Finished TFA. Some thoughts. Probably going to butcher film words because I'm not even remotely fluent in film language, but I'll do my best:

I don't know what you'd call it exactly, pacing or screenwriting maybe. But I feel they were really trying to get as much action into scenes as they could fit, sometimes at the expense of storytelling. Some plot parts feel rushed, and some action scenes around them are a bit long and pointless. When we first meet Finn is a good example. We're shown a stormtrooper on Jakku who sees some **** and is clear put off by the First Order. They did a good job bringing attention to him, I got that his character was important, and was interested. They show him again as a stormtrooper back at base, where we don't learn much about him other than seeing his face and that he was disturbed by everything he saw.

Next scene we see him, he's trying to free a Resistance pilot to escape the First Order. I thought at this point: uh, okay? It's not like it was totally unfounded for him to want to escape. But I felt like there was a scene missing, some moment where he actually makes the decision to leave and decides a plan. It's just a bit jarring to be thrown around between scenes so quickly where you're inferring motivations.

Then I felt the actual escape scene was sort of a microcosm of the same thing: the characters of Finn and Poe steal the TIE, work together to escape, and get shot down. Which was a cool scene, I like it in many regards. Where I didn't like it was the way they decided to introduce the characters: while flying, dodging shots and fighting a bunch of TIEs, the Poe and Finn have a scene where they introduce themselves and have a conversation about nicknames. Except they yell it in a high action scene. It felt weird right in the middle of a bunch of missiles and lasers and ****, which had plenty, maybe even excessive, screentime. I think the scene would have flowed better if, maybe they thought they had escaped, then in the downtime introduced, then some new fighters came in from a surprise angle. That would have felt a bit better, but since the screenwriters clearly decided to maximize lasers over story, they stuck the introduction into that scene.

And I think that represents much of my attitude about parts of the film. There's not anything I thought was overtly bad, but I felt there was too much screentime devoted to showing explosions and lasers where some more story would have been more fitting.

Also: as a side note, deciding to spring an enemy pilot and fight your way out of a base is a pretty brave act. Yet, the movie tells us Finn is a coward, and he has some scenes where he sort of acts like that, then decides to be really heroic and rescue Rey. So like, in some scenes he's kinda cowardly, then in some he's doing near heroic acts. Which is it? We might not know, but it's a tad contradictory.

One other thing: I'm sure this has been talked about quite a bit, but Rey is too powerful for a new force user. On intuition she seemed able to use the force on the level of a Jedi Master, and without training used a lightsaber to beat Kylo Ren (granted he was injured, but still). Neither Anakin nor Luke, both some of the most powerful Jedi, seemed to be able to use the Force at that level in the beginning. As well, her beyond-typical technological skill, which somehow apparently extends to everything, felt a little much, like how she apparently could navigate and operate all parts of the Millennium Falcon without any sort of knowledge about that kind of ship. It felt like they were making a very overt, self-conscious effort to be feminist, and it was a bit obnoxious.

Also, Rey never met Leia but knew she needed comfort after the mission. I guess you could say it was "the Force", but Rey had no idea about Leia's relationship to Han or Kylo or why that would matter. It seemed odd for her to be the one to comfort Leia.

I thought Harrison Ford did a fantastic job acting in this movie, his role and delivery were great. Not sure how I feel about the scene of Han Solo dying. I get why it was supposed to be an impactful scene, so intellectually it worked, but emotionally I didn't feel much. Because, well, they don't show the relationship at all. Like, they tell you Kylo is Han and Leia's son, they tell you he was training under Luke and that it went bad, then you see him die. I got what was happening, but I didn't feel it, because none of that was established in any way. As in: that scene mattered more because Han Solo was dying and we were losing the character more than it mattered for the plotline between the characters, and that's something of a problem.

Also, the fan service of TFA was a bit excessive. "Oh, that's the thing from A New Hope", he said, for the 150th time. A few of these would be fine, and it cut down near the end, but at some point near the middle of the film it felt like every third scene was dropping a direct reference.

