Correction - it was the epic you wanted to see. Many fans, myself included, were satisfied with the conclusion of his story arc and happy that there are new, interesting characters with their own arcs.
A lot of basic storytelling seemed to be missing in general. But it was still a big improvement on the previous one. They seemed to be trying to subvert tropes, while still ripping off the first trilogy and it was hit and miss.
It does say something about how good the first trilogy was when you got all the world-building of the first movies, decades of advances in special effects and such a vast budget and you still fall short of equalling the originals.
Not sure about this. Luke is 20 years removed from a galaxy where the Jedi were an integral part. Rey is 50+ years removed from that world, but 30 years removed from the ‘legend’ of one guy bringing down the Empire. I would put my money on Luke being more likely to believe, he knew all about the Clone Wars.
Well sure. In principle, Rey could be so powerful in the Force that she could just sit in one place and finish off the war by herself. It would make for a boring film. The point is that the constraints on Luke’s powers set up interesting choices which drive the story. As does Vader’s power and menace. By contrast Rey and Kylo are much less interesting IMO.
We don’t have to guess at this though. Luke didn’t know anything about the force or Jedis before he met Old Ben, Rey did know about everything that happened in the original trilogy. We were shown this.
This could be good or bad.
On one hand, the “we do this in trilogies” thing can result in some bad choices. To use the reverse example, the prequel trilogy is at best TWO movies, not three; “The Phantom Menace” is wholly irrelevant, and the story could have started with “Attack of the Clones.” The movies have a lot of problems besides that, but that’s a big one; it drags two hours’ worth of plot and exposition over four hours of movie. Had Lucas just made two movies maybe they’d have been better.
So it is with the current set. While I am not a screenwriter I do find it hard to see how all this can be satisfactorily wrapped up in one movie, and not feel wildly rushed. Personally, I would be absolutely okey-dokey with watching an Episode X in 2020 or 2021.
On the other hand,
- There is something to be said for discipline. JJ Abrams never got anything done in “Lost” because he never had to, as there was always another episode, and when it suddenly came time to end it there was no way to and it become hilariously clear they’d just been writing stuff at random and didn’t know where it was going.
The discipline of working within a constraint is often conducive to good art, and Star Wars itself is an example; it was very hard to make “Star Wars,” with budget and technical limitations, and so Lucas and his team were forced to make hard choices, and in part because of that they turned out an absolutely outstanding movie. If you just give someone carte blanche and a zillion dollars and all the movies they want, why make good stuff?
- I know I am in the minority on this, but Marvel movies are, IMHO, generally quite shitty. There have been some good ones, like “Iron Man,” but the recent output is becoming like Transformers movies; noisy explosion festivals with too many characters and they’re all starting to look the same. “Black Panther” looks identical to stuff they’ve already made, and “Infinity War” looks atrocious.
If Star Wars just becomes a revenue stream, like Marvel movies have, it will be difficult for them to be any good. It’s not impossible, especially if you hand the keys to different elements of the franchise to different directors and get them competing with one another, but you’re likely to end up with five forgettable “Doctor Strange” and “Thor: Ragnarok” movies for every gem.
The idea of using the Star Wars brand to tell totally different stories is potentially a good one, and it HAS been done in various media; “Clone Wars” is way better than the movies it lies between. and the story behind the video game “Knights of the Old Republic” is better than most of the movies, too. But there’s a lot of shitty Star Wars stuff, too. “Lots of stories in the same universe” is the Marvel approach too, and while they have some gems, most of their movies are mediocre and, really, none have been truly great movies recently.
Luke wasn’t just randomly on a backwater either, he was specifically being hidden (on the planet where his father grew up :smack: , but still), and I assume that his relatives were actively preventing him from learning any more abut jedi and space battles and such as possible.
Absolutely, if she had a higher midichlorian count!
(ow, stop hitting me)
That’s what it feels like when millions of voices suddenly cry out.
Kylo is one of the toughest force users to appear in the series. He used force abilities that no one else, including Vader, were able to manage like holding a blaster bolt in midair for an extended time (everyone else only manages to deflect them, not stop them). In VII, they made a point of showing how powerful Chewie’s bowcaster was by highlighting the way it flung ordinary stromtroopers back when they got hit. Kylo took a direct hit to the torso from it and not only didn’t get flung back, but basically caught his breath and then kept on fighting. Rey was able to beat him only AFTER he shrugged off a hit from a weapon that usually kills people in one shot.
If you’re going to completely ignore what’s on the screen in order to complain, there’s really no chance you’ll ever like the movies. Kylo Ren is highly emotional, and criticizing the character in that department could be a valid argument (though it’s very thematically consistent with turning away from emotion-hostile Jedi training), but saying that a guy who does force tricks no one else can manage and who shrugs off a hit from an abnormally strong weapon to keep fighting is a ‘wimp’ just isn’t consistent with what’s shown.
