job of deconstructing some established ideas of the lore with an interesting character and at the same time doesn't shit all over Star Wars while doing so.
Jedi failed mace was know as a the strong Jedi and the only one to beat Palpatine because of his understand of the dark side
"Rian isn't interested in recycling old Star Wars"...
...
...
Except when he literally rehashes the same plots as the previous movies...
I heard that the ending were different than the director's concept because Disney asked, don't know, but... It's quite possible...
He didn’t.
@@Dragonage2ftw He did.
@@vaguelyawareofstuff2955 How is that any different than JJ. None of you whiny losers seem to have a problem with his rehash
Either you say Rian Johnson changed everything or Nothing.
Fans are splitted on this topic
"The most morally ambiguous moment in any Star Wars film."
Unlike Cassian Andor killing his informant as a simple diversion so he could escape, or Lando giving up an old friend to the empire in order to give the people that depend on him a feeling of safety.
But hey, DJ said some stuff, so he's the most morally ambiguous. No matter that whatever he said didn't affect the movie at all.
yeah, i thought about Lando in Empire when he talked about DJ.
When Cassian kill and Lando given up you don't know how they are
But Lando was forced by evil, full of regret, and then worked with the rebels, that's a low moment and a noble desire to protect his people, not a cynical dismissal of the entire conflict
I really disliked that scene, because it is well established in Star Wars source material that Seinar Fleet Systems manufacture the TIE series of fighters, and Incom Corporation manufacture X-Wings. Apart from both ships being available to purchase by people with enough money , for example planetary defence fleets, but the First Order has been hiding in the Unknown Regions, but there are also laws against the First Order being sold weapons or weapons components. To get around this, Seinar sent a subsidiary into the Unknown Regions to work with the First Order in secret. So apparently some random guy set up business relations with a faction in hiding, has acquired ships that are being sold directly to the First Order, and is also selling another company's ships at the same time, and is somehow making all this a lucrative business strategy. Sure. But how does that make the water muddy? He is purchasing ships and selling them. The Resistance and the First Order might be buying stuff from the same person, but they are different products from different manufacturers. Either my disdain for Ryan Johnson and this movie has blinded me, or Ryan Johnson made a space opera set in the Star Wars universe, and didn't consider any material already made about the universe before creating his script. Or maybe he did, but just really wanted a moment where the audience gasps when they are told that both sides have ships they use, and some guy happens to sell both.
In ESB Lando was under the impression that Han and company were just being used as the bait for the trap for Vader to capture Luke and they they weren't in any danger. I didn't fully realize this until a recent viewing of the movie. Lando says to Han and Leia "They [the empire] don't want you, they're after someone named Skywalker" And later he says to Vader something like [in regard to Vader taking Leia and Chewie] "That wasn't part of our deal, nor was handing Han over to this bounty hunter." Lando got played.
I hate the "whack-a-mole" aspect of Johnson's interpretation of "balance" more than anything. If you follow that logic Snoke arose because of Luke and the lack of a dark side balancing force. He may have been a nobody but the dark side needed a vessel so it empowered him. When Snoke died Luke had to commit force suicide to prevent another Snoke. Now Rey is balancing Ren because "reasons." There's no need to train, struggle, overcome, etc because whether Rey succeeds or fails another balancing force will appear, probably Broom Boy. There's nothing to pull for, no victory to hope for. The best case scenario is that Rey kills Ren and then immediately commits suicide to end the constant rebalancing. It makes Star Wars a hopeless universe of endless cycles and nothing new, no end game.
It frustrates me that there are so many people who blindly support TLJ without seeing how bleak and uninteresting Johnson's origin for Rey and Snoke makes the SW universe. I didn't have theories. I'm not made because it didn't play out a certain way. I'm just mad about how it played out.
Great post. I see it posted a lot here, but (and I hope I don't sound like a broken record) Knights of the Old Republic 2 seems to have at least played this idea of "whack-a-mole" better. I don't think the idea of the force trying to balance itself, is necessarily is wrong since there is a clip of George Lucas even saying that the events of the galaxy seem to repeat over time: hero getting their hand cut off, hero born in some outer rim desert planet, dark always rising to challenge the light, etc. At least Kreia in KoTOR 2 saw that Jedi and Sith conflict would lead to an endless cycle of genocide and warfare and tried to kill the force itself. There are faults in her actions and it may be a case of a broken clock being right twice a day, but we are left with few options. Another option I would argue, is that what Kylo said was right: "let the past die". Kill the past, not necessarily through murder but do not spread the Jedi or Sith teachings, the problem is this may require book burnings (thanks Yoda!) and suppression of ideas and free speech. Even if you mess up, someone is apparently going to rise up and counter it.
You make a great point as to why this a bleak and unsettling concept for anyone in the Star Wars galaxy. It also takes away much of the tension as a film because things will always get better and then worse. A more troubling concern is that will planet destroying weapons eventually the Star War galaxy will wither away till all the habitable planets are gone since the dark side will always rise. I don't see Rey's motivation for keeping the cycle going.
F Baxter I really don't mind playing around with stuff a little in the EU. There's so much wiggle room in there. I just got this impression that they inserted the self balancing force thing in there so Disney can have infinite storylines. It's just a bummer because the heroes never have a happily ever after.
Remember that it was the middle chapter, not the final. The final conclusion to that concept, the answer still has time to be answered and should be answered in episode 9. I believe that the moral in TLJ was that extremism is not beneficial. That sith and Jedi are wrong and the way of the grey jedi might be what Rey and those who follow her must choose to balance the force.