Anyway, after this wall of complaints you might think I hated the movie. Not really, I enjoyed it enough, I don't think there was anything so awful to be beyond redemption. It was competent, and my complaints about pacing, and the ratio of action:story was off kilter, but it's so off kilter in so many movies now that it's hard to blame just Star Wars for that, it's just a "movies today" problem where 45 minutes of the movie has to be ****ing laser battles.

I agree w/most of that (and also really enjoyed TFA).

Surprised you left out what was to me the most egregious bit of rushed plotting--when the First Order announces that they're going to destroy the "Republic" (not previously mentioned except in the opening crawl, I think), we're introduced to the Republic seat of government with the entirety of their galactic fleet parked in front of it and it's destroyed in less than a minute. WHaaat

that is a story for another time

Ok Reid now do TLJ

Okay, so, The Last Jedi. Basically this entire post is a big spoiler and I don't want to tag it, so if you care for that don't read it.

Oh boy is there a bunch to say. I get why the movie was so polarizing. At first I felt neutral. Throughout the middle part to almost the end I felt the movie was amazing. Near the end I felt strong disappointment in a few areas.

So first: Kylo Ren is far and above the most interesting character in the new Star Wars. The first movie gave me that impression, TLJ sealed the deal. And this is in contrast to Rey, who's pretty boring and undeveloped as a character. But, yeah: his edgy mask that he wears as a fanboy to Vader, the discards, his actual tensions with who he wants to be, his fits of anger where he just smashes ****, all super interesting and well done. He even kills Snoke to secure power, which was pretty rad. In contrast to Rey, who's not.. uninteresting but not very compelling, either. I mean, who is she, really? She seems to be some sort of unambiguous "good guy". She doesn't really get training from Luke, fails to resist the dark side, voluntarily goes into the dark side cave in one of the many promising but ultimately pointless and confusing scenes, then fights Luke, learns of the failing of him as a Jedi Master, then goes off to turn Kylo Ren. Like, basically she's a far more reckless, untrained version of Luke in ESB, and is much more morally ambiguous, yet then goes on to just straight win her fights.. like nothing bad happens?

It's a pure negation of ESB. She didn't learn anything, didn't overcome anything, didn't develop as a character in any dimension, then goes and still wins. She's good by intrinsic nature and seems immune to any dark side temptation. At least we have Kylo to do and say interesting things.

Oh, and regarding Kylo, that line he said about "ending the past", I thought the movie was lining itself up to agree with him there. It was an interesting premise, and had promise: Kylo Ren speaks of ending the past. The old actors are over. Yoda burns the old Jedi books. There's a theme of people "moving on" from the past. My thoughts? I thought the Rey vs. Kylo Ren thing was going to turn into a morally ambiguous line: something where the old tradition of "Jedi vs. Sith" was going to be broken down, and Kylo and Rey were going to be the arbiters of some new understanding of the force. That, to me, would have been really interesting, a death of the old ways and the birth of something really new.

But, nope, Rey's unstoppable savant Jedi skills and untainted will had her resist Kylo's offer, then beat him in a fight and leave.. (also, how did she get off the ship.. am I crazy or was that not shown?). So the movie resolves itself back to what feels to be a really basic, kinda cheesy good vs. evil plotline, with little subtlety.

Maybe, just maybe, if the last movie has Rey turn evil and Kylo turn good, then maybe something cool will happen. Or anything that disrupts the really straightforward note they ended on. So much of the movie made it feel like they were tearing down the old walls only to rebuild them at the end, I'm not sure what they're planning at all. We know there will be another Jedi, and in the lightsaber duel between Kylo and the Luke hologram, Luke (seems to) imply that Rey will be the next Jedi Master. Let's hope it's a good plot they work up.

So enough about Rey. One thing that felt odd: many of the scenes in this film seemed to serve no purpose whatsoever for the story. For example: Leia's weird frozen magic space move scene. What the **** was that about? I was laughing because that scene felt.. really absurd. But that leads into what I think was the most pointless plot in the entire movie. So, after that scene, we get what's-her-name, the purple hair woman, in charge. She commands the fleet to keep moving forward. Poe disagrees, but is shunned, so he forms the plan with Rose and Finn. They execute it (by the way, didn't flying to a Casino planet to find a guy who can break the code seem to really break the pace of a scene where they're "almost out of fuel"?), and start bringing the dude they found back. So Poe leads a mutiny, then he's taken down by Leia herself, then we find it was all a ploy since they have cloaked ships they're moving out anyway that they didn't tell Poe about because, why not? Then Finn and Rose fail, have a cool but pointless fight scene filled with BB-8 gags, and escape.

So literally nothing that happened in any of that mattered at all for the story. All it really served to do was introduce Rose, give some revenge porn for Finn and the silver stormtrooper lady, and double down on the character they already established for Finn. Oh, and it let us have the cool light speed through an imperial fleet scene. But, storywise, you could have just like.. directly gone to them getting on cloaked ships, and it wouldn't change one thing. So I don't get why that ate up 30 minutes or so of screen time? It gave plenty of opportunities to generate all those rad special effects, and it did build up the base of characters, but it still feels really odd that none of it was consequential.

However, they also could have used that time to, like, give Rey training, or something interesting to do or say.

I liked the promise of the Sith cave, where time is an infinite circle (NIETZSCHE ANYONE?), however the scene ended in a literal non-answer and then Kylo tells Rey her parents were insignificant. Maybe he's lying, but if that's the truth then.. okay? So her one interesting plot point was just dismissed like that? Though the whole mind connection thing between Rey and Kylo was interesting, and let to the most interesting dialogue, having it later all just be a machination of Snoke was a tad disappointing. Possibly since Snoke is "uninteresting characterless evil guy" they disposed of, whereas Kylo is actually interesting.

Also, the hologram Luke thing was just odd, and again, what was the point? I didn't feel really surprised by it, it just sort of "broke the rules", so to say, of what Jedi were capable of. So.. not only can Jedi create holograms, these holograms are also corporeal and can lightsaber duel? And using this superpower kills you? Like, Luke just died spontaneously anyway, why did the hologram thing even matter, except so they could have a nice long shot of AT-ATs shooting lasers?

Okay, so I've just ragged on the film a bunch. I don't really know how I feel yet. I didn't love or hate it, and there were also some scenes I really liked. Having Luke be sort of an edgy, detached hermit, and having Kylo's version of events be more closer to truth than Luke's was very interesting (THOUGH TOTALLY INCONSEQUENTIAL FOR REY, AS WITH EVERYTHING), and his basic refusal to train Rey, all really good. And the scene of him mocking her reaching out her hand ruled. I liked how much more story there was compared to action in this film, and many of the scenes were really intriguing. I just felt they didn't pay off in ways that mattered.

I guess I'll to wait and see what they do with the story. If it ends up being super straightforward that Kylo Ren's the bad guy and Rey's the good guy, and she wins the Jedi cause, then I think this movie was pretty bad. They did just so much working building up all this cool stuff, so if they throw it away I'll be really disappointed. However, if the next story takes the complications this movie created and deals with them in an interesting way, then I think it will be pretty dang good.

I just felt that the movie had too many heroic sacrifices which in the end made them all feel pretty shallow. I felt like I was watching a Michael Bay movie.

Good well thought-out points Reid, thank you. My biggest disappointment here is with the wasted potential. The new characters established in FA are good and their actors are charismatic. The return of the original cast has felt natural to me and not just cheap fan service. Lucas is no longer involved with his endless inanities as seen in the prequels and even before that. FA did well enough to serve as a foundation for true greatness in this installment. This could have been a wonderful Star Wars movie. What a shame.

The bit when they went to Monte Carlo was some prequel level stuff btw.

