Well, the TLJ explanation is that Luke cut himself off from the force, otherwise he surely would have known people needed his help, in which case I simply do not believe the Luke I know would have done nothing. Doing nothing while your friends are dying is just. not. Luke. AFAIK, FO was not really a big galaxy-known threat until the events of TFA. I am practically certain Luke didn’t know Starkiller existed, otherwise he would have been first in line to blow that fucker up.
Now, this movie posits that Luke slinks off because he screwed up with Ben. My assumption before this movie was that Luke was on his own quest to find something important at Jedi Island. Something top-secret that nobody could find out about unless they were close to Luke.
It was pretty weak sauce that ghost Yoda only showed up to prod Luke AFTER millions of people died, although I suppose you could write that off to Luke being “cut off from the force”. Maybe next movie Luke will redeem himself by blowing away the FO with lightning bolts using Yoda’s never-before-seen “Ghost Lighting”.
Look, even Hamill thought they fucked up with Luke. Yeah, he’s invested in his character, but his critiques are valid.
… And then they killed him off, knowing Carrie was dead. /sigh
Absolutely no one who has ever been in any army in the history of armies finds this the slightest bit hard to believe. Your job might officially be “super duper fighting guy” but damn straight you’re going to do scut work.
With due respect, you are confusing the concepts of impression and facts.
Yes, the facts are that the Death Star and Emperor are dead, and that’s as far as it goes. The IMPRESSION, however, is one of total victory - especially in the crappy new version where you see people celebrating all over the galaxy.
I like the new movies and all but let’s not pretend there aren’t some significant bumps in the story’s consistency, or that the story isn’t simply written to ensure that they can keep making insanely profitable movies. But then, that’s hardly a new thing.
Yes, that impression is there. And I suspect they added the “galaxy wide celebration” scenes because George was certain 7-9 wasn’t happening. While it is impressed, it doesn’t really make sense. “Surrender” was the Emperor’s contingency plan if he died? This isn’t like Hitler, where he offed himself when complete and utter defeat was imminent. Surely the Empire wasn’t all gathered up on Death Star II.
Yes, of course the end of Return of the Jedi was a really big victory for the Good Guys, and of course they’re going to celebrate that. But everyone really should be able to tell that it’s not the end, and that even if the Empire is mortally wounded, it’ll take a long time to finish its death throes.
That said, 30 years is a long time, and it’s fair to ask why, in all that time, the Good Guys still haven’t been able to finish the job (where “finish the job” might not mean “all evil eradicated”, but should at least mean “not enough left of the Old Empire to build yet another planet-killing weapon”). But the blame for not telling us that falls squarely on Abrams, not on Johnson: By the time Johnson took the helm, the time for that story had passed.
I guess I am just used to non-movie quasi-canon like various rpgs and whatnot set in the universe. I’ve always had the impression that the empire was less a centralized, unitary state than a central autocracy dominating a large decentralized combine of tributary planets by military force. Something akin to the Aztec empire, where a few core regions extorted tribute from a wide area on the basis of superior military strength. Or maybe the very early Roman empire, when half the empire consisted of vassal states with their own militaries. The Star Wars universe for example has always had the concept of ‘core worlds’, ‘mid-rim’ and ‘outer-rim’ with seeming decreasing population and centralized control the further out you went.
But a lot of this is wookiepedia territory which basically fills in all the backstory, so I can see arguing against it based on just the movies.
The Empire inherited a lot of its structure from the Old Republic, which had both a unified central government and autonomous planets (like Naboo, with its own queen) within that central government.
The biggest problem and the fundamental one (and I have said this before) is that Star Wars creatively can’t carry the load that Disney wants it to carry so you will always end up with stories about a Rebellion Against an Evil Empire until they stop making Disney money.
YES. This is one of my two biggest pet peeves with the way critics talk about the divide between near-universal critical approval of TLJ and the many fans who aren’t so hot on it. They claim that fans just want something familiar and this movie is too original. But it’s all kinds of remix, as you say! (My other even bigger peeve is when they insinuate or flat-out claim that people who don’t dig this movie are, ipso facto, motivated by racism and sexism. UGH: you could replace every character in this movie with white men, and I would like it LESS.)
Very good points/questions. But we’ve already seen that they don’t really care about any kind of logical continuity. At the beginning of TFA, the old status quo from the beginning of the first SW movie has been reestablished for no apparent reason. The “First Order” has the same ships, uniforms, and accents as the Imperial military from 1977 movie, and the good guys are “rebels” even though the First Order should logically be the ones rebelling against the New Republic.
So once again, it’s all about destroying the Death Star—er, “Starkiller Base”. And they do it, yay! Except as TLJ begins, we see no sign this has turned the tide the way you’d think: apparently the First Order is even more dominant without their planet-killing machine?!?