OK I don’t remember the details of his climactic fight in TFA but I still stand by the statement that he generally comes off as a wimp. First of all he does lose the light-saber levitation face-off with Rey in this film, right? It’s not clear what happens but he is the one who ends up on the floor. And Rey still hasn’t had any training to speak of. And Jedi powers aside, his leadership in the climactic battle is impulsive and stupid.
Meh, so Ren’s not calm and menacing, instead he’s powerful and unpredictable and wants to be scary. Not sure why that’s less interesting as a villain. Yes, he’s in charge when he’s not really competent, I’m pretty sure that’s the point; him and Hux are supposed to be out of their depth and in danger of not holding ‘their’ army together.
The problem is that when the bad guys are lead by a couple of stumblebums, it undermines the sense of menace and renders rather hollow whatever victory is achieved.
I did describe the strategy to a friend as one of depending on the incompetence of the opponent to save you.
Nah, a victory over Trump would be a great victory indeed.
Forgive me if it has been posted, but I really liked the above article. Epilogues and re-visiting characters years later is necessarily disappointing.
I think that the article really hits why people both love and hate the movie. It’s disappointing to learn how Han and Luke ended up. I mean…they only won for a bit and Han’s marriage even broke up. But…that is life.
I respect the hell out of Rian Johnson and, dare I say it, even Disney for having the guts to make Episode VIII the way it was. And Episode VII. While I won’t ever love them as much as the original three, I think they contribute something meaningful to the story.
With the rebel army being reduced to about 20 people, having competent leaders on the ‘bad guy’ side would be pushing the boundaries of even Star Wars realism to get a sequel. They’ve got strength but disorganisation on one side vs. a tiny but dedicated group on the other; both have one strength, one glaring weakness.
I just don’t think ‘menacing’ was quite what they were going for. For that to work, they’d either they’d have to come up with something more menacing than Vader, or it would be really unsatisfying. I don’t think they want to try and outdo their godfather of menacing, and I’m quite glad this film didn’t try. Chaotic strength is just as dangerous (insert political joke here).
I’ve been thinking that there MIGHT be something different going on here.
In the Prequels, the Force is centered in the hands of a couple of competing theocratic priesthoods. In the Trilogy, it is primarily the tool of elite autocrats, and forgotten mythology to the rest. I feel like the two most recent movies are setting forth a more democratic view–a “priesthood of all believers”, something accessible to all, regardless of birth, pedigree, or status. We’ll see if that’s where it’s really going.
No, the lightsaber breaks and explodes. Rey grew up having to fight just to eat, it might not be official training but she’s not a sheltered farm boy either. Impulsive and stupid is a good description of Kylo though.
I enjoyed these last three new movies (and I admit publicly again that I liked the prequels. Of course OT is the best, and I can objectively see the problems in all 9 movies, but I enjoyed myself in the theater when I saw them all (er, those of which I am old enough to have seen in theaters), which is really the standard that gets forgotten about).
I’m most worried about the random writing today. I didn’t know that this trilogy is not sketched out until this week. Like … at all. Some of the valid TLJ criticism is that it throws out a lot of the established TFA stuff. Why did it bother to happen one movie ago to be just “Meh, we don’t need it” in the next one? I mean, I do like the openness to try anything, and we all know Lucas wasn’t exactly planning out the whole universe from day one, but maybe having a sketch for the three movies would be nice. You can shove in two suns for closing a character arc and that’s FINE, but it’s hard to do foreshadowing and hints when you don’t know where it’s going.
I think it worked for the most part in TLJ, but I’m worried it’ll end up the awful Kevin Smith movie Red State, where literally every few minutes the entire tone, if not genre, of the movie would change. It was a daring experiment, but it failed for me as a viewer. Is that the direction it’s going to go in now? New writers and directors, no grand plan, going any which way with no cohesive idea other than laser swords? For the movies that are going to be part of the “A long time ago” branch, not the “a star wars story” branch.
I liked TLJ’s surprises, but I don’t need to be shocked and surprised. I want to be engaged and enchanted.
I guess if the new trilogy is fly by the seat of the writers’ pants, causing weird inconsistencies and plot holes, it really is honoring the OT’s legacy, but I would prefer that they knew what they wanted it to be generally and let each writer play in a semi-open sandbox. And I could be worrying for nothing. But like… Rey’s parents. Maybe Kylo was lying, maybe he wasn’t. I think it’s ok they left it as it is. They can go with it or upend it and either would make sense in this one case. However, I worry that there’ll be too many loose threads dangling, too many “aha! you thought this but it’s really that!” You can’t do that with EVERYTHING. You can only “from a certain point of view” so many times. And if you don’t have future stories in mind, the next writer is more likely to come along and be like “Didn’t like that. Let’s make that not have happened.” And it’d be a mess.