Man, I was with you until here. In what world does the entire Cantobite sequence make any narrative sense? Even internal to itself Last Jedi was a mess. Abrams at least made big goofy fun movies.
I agree about hiring a show runner since some people here think Kennedy was too incompetent to fill the role herself. Someone needs to look at the naritative arc of the trilogy and make sure there is something there otherwise you get Indiana Jones with three separate stories.
Eh… maybe we’re going around in circles here, but I disagree. I mean, it’s perfectly plausible in our normal real world that any random person you meet on the street might be a near-world-class expert on the unicycle. You’d never know. There’s no reason to think that’s impossible. But if a show or movie has the heroes escape from a particularly dire strait because one of them suddenly unicycles their way to safety doing all sorts of crazy unicycle tricks, well, that would be pretty jarring. But it wouldn’t take more than 30 seconds of unicycle-skill-related-exposition earlier in the show to get buy-in (at least for the right tone of movie).
How bad/good that is compared to a movie where there’s a 4-year-old who is an off-the-scale unicycle prodigy, and that’s a major plot point, and everyone talks about it a lot… probably depends on the context and each viewer’s personal preference?
(Apropos of nothing, the suspension-of-disbelief for Phantom Menace that I just can’t get past is the idea that there’s no way on the entire planet of Tatooine for the Jedi and Amidala to convert their Imperial credits into some currency that Wato will take. It’s like there’s an island nation in the Carribean, clearly living in the shadow of the dominant hegemonic US sphere of influence, and there’s no way on the entire island to convert dollars into local currency.)
Also, Watto is using child slave labor. Just slice his head off and take what you need. Your karma will be fine.
Was that character only that? I thought he had F-4 experience in Vietnam or the like.
Anyway, extended universe “fixed” the ability of someone like Luke to jump right in by establishing that the Incom T-16 Skyhopper had very similar control layouts to Incom T-65 X-Wing. And it’s not implausible for the Rebels to throw every warm body into a do-or-die mission with someone who has some skill and knowledge.
I think there’s sort of two different issues here.
On the one hand, this was the seventh movie in a series about people who are unusually good at stuff because they have magic Force powers, and not only is Rey the protagonist, she’s the protagonist in a movie called “The Force Awakens.” I think it can be assumed that she’s going to be really, really good at Force stuff, just by the nature of these movies and who she is in them. All the powers she uses are powers that its been established are things people who are good at the Force can do. I don’t think it’s necessary to explicitly establish that Rey is really, really good with the Force: just show her being really, really good with it, and the audience can figure out, “Oh, like Luke and Anakin in the other movies.”
On the other hand, in RotJ, when Luke mind tricks the twilek, it’s a sign that Luke’s turned into a genuine Jedi badass. Having Rey do the mind trick as, like, the second thing she ever does with the Force reduces the, “That’s a badass move” factor by quite a bit.
I guess what I’m saying is you’re wrong, but I agree with you anyway.
That honestly strikes me as completely believable. I mean, sure, there’s almost certainly places on Tatooine where you could make that exchange, but I can easily see it being something that’s only done on the black market, and I wouldn’t expect a couple Jedis to know how to get that hookup on a foreign world. Like, I don’t know anything about currency markets in Cuba, but if you told me that there was no legal way for me to spend or convert a US dollar, I would not find that remarkable. And if you dropped me in the middle of Cuba with a wad of greenbacks, I’d have no idea where to go to convert them into… whatever currency they use in Cuba.
That said, they did settle on “Let’s let this minor child risk his life for our short term benefit” really quick.
In an organized military, Luke getting a slot on the Death Star battle isn’t something that would happen. But the Alliance isn’t that organized. If some sympathizer manages to get them a delivery of 100 starfighters, they’re not going to say “What are we going to do with these? We don’t have the pilots for them”. Nor are they likely to have enough advance notice to train up the pilots for the starfighters they’re about to get. They’re going to say “Great, we’ll take whatever help we can get”, and then start worrying about manning them. And if, before they’ve had a chance to do that, a do-or-die battle suddenly hypers into their system, then of course they’ll take every pilot they’ve got and cram them into seats. Especially if one of their leaders personally vouches for this kid who just rescued her.