Part of that is because in reality there never is a completely happy ending. There will always arise another problem. The original trilogy caps off with the destruction of the Empire, but as seen throughout human history, the resulting power vacuum always results in others rising to take that spot. The idea of the Force balancing was already somewhat established in the prequels with the prophecy.
I felt from the day I watched it in theaters that it was designed basically to completely ignore everything that had just been set up for this trilogy for no real reason other than to subvert expectations, which isn't necessarily a bad thing if it is done well. However, there is a reason that most stories tend to play out along familiar paths and that is because they work and are easily understandable without needing to watch a dozen different videos and read a dozen different interviews to know what the story is supposed to mean. That aside, TLJ also had so many plot holes and bad character logics that just hurt the entire experience.
Just saw this and I 100% agree with this guy, the whole movie is basically projected bad guy, but actually the realist and the one who wants to be a hero, but is actually a hypocrite in a way.
Another big problem, that is highlighted through the clips shown in this video, is that Rian's ideas are conveyed to us not through the story, but a bunch of speeches. The heroes that we met in TFA - Rey, Finn and Poe - just get constantly lectured by everyone else - Luke, Leia, Snoke, Kylo, Rose, Benecio Del Toro. A lot of the time the substance of these speeches overlaps between completely different characters. It's like they're all reading from Rian's The Last Jedi Cliff Notes or something. It's all so on-the-nose, preachy and devoid of genuine character. I'm all for films having themes, but the handling of them in this film is clunky as hell.
I’m 31 years old so I wasn’t alive for the initial hype but I have such fond memories of the original trilogy. And old school video games.
I went in on Day 1 expecting a 10/10 as the reviews had said. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine Rian Johnson had created a franchise killer that was actually worse than Phantom Menace. I left the theatre more angry than I had ever been after watching a movie.
Saaaame. I was so excited. It’s sad because even if the rise of skywalker is a 10/10 SW movie, the trilogy is still 6/10. And if it’s a 7/10, than the trilogy is a 4/10.
I remember the early buzz was "as good as ESB." But......not. even. close. Worst entry in the entire franchise. It's an insulting movie that only gets worse on repeat viewings. The Ewok tv specials were better.
J Fett alright I wouldn’t go that far. The Ewok TV movies are pretty bad haha. I mean the holiday special is unwatchable. But yeh definitely the worst movie that was released in theaters
That's why I am boycotting all future Star Wars productions by Disney until they get some top notch screenwriters in on the game. Maybe CHristopher Nolan could do something interesting with the franchise.
Daniel Topp whelp get ready to sit out 9. We got J.J. and that guy who wrote justice league and Batman v superman
honestly this was my biggest grief with the movie, even if I couldn't quite put it into words at the time
Kotor 2 did the morally grey area way better than anything else I‘ve seen from Star Wars and yet, not many seem to talk about or even care. And it also had one of the most deep characters (Kreia) in Star Wars history!
Here‘s a rundown of her beliefs and character with spoilers of course: Kreia or Darth Treia was once a powerful Jedi who later turned to the dark side only to be betrayed and left in between the dark & light. While talking about her past as a Sith she says, "To be united by hatred is a fragile alliance at best." Anyway, she grew to hate the force for what it did and would continue to do to the galaxy with “good” always fighting “evil” & people suffering in between the two. Sometimes there would be times where the “good guys” ruled the galaxy and vice versa. Later on, she goes on to say,
“A Jedi without the force is weaker then someone who has lived without it.”-Kreia
This quote should have made me realise sooner, that what she was working toward throughout the entire game was to do something with the force; perhaps change it. But instead she tries to destroy the force all together, no more Jedi nor Sith, nor “good” vs. “evil” only what is/was able to remain without it.
I wish that there were more characters like Kreia who really got people thinking, or changing their perceptions on what truly is good or evil. And I doubt that Obsidion Entertainment will get chances quite like this in the future.
P.S......Sorry for the wall of text. And please correct me if I’m wrong it’s been a while.
Thank you for mentioning Kreia. For anyone wondering, there is an awesome 2 hour long video explaining her philosophy in details /watch?v=-Z0S0Z8lUTg
Just throving some UNEXPECTED SUBVERSIVE IDEAS!!! is never enough, one also have to make a good work of it.
I knew Disney would ruin Star Wars.
Well they didn't ruin marvel... Yet.
Last Jedi was awesome
@@the_seer_0421 They already did
@@the_seer_0421 trying with captain marvel.
Star wars was ruined by the prequels. It was resurrected by disney.
Problem is that Rian spent too much script time telling the audience that this Star Wars universe will no longer rehash the original Star Wars trilogy, rather than creating a story that simply did that without any posturing. TLJ is a Star Wars film written by a weak-willed scaredy-cat without cinematic study.
The old saying "Show, don't tell." never rang more true than with this movie. Old sayings never die. By trying to kill the past, Rian Johnson confirmed the knowledge of the past.
What's worse... Rian _did_ rehash the OG Star Wars with walkers assaulting a a rebel base, and the protagonist going to a remote planet to study under a master and going into a "mystic cave" to have a vision.
It just makes me sad really. They could have been so much more. Star Wars has such a rich history, in pop culture and in-universe lore. They made some decent characters, and as seen, have had access to the original cast, so why did they fail so poorly in the the writing. How did the same company that produced Rouge One, a spin-off, get such a poor team for the primary films. It seems the best content since the original trilogy has been the side media: Books, shows, games. At least there's Fallen Order & The Mandalorian for now. I can only hope and assume that side content will continue to persevere with quality.