Yeah it kinda was. I think it was supposed to be like "what if mos eisley cantina, but how the other half lives" and it ended up being more "prequel level stuff" if I'm getting you right.

I understand you haven't seen the new movie. That's never been my point. I understand that you're frustrated by JJ and his mysteries. I'm simply saying that even if JJ didn't define Rey's past and "there is no plan" is absurd. And yaknow, giving Rey an ambiguous past counts as a broad stroke.

TBH, I don't remember feeling like the mystery of Rey's parentage was really dealt with very much by TFA. The stuff we're shown in that movie seemed to deal more w/ the abandonment and the hope they'd return, not whether or not they were somebody special. But the fan speculation sure as hell got into 'who are they' territory really fast. Even back then, I didn't care, and in fact actively hoped she wouldn't turn out to have special heritage. I really remember all that conversation being mostly spurred by fan assumptions about what the studio, director, writers would do, than anything explicitly mentioned or depicted in TFA.

that's just talking about one ~JJ MYSTERY~ though.

The point was they wanted a "Jedi" to save them, but Luke knows the Jedi are better in myth than in reality. He knows that Jedi have a history of failure, yet history smiles at them for being cool space wizards, even though they are ultimately cowards and failures. He even tells girl-Luke that "what's one guy with a lazer sword supposed to do against the entire first order?"

Luke realizes after talking to Yoda that even though he and the Jedi were failures, people still need inspiration (that "spark" they mentioned half a dozen times, including in the opening crawl), so he gives them what the want. He wouldn't be a failure again for abandoning his family. So he uses his hologram. Even though it was fake, the resistance didn't know it. He gave them the Jedi of legend, not the Jedi of reality. This is made obvious when the space stable boy is telling the story of the Jedi legend Luke Skywalker. Apparently this used a lot of energy, because it took him out. Kylo Ren mentions at one point that the little Force-Skype convos he has with Rey would kill her, so it must not be her. So a full on Jedi hologram would be pretty intense, which is why Kylo didn't suspect it. The audience has lots of clues, like an obviously younger Luke, no red footprints, and Luke holding a lightsaber that we saw explode a few minutes ago. I think it was fitting, but it's not what fans wanted. We wanted Force Unleashed kind of ****. Like throwing around Tie fighters ATATs like crumpled paper and being a badass. But, according to Luke, that's not real.

This movie actually makes the story of the prequels better. It fixes them a bit. They're still terrible movies, but it makes their story better.

Yeah, I didn't get the impression that her parentage was important until a bunch of internet articles told me it was. I'm pretty glad they didn't give her some canon lineage bc the "royal blood" angle of Star Wars has never been my favorite.

@Reid - Again I mostly agree, but a couple points: One, Poe inadvertently​ leaks the secret rebel plan to the first order as soon as he learns about it, leading to most of the resistance being killed (I don't recall there being any reason to think the plan would have failed otherwise). So, not telling him might or might not have been a mistake. Two, Luke's astral projection thing is outside of what we've seen from Jedi in the past but I don't know if there are really "rules" to break--nobody could shoot lightning from their hands until RotJ. After that, the EU mostly just codified the "force powers" we'd already seen (moving rocks! Jumping high! Mind trick!) The Star Wars games definitely contributed to this. And by the time the prequels came around they didn't seem to have much interest in adding anything new. Instead we got higher high jumps and bigger finger lightning. But the force as initially described is really open-ended and I think it's hard to say something isn't possible or is against the "rules," especially with the EU (rightfully) thrown out. Like Kylo Ren freezing people was pretty dope right?

I thought Leia's spaceflight was dumb, not because it wasn't a correct use of the force, but because it looked ridiculous and didn't square w/the desperation of the situation--they could have had her do something similar and not look like Chris Reeve and it would have been ten times better, haha

Agree w/ this and pretty much all the other stuff you said as well. At the very least, it was good to hear someone directly verbally refer to the fact that the Jedi ****ed up big time in the prequels. It just feels like there's a little bit more connective tissue between the Prequel Trilogy and the New Trilogy when Luke talks about stuff he's learned about what happened in those movies (and just the old history of the Jedi in general).

oops wrong thread

Edit: Kylo Rens comically oversized chest was funny, though out place

Oopsies

I didn't read any of this thread, but I'm seeing this movie tomorrow or the next day. I will report my findings then.

read the thread before you type up your finding though ~_~

SPOILERS GALORE! Good interview with Rian Johnson about TLJ https://soundcloud.com/thedirectorscut/star-wars-the-last-jedi-with-rian-johnson-and-spike-jonze-ep-123

Kylo Rens chest ****s all over the canon and no true Star Wars fan will abide it

Matt the radar technician was right

Kyle Ren IS shredded

im seeing it again saturday purely for Kylo Shred

I couldn't agree more with saberopus and Reid on this point.

I sensed that it was too good to be true, but just after eliminating that lame Snoke character, Rey broke what I consider to be the focal point of the movie--the incredible sexual tension that had been building between herself and Ben, first through online chats and culminating in their physical confrontation--simply to return to more repetitive fighting sequences.

You're not going to engage me if you think that interesting, potentially pivotal plot points are only good for driving forward more fighting sequences, over and over again. Doing it in five different ways in the same movie doens't make it any better.

I'll add that I agree with saberopus and Reid as well when they both said that the beginning was slow, the middle was great, and the ending left something to be desired. Hitting us with homage after homage and generally copying the ESB was really wearing me down, until things got really interesting in the middle (several times), but ultimately didn't really culminate in anything I could take home with me as I left the theater.

Also, there were two really stupid things.

1. Why didn't they put the main rebel cruiser on autopilot, sparing the commander, and send it ramming into the imperial flagship right from the beginning? And if the imperials knew this was possible, why didn't they target it first?
2. Rose going on a suicide mission to save Finn from sacrificing himself was... bizarre and pointless.

I actually like Episode II & III better than the new movies (Episode I was racist trash, though). However corny the dialogue, at least Lucas tried to write a story / build a world (as Jon`C points out).

With the new movies, I enjoy them while they appear to be leading somewhere interesting, and a plot twist redeems it for a moment, and then there's just more pointless fighting, never giving the audience a chance to develop an attachment to some potential plot or character development.

The new movies have it backward. The action is supposed to help move forward the plot, being secondary to dialogue and character development, whereas here interesting plot points simply explode every assumption we've had prior, and the action resumes until the next time this is done again (and again), but nowhere is the audience given something to care about that survives to the end of the movie.

My ranking:

1. Empire Strikes Back
2. A New Hope
3. Return of the Jedi
4. Revenge of the Sith
5. Attack of the Clones
6. The Last Jedi
7. The Force Awakens
8. The Phantom Menace

Edit: I'm actually not even sure if I like RotJ more than RotS. It's a toss-up.

The prequals tried to cram way too much into the movie spatially using excessive CGI. The new trilogy tries to cram way too much into the movie temporally. They are long and disjointed.

That said, TFA was even worse about this: I thought the movie was going to be over about three different times, but no, it just kept the homages and action sequences going.

Also, the vegan propaganda was sorta strange.

I think what bothers me most about the new trilogy movies is that there are no risks being taken.

They are not so much movies with a central idea, sinking or floating according to its merit, than cheap amalgamations of set pieces, much like something from a superhero universe, having lots of different characters that make cameos lasting just long enough for a respite from more CGI action.

That all said, it's certainly possible that everything I claimed was lacking in the movie was actually there after all, but I didn't notice it because I was too disinterested to suspend my low expectations.

I still have pretty mixed feelings about the film. I'm really excited to see some fan-edits down the road, as there were some good parts, but as a whole the movie is deeply flawed.

One of the biggest problems for me is that the events of TFA happen in something like two days. Then you have TLJ which starts immediately after TFA and that only takes place within three days. There is no time for characters to breath or develop off screen. By the end of TLJ Finn and Rey act like old friends that haven't seen each other in years, but really they just met earlier that week. At this rate it's possible Rey's desert bread is still passing through her digestive tract!

The OT gave us a few years between the events of the films, which made the galaxy feel bigger, like things were really happening off screen. In these new films it feels like we're watching a bad weekend in galactic history where the government has been blown up, but instead of taking power the First Order is chasing around a tiny caravan of ships trying to kill them all while the rest of the galaxy seems to go along as if nothing big has happened.

Aside from never explaining anything in TFA we're left with so many questions, and though Disney is selling answers as "DLC" with books and other supplemental materials we're left asking more questions than we're getting answers for.

One prime example of this is that when the new cannon New Republic started, they decided the capitol would rotate from system to system every few years so there would be more equal representation in the government rather than having it centralized. By the time we get to the events of TFA the capitol had been in 4 different systems, yet blowing up the current capitol's system somehow eliminated the entire New Republic?

8 POESTS IN A ROW, THOUGH?

edit: banned for all caps

I was trying to mimic the multiplicity of apparent endings that in the new movies in my posting style.

It's like poetry.

I just watched The Phantom Menace again, and while the character writing is of course awful, it really does pace itself and...luxuriate in the universe it's created in a way that the new movies haven't. Ships landing and taking off from planets is a Big Deal, with big establishing shots and lots of pomp and circumstance in the music, sound design, etc. The podrace (which owned IDGAF what anyone says) was built up to over like a half dozen scenes, with rwcer engines in watto's shop, run-in with sebulba, Anakin's racer in his back yard, dinner conversation. By the time it actually starts, we know exactly what's about to happen and what the stakes are.

It's all diminished considerably by the presence of Anakin and Jar Jar and absence of any likable characters, but there's definitely something valuable there that got left behind. The new movies don't have time for lingering establishing shots of planets or long landing sequences, so they put them in the background while characters say funny stuff. It's a mixed blessing

I agree with what you say about TPM, despite it being my least favorite movie in the series. I've thought along similar lines before, but didn't go back and watch the whole thing, instead browsing for clips here and there, only to be repulsed by how utterly dumb Jar Jar and many of the lines were.

One might say that TPM represents the movie with the most wasted potential, since as you pointed out it did build up an interesting world but wasn't quite right in the end, whereas the new trilogy represents the most forced results out of the most inadequate setup.

I miss this so much in these movies and others. Just a sense of time and space, of location, geography, of stillness or silence.

Ironically, If I'm not mistaken, it was with the prequels that George Lucas began the trend of cramming so much CGI crap on the screen as possible that makes developing a sense or time and space all but impossible.

It was either him or Michael Bay.

Looking back from 2017, the people-standing-in-front-of-a-green-screen effect of the Prequels really stands out. I mean, it did before but CGI definitely improved in this decade in that regard.

I think I'm lucky in that TPM came out when I was 10, so I really did enjoy it pretty thoroughly before the internet told me it was bad and I should hate it. I never loved Jar Jar but it's pretty easy for me to tune him out at this point, haha.

What really annoyed me this time was Qui-Gon. Liam Neesons plays him with so much gravitas it's easy to miss, but practically everything he does in the movie is either incompetent or incredibly unethical. He's lucky he died before any of the consequences happened.



Meant to mention before, but I somewhat disagree on this. The Force Awakens was about un-risky as it could possibly be, but a lot of the stuff in The Last Jedi--all the "kill the past" stuff, depicting Luke as kind of a failure, the whole abortive Casino mission as a means of condemning reckless heroism, killing Snoke mid-trilogy, etc--is plenty risky. Some of those risks paid off and others kind of got in their own way, but TLJ definitely feels to me like a movie that's trying to look outward.

Well with where TLJ leaves off, we almost have to have a separation before the next movie now since the "entire" Resistance on the Falcon having to build their forces up won't make for much of a movie.