Now we’re down to just a handful of Rebels on the Falcon, as you say (lower than things ever got in the original trilogy). But in the next movie, as you note, a bunch of new recruits will join up, and there will presumably be some big triumph and joyous celebration (you can’t end two movies in a row on a down note). But then what? Are they really going to reset the status quo again a year or two after that, and put Rey and Finn and Poe back into position as dogged underdogs (heh) again, joined by some younger characters to keep things going as they face the Second Order and their mysterious Force-using Sith Lord-esque leader? All signs would seem to point to “yes”, as Quimby notes:
But wow will that take chutzpah, to reset the continuity after only a few years this time instead of decades. Or maybe they’ll just go back and remake the original trilogy, the way they go back and redo Spider-Man’s origin story periodically?
All you’re really pointing out is that the retcons started with “Empire”. Clearly what Lucas intended with the original “Star Wars” (which I refuse to call “A New Hope”) is Luke saves the princess, they are now boyfriend and girlfriend, they go on to save the Galaxy, the Rebels are now triumphant, yay here are the medals (except for you, Chewie), celebration time. But then to make for a way to spin out more story and make a bazillion more dollars, that stuff was retconned. The same goes double here as I agree that Lucas intended RotJ to be a truly final victory. Sure, you can end up with new baddies down the road, but with the same uniforms and ships? Building another Death Star with a different name. Weak.
I have come to believe that the only really worthwhile movies in the franchise (and I know nothing about the extended novels etc. and don’t care to) are “Star Wars”, “Revenge of the Sith” (minus the risible “Noooo!”), and “Rogue One”. And those latter two are optional. There is a lovely story told in that one 1977 movie, and all the mucking around since has not improved on it. (And I say this as someone who used to like “Empire” the best, although I never liked RotJ.)
I call this epic envy. And I use “epic” in the traditional sense. It started when Tolkien’s detailed world-building was popularized. Then it became not enough to have a single good story. There had to be back stories and explanations and the narratives tying it all together. Or trying to and failing, because universe building is difficult. Even Tolkien failed at times, as any one familiar with Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales knows.
Sometimes it’s better to not bother with all that. Let each story stand on its own. It might have some overlaps in characters or themes with other stories, but trying to build a consistent narrative universe tends to detract from each individual story unless it’s done well. And nobody does it well consistently.
Star Wars would do better as a serial. Do you know why the prequels failed? Because of too much world building and not enough good story. Give the storytellers some basic guidelines so that they stay within the Star Wars themes, but otherwise don’t enforce details. Traditional mythos have many contradictions because good storytelling is more compelling than foolish consistency, which is only a hobgoblin after all.
And one more thing: a good story deserves to be retold many times. No one complains about Hamlet being redone, because it’s a good story. A rehash of a good story is still a good story, perhaps poorly executed.
For anyone who hasn’t seen it already, a thoughtful film critic who goes by the name “Film Crit Hulk” wrote a very engaging essay about The Last Jedi, common criticisms of it, and Star Wars fandom in general. I think it’s well worth reading if you’re a fan of the franchise at all.
It’s a little inflammatory at first – he’s writing this in response to a slew of fairly hateful comments he received for his initial positive review of The Last Jedi. But if you get through that there’s a lot of high quality discussion of film structure, theme, and the interaction between film creators and the fans.
(And for those who have read anything by Film Crit Hulk before, you’ll be relieved to know that he dropped the ALL CAPITALS shtick a while back.)
One problem I’ve not seen anyone mention is the lack of Han Solo or a similar character (unless that guy who sold them out is supposed to suffice? Sorry, no). I have felt most of the SW movies after the original have been too Jedi-obsessed. Han was always my favorite because he wasn’t into “woo”.
Wow, was that ever long and tough to endure. But I did read all of it. FCH, it seems to me, gives lip service to “I’m only really denouncing the truly toxic fans, so if you just didn’t like it for different reasons, that’s cool”—but then the rest of the piece is all about lecturing and belittling the “haters”, just in a slightly less demonstrative way than in the opening. They don’t understand what good writing is, they don’t know what a character arc is, they are juvenile/immature, they are obsessed with “logic”.
Oh, and even though I said they were separate from the really toxic haters, they really aren’t if you dig down deep enough. Because SW fans who don’t love TLJ like I do are stuck on a toxic masculine “power fantasy”, and they feel attacked because the movie is “attacking the worst parts of ourselves and asking us to do better”.* Good grief. FCH could have saved several thousand words and simply said “Many fans just aren’t good-hearted enough to understand/appreciate this movie. Maybe someday, when they are more enlightened.” Barf.
