I must say after The Last Jedi, my anticipation for IX has plummeted.
I can forgive almost everything about TLJ, even though I think it is a huge slap down and F.U. to TFA, but there are a couple things I think were a mistake and are going to make things unnecessarily hard for JJ.
Killing off Luke when Carrie Fisher actually died.
Not killing off Leia when he had the chance.
Note, there was plenty of time for reshoots to make those changes.
I know it sounds cold, but Carrie dying is a real problem. I don’t want Leia’s death to be a footnote in the crawl, I don’t want her off on vacation somewhere, and they aren’t going to CGI her (which would be terrible as well). Knowing she’s dead, and then killing off Luke in the same move is just awful. They had footage of her being blown up, so blow her up, or some other creative way, and maybe move it farther down the movie so she gets roughly the same amount of screen time. It could have been a very somber, powerful moment, if done right.
He should have let Luke live and allowed JJ clean up the “Luke mess” (if that even exists). Luke kinda sucked in this film, a lot of people think that, and I think there is only so much redemption you can get as a force ghost.
Johnson, seemingly deliberately, slapped down every layup JJ set up in TFA, and then did this. I think it’s gonna be rough for JJ to come up with a good film.
I disagree with most of your post, but do agree that JJ and his writing partner have a terribly difficult task.
Rian Johnson stole many of the climaxes for his movie he:
Killed Luke
Killed Snoke
Resolved Rey’s parentage
Killed Phasma
When asked about what was left for Episode IX, Johnson has said, “I don’t know. I’m not writing or involved in that movie at all. That’s up to that movie’s team.”
I’m amazed Disney allowed him to take so much of the story and wrap it up.
To be fair, it’s not like JJ and company had any clear idea where the plot was going after TFA. TFA was just another movie full of JJ’s patented mystery box bullshit. That man really needs to not make anything ever again. At the very least he should have no say in the story.
You realize the one that grossed a heck of a lot less money got a lower score with critics, and a lower score with audiences, over at ROTTEN TOMATOES, right?
I did, too: TLJ is my favorite Star Wars movie, despite its flaws, because it felt like the author was trying something new and interesting. I’m pretty cold on Abrams and don’t really care to see anything else he does; for the first time ever, I may give a Star Wars movie a miss.
But I recognize that TLJ’s different style isn’t going to be to all tastes. It doesn’t surprise me at all that some folks like Abram’s stuff more.
I was hoping someone other than Abrams would be in charge for the next movie. His visual style is fine, but one problem with both Star Wars and his Star Trek efforts is that they feel like they take place in an afternoon; he doesn’t do the passage of time very well at all. I expect a less interesting plot from him than The Last Jedi’s too, and that’s a shame because it left off in a great place and I’m curious to see how a couple of dozen remaining rebels deal with the baddies.
Because TLJ ended with the Resistance in a ragtag scattershot mess, and also because Leia surviving was such an important part of the storyline (at the time), I anticipate there will be a lot of time passing between episodes for regrouping. The time between VII and VIII was like two weeks. The time beween VIII and IX will likely be something like five years or more.
I loved The Last Jedi, but I agree that the multiple opportunities in the story for Leia to die probably should’ve been taken to fit Carrie’s death. They had Holdo to fill her shoes in a sequel, and then keep Luke alive for the old guard to have a presence still. It seems a missed opportunity.
As it is, Luke will almost certainly return as a Force Ghost for Rey’s support.
This. AFAIAC, Ep 8 was the end of the story, not with a bang but with a whimper. There are loose ends, but not enough to care about or bother with.
Ep 7, though not the greatest movie in the world, still left me with enough reason to see Ep 8. For me, at least, Ep 8 fails to do that for Ep 9.
Thinking on Eps 1-3 and 7-8, I’m reminded of the opening sentence of “Prologue - Concerning Boggies” from Bored of the Rings: “This book is predominantly concerned with making money, and from its pages a reader may learn much about the character and the literary integrity of the authors.”
In the original trilogy, Lucas had a story that grabbed the public’s imagination, and it made a shitload of money. But the story came first. But in the rest of the eps, it seems like (other than the rudimentary notion of Anakin starting off good and somehow going over to the Dark Side) I have to imagine them saying, “we can make a shitload of money here, now what story can we come up with to do it?”
TFA was okay. Not great, not original, but coherent and entertaining.
TLJ was incoherent, scattershot, poorly plotted, poorly written and poorly thought out.
It had better acting and better SFX than TFA, I’ll say that for it.
But everyone I know IRL who saw both movies enjoyed TFA a hell of a lot more.
Sorry if this conflicts with your feelings on the matter, but I think a hell of a lot of people didn’t like TLJ.
I’m not offended, just surprised. I thought it was so obvious that it was a better movie that I just assumed that everyone else would agree, without bothering to ask anyone (other than the friend I saw it with, who agreed with me). But apparently people do disagree with me. Shrug.
It’s hard for me to tell if there is a significant number of people who dislike The Last Jedi or if it’s an illusion. There is certainly a vocal online contingent, and there was a sharp drop-off at the box office in the second week, but final tallies still have it in the top ten grosses ever, and the drop-off could also be explained by it being a sequel, and it being the week of Christmas.
Most of the arguments I see against it I really find surprising and ones I can’t agree on at all. It really seems like a sharp demarcated divisive line between the likers and haters. Quite a shame, I think they’re cutting themselves off from a great movie.
My biggest fault with it (and I hope JJ can steer it back to where I, yes I, cuz I am the only one that matters, want it to be) is that it sort of ended the Skywalker arc prematurely (there’s supposed to be another movie, Rian!). The cartoons, the side movies, the new movies, the books, et al can be about any one of the billions of characters in the galaxy. But these nine episodes, IMO, are supposed to be about the Skywalker story.
All the fun speculation fans had coming out of TFA about Rey and Luke and Leia were squashed in TLJ. Luke’s dead, Leia’s presumably dying off-screen, Rey’s a nobody…I mean, I get it: Rian wants all of us to let the past die, kill it if we must, but come on man, let us have these last couple of movies with the Skywalkers and see how the magic wraps up before we completely move on.
A lot of fans wanted that. Rian Johnson made it pretty clear that he was making a movie he wanted to make and didn’t give a damn about the fans. That’s why it underperformed.
I’ve been an utterly massive Star Wars fan for as long as I can remember, and TLJ was my favorite SW movie since the OT. Probably by far – I might even like it more than RotJ. I understand that you didn’t like the movie, and some other folks didn’t either, but it’s just silly broad-brushing to say that the director “didn’t give a damn about the fans”. You can speak for yourself, but you don’t speak for “the fans” any more than me or any other single person.
I’m not the one saying that though. Johnson says it himself with the way he structured the movie. The fans want to know who Snoke is? Fuck it, he’s dead. Don’t care what they want.
The fans want to know who Rey’s parents are? Fuck it, they’re nobodies, unimportant.
The fans want to see the dramatic moment when Rey hands Luke back his lightsaber?
Fuck it, let’s turn it into a comic moment and have him toss it over his shoulder.