Especially with help from the Mind Trick. Sure, Watto is immune, but not everyone is. “You will give us 20 credits worth of local money for these 30 Republic credits” “I will give you 20 credits worth of local money for these 30 Republic credits” has to be a lot easier than “You don’t need to see our papers”.
Yes, he was. It’s still pretty unrealistic for a crop duster pilot whose only training and experience with a jet fighter was flying an F-4 decades ago to jump into the seat of a modern F/A-18, get a few minutes of familiarization, and then fly it flawlessly. It fit well enough into the general tone of the movie, where an F/A-18 pilot flies an alien fighter with no familiarization, but it’s unrealistic. I’ve heard complaints about both of those, actually, but it’s always been complaints about the poor plotting and writing, not complaints that Randy Quaid’s and Will Smith’s characters were Mary Sues.
Considering that Randy Quaid was a drunk and a loser who’s own children didn’t respect him you’d have to be extra twisted to describe that as a Mary Sue character. Will Smith was certainly nearly perfect but having that associated with bad writing is similar to the complaints I’ve heard about Rey. I guess I’d be ok with agreeing that both were poorly written characters but Independance Day is a much more fun movie.
I’ve said I think “A New Hope” is a stupid retitling of the original movie (if they were going to do that, couldn’t they have come up with something more evocative?), but no question that the owners of the Star Wars franchise have been calling it that for at least two decades, and it’s perfectly natural for people today to call it that.
Just to point out what the debate over the name isn’t about.
This. The real problem with the final trilogy, as others have suggested, does seem to be that no one person was in charge of its narrative arc. Or maybe there had been a unifying vision, but Carrie Fisher’s death left them in a quandary they never figured their way out of. (That had to be one hell of a challenge, especially with Han having already been killed off in TFA.)
But I can’t help believing that Abrams left plenty of room for the remainder of the trilogy to go somewhere reasonably worthwhile. TFA was a big goofy fun movie, did a good job of introducing a new set of key characters and getting you to care about them. There’s a fair amount to work with, yet TLJ leaves you really nowhere in terms of narrative arc.
Straight from the horse’s mouth:
One thing that bugged me: the Falcon ending up in a junkyard. WTF? That was Han’s baby. I can’t believe he’d allow that to happen, and even if he wasn’t that attached, you’d think a museum would love to get their hands on it. I mean, consider the history of that ship!
And why would Leia give it to Rey – I think Chewie would have more right to it than anything.
I have no issues with the number of female characters, and whether or not they’re minorities. I agree that those who do have such issues should get over them. I also have no issue with lack of technical explanations, and certainly wouldn’t want Star Wars to become Star Trek. As a wise man once said, “This ain’t that kind of movie kid.” The problem, however, with Johnson breaking new ground is that he did it in a way that made it no longer feel like Star Wars. Jon Favreau showed us how to break new ground in a way that still feels like Star Wars. Grumpy Luke dissing the whole idea of light sabers, flying Leía, and three separate storylines for each of the primary heroes that end up never merging together isn’t it.
She wouldn’t even give him a medal fer cripesake, of course she’s not going to give him a ship. 
Sure, but Cuba is not Tatooine. Cuba is a (pretty much the only) country in the Caribbean which is openly and actively hostile towards the US. But go to some other country there, say Haiti. Be a clearly rich American. Go to a junk yard. Say you’re interested in buying something really expensive. Even if that junkyard owner doesn’t directly take US cash (or your credit card) (and I bet he would), he will fall over himself directing you to someone who can change the money for you. Because it would be suicidally bad business for him not to. It doesn’t make any sense for Watto, an apparently greed-oriented capitalist, not to be actively helping the Jedi change their money so he can overcharge them. (Maybe he has some other motivation? Maybe he just really really hates the Republic? But that’s certainly not shown…) (Not to mention the many many other easy solutions, such as mind-tricking someone ELSE, or using their money to buy gold and then trading the gold to Watto, yada yada yada.)
Furthermore, Jedi knights are not just swordfighters and super-high-jumpers. They are trouble-solvers and diplomats. It’s precisely in their wheelhouse to know how to interact with nearby local non-Old-Republic planets, including negotiating and moving money around.
There’s a difference between “learn super quickly” and “do it without learning at all”. It may be ridiculous how good Annakin is at pod racing as a kid. But it’s clearly a skill he’s already worked at and practiced and done. Same for Luke and piloting. Note how Lucas made an effort to scatter the little hints about Luke being a pilot throughout the movie so it would (at least to some people) NOT seem ridiculous when he was out there in an X-Wing. Why was there that dialog between Han and Luke about “who’s gonna fly it kid?”. To set up Luke suddenly being a pilot in the big raid at the end. So that it was NOT just “oh, yeah, he’s a force user so he can do anything”.
Thanks, ZosterSandstorm, for giving an excellent example of the kind of attitude that I described ~200 posts ago:
If you enjoyed TLJ, then great, good for you.
However, I didn’t enjoy it, and I can explain why I did not enjoy it without needing to resort to implying people who liked the movie are geeks or jerks.
And no, it’s not based on a desire for more technobabble, which is definitely a thing someone ever asked for.
I have to call this out. Debating whether Rey (or Anakin, or Luke) is a Mary Sue (or Marty Stu) does not put someone in league with Incels.
In fact, making the case that including overt political statements in a bit of fantastical escapism like Star Wars might be a little jarring or disbelief ruining doesn’t make you a mouth-breather either, and preemptive ad hominem attacks aren’t conducive to a friendly discussion.
To be frank, I don’t see any correlation between the Mary Sue discussion and any of the more toxic shit that was spewed about these movies. Yet I see a lot of people painting all critics as internet trolls as a lazy way to win any argument about the ST.
Until 2017 a “Mary Sue” was when a female author of fan fiction created a self-insert character who is unrealistically perfect and represented the author’s own romantic desire for the male characters in the property.
As of The Last Jedi, a male writer/director of an authorized sequel using a female character whose major achievement in the film is moving some rocks is apparently, also, a secret second definition. Also it’s bad when that character does “politics” even though the character in question does not in fact have any involvement in the extremely broad political storyline of the movie that in no way has anything to do with specific parties or issues in the contemporary United States, and the only possible meaning of “politics” from context is “the political act of making a woman the protagonist of a movie.”
There is no functional difference between the way people are stretching the term “Mary Sue” and just saying “any female character I don’t like.” I am the farthest thing in the world from some kind of kneejerk social justice warrior, but it’s so obvious that the people complaining about TLJ are complaining about the existence of female characters that it would be willful blindness of me not to notice it. The “must like all Disney product!” people are also not part of this (I don’t see how anyone could like both the Abrams films and TLJ anyway since they are such repudiations of each other).
I have no self-doubt about the fact that I have more experience with both art film and Star Wars media than 99.99% of these people. Are you “allowed” to dislike it? No one is stopping you. Am I persuaded by your arguments as to why you are qualified to tell me anything beyond “this is my own subjective feeling that has no bearing on how anyone else should respond to the movie?” Still no after four years, but keep trying,
I think the problem is that you’re arguing against the straw man TLJ hater, and not listening to what people are actually saying.
My criticism of TLJ didn’t even mention Rey, nor did I ask for a technobabble explanation of the Holdo maneuver (I just want some degree of self consistency within a plot).
To the extent anyone is being critical of Rey, note that it’s just specific, described aspects of the character. And note that other female characters like Holdo have not been criticized here. So what is it, that if we think one female character is poorly written we’re MRA incels now?
The term has been used fluidly and broadly to describe characters written by men, and characters who are men, for a long, long time. This application is not some recent contrivance thought up by TLJ trolls to mask their gender politics. If you’ve got issues with the way every internet discussion these days seems to be a proxy for some larger culture war that’s fine, but let’s not misrepresent facts…because doing so puts you down in the mud with the same trolls.
So it transitioned to meaning “any female character I don’t like” sometime before 2017?
What do you believe this term “Mary Sue” to mean, and if not the above, then what are some examples of “female characters I don’t like” who are not “Mary Sues?”