In fact, if anyone is looking for a TL;DR on this incredibly long piece, here’s a very representative piece toward the end, which hilariously includes FCH’s puzzlement about being characterized as “smug” or having “superiority issues”, immediately followed by incredibly disingenuous “who, me?” type responses, and then yet more strawmanning and holier-than-thou posturing and preening:
:smack:
(I do agree with FCH on one point: I liked that Rey’s parents were nobodies. I don’t like how, as someone said upthread, people end up connected in ridiculous ways: C-3PO being originally constructed by Anakin, for instance.)
*I don’t mind a movie not following logic (or following dream logic) if it’s a David Lynch type movie. But since that is not what kind of movie this is, I do get annoyed with a bunch of stuff, like:
Gravity bombing in space?!?
Why wouldn’t the First Order fleet simply use hyperdrive to take positions surrounding the rebel fleet?
Leia Mary Poppinsing through space was risible.
Does anyone have a serious argument as to how Holdo’s plan would have worked (to save most of the personnel and ships) if Poe hadn’t screwed it up?
Why is Rose right to stop Finn from sacrificing himself (despite their being no reason to think both of them would not be killed almost immediately afterward), but Holdo was a hero for sacrificing herself?
Since Poe, Finn, and Rose were able to sneak off to a casino planet and back to the retreating rebel fleet without anyone from the First Order chasing them, why couldn’t a bunch of the rebels do that? Certainly could have added up to as many as actually survived (and those only because of Luke’s intervention from afar, combined with Rey arriving at the right time), or more.
So, somehow slave kids saw everything. I didn’t get how that happened. I caught that the rebel base had communication equipment, so I guess they were broadcasting their ultimate destruction, to inspire people.
And the kids are the new hope for the galaxy, even though they are kids, with nothing. Is the next installment going to be a spacey remake of Newsies?
And maybe there wouldn’t have been a mutiny if they gave the crew some idea that they had a plan other then wait to be picked off one by one.
Rose’s plan seemed impossibly stupid. Yeah, why aren’t they both dead? How’d she get ahead of him? And is that even a romance anyone wants to see? It’s definitely interfering with their work.
On FCH: I have rarely read anything quite so smug, self-satisfied, and bent on ignoring valid criticism in favor of personal attacks on strawmen outside of Donald Trump’s twitter feed.
I’ve criticisized the movie and will probably do it again, but I fully see that it has some good elemernts in it, strong acting, and a lot of enjoyable character moments. But I would never be so jerkish as to suggest that people who don’t agre with me must have a variety of emotional problems. As an example, I happen to like the movie Speed Racer, which I found to be fun and wonderful in the sense that it’s full of wonder. I completely understand it’s flaws, and totally accept that people just won’t always get into the movie in the same way. I don’t feel the denigrate everybody who disagres with me as petulant manchildren, or super-stuffy obsessives, or the fiftieth noxious stereotype FCH feels the need to slam.
Leaving aside the strawmanning, the big issue that FCH fails to get is that RIan Johnson tries to do a lot of things in the film - but that doesn’t mean he succeeds at doing them. I very frequently see serious film geeks seek novelty (real or perceived) over quality. This is perfectly fine! … as long as you don’t confuse the two.
I’m still gobsmacked by the utter stupidity of that plot point. The plan literally seems to be that the Resistance would deliberately abandon all of their equipment, try to flee down to the planet, and then hope for rescue, apparently praying for their lives because if the First Order ever checked (as apparently they easily did) everyone was completely screwed. Or if the First Order just double-checked the make sure that the Resistance didn’t sneak anyone off onto the planet that they just flew past. (Granted, the First Order is hilariously incompetent, but assume the villains weren’t hilarious blockheads.)
I still can’t come up with an excuse as to why they weren’t sending out the fighters and escape pods and such, since apparently there… wasn’t any problem sneaking out. In fact, why was Rose even guarding the escape pods if the plan was to just have everyone basically… pile into escape pods?
FCH tried to justify this as part of Finn’s character arc, which… really doesn’t make sense. The problem here is that the script needs certain to people to be “right”. It’s not enough for them to have differeing points of view - even amongst the heroes, we must divide everyone into either being “right” or “wrong” entirely. But Rian Johnson sort of forgot to set up the situation to match.
Looping back to FCH: I am totally ok with Finn having a character arc about overcoming a desire for reveange, or POe having to become a responsible commander, or whatever. But the movie doesn’t actually justify those arcs. Finn isn’t pointlessly getting himself killed, Rose isn’t making some brave statement of truth (she’s mouthing silly platitudes, and you need to go pretty low before thst stands out in Star Wars), and Poe isn’t actually making bad decisions. You can’t justify a broken script by appealing to a character arc that doens’t sense with the script.
Right? And then to so utterly fail at self-reflection by referring to an apparently large number of critics who call him “smug” and having “superiority issues” while shrugging off any possibility there might be some truth to it. :dubious: