And yeah, the ending does have the Resistance almost wiped out. Just like almost the entire fighter force the rebels send after the Death Star die. Just like Neo literally dies right before the end. Because you push your heroes to the ragged edge before they pull out the win at the last minute. That's a very common structure.
...
When I was younger, I fucking loved Star Wars. I watched it about a billion times. I don't remember which editions we had (though definitely I saw the originals first), but I remember that the start of each one had an interview with George Lucas talking about making the films. I remember very little except that he said that he followed a very classic structure in the films: in the first act, you introduce the heroes, in the second, you put them in a dark situation where they're never going to get out, and in the third act, they get out. "That's drama." I don't think he was wrong! At least, about that being a major, common, classic way to do drama.
Anyway seeing this just reminds me of that. Who knows how honest he was being about that being his plan (at least once the first movie was a hit), but the rebels being crushed and almost hopeless was deliberate in Empire Strikes Back, so I don't feel like it was out of place there.
I keep seeing the supposed parallel to ESB being thrown around, but it’s really not the same. At the end of Empire, Luke has already healed from his wound and is adjusting to his mechanical hand, and they’re in space with a bunch of Rebel ships. It was a lost battle, not a lost war - and with Han being explicitly pointed out as alive, we have a basic idea of how the heroes will regroup and save the day in the finale.
TFA sets up the entire republic fleet/hierarchy/whatever getting blown up, and then TLJ compounds on it with the entire resistance reduced to maybe two dozen people. There’s no fleet to regroup with, Han is dead, Luke is dead, and it’s explicitly called out that nobody is responding to help or coming to support. “We are the spark that will blah blah” doesn’t mean shit when the entire galaxy heard you call for help and collectively shrugged. The war is over and the resistance lost, and the only spark of optimism is that broomstick kid can use the force. Which, ok, that’s nice if he’s all trained up in 15 years, but is completely irrelevant to the fight against the first order.
On its own merits TLJ is the best of the sequel trilogy, but it really leaves ROS with hardly anything to work with.
No, the end of TLJ is implying that because of Luke's actions reaching across the galaxy, all those people that weren't responding are now joining up. The fires of rebellion are spreading. The kid is symbolic ffs, he's not supposed to be a major character in the next film.
TLJ sets up an obvious direction for the next film. Rey is figuring out the new Jedi order. Poe is leading the new rebellion. Finn is a rebel hero. They are gonna kick the First Order around.
And you can glance at the leaked Treverrow script and see that people got that part. It may suck (that script sucks) but it clearly sees the pieces left for it.
A vast, vast amount of TRoS would be easily improved by “IT AS BEEN 10 YEARS” instead of “THE DEAD SPEAK” and going from there. Abrams deciding the next movie takes place a few weeks later when he was given a perfect setup to create whatever he wanted the new universe to be is mind boggling.
The choices of both movies to have no temporal gap between the preceding one whatsoever were extremely poor.
How much of a gap would you expect between Rey meeting Luke and her beginning her training?
Yes, yes, the last scene of TFA was also terrible.
And yeah, the ending does have the Resistance almost wiped out. Just like almost the entire fighter force the rebels send after the Death Star die. Just like Neo literally dies right before the end. Because you push your heroes to the ragged edge before they pull out the win at the last minute. That's a very common structure.
...
When I was younger, I fucking loved Star Wars. I watched it about a billion times. I don't remember which editions we had (though definitely I saw the originals first), but I remember that the start of each one had an interview with George Lucas talking about making the films. I remember very little except that he said that he followed a very classic structure in the films: in the first act, you introduce the heroes, in the second, you put them in a dark situation where they're never going to get out, and in the third act, they get out. "That's drama." I don't think he was wrong! At least, about that being a major, common, classic way to do drama.
Anyway seeing this just reminds me of that. Who knows how honest he was being about that being his plan (at least once the first movie was a hit), but the rebels being crushed and almost hopeless was deliberate in Empire Strikes Back, so I don't feel like it was out of place there.
I keep seeing the supposed parallel to ESB being thrown around, but it’s really not the same. At the end of Empire, Luke has already healed from his wound and is adjusting to his mechanical hand, and they’re in space with a bunch of Rebel ships. It was a lost battle, not a lost war - and with Han being explicitly pointed out as alive, we have a basic idea of how the heroes will regroup and save the day in the finale.
TFA sets up the entire republic fleet/hierarchy/whatever getting blown up, and then TLJ compounds on it with the entire resistance reduced to maybe two dozen people. There’s no fleet to regroup with, Han is dead, Luke is dead, and it’s explicitly called out that nobody is responding to help or coming to support. “We are the spark that will blah blah” doesn’t mean shit when the entire galaxy heard you call for help and collectively shrugged. The war is over and the resistance lost, and the only spark of optimism is that broomstick kid can use the force. Which, ok, that’s nice if he’s all trained up in 15 years, but is completely irrelevant to the fight against the first order.
On its own merits TLJ is the best of the sequel trilogy, but it really leaves ROS with hardly anything to work with.
No, the end of TLJ is implying that because of Luke's actions reaching across the galaxy, all those people that weren't responding are now joining up. The fires of rebellion are spreading. The kid is symbolic ffs, he's not supposed to be a major character in the next film.
TLJ sets up an obvious direction for the next film. Rey is figuring out the new Jedi order. Poe is leading the new rebellion. Finn is a rebel hero. They are gonna kick the First Order around.
And you can glance at the leaked Treverrow script and see that people got that part. It may suck (that script sucks) but it clearly sees the pieces left for it.
A vast, vast amount of TRoS would be easily improved by “IT AS BEEN 10 YEARS” instead of “THE DEAD SPEAK” and going from there. Abrams deciding the next movie takes place a few weeks later when he was given a perfect setup to create whatever he wanted the new universe to be is mind boggling.
The choices of both movies to have no temporal gap between the preceding one whatsoever were extremely poor.
How much of a gap would you expect between Rey meeting Luke and her beginning her training?
Yes, yes, the last scene of TFA was also terrible.
It's been mentioned before but throwing that last scene in to TFA just does a TON to constrain the next film. It's actually kind of hilarious. If you imagine the film ends with Rey zipping away to find Luke suddenly there's like infinite possibilities for what situation he could be in or where it could go. But JJ just really wanted to set up Luke as Yoda or something.
And yeah, the ending does have the Resistance almost wiped out. Just like almost the entire fighter force the rebels send after the Death Star die. Just like Neo literally dies right before the end. Because you push your heroes to the ragged edge before they pull out the win at the last minute. That's a very common structure.
...
When I was younger, I fucking loved Star Wars. I watched it about a billion times. I don't remember which editions we had (though definitely I saw the originals first), but I remember that the start of each one had an interview with George Lucas talking about making the films. I remember very little except that he said that he followed a very classic structure in the films: in the first act, you introduce the heroes, in the second, you put them in a dark situation where they're never going to get out, and in the third act, they get out. "That's drama." I don't think he was wrong! At least, about that being a major, common, classic way to do drama.
Anyway seeing this just reminds me of that. Who knows how honest he was being about that being his plan (at least once the first movie was a hit), but the rebels being crushed and almost hopeless was deliberate in Empire Strikes Back, so I don't feel like it was out of place there.
I keep seeing the supposed parallel to ESB being thrown around, but it’s really not the same. At the end of Empire, Luke has already healed from his wound and is adjusting to his mechanical hand, and they’re in space with a bunch of Rebel ships. It was a lost battle, not a lost war - and with Han being explicitly pointed out as alive, we have a basic idea of how the heroes will regroup and save the day in the finale.
TFA sets up the entire republic fleet/hierarchy/whatever getting blown up, and then TLJ compounds on it with the entire resistance reduced to maybe two dozen people. There’s no fleet to regroup with, Han is dead, Luke is dead, and it’s explicitly called out that nobody is responding to help or coming to support. “We are the spark that will blah blah” doesn’t mean shit when the entire galaxy heard you call for help and collectively shrugged. The war is over and the resistance lost, and the only spark of optimism is that broomstick kid can use the force. Which, ok, that’s nice if he’s all trained up in 15 years, but is completely irrelevant to the fight against the first order.
On its own merits TLJ is the best of the sequel trilogy, but it really leaves ROS with hardly anything to work with.
No, the end of TLJ is implying that because of Luke's actions reaching across the galaxy, all those people that weren't responding are now joining up. The fires of rebellion are spreading. The kid is symbolic ffs, he's not supposed to be a major character in the next film.
TLJ sets up an obvious direction for the next film. Rey is figuring out the new Jedi order. Poe is leading the new rebellion. Finn is a rebel hero. They are gonna kick the First Order around.
And you can glance at the leaked Treverrow script and see that people got that part. It may suck (that script sucks) but it clearly sees the pieces left for it.
A vast, vast amount of TRoS would be easily improved by “IT AS BEEN 10 YEARS” instead of “THE DEAD SPEAK” and going from there. Abrams deciding the next movie takes place a few weeks later when he was given a perfect setup to create whatever he wanted the new universe to be is mind boggling.
The choices of both movies to have no temporal gap between the preceding one whatsoever were extremely poor.
How much of a gap would you expect between Rey meeting Luke and her beginning her training?
Yes, yes, the last scene of TFA was also terrible.
And that’s what Rian Johnson was given to work with. It was not a “choice” to have no time gap, Abrams forced it by creating an unnecessarily specific cliffhanger.
+3
Options
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
And yeah, the ending does have the Resistance almost wiped out. Just like almost the entire fighter force the rebels send after the Death Star die. Just like Neo literally dies right before the end. Because you push your heroes to the ragged edge before they pull out the win at the last minute. That's a very common structure.
...
When I was younger, I fucking loved Star Wars. I watched it about a billion times. I don't remember which editions we had (though definitely I saw the originals first), but I remember that the start of each one had an interview with George Lucas talking about making the films. I remember very little except that he said that he followed a very classic structure in the films: in the first act, you introduce the heroes, in the second, you put them in a dark situation where they're never going to get out, and in the third act, they get out. "That's drama." I don't think he was wrong! At least, about that being a major, common, classic way to do drama.
Anyway seeing this just reminds me of that. Who knows how honest he was being about that being his plan (at least once the first movie was a hit), but the rebels being crushed and almost hopeless was deliberate in Empire Strikes Back, so I don't feel like it was out of place there.
I keep seeing the supposed parallel to ESB being thrown around, but it’s really not the same. At the end of Empire, Luke has already healed from his wound and is adjusting to his mechanical hand, and they’re in space with a bunch of Rebel ships. It was a lost battle, not a lost war - and with Han being explicitly pointed out as alive, we have a basic idea of how the heroes will regroup and save the day in the finale.
TFA sets up the entire republic fleet/hierarchy/whatever getting blown up, and then TLJ compounds on it with the entire resistance reduced to maybe two dozen people. There’s no fleet to regroup with, Han is dead, Luke is dead, and it’s explicitly called out that nobody is responding to help or coming to support. “We are the spark that will blah blah” doesn’t mean shit when the entire galaxy heard you call for help and collectively shrugged. The war is over and the resistance lost, and the only spark of optimism is that broomstick kid can use the force. Which, ok, that’s nice if he’s all trained up in 15 years, but is completely irrelevant to the fight against the first order.
On its own merits TLJ is the best of the sequel trilogy, but it really leaves ROS with hardly anything to work with.
No, the end of TLJ is implying that because of Luke's actions reaching across the galaxy, all those people that weren't responding are now joining up. The fires of rebellion are spreading. The kid is symbolic ffs, he's not supposed to be a major character in the next film.
TLJ sets up an obvious direction for the next film. Rey is figuring out the new Jedi order. Poe is leading the new rebellion. Finn is a rebel hero. They are gonna kick the First Order around.
And you can glance at the leaked Treverrow script and see that people got that part. It may suck (that script sucks) but it clearly sees the pieces left for it.
A vast, vast amount of TRoS would be easily improved by “IT AS BEEN 10 YEARS” instead of “THE DEAD SPEAK” and going from there. Abrams deciding the next movie takes place a few weeks later when he was given a perfect setup to create whatever he wanted the new universe to be is mind boggling.
The choices of both movies to have no temporal gap between the preceding one whatsoever were extremely poor.
How much of a gap would you expect between Rey meeting Luke and her beginning her training?
Yes, yes, the last scene of TFA was also terrible.
And that’s what Rian Johnson was given to work with. It was not a “choice” to have no time gap, Abrams forced it by creating an unnecessarily specific cliffhanger.
He did make a choice to have the ticking clock of his shitty chase happen, though. That wasn't a good choice.
And yeah, the ending does have the Resistance almost wiped out. Just like almost the entire fighter force the rebels send after the Death Star die. Just like Neo literally dies right before the end. Because you push your heroes to the ragged edge before they pull out the win at the last minute. That's a very common structure.
...
When I was younger, I fucking loved Star Wars. I watched it about a billion times. I don't remember which editions we had (though definitely I saw the originals first), but I remember that the start of each one had an interview with George Lucas talking about making the films. I remember very little except that he said that he followed a very classic structure in the films: in the first act, you introduce the heroes, in the second, you put them in a dark situation where they're never going to get out, and in the third act, they get out. "That's drama." I don't think he was wrong! At least, about that being a major, common, classic way to do drama.
Anyway seeing this just reminds me of that. Who knows how honest he was being about that being his plan (at least once the first movie was a hit), but the rebels being crushed and almost hopeless was deliberate in Empire Strikes Back, so I don't feel like it was out of place there.
I keep seeing the supposed parallel to ESB being thrown around, but it’s really not the same. At the end of Empire, Luke has already healed from his wound and is adjusting to his mechanical hand, and they’re in space with a bunch of Rebel ships. It was a lost battle, not a lost war - and with Han being explicitly pointed out as alive, we have a basic idea of how the heroes will regroup and save the day in the finale.
TFA sets up the entire republic fleet/hierarchy/whatever getting blown up, and then TLJ compounds on it with the entire resistance reduced to maybe two dozen people. There’s no fleet to regroup with, Han is dead, Luke is dead, and it’s explicitly called out that nobody is responding to help or coming to support. “We are the spark that will blah blah” doesn’t mean shit when the entire galaxy heard you call for help and collectively shrugged. The war is over and the resistance lost, and the only spark of optimism is that broomstick kid can use the force. Which, ok, that’s nice if he’s all trained up in 15 years, but is completely irrelevant to the fight against the first order.
On its own merits TLJ is the best of the sequel trilogy, but it really leaves ROS with hardly anything to work with.
No, the end of TLJ is implying that because of Luke's actions reaching across the galaxy, all those people that weren't responding are now joining up. The fires of rebellion are spreading. The kid is symbolic ffs, he's not supposed to be a major character in the next film.
TLJ sets up an obvious direction for the next film. Rey is figuring out the new Jedi order. Poe is leading the new rebellion. Finn is a rebel hero. They are gonna kick the First Order around.
And you can glance at the leaked Treverrow script and see that people got that part. It may suck (that script sucks) but it clearly sees the pieces left for it.
A vast, vast amount of TRoS would be easily improved by “IT AS BEEN 10 YEARS” instead of “THE DEAD SPEAK” and going from there. Abrams deciding the next movie takes place a few weeks later when he was given a perfect setup to create whatever he wanted the new universe to be is mind boggling.
The choices of both movies to have no temporal gap between the preceding one whatsoever were extremely poor.
How much of a gap would you expect between Rey meeting Luke and her beginning her training?
Yes, yes, the last scene of TFA was also terrible.
And that’s what Rian Johnson was given to work with. It was not a “choice” to have no time gap, Abrams forced it by creating an unnecessarily specific cliffhanger.
He did make a choice to have the ticking clock of his shitty chase happen, though. That wasn't a good choice.
No, the end of TLJ is implying that because of Luke's actions reaching across the galaxy, all those people that weren't responding are now joining up. The fires of rebellion are spreading. The kid is symbolic ffs, he's not supposed to be a major character in the next film.
The fact that this is such an argued point among the fandom is mind-boggling to me. How can anyone watch this scene and think otherwise? Luke is the spark! The kids play with the toys and tell the story of Luke facing down the First Order. Broom Kid gets a reminder of how shitty his life is and goes off to look up at the stars and dream...
Broom Kid is all of us. How was this not obvious?
(Don't answer that, you animals. It was rhetorical.)
That scene follows the Resistance explicitly saying "everyone got the message and they're not coming".
Like the symbolism is obvious and like a ton of other stuff in that movie is just tonally out of place with everything else and muddled by all the other things the movie does.
It doesn't follow that scene. There's a whole bunch of scenes between those points. Including the literal climax of the entire film. Important things happen during that time for fairly obvious reasons.
"We need to inspire people to fight the First Order" as a goal does not exist in the movie until it suddenly exists in Act 3. Like, think carefully: is anyone in the movie actually have this a goal they act on or even say, up until that point?
The entire problem I have with TLJ is that yes, in a bunch of places it does X which means Y because Z but none of it actually is done well enough to land emotionally, or it bizarrely undermines it or fails to wrap it up, or fails to set it up.
The movie makes the bizarre decision to completely abandon addressing what it's main characters are doing next in favor of dropping an utterly generic "looking towards the future" character pose on screen while 15 minutes prior telling the audience the resistance is finished because no one is actually coming to fight the First Order.
+5
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reVerseAttack and Dethrone GodRegistered Userregular
And yeah, the ending does have the Resistance almost wiped out. Just like almost the entire fighter force the rebels send after the Death Star die. Just like Neo literally dies right before the end. Because you push your heroes to the ragged edge before they pull out the win at the last minute. That's a very common structure.
...
When I was younger, I fucking loved Star Wars. I watched it about a billion times. I don't remember which editions we had (though definitely I saw the originals first), but I remember that the start of each one had an interview with George Lucas talking about making the films. I remember very little except that he said that he followed a very classic structure in the films: in the first act, you introduce the heroes, in the second, you put them in a dark situation where they're never going to get out, and in the third act, they get out. "That's drama." I don't think he was wrong! At least, about that being a major, common, classic way to do drama.
Anyway seeing this just reminds me of that. Who knows how honest he was being about that being his plan (at least once the first movie was a hit), but the rebels being crushed and almost hopeless was deliberate in Empire Strikes Back, so I don't feel like it was out of place there.
I keep seeing the supposed parallel to ESB being thrown around, but it’s really not the same. At the end of Empire, Luke has already healed from his wound and is adjusting to his mechanical hand, and they’re in space with a bunch of Rebel ships. It was a lost battle, not a lost war - and with Han being explicitly pointed out as alive, we have a basic idea of how the heroes will regroup and save the day in the finale.
TFA sets up the entire republic fleet/hierarchy/whatever getting blown up, and then TLJ compounds on it with the entire resistance reduced to maybe two dozen people. There’s no fleet to regroup with, Han is dead, Luke is dead, and it’s explicitly called out that nobody is responding to help or coming to support. “We are the spark that will blah blah” doesn’t mean shit when the entire galaxy heard you call for help and collectively shrugged. The war is over and the resistance lost, and the only spark of optimism is that broomstick kid can use the force. Which, ok, that’s nice if he’s all trained up in 15 years, but is completely irrelevant to the fight against the first order.
On its own merits TLJ is the best of the sequel trilogy, but it really leaves ROS with hardly anything to work with.
No, the end of TLJ is implying that because of Luke's actions reaching across the galaxy, all those people that weren't responding are now joining up. The fires of rebellion are spreading. The kid is symbolic ffs, he's not supposed to be a major character in the next film.
TLJ sets up an obvious direction for the next film. Rey is figuring out the new Jedi order. Poe is leading the new rebellion. Finn is a rebel hero. They are gonna kick the First Order around.
And you can glance at the leaked Treverrow script and see that people got that part. It may suck (that script sucks) but it clearly sees the pieces left for it.
A vast, vast amount of TRoS would be easily improved by “IT AS BEEN 10 YEARS” instead of “THE DEAD SPEAK” and going from there. Abrams deciding the next movie takes place a few weeks later when he was given a perfect setup to create whatever he wanted the new universe to be is mind boggling.
The choices of both movies to have no temporal gap between the preceding one whatsoever were extremely poor.
How much of a gap would you expect between Rey meeting Luke and her beginning her training?
Yes, yes, the last scene of TFA was also terrible.
And that’s what Rian Johnson was given to work with. It was not a “choice” to have no time gap, Abrams forced it by creating an unnecessarily specific cliffhanger.
There could've been a time gap, he didn't need to pick everything back up literally from that scene. Even if it was a couple of weeks, and we pick back up with Luke very reluctantly giving Rey some half-assed entry-level training and Rey getting annoyed by it, you could have the rest of that exact same story.
TLJ starting up immediately after the events of TFA is one of its biggest weaknesses.
TFA was the best of the sequel trilogy, but it still isn't really good. I felt the same way about it as I did after the first Star Trek reboot film, which is that it was ok, and that hopefully they actually do something interesting with the next one.
The whole trilogy is kind of an uninspired mess, and the more I look back on them the less I like any of it.
No, the end of TLJ is implying that because of Luke's actions reaching across the galaxy, all those people that weren't responding are now joining up. The fires of rebellion are spreading. The kid is symbolic ffs, he's not supposed to be a major character in the next film.
The fact that this is such an argued point among the fandom is mind-boggling to me. How can anyone watch this scene and think otherwise? Luke is the spark! The kids play with the toys and tell the story of Luke facing down the First Order. Broom Kid gets a reminder of how shitty his life is and goes off to look up at the stars and dream...
Broom Kid is all of us. How was this not obvious?
(Don't answer that, you animals. It was rhetorical.)
That scene follows the Resistance explicitly saying "everyone got the message and they're not coming".
Like the symbolism is obvious and like a ton of other stuff in that movie is just tonally out of place with everything else and muddled by all the other things the movie does.
It doesn't follow that scene. There's a whole bunch of scenes between those points. Including the literal climax of the entire film. Important things happen during that time for fairly obvious reasons.
"We need to inspire people to fight the First Order" as a goal does not exist in the movie until it suddenly exists in Act 3. Like, think carefully: is anyone in the movie actually have this a goal they act on or even say, up until that point?
The entire problem I have with TLJ is that yes, in a bunch of places it does X which means Y because Z but none of it actually is done well enough to land emotionally, or it bizarrely undermines it or fails to wrap it up, or fails to set it up.
The movie makes the bizarre decision to completely abandon addressing what it's main characters are doing next in favor of dropping an utterly generic "looking towards the future" character pose on screen while 15 minutes prior telling the audience the resistance is finished because no one is actually coming to fight the First Order.
No. Locking in exactly what is happening next is really bad filmmaking JJ. And telling the audience the resistance is finished is kind of necessary for a second act in a movie. Did you see Empire? It’s a long string of the Rebels losing and the Imperals losing and it ends with the heroes running away with who knows how many left, handless, wondering about the future...
Also like... the “we need to inspire people to fight” was a theme right from the start. There are like a billion speeches about hope in the movie they’re not there by accident. And it’s not like RJ is a subtle filmmaker
No, the end of TLJ is implying that because of Luke's actions reaching across the galaxy, all those people that weren't responding are now joining up. The fires of rebellion are spreading. The kid is symbolic ffs, he's not supposed to be a major character in the next film.
The fact that this is such an argued point among the fandom is mind-boggling to me. How can anyone watch this scene and think otherwise? Luke is the spark! The kids play with the toys and tell the story of Luke facing down the First Order. Broom Kid gets a reminder of how shitty his life is and goes off to look up at the stars and dream...
Broom Kid is all of us. How was this not obvious?
(Don't answer that, you animals. It was rhetorical.)
That scene follows the Resistance explicitly saying "everyone got the message and they're not coming".
Like the symbolism is obvious and like a ton of other stuff in that movie is just tonally out of place with everything else and muddled by all the other things the movie does.
It doesn't follow that scene. There's a whole bunch of scenes between those points. Including the literal climax of the entire film. Important things happen during that time for fairly obvious reasons.
Specifically it happens after “are we all that’s left?” As it answers the question for the resistance, no there are others.
I think TRoS was a mess primarily because of studio response to the internet backlash. JJ can make a perfectly entertaining film (see TFA), particularly when the story or even genre fits his strengths (see Cloverfield). The racist, sexist, weeaboo bullshit is because Disney execs don't understand the internet (see James Gunn for further proof).
Blame the suits.
JJ is the suit. He was second on the entire project after Kennedy. He would be the single person with the most involvement in all three films. The idea that he didn't have anything to do with TLJ is kind of ridiculous on its face
TRoS is a shitty movie through and through on craftsmanship alone. TFA wasn't. Cloverfield wasn't. None of them were reactionary racist like TRoS. The difference, I think, is Disney meddling.
I admit I'm going almost entirely on gut feeling here.
Yesf TLJ is implying that because of Luke's actions reaching across the galaxy, all those people that weren't responding are now joining up. The fires of rebellion are spreading. The kid is symbolic ffs, he's not supposed to be a major character in the next film.
The fact that this is such an argued point among the fandom is mind-boggling to me. How can anyone watch this scene and think otherwise? Luke is the spark! The kids play with the toys and tell the story of Luke facing down the First Order. Broom Kid gets a reminder of how shitty his life is and goes off to look up at the stars and dream...
Broom Kid is all of us. How was this not obvious?
(Don't answer that, you animals. It was rhetorical.)
That scene follows the Resistance explicitly saying "everyone got the message and they're not coming".
Like the symbolism is obvious and like a ton of other stuff in that movie is just tonally out of place with everything else and muddled by all the other things the movie does.
It doesn't follow that scene. There's a whole bunch of scenes between those points. Including the literal climax of the entire film. Important things happen during that time for fairly obvious reasons.
"We need to inspire people to fight the First Order" as a goal does not exist in the movie until it suddenly exists in Act 3. Like, think carefully: is anyone in the movie actually have this a goal they act on or even say, up until that point?
The entire problem I have with TLJ is that yes, in a bunch of places it does X which means Y because Z but none of it actually is done well enough to land emotionally, or it bizarrely undermines it or fails to wrap it up, or fails to set it up.
The movie makes the bizarre decision to completely abandon addressing what it's main characters are doing next in favor of dropping an utterly generic "looking towards the future" character pose on screen while 15 minutes prior telling the audience the resistance is finished because no one is actually coming to fight the First Order.
The problem here is you are just wrong about how the film plays out.
For example the spark analogy pops up early in the film. Holdo is I believe the first one to mention it explicitly in her first scene. She literally brings this entire idea up you are claiming doesn't exist till the third act just as the movie is really starting to spin out all it's plot threads. It's right near the start of the film that they establish explicitly that their goal is to survive and become the core of a new rebellion by inspiring hope in the oppressed masses of the galaxy.
And then the story challenges that goal. Puts obstacles in it's way. Things get bad, more people die, etc, etc. Finally they hit their lowest point. There are almost none of them left. No one answers their call for help. And then Luke shows up. We go from their lowest point to victory because that's how this kind of story works. Luke is all alone, Vader has him in his sights, fucking Han Solo out of nowhere to save the day. Luke comes along and schools a First Order army singlehandedly and gives the resistance time to escape.
Then we move to the ending. What do we see? Everyone on the Falcon celebrating their escape. There's a bunch of meaningful scenes setting up future plots. Also Rey and Poe meet for the first time I believe. Included in this is a very explicit call out to what is going to happen, which comes after talking about Luke dying at peace and with purpose and while they are both looking at his broken lightsaber.
REY: How do we build a Rebellion from this?
LEIA: We have everything we need.
Then we cut immediately to the final scene where oppressed children we've been introduced to before repeat the legends of Luke Skywalker and then a child stares up the sky and imagines himself as a rebel.
It's all very obvious. Set up the idea early in the film, take it to it's lowest point, the day is saved at the last minute, the Resistance has everything it needs to rebuild itself, here's an example of how that spark is setting a fire across the galaxy.
Like, straight up, you are remembering the movie wrong. The things you are saying didn't happen are right there in the film. You are even literally trying to ignore the climax of the film.
And yeah, the ending does have the Resistance almost wiped out. Just like almost the entire fighter force the rebels send after the Death Star die. Just like Neo literally dies right before the end. Because you push your heroes to the ragged edge before they pull out the win at the last minute. That's a very common structure.
...
When I was younger, I fucking loved Star Wars. I watched it about a billion times. I don't remember which editions we had (though definitely I saw the originals first), but I remember that the start of each one had an interview with George Lucas talking about making the films. I remember very little except that he said that he followed a very classic structure in the films: in the first act, you introduce the heroes, in the second, you put them in a dark situation where they're never going to get out, and in the third act, they get out. "That's drama." I don't think he was wrong! At least, about that being a major, common, classic way to do drama.
Anyway seeing this just reminds me of that. Who knows how honest he was being about that being his plan (at least once the first movie was a hit), but the rebels being crushed and almost hopeless was deliberate in Empire Strikes Back, so I don't feel like it was out of place there.
I keep seeing the supposed parallel to ESB being thrown around, but it’s really not the same. At the end of Empire, Luke has already healed from his wound and is adjusting to his mechanical hand, and they’re in space with a bunch of Rebel ships. It was a lost battle, not a lost war - and with Han being explicitly pointed out as alive, we have a basic idea of how the heroes will regroup and save the day in the finale.
TFA sets up the entire republic fleet/hierarchy/whatever getting blown up, and then TLJ compounds on it with the entire resistance reduced to maybe two dozen people. There’s no fleet to regroup with, Han is dead, Luke is dead, and it’s explicitly called out that nobody is responding to help or coming to support. “We are the spark that will blah blah” doesn’t mean shit when the entire galaxy heard you call for help and collectively shrugged. The war is over and the resistance lost, and the only spark of optimism is that broomstick kid can use the force. Which, ok, that’s nice if he’s all trained up in 15 years, but is completely irrelevant to the fight against the first order.
On its own merits TLJ is the best of the sequel trilogy, but it really leaves ROS with hardly anything to work with.
No, the end of TLJ is implying that because of Luke's actions reaching across the galaxy, all those people that weren't responding are now joining up. The fires of rebellion are spreading. The kid is symbolic ffs, he's not supposed to be a major character in the next film.
TLJ sets up an obvious direction for the next film. Rey is figuring out the new Jedi order. Poe is leading the new rebellion. Finn is a rebel hero. They are gonna kick the First Order around.
And you can glance at the leaked Treverrow script and see that people got that part. It may suck (that script sucks) but it clearly sees the pieces left for it.
A vast, vast amount of TRoS would be easily improved by “IT AS BEEN 10 YEARS” instead of “THE DEAD SPEAK” and going from there. Abrams deciding the next movie takes place a few weeks later when he was given a perfect setup to create whatever he wanted the new universe to be is mind boggling.
The choices of both movies to have no temporal gap between the preceding one whatsoever were extremely poor.
How much of a gap would you expect between Rey meeting Luke and her beginning her training?
Yes, yes, the last scene of TFA was also terrible.
And that’s what Rian Johnson was given to work with. It was not a “choice” to have no time gap, Abrams forced it by creating an unnecessarily specific cliffhanger.
There could've been a time gap, he didn't need to pick everything back up literally from that scene. Even if it was a couple of weeks, and we pick back up with Luke very reluctantly giving Rey some half-assed entry-level training and Rey getting annoyed by it, you could have the rest of that exact same story.
TLJ starting up immediately after the events of TFA is one of its biggest weaknesses.
That was literally what the film did. The time between TFA and TLJ is already however many days or weeks of time Rey spent with Luke. The chase was only 18 hours and she shows up near the end of that time, but we are explicitly shown at least a couple day/night cycles with her and Luke.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
And yeah, the ending does have the Resistance almost wiped out. Just like almost the entire fighter force the rebels send after the Death Star die. Just like Neo literally dies right before the end. Because you push your heroes to the ragged edge before they pull out the win at the last minute. That's a very common structure.
...
When I was younger, I fucking loved Star Wars. I watched it about a billion times. I don't remember which editions we had (though definitely I saw the originals first), but I remember that the start of each one had an interview with George Lucas talking about making the films. I remember very little except that he said that he followed a very classic structure in the films: in the first act, you introduce the heroes, in the second, you put them in a dark situation where they're never going to get out, and in the third act, they get out. "That's drama." I don't think he was wrong! At least, about that being a major, common, classic way to do drama.
Anyway seeing this just reminds me of that. Who knows how honest he was being about that being his plan (at least once the first movie was a hit), but the rebels being crushed and almost hopeless was deliberate in Empire Strikes Back, so I don't feel like it was out of place there.
I keep seeing the supposed parallel to ESB being thrown around, but it’s really not the same. At the end of Empire, Luke has already healed from his wound and is adjusting to his mechanical hand, and they’re in space with a bunch of Rebel ships. It was a lost battle, not a lost war - and with Han being explicitly pointed out as alive, we have a basic idea of how the heroes will regroup and save the day in the finale.
TFA sets up the entire republic fleet/hierarchy/whatever getting blown up, and then TLJ compounds on it with the entire resistance reduced to maybe two dozen people. There’s no fleet to regroup with, Han is dead, Luke is dead, and it’s explicitly called out that nobody is responding to help or coming to support. “We are the spark that will blah blah” doesn’t mean shit when the entire galaxy heard you call for help and collectively shrugged. The war is over and the resistance lost, and the only spark of optimism is that broomstick kid can use the force. Which, ok, that’s nice if he’s all trained up in 15 years, but is completely irrelevant to the fight against the first order.
On its own merits TLJ is the best of the sequel trilogy, but it really leaves ROS with hardly anything to work with.
No, the end of TLJ is implying that because of Luke's actions reaching across the galaxy, all those people that weren't responding are now joining up. The fires of rebellion are spreading. The kid is symbolic ffs, he's not supposed to be a major character in the next film.
TLJ sets up an obvious direction for the next film. Rey is figuring out the new Jedi order. Poe is leading the new rebellion. Finn is a rebel hero. They are gonna kick the First Order around.
And you can glance at the leaked Treverrow script and see that people got that part. It may suck (that script sucks) but it clearly sees the pieces left for it.
A vast, vast amount of TRoS would be easily improved by “IT AS BEEN 10 YEARS” instead of “THE DEAD SPEAK” and going from there. Abrams deciding the next movie takes place a few weeks later when he was given a perfect setup to create whatever he wanted the new universe to be is mind boggling.
The choices of both movies to have no temporal gap between the preceding one whatsoever were extremely poor.
How much of a gap would you expect between Rey meeting Luke and her beginning her training?
Yes, yes, the last scene of TFA was also terrible.
And that’s what Rian Johnson was given to work with. It was not a “choice” to have no time gap, Abrams forced it by creating an unnecessarily specific cliffhanger.
There could've been a time gap, he didn't need to pick everything back up literally from that scene. Even if it was a couple of weeks, and we pick back up with Luke very reluctantly giving Rey some half-assed entry-level training and Rey getting annoyed by it, you could have the rest of that exact same story.
TLJ starting up immediately after the events of TFA is one of its biggest weaknesses.
That was literally what the film did. The time between TFA and TLJ is already however many days or weeks of time Rey spent with Luke. The chase was only 18 hours and she shows up near the end of that time, but we are explicitly shown at least a couple day/night cycles with her and Luke.
Not true.
Last scene of Rey & Luke in TFA: Rey walks up to him and presents the lightsaber
First scene of them in TLJ: Luke takes the lightsaber and tosses it
Maybe there's a bit of leeway with the resistance stuff, but Rey's temporal position is instantaneous
So I don't get how anything you just told me undermines what was the thrust of my point which is: the movie does a bunch of stuff and none of it lands emotionally, for various reasons.
People keep responding to criticism of the movie by re-explaining in excruciating detail what happened but not why it was tonally or emotionally significant, or if the quality of it's delivery conveyed the importance of the moment for the character or if the scene created a conviction that something was important.
Though I'm just going to say it: even while saying I didn't understand the theme, you can't actually remember exactly when the "we're going to inspire a resistance" dialogue initially comes up. It's that vague yet is a core theme? Really? And that literally fails to explain how that thread remains relevant after "no one is coming". Like I don't think I can really overstate the issue that, sure, a bunch of people in a scene said some things the script made them say but this is literally after the movie is smacking you in the face with "our allies heard our call for help and are not coming" and then actually did not come.
Maybe my perspective means parts of a movie resonate with me more then others - that's true of everyone. But if it seems like the importance of that scene is overshadowing how I remember the ending of the movie, it's because emotionally the way it was put together really fails to harmonize with anything else going on. People are saying things don't make sense because what's on screen is just whiplashing against what's been built up. And you don't get nearly this much disagreement in movies that are written well, and you definitely don't get nearly as many scene by scene breakdowns because when there are competing interpretations they're at least holistic.
So I don't get how anything you just told me undermines what was the thrust of my point which is: the movie does a bunch of stuff and none of it lands emotionally, for various reasons.
People keep responding to criticism of the movie by re-explaining in excruciating detail what happened but not why it was tonally or emotionally significant, or if the quality of it's delivery conveyed the importance of the moment for the character or if the scene created a conviction that something was important.
Though I'm just going to say it: even while saying I didn't understand the theme, you can't actually remember exactly when the "we're going to inspire a resistance" dialogue initially comes up. It's that vague yet is a core theme? Really? And that literally fails to explain how that thread remains relevant after "no one is coming". Like I don't think I can really overstate the issue that, sure, a bunch of people in a scene said some things the script made them say but this is literally after the movie is smacking you in the face with "our allies heard our call for help and are not coming" and then actually did not come.
Maybe my perspective means parts of a movie resonate with me more then others - that's true of everyone. But if it seems like the importance of that scene is overshadowing how I remember the ending of the movie, it's because emotionally the way it was put together really fails to harmonize with anything else going on. People are saying things don't make sense because what's on screen is just whiplashing against what's been built up. And you don't get nearly this much disagreement in movies that are written well, and you definitely don't get nearly as many scene by scene breakdowns because when there are competing interpretations they're at least holistic.
Dude, you were literally wrong about this point, why are you still hammering it?
Because I have Disney+ I can actually tell you down to the minute the point where Holdo introduces the theme if you want. It's somewhere just after like 30 minutes into the film though, from when I looked it up earlier. It is not introduced late, as you claimed. That is just wrong.
People keeping walking through the beats of the film explicitly because some of the arguments about what the film does are just wrong about how the film plays out. When you are arguing about when the film introduces an idea while not accurately describing when it actually happens or arguing about what the ending of the film says while literally eliding over the climax of the film, you are just not gonna craft a coherent argument and the most obvious response to that incoherent argument is to point out the actual substance of the film that is being ignored or wrongly remembered.
You don't get these kind of arguments in other films because generally people agree on events that happen within a film and their order because that's the kind of thing that is trivially easy to check.
And yeah, the ending does have the Resistance almost wiped out. Just like almost the entire fighter force the rebels send after the Death Star die. Just like Neo literally dies right before the end. Because you push your heroes to the ragged edge before they pull out the win at the last minute. That's a very common structure.
...
When I was younger, I fucking loved Star Wars. I watched it about a billion times. I don't remember which editions we had (though definitely I saw the originals first), but I remember that the start of each one had an interview with George Lucas talking about making the films. I remember very little except that he said that he followed a very classic structure in the films: in the first act, you introduce the heroes, in the second, you put them in a dark situation where they're never going to get out, and in the third act, they get out. "That's drama." I don't think he was wrong! At least, about that being a major, common, classic way to do drama.
Anyway seeing this just reminds me of that. Who knows how honest he was being about that being his plan (at least once the first movie was a hit), but the rebels being crushed and almost hopeless was deliberate in Empire Strikes Back, so I don't feel like it was out of place there.
I keep seeing the supposed parallel to ESB being thrown around, but it’s really not the same. At the end of Empire, Luke has already healed from his wound and is adjusting to his mechanical hand, and they’re in space with a bunch of Rebel ships. It was a lost battle, not a lost war - and with Han being explicitly pointed out as alive, we have a basic idea of how the heroes will regroup and save the day in the finale.
TFA sets up the entire republic fleet/hierarchy/whatever getting blown up, and then TLJ compounds on it with the entire resistance reduced to maybe two dozen people. There’s no fleet to regroup with, Han is dead, Luke is dead, and it’s explicitly called out that nobody is responding to help or coming to support. “We are the spark that will blah blah” doesn’t mean shit when the entire galaxy heard you call for help and collectively shrugged. The war is over and the resistance lost, and the only spark of optimism is that broomstick kid can use the force. Which, ok, that’s nice if he’s all trained up in 15 years, but is completely irrelevant to the fight against the first order.
On its own merits TLJ is the best of the sequel trilogy, but it really leaves ROS with hardly anything to work with.
No, the end of TLJ is implying that because of Luke's actions reaching across the galaxy, all those people that weren't responding are now joining up. The fires of rebellion are spreading. The kid is symbolic ffs, he's not supposed to be a major character in the next film.
TLJ sets up an obvious direction for the next film. Rey is figuring out the new Jedi order. Poe is leading the new rebellion. Finn is a rebel hero. They are gonna kick the First Order around.
And you can glance at the leaked Treverrow script and see that people got that part. It may suck (that script sucks) but it clearly sees the pieces left for it.
A vast, vast amount of TRoS would be easily improved by “IT AS BEEN 10 YEARS” instead of “THE DEAD SPEAK” and going from there. Abrams deciding the next movie takes place a few weeks later when he was given a perfect setup to create whatever he wanted the new universe to be is mind boggling.
The choices of both movies to have no temporal gap between the preceding one whatsoever were extremely poor.
How much of a gap would you expect between Rey meeting Luke and her beginning her training?
Yes, yes, the last scene of TFA was also terrible.
And that’s what Rian Johnson was given to work with. It was not a “choice” to have no time gap, Abrams forced it by creating an unnecessarily specific cliffhanger.
There could've been a time gap, he didn't need to pick everything back up literally from that scene. Even if it was a couple of weeks, and we pick back up with Luke very reluctantly giving Rey some half-assed entry-level training and Rey getting annoyed by it, you could have the rest of that exact same story.
TLJ starting up immediately after the events of TFA is one of its biggest weaknesses.
That was literally what the film did. The time between TFA and TLJ is already however many days or weeks of time Rey spent with Luke. The chase was only 18 hours and she shows up near the end of that time, but we are explicitly shown at least a couple day/night cycles with her and Luke.
Not true.
Last scene of Rey & Luke in TFA: Rey walks up to him and presents the lightsaber
First scene of them in TLJ: Luke takes the lightsaber and tosses it
Maybe there's a bit of leeway with the resistance stuff, but Rey's temporal position is instantaneous
Yeah, it does feel like there's some fudging of timelines going on in the film. Although maybe there's some time between when Rey leaves and when the rest of the Resisitance leaves? Not really clear. It's very ESB in that respect.
I do get the impression Rey does not spend much time hanging out with Luke though. But it feels like more then a bit over 18 hours.
And yeah, the ending does have the Resistance almost wiped out. Just like almost the entire fighter force the rebels send after the Death Star die. Just like Neo literally dies right before the end. Because you push your heroes to the ragged edge before they pull out the win at the last minute. That's a very common structure.
...
When I was younger, I fucking loved Star Wars. I watched it about a billion times. I don't remember which editions we had (though definitely I saw the originals first), but I remember that the start of each one had an interview with George Lucas talking about making the films. I remember very little except that he said that he followed a very classic structure in the films: in the first act, you introduce the heroes, in the second, you put them in a dark situation where they're never going to get out, and in the third act, they get out. "That's drama." I don't think he was wrong! At least, about that being a major, common, classic way to do drama.
Anyway seeing this just reminds me of that. Who knows how honest he was being about that being his plan (at least once the first movie was a hit), but the rebels being crushed and almost hopeless was deliberate in Empire Strikes Back, so I don't feel like it was out of place there.
I keep seeing the supposed parallel to ESB being thrown around, but it’s really not the same. At the end of Empire, Luke has already healed from his wound and is adjusting to his mechanical hand, and they’re in space with a bunch of Rebel ships. It was a lost battle, not a lost war - and with Han being explicitly pointed out as alive, we have a basic idea of how the heroes will regroup and save the day in the finale.
TFA sets up the entire republic fleet/hierarchy/whatever getting blown up, and then TLJ compounds on it with the entire resistance reduced to maybe two dozen people. There’s no fleet to regroup with, Han is dead, Luke is dead, and it’s explicitly called out that nobody is responding to help or coming to support. “We are the spark that will blah blah” doesn’t mean shit when the entire galaxy heard you call for help and collectively shrugged. The war is over and the resistance lost, and the only spark of optimism is that broomstick kid can use the force. Which, ok, that’s nice if he’s all trained up in 15 years, but is completely irrelevant to the fight against the first order.
On its own merits TLJ is the best of the sequel trilogy, but it really leaves ROS with hardly anything to work with.
No, the end of TLJ is implying that because of Luke's actions reaching across the galaxy, all those people that weren't responding are now joining up. The fires of rebellion are spreading. The kid is symbolic ffs, he's not supposed to be a major character in the next film.
TLJ sets up an obvious direction for the next film. Rey is figuring out the new Jedi order. Poe is leading the new rebellion. Finn is a rebel hero. They are gonna kick the First Order around.
And you can glance at the leaked Treverrow script and see that people got that part. It may suck (that script sucks) but it clearly sees the pieces left for it.
A vast, vast amount of TRoS would be easily improved by “IT AS BEEN 10 YEARS” instead of “THE DEAD SPEAK” and going from there. Abrams deciding the next movie takes place a few weeks later when he was given a perfect setup to create whatever he wanted the new universe to be is mind boggling.
The choices of both movies to have no temporal gap between the preceding one whatsoever were extremely poor.
How much of a gap would you expect between Rey meeting Luke and her beginning her training?
Yes, yes, the last scene of TFA was also terrible.
And that’s what Rian Johnson was given to work with. It was not a “choice” to have no time gap, Abrams forced it by creating an unnecessarily specific cliffhanger.
There could've been a time gap, he didn't need to pick everything back up literally from that scene. Even if it was a couple of weeks, and we pick back up with Luke very reluctantly giving Rey some half-assed entry-level training and Rey getting annoyed by it, you could have the rest of that exact same story.
TLJ starting up immediately after the events of TFA is one of its biggest weaknesses.
That was literally what the film did. The time between TFA and TLJ is already however many days or weeks of time Rey spent with Luke. The chase was only 18 hours and she shows up near the end of that time, but we are explicitly shown at least a couple day/night cycles with her and Luke.
Not true.
Last scene of Rey & Luke in TFA: Rey walks up to him and presents the lightsaber
First scene of them in TLJ: Luke takes the lightsaber and tosses it
Maybe there's a bit of leeway with the resistance stuff, but Rey's temporal position is instantaneous
Yes, but that's not an argument against my point. The two stories in TLJ are not simultaneous. Rey explicitly spends more time with Luke than the film spends with the fleet. The two stories' timelines only meet up roughly 18 hours after the evacuation that started the film, hence there is a gap between TFA and the beginning of TLJ.
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
So I don't get how anything you just told me undermines what was the thrust of my point which is: the movie does a bunch of stuff and none of it lands emotionally, for various reasons.
So I don't get how anything you just told me undermines what was the thrust of my point which is: the movie does a bunch of stuff and none of it lands emotionally, for various reasons.
People keep responding to criticism of the movie by re-explaining in excruciating detail what happened but not why it was tonally or emotionally significant, or if the quality of it's delivery conveyed the importance of the moment for the character or if the scene created a conviction that something was important.
Though I'm just going to say it: even while saying I didn't understand the theme, you can't actually remember exactly when the "we're going to inspire a resistance" dialogue initially comes up. It's that vague yet is a core theme? Really? And that literally fails to explain how that thread remains relevant after "no one is coming". Like I don't think I can really overstate the issue that, sure, a bunch of people in a scene said some things the script made them say but this is literally after the movie is smacking you in the face with "our allies heard our call for help and are not coming" and then actually did not come.
Maybe my perspective means parts of a movie resonate with me more then others - that's true of everyone. But if it seems like the importance of that scene is overshadowing how I remember the ending of the movie, it's because emotionally the way it was put together really fails to harmonize with anything else going on. People are saying things don't make sense because what's on screen is just whiplashing against what's been built up. And you don't get nearly this much disagreement in movies that are written well, and you definitely don't get nearly as many scene by scene breakdowns because when there are competing interpretations they're at least holistic.
Dude, you were literally wrong about this point, why are you still hammering it?
Because I have Disney+ I can actually tell you down to the minute the point where Holdo introduces the theme if you want. It's somewhere just after like 30 minutes into the film though, from when I looked it up earlier. It is not introduced late, as you claimed. That is just wrong.
And yet, you're still not sure. What scene? What dialogue? How is it a core theme if when introduced you can only in the most vague possible sense remember it coming up?
Which is exactly my point: it wasn't presented in a way which stuck. It wasn't presented in a way which shaped Holdo's character arc with Poe. It was just background dialogue until the film needed to rescue it's ending. It didn't manage to form the basis of any character's conflict: at no point is Poe arguing "we need to win if we want to inspire" or anything like that because the Poe and Holdo conflict isn't written that way, it's written as "Obey Obey Obey" - since Holdo does nothing but dismiss Poe the entire arc, there's no possible way for them to represent a conflict in method but not result or really anything else.
electricitylikesme on
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KetarCome on upstairswe're having a partyRegistered Userregular
My kids decided to turn on Attack of the Clones. They both just clapped and said, "Yay, Jar Jar!"
Please excuse me as I go now to walk into the sea.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
So I don't get how anything you just told me undermines what was the thrust of my point which is: the movie does a bunch of stuff and none of it lands emotionally, for various reasons.
Speak for yourself, I guess.
I mean, yes? The whole point is that some people think that TLJ is not a good movie. If those scenes landed, they probably would not have that opinion.
So I don't get how anything you just told me undermines what was the thrust of my point which is: the movie does a bunch of stuff and none of it lands emotionally, for various reasons.
People keep responding to criticism of the movie by re-explaining in excruciating detail what happened but not why it was tonally or emotionally significant, or if the quality of it's delivery conveyed the importance of the moment for the character or if the scene created a conviction that something was important.
Though I'm just going to say it: even while saying I didn't understand the theme, you can't actually remember exactly when the "we're going to inspire a resistance" dialogue initially comes up. It's that vague yet is a core theme? Really? And that literally fails to explain how that thread remains relevant after "no one is coming". Like I don't think I can really overstate the issue that, sure, a bunch of people in a scene said some things the script made them say but this is literally after the movie is smacking you in the face with "our allies heard our call for help and are not coming" and then actually did not come.
Maybe my perspective means parts of a movie resonate with me more then others - that's true of everyone. But if it seems like the importance of that scene is overshadowing how I remember the ending of the movie, it's because emotionally the way it was put together really fails to harmonize with anything else going on. People are saying things don't make sense because what's on screen is just whiplashing against what's been built up. And you don't get nearly this much disagreement in movies that are written well, and you definitely don't get nearly as many scene by scene breakdowns because when there are competing interpretations they're at least holistic.
Dude, you were literally wrong about this point, why are you still hammering it?
Because I have Disney+ I can actually tell you down to the minute the point where Holdo introduces the theme if you want. It's somewhere just after like 30 minutes into the film though, from when I looked it up earlier. It is not introduced late, as you claimed. That is just wrong.
And yet, you're still not sure. What scene? What dialogue? How is it a core theme if when introduced you can only in the most vague possible sense remember it coming up?
Which is exactly my point: it wasn't presented in a way which stuck. It wasn't presented in a way which shaped Holdo's character arc with Poe. It was just background dialogue until the film needed to rescue it's ending. It didn't manage to form the basis of any character's conflict: at no point is Poe arguing "we need to win if we want to inspire" or anything like that because the Poe and Holdo conflict isn't written that way, it's written as "Obey Obey Obey" - since Holdo does nothing but dismiss Poe the entire arc, there's no possible way for them to represent a conflict in method but not result or really anything else.
I'm not sure because I didn't watch the film with a stopwatch on screen while using my photographic memory to recall the exact instant it happens. I thought this would be obvious because the criteria you are trying to set here is like very obviously silly and ridiculous.
I can't tell you the exact timestamp for when The Dark Knight introduced it's whole idea of "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain". But I can tell you it happens early in the film, at the dinner scene between Harvey, Rachel and Bruce (and his nameless sham date). And you would be a fool to claim that only vaguely remembering when that scene happens somehow suggests that said theme was not important to the film or that the movie was bad.
Similarly I can't tell you the exact time stamp for when the "spark that lights the flame" theme is first brought up in The Last Jedi but I can tell you that it's at least as early as Holdo's rally speech she gives after first being introduced, which occurs early in the film, after the bridge is blown up. That's the first time someone uses the whole "spark/fire" analogy. Leia may vaguely elude to the need to escape and rebuild earlier in the film, but for sure Holdo lays it out directly as a goal for the characters in that speech.
Now, I could tell you earlier that it was around the 30-40 minute mark because I'd looked up something else from that scene a day or two ago and I vaguely remembered the time stamp. I can tell you now that her speech starts at approximately 36 minutes and 13 seconds into the film because I just looked it up because you keep trying to push this issue for some reason.
None of that changes the basic fact that it happens early in the film which is the opposite of what you claimed. My lack of photographic memory (a fictional construct anyway afaik) does not change any of this.
The theme is introduced early in the film. It's built on in many ways. It's then paid off in the end.
I think TRoS was a mess primarily because of studio response to the internet backlash. JJ can make a perfectly entertaining film (see TFA), particularly when the story or even genre fits his strengths (see Cloverfield). The racist, sexist, weeaboo bullshit is because Disney execs don't understand the internet (see James Gunn for further proof).
Blame the suits.
Cloverfield is an aberration, in that the mystery is dead fucking simple: "What's going on?" and once we hear it's a monster, "What's it look like?"
TFA is like the beginning of Lost, where Abrams is writing a lot of checks he thinks he never has to personally cash. Of course it's a strong film, he doesn't have to do anything except set things up.
I think TRoS was a mess primarily because of studio response to the internet backlash. JJ can make a perfectly entertaining film (see TFA), particularly when the story or even genre fits his strengths (see Cloverfield). The racist, sexist, weeaboo bullshit is because Disney execs don't understand the internet (see James Gunn for further proof).
Blame the suits.
Cloverfield is an aberration, in that the mystery is dead fucking simple: "What's going on?" and once we hear it's a monster, "What's it look like?"
TFA is like the beginning of Lost, where Abrams is writing a lot of checks he thinks he never has to personally cash. Of course it's a strong film, he doesn't have to do anything except set things up.
JJ didn't direct or even write Cloverfield, he just produced it.
I think TRoS was a mess primarily because of studio response to the internet backlash. JJ can make a perfectly entertaining film (see TFA), particularly when the story or even genre fits his strengths (see Cloverfield). The racist, sexist, weeaboo bullshit is because Disney execs don't understand the internet (see James Gunn for further proof).
Blame the suits.
Cloverfield is an aberration, in that the mystery is dead fucking simple: "What's going on?" and once we hear it's a monster, "What's it look like?"
TFA is like the beginning of Lost, where Abrams is writing a lot of checks he thinks he never has to personally cash. Of course it's a strong film, he doesn't have to do anything except set things up.
JJ didn't direct or even write Cloverfield, he just produced it.
Ah so TFA is the only film he's written/directed that didn't totally shit the bed by the end?
So I don't get how anything you just told me undermines what was the thrust of my point which is: the movie does a bunch of stuff and none of it lands emotionally, for various reasons.
People keep responding to criticism of the movie by re-explaining in excruciating detail what happened but not why it was tonally or emotionally significant, or if the quality of it's delivery conveyed the importance of the moment for the character or if the scene created a conviction that something was important.
Though I'm just going to say it: even while saying I didn't understand the theme, you can't actually remember exactly when the "we're going to inspire a resistance" dialogue initially comes up. It's that vague yet is a core theme? Really? And that literally fails to explain how that thread remains relevant after "no one is coming". Like I don't think I can really overstate the issue that, sure, a bunch of people in a scene said some things the script made them say but this is literally after the movie is smacking you in the face with "our allies heard our call for help and are not coming" and then actually did not come.
Maybe my perspective means parts of a movie resonate with me more then others - that's true of everyone. But if it seems like the importance of that scene is overshadowing how I remember the ending of the movie, it's because emotionally the way it was put together really fails to harmonize with anything else going on. People are saying things don't make sense because what's on screen is just whiplashing against what's been built up. And you don't get nearly this much disagreement in movies that are written well, and you definitely don't get nearly as many scene by scene breakdowns because when there are competing interpretations they're at least holistic.
Dude, you were literally wrong about this point, why are you still hammering it?
Because I have Disney+ I can actually tell you down to the minute the point where Holdo introduces the theme if you want. It's somewhere just after like 30 minutes into the film though, from when I looked it up earlier. It is not introduced late, as you claimed. That is just wrong.
And yet, you're still not sure. What scene? What dialogue? How is it a core theme if when introduced you can only in the most vague possible sense remember it coming up?
Which is exactly my point: it wasn't presented in a way which stuck. It wasn't presented in a way which shaped Holdo's character arc with Poe. It was just background dialogue until the film needed to rescue it's ending. It didn't manage to form the basis of any character's conflict: at no point is Poe arguing "we need to win if we want to inspire" or anything like that because the Poe and Holdo conflict isn't written that way, it's written as "Obey Obey Obey" - since Holdo does nothing but dismiss Poe the entire arc, there's no possible way for them to represent a conflict in method but not result or really anything else.
I'm not sure because I didn't watch the film with a stopwatch on screen while using my photographic memory to recall the exact instant it happens. I thought this would be obvious because the criteria you are trying to set here is like very obviously silly and ridiculous.
I can't tell you the exact timestamp for when The Dark Knight introduced it's whole idea of "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain". But I can tell you it happens early in the film, at the dinner scene between Harvey, Rachel and Bruce (and his nameless sham date). And you would be a fool to claim that only vaguely remembering when that scene happens somehow suggests that said theme was not important to the film or that the movie was bad.
Similarly I can't tell you the exact time stamp for when the "spark that lights the flame" theme is first brought up in The Last Jedi but I can tell you that it's at least as early as Holdo's rally speech she gives after first being introduced, which occurs early in the film, after the bridge is blown up. That's the first time someone uses the whole "spark/fire" analogy. Leia may vaguely elude to the need to escape and rebuild earlier in the film, but for sure Holdo lays it out directly as a goal for the characters in that speech.
Now, I could tell you earlier that it was around the 30-40 minute mark because I'd looked up something else from that scene a day or two ago and I vaguely remembered the time stamp. I can tell you now that her speech starts at approximately 36 minutes and 13 seconds into the film because I just looked it up because you keep trying to push this issue for some reason.
None of that changes the basic fact that it happens early in the film which is the opposite of what you claimed. My lack of photographic memory (a fictional construct anyway afaik) does not change any of this.
The theme is introduced early in the film. It's built on in many ways. It's then paid off in the end.
400 of us. On 3 ships. We are the very last of the Resistance. But we are not alone. In every corner of the galaxy, people know our symbol and put their hope in it. We are the spark, that'll light the fire, that will restore the Republic. The spark is that the Resistance must survive. That is our mission. Now go back to your stations... and may the force be with us.
SiliconStew on
Just remember that half the people you meet are below average intelligence.
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KetarCome on upstairswe're having a partyRegistered Userregular
And yeah, the ending does have the Resistance almost wiped out. Just like almost the entire fighter force the rebels send after the Death Star die. Just like Neo literally dies right before the end. Because you push your heroes to the ragged edge before they pull out the win at the last minute. That's a very common structure.
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When I was younger, I fucking loved Star Wars. I watched it about a billion times. I don't remember which editions we had (though definitely I saw the originals first), but I remember that the start of each one had an interview with George Lucas talking about making the films. I remember very little except that he said that he followed a very classic structure in the films: in the first act, you introduce the heroes, in the second, you put them in a dark situation where they're never going to get out, and in the third act, they get out. "That's drama." I don't think he was wrong! At least, about that being a major, common, classic way to do drama.
Anyway seeing this just reminds me of that. Who knows how honest he was being about that being his plan (at least once the first movie was a hit), but the rebels being crushed and almost hopeless was deliberate in Empire Strikes Back, so I don't feel like it was out of place there.
I keep seeing the supposed parallel to ESB being thrown around, but it’s really not the same. At the end of Empire, Luke has already healed from his wound and is adjusting to his mechanical hand, and they’re in space with a bunch of Rebel ships. It was a lost battle, not a lost war - and with Han being explicitly pointed out as alive, we have a basic idea of how the heroes will regroup and save the day in the finale.
TFA sets up the entire republic fleet/hierarchy/whatever getting blown up, and then TLJ compounds on it with the entire resistance reduced to maybe two dozen people. There’s no fleet to regroup with, Han is dead, Luke is dead, and it’s explicitly called out that nobody is responding to help or coming to support. “We are the spark that will blah blah” doesn’t mean shit when the entire galaxy heard you call for help and collectively shrugged. The war is over and the resistance lost, and the only spark of optimism is that broomstick kid can use the force. Which, ok, that’s nice if he’s all trained up in 15 years, but is completely irrelevant to the fight against the first order.
On its own merits TLJ is the best of the sequel trilogy, but it really leaves ROS with hardly anything to work with.
No, the end of TLJ is implying that because of Luke's actions reaching across the galaxy, all those people that weren't responding are now joining up. The fires of rebellion are spreading. The kid is symbolic ffs, he's not supposed to be a major character in the next film.
TLJ sets up an obvious direction for the next film. Rey is figuring out the new Jedi order. Poe is leading the new rebellion. Finn is a rebel hero. They are gonna kick the First Order around.
And you can glance at the leaked Treverrow script and see that people got that part. It may suck (that script sucks) but it clearly sees the pieces left for it.
A vast, vast amount of TRoS would be easily improved by “IT AS BEEN 10 YEARS” instead of “THE DEAD SPEAK” and going from there. Abrams deciding the next movie takes place a few weeks later when he was given a perfect setup to create whatever he wanted the new universe to be is mind boggling.
The choices of both movies to have no temporal gap between the preceding one whatsoever were extremely poor.
How much of a gap would you expect between Rey meeting Luke and her beginning her training?
Yes, yes, the last scene of TFA was also terrible.
And that’s what Rian Johnson was given to work with. It was not a “choice” to have no time gap, Abrams forced it by creating an unnecessarily specific cliffhanger.
He did make a choice to have the ticking clock of his shitty chase happen, though. That wasn't a good choice.
To me it wasn't even that there was a ticking clock, it was that he made it so short. When you have a chase involving big lumbering warships, why do you try to make it a short one? Make it an endurance test. Take a page from the first episode of the Battlestar Galactica reboot, 33. The First Order has more resources so they can just keep rotating people and refueling and pushing, while the Resistance have to keep transferring fuel and personnel and leaving empty ships behind and they're exhausted after a week or more of little sleep and all the time they know that it's largely just prolonging the inevitable. This also brings tempers to the forefront and makes certain irrational decisions...not more understandable (they were perfectly understandable in the film), but less terrible, if you absolutely must cushion Poe from his fuckups.
And it gives more in-universe time for Rey to train and decide to try redeeming Kylo, as well as for Finn and Rose to complete their mission and return.
Plus, I mean...have you seen Oscar Isaac when he lets his beard grow (considering that an easy visual shorthand for "time has passed and things are falling apart" is people looking rumpled and men in particular having a few days' facial hair growth)? Rawr.
I think TRoS was a mess primarily because of studio response to the internet backlash. JJ can make a perfectly entertaining film (see TFA), particularly when the story or even genre fits his strengths (see Cloverfield). The racist, sexist, weeaboo bullshit is because Disney execs don't understand the internet (see James Gunn for further proof).
Blame the suits.
Cloverfield is an aberration, in that the mystery is dead fucking simple: "What's going on?" and once we hear it's a monster, "What's it look like?"
TFA is like the beginning of Lost, where Abrams is writing a lot of checks he thinks he never has to personally cash. Of course it's a strong film, he doesn't have to do anything except set things up.
JJ didn't direct or even write Cloverfield, he just produced it.
Ah so TFA is the only film he's written/directed that didn't totally shit the bed by the end?
He's directed, as far as Wiki knows:
Mission Impossible 3
Star Trek (09)
Super 8
Star Trek: Into Darkness
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
MI3 I remember being fun nonsense but not much else.
The rest I think all have some great direction but tend to fall apart as the film goes on because of a lack of attention to coherence and good storytelling.
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OrcaAlso known as EspressosaurusWrexRegistered Userregular
So I don't get how anything you just told me undermines what was the thrust of my point which is: the movie does a bunch of stuff and none of it lands emotionally, for various reasons.
People keep responding to criticism of the movie by re-explaining in excruciating detail what happened but not why it was tonally or emotionally significant, or if the quality of it's delivery conveyed the importance of the moment for the character or if the scene created a conviction that something was important.
Though I'm just going to say it: even while saying I didn't understand the theme, you can't actually remember exactly when the "we're going to inspire a resistance" dialogue initially comes up. It's that vague yet is a core theme? Really? And that literally fails to explain how that thread remains relevant after "no one is coming". Like I don't think I can really overstate the issue that, sure, a bunch of people in a scene said some things the script made them say but this is literally after the movie is smacking you in the face with "our allies heard our call for help and are not coming" and then actually did not come.
Maybe my perspective means parts of a movie resonate with me more then others - that's true of everyone. But if it seems like the importance of that scene is overshadowing how I remember the ending of the movie, it's because emotionally the way it was put together really fails to harmonize with anything else going on. People are saying things don't make sense because what's on screen is just whiplashing against what's been built up. And you don't get nearly this much disagreement in movies that are written well, and you definitely don't get nearly as many scene by scene breakdowns because when there are competing interpretations they're at least holistic.
Dude, you were literally wrong about this point, why are you still hammering it?
Because I have Disney+ I can actually tell you down to the minute the point where Holdo introduces the theme if you want. It's somewhere just after like 30 minutes into the film though, from when I looked it up earlier. It is not introduced late, as you claimed. That is just wrong.
And yet, you're still not sure. What scene? What dialogue? How is it a core theme if when introduced you can only in the most vague possible sense remember it coming up?
Which is exactly my point: it wasn't presented in a way which stuck. It wasn't presented in a way which shaped Holdo's character arc with Poe. It was just background dialogue until the film needed to rescue it's ending. It didn't manage to form the basis of any character's conflict: at no point is Poe arguing "we need to win if we want to inspire" or anything like that because the Poe and Holdo conflict isn't written that way, it's written as "Obey Obey Obey" - since Holdo does nothing but dismiss Poe the entire arc, there's no possible way for them to represent a conflict in method but not result or really anything else.
I'm not sure because I didn't watch the film with a stopwatch on screen while using my photographic memory to recall the exact instant it happens. I thought this would be obvious because the criteria you are trying to set here is like very obviously silly and ridiculous.
I can't tell you the exact timestamp for when The Dark Knight introduced it's whole idea of "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain". But I can tell you it happens early in the film, at the dinner scene between Harvey, Rachel and Bruce (and his nameless sham date). And you would be a fool to claim that only vaguely remembering when that scene happens somehow suggests that said theme was not important to the film or that the movie was bad.
Similarly I can't tell you the exact time stamp for when the "spark that lights the flame" theme is first brought up in The Last Jedi but I can tell you that it's at least as early as Holdo's rally speech she gives after first being introduced, which occurs early in the film, after the bridge is blown up. That's the first time someone uses the whole "spark/fire" analogy. Leia may vaguely elude to the need to escape and rebuild earlier in the film, but for sure Holdo lays it out directly as a goal for the characters in that speech.
Now, I could tell you earlier that it was around the 30-40 minute mark because I'd looked up something else from that scene a day or two ago and I vaguely remembered the time stamp. I can tell you now that her speech starts at approximately 36 minutes and 13 seconds into the film because I just looked it up because you keep trying to push this issue for some reason.
None of that changes the basic fact that it happens early in the film which is the opposite of what you claimed. My lack of photographic memory (a fictional construct anyway afaik) does not change any of this.
The theme is introduced early in the film. It's built on in many ways. It's then paid off in the end.
400 of us. On 3 ships. We are the very last of the Resistance. But we are not alone. In every corner of the galaxy, people know our symbol and put their hope in it. We are the spark, that'll light the fire, that will restore the Republic. The spark is that the Resistance must survive. That is our mission. Now go back to your stations... and may the force be with us.
i'm not arguing the point of the message of the movie but this quote is kind of rough because the movie goes on to state Holdo was wrong, or at least, that's the implied message. no one shows up to help them. if people get Leia's message, they don't care or don't care enough to put their lives on the line.
And yeah, the ending does have the Resistance almost wiped out. Just like almost the entire fighter force the rebels send after the Death Star die. Just like Neo literally dies right before the end. Because you push your heroes to the ragged edge before they pull out the win at the last minute. That's a very common structure.
...
When I was younger, I fucking loved Star Wars. I watched it about a billion times. I don't remember which editions we had (though definitely I saw the originals first), but I remember that the start of each one had an interview with George Lucas talking about making the films. I remember very little except that he said that he followed a very classic structure in the films: in the first act, you introduce the heroes, in the second, you put them in a dark situation where they're never going to get out, and in the third act, they get out. "That's drama." I don't think he was wrong! At least, about that being a major, common, classic way to do drama.
Anyway seeing this just reminds me of that. Who knows how honest he was being about that being his plan (at least once the first movie was a hit), but the rebels being crushed and almost hopeless was deliberate in Empire Strikes Back, so I don't feel like it was out of place there.
I keep seeing the supposed parallel to ESB being thrown around, but it’s really not the same. At the end of Empire, Luke has already healed from his wound and is adjusting to his mechanical hand, and they’re in space with a bunch of Rebel ships. It was a lost battle, not a lost war - and with Han being explicitly pointed out as alive, we have a basic idea of how the heroes will regroup and save the day in the finale.
TFA sets up the entire republic fleet/hierarchy/whatever getting blown up, and then TLJ compounds on it with the entire resistance reduced to maybe two dozen people. There’s no fleet to regroup with, Han is dead, Luke is dead, and it’s explicitly called out that nobody is responding to help or coming to support. “We are the spark that will blah blah” doesn’t mean shit when the entire galaxy heard you call for help and collectively shrugged. The war is over and the resistance lost, and the only spark of optimism is that broomstick kid can use the force. Which, ok, that’s nice if he’s all trained up in 15 years, but is completely irrelevant to the fight against the first order.
On its own merits TLJ is the best of the sequel trilogy, but it really leaves ROS with hardly anything to work with.
No, the end of TLJ is implying that because of Luke's actions reaching across the galaxy, all those people that weren't responding are now joining up. The fires of rebellion are spreading. The kid is symbolic ffs, he's not supposed to be a major character in the next film.
TLJ sets up an obvious direction for the next film. Rey is figuring out the new Jedi order. Poe is leading the new rebellion. Finn is a rebel hero. They are gonna kick the First Order around.
And you can glance at the leaked Treverrow script and see that people got that part. It may suck (that script sucks) but it clearly sees the pieces left for it.
How are Luke’s actions supposed to reach across the galaxy? They were observed by the first order, which certainly isn’t going to talk about them, and maybe 20 surviving resistance dudes, who nobody was willing help. Broom kid is certainly partial to the resistance for breaking up the monotony of his life, but knows zip about Luke Skywalker.
Maybe that was supposed to be blindingly obvious, but I’ve seen the movie at least 3 times and didn’t pick up on it. It sets up the possibility for things to rebuild in about 20 years but that’s pretty much it.
If I'm a Stormtrooper and I just saw what I thought was a myth survive a barrage of gunfire that would've destroyed anything, absolutely own my boss, and then disappear, I'd be telling people at the bar about it.
Among TLJ's problems is that it muddles every point it's apparently trying to make.
It was wrong for Poe to disobey orders and try to stop the dreadnought... that apparently would have destroyed the whole fleet. (Ends up being moot 'cause that happens anyway, good job I guess.)
People will come and help us... but they don't, and the Resistance is reduced to one freighter-load of walking wounded.
No one uses their damn words because that might actually prevent some of the dumb decisions RJ needs to deliver his idiot plot moral lessons.
That it's still possibly the best of the ST is more the fault of JJ and that the bar isn't just lying on the ground, it's in a ditch.
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Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
That goes back to the lack of time passing between and within films. The pacing for The Last Jedi, in particular, is inconsistent across its various settings and plots. And the choice to immediately pick up from the end of the last film instead of staring in media res at a later point and then revisiting the handing-off-of-the-lightsaber scene was likely not a good one.
TROS makes the same mistake again but it is even more egregious because it gives no time for the events of the pervious film to impact the galaxy, which would have solved some of its more glaring issues. Because JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio have no idea how to write a narratively coherent, fulfilling film.
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Yes, yes, the last scene of TFA was also terrible.
It's been mentioned before but throwing that last scene in to TFA just does a TON to constrain the next film. It's actually kind of hilarious. If you imagine the film ends with Rey zipping away to find Luke suddenly there's like infinite possibilities for what situation he could be in or where it could go. But JJ just really wanted to set up Luke as Yoda or something.
And that’s what Rian Johnson was given to work with. It was not a “choice” to have no time gap, Abrams forced it by creating an unnecessarily specific cliffhanger.
He did make a choice to have the ticking clock of his shitty chase happen, though. That wasn't a good choice.
That I definitely agree with.
"We need to inspire people to fight the First Order" as a goal does not exist in the movie until it suddenly exists in Act 3. Like, think carefully: is anyone in the movie actually have this a goal they act on or even say, up until that point?
The entire problem I have with TLJ is that yes, in a bunch of places it does X which means Y because Z but none of it actually is done well enough to land emotionally, or it bizarrely undermines it or fails to wrap it up, or fails to set it up.
The movie makes the bizarre decision to completely abandon addressing what it's main characters are doing next in favor of dropping an utterly generic "looking towards the future" character pose on screen while 15 minutes prior telling the audience the resistance is finished because no one is actually coming to fight the First Order.
There could've been a time gap, he didn't need to pick everything back up literally from that scene. Even if it was a couple of weeks, and we pick back up with Luke very reluctantly giving Rey some half-assed entry-level training and Rey getting annoyed by it, you could have the rest of that exact same story.
TLJ starting up immediately after the events of TFA is one of its biggest weaknesses.
The whole trilogy is kind of an uninspired mess, and the more I look back on them the less I like any of it.
No. Locking in exactly what is happening next is really bad filmmaking JJ. And telling the audience the resistance is finished is kind of necessary for a second act in a movie. Did you see Empire? It’s a long string of the Rebels losing and the Imperals losing and it ends with the heroes running away with who knows how many left, handless, wondering about the future...
Also like... the “we need to inspire people to fight” was a theme right from the start. There are like a billion speeches about hope in the movie they’re not there by accident. And it’s not like RJ is a subtle filmmaker
Specifically it happens after “are we all that’s left?” As it answers the question for the resistance, no there are others.
TRoS is a shitty movie through and through on craftsmanship alone. TFA wasn't. Cloverfield wasn't. None of them were reactionary racist like TRoS. The difference, I think, is Disney meddling.
I admit I'm going almost entirely on gut feeling here.
The problem here is you are just wrong about how the film plays out.
For example the spark analogy pops up early in the film. Holdo is I believe the first one to mention it explicitly in her first scene. She literally brings this entire idea up you are claiming doesn't exist till the third act just as the movie is really starting to spin out all it's plot threads. It's right near the start of the film that they establish explicitly that their goal is to survive and become the core of a new rebellion by inspiring hope in the oppressed masses of the galaxy.
And then the story challenges that goal. Puts obstacles in it's way. Things get bad, more people die, etc, etc. Finally they hit their lowest point. There are almost none of them left. No one answers their call for help. And then Luke shows up. We go from their lowest point to victory because that's how this kind of story works. Luke is all alone, Vader has him in his sights, fucking Han Solo out of nowhere to save the day. Luke comes along and schools a First Order army singlehandedly and gives the resistance time to escape.
Then we move to the ending. What do we see? Everyone on the Falcon celebrating their escape. There's a bunch of meaningful scenes setting up future plots. Also Rey and Poe meet for the first time I believe. Included in this is a very explicit call out to what is going to happen, which comes after talking about Luke dying at peace and with purpose and while they are both looking at his broken lightsaber. Then we cut immediately to the final scene where oppressed children we've been introduced to before repeat the legends of Luke Skywalker and then a child stares up the sky and imagines himself as a rebel.
It's all very obvious. Set up the idea early in the film, take it to it's lowest point, the day is saved at the last minute, the Resistance has everything it needs to rebuild itself, here's an example of how that spark is setting a fire across the galaxy.
Like, straight up, you are remembering the movie wrong. The things you are saying didn't happen are right there in the film. You are even literally trying to ignore the climax of the film.
That was literally what the film did. The time between TFA and TLJ is already however many days or weeks of time Rey spent with Luke. The chase was only 18 hours and she shows up near the end of that time, but we are explicitly shown at least a couple day/night cycles with her and Luke.
Not true.
Last scene of Rey & Luke in TFA: Rey walks up to him and presents the lightsaber
First scene of them in TLJ: Luke takes the lightsaber and tosses it
Maybe there's a bit of leeway with the resistance stuff, but Rey's temporal position is instantaneous
People keep responding to criticism of the movie by re-explaining in excruciating detail what happened but not why it was tonally or emotionally significant, or if the quality of it's delivery conveyed the importance of the moment for the character or if the scene created a conviction that something was important.
Though I'm just going to say it: even while saying I didn't understand the theme, you can't actually remember exactly when the "we're going to inspire a resistance" dialogue initially comes up. It's that vague yet is a core theme? Really? And that literally fails to explain how that thread remains relevant after "no one is coming". Like I don't think I can really overstate the issue that, sure, a bunch of people in a scene said some things the script made them say but this is literally after the movie is smacking you in the face with "our allies heard our call for help and are not coming" and then actually did not come.
Maybe my perspective means parts of a movie resonate with me more then others - that's true of everyone. But if it seems like the importance of that scene is overshadowing how I remember the ending of the movie, it's because emotionally the way it was put together really fails to harmonize with anything else going on. People are saying things don't make sense because what's on screen is just whiplashing against what's been built up. And you don't get nearly this much disagreement in movies that are written well, and you definitely don't get nearly as many scene by scene breakdowns because when there are competing interpretations they're at least holistic.
Dude, you were literally wrong about this point, why are you still hammering it?
Because I have Disney+ I can actually tell you down to the minute the point where Holdo introduces the theme if you want. It's somewhere just after like 30 minutes into the film though, from when I looked it up earlier. It is not introduced late, as you claimed. That is just wrong.
People keeping walking through the beats of the film explicitly because some of the arguments about what the film does are just wrong about how the film plays out. When you are arguing about when the film introduces an idea while not accurately describing when it actually happens or arguing about what the ending of the film says while literally eliding over the climax of the film, you are just not gonna craft a coherent argument and the most obvious response to that incoherent argument is to point out the actual substance of the film that is being ignored or wrongly remembered.
You don't get these kind of arguments in other films because generally people agree on events that happen within a film and their order because that's the kind of thing that is trivially easy to check.
Yeah, it does feel like there's some fudging of timelines going on in the film. Although maybe there's some time between when Rey leaves and when the rest of the Resisitance leaves? Not really clear. It's very ESB in that respect.
I do get the impression Rey does not spend much time hanging out with Luke though. But it feels like more then a bit over 18 hours.
Yes, but that's not an argument against my point. The two stories in TLJ are not simultaneous. Rey explicitly spends more time with Luke than the film spends with the fleet. The two stories' timelines only meet up roughly 18 hours after the evacuation that started the film, hence there is a gap between TFA and the beginning of TLJ.
Speak for yourself, I guess.
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And yet, you're still not sure. What scene? What dialogue? How is it a core theme if when introduced you can only in the most vague possible sense remember it coming up?
Which is exactly my point: it wasn't presented in a way which stuck. It wasn't presented in a way which shaped Holdo's character arc with Poe. It was just background dialogue until the film needed to rescue it's ending. It didn't manage to form the basis of any character's conflict: at no point is Poe arguing "we need to win if we want to inspire" or anything like that because the Poe and Holdo conflict isn't written that way, it's written as "Obey Obey Obey" - since Holdo does nothing but dismiss Poe the entire arc, there's no possible way for them to represent a conflict in method but not result or really anything else.
Please excuse me as I go now to walk into the sea.
I mean, yes? The whole point is that some people think that TLJ is not a good movie. If those scenes landed, they probably would not have that opinion.
I'm not sure because I didn't watch the film with a stopwatch on screen while using my photographic memory to recall the exact instant it happens. I thought this would be obvious because the criteria you are trying to set here is like very obviously silly and ridiculous.
I can't tell you the exact timestamp for when The Dark Knight introduced it's whole idea of "You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain". But I can tell you it happens early in the film, at the dinner scene between Harvey, Rachel and Bruce (and his nameless sham date). And you would be a fool to claim that only vaguely remembering when that scene happens somehow suggests that said theme was not important to the film or that the movie was bad.
Similarly I can't tell you the exact time stamp for when the "spark that lights the flame" theme is first brought up in The Last Jedi but I can tell you that it's at least as early as Holdo's rally speech she gives after first being introduced, which occurs early in the film, after the bridge is blown up. That's the first time someone uses the whole "spark/fire" analogy. Leia may vaguely elude to the need to escape and rebuild earlier in the film, but for sure Holdo lays it out directly as a goal for the characters in that speech.
Now, I could tell you earlier that it was around the 30-40 minute mark because I'd looked up something else from that scene a day or two ago and I vaguely remembered the time stamp. I can tell you now that her speech starts at approximately 36 minutes and 13 seconds into the film because I just looked it up because you keep trying to push this issue for some reason.
None of that changes the basic fact that it happens early in the film which is the opposite of what you claimed. My lack of photographic memory (a fictional construct anyway afaik) does not change any of this.
The theme is introduced early in the film. It's built on in many ways. It's then paid off in the end.
I don't want to say you've failed as a parent. Because that would be impolite.
Cloverfield is an aberration, in that the mystery is dead fucking simple: "What's going on?" and once we hear it's a monster, "What's it look like?"
TFA is like the beginning of Lost, where Abrams is writing a lot of checks he thinks he never has to personally cash. Of course it's a strong film, he doesn't have to do anything except set things up.
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At least they watched Return of the Jedi first?
JJ didn't direct or even write Cloverfield, he just produced it.
As a firm believer in chronological order, this is acceptable.
Jar Jar is good actually
Ah so TFA is the only film he's written/directed that didn't totally shit the bed by the end?
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Specifically, she says
Nah. Ahmed Best is great and didn't deserve any of the harassment he got, but Jar Jar is terrible and always has been.
To me it wasn't even that there was a ticking clock, it was that he made it so short. When you have a chase involving big lumbering warships, why do you try to make it a short one? Make it an endurance test. Take a page from the first episode of the Battlestar Galactica reboot, 33. The First Order has more resources so they can just keep rotating people and refueling and pushing, while the Resistance have to keep transferring fuel and personnel and leaving empty ships behind and they're exhausted after a week or more of little sleep and all the time they know that it's largely just prolonging the inevitable. This also brings tempers to the forefront and makes certain irrational decisions...not more understandable (they were perfectly understandable in the film), but less terrible, if you absolutely must cushion Poe from his fuckups.
And it gives more in-universe time for Rey to train and decide to try redeeming Kylo, as well as for Finn and Rose to complete their mission and return.
Plus, I mean...have you seen Oscar Isaac when he lets his beard grow (considering that an easy visual shorthand for "time has passed and things are falling apart" is people looking rumpled and men in particular having a few days' facial hair growth)? Rawr.
He's directed, as far as Wiki knows:
Mission Impossible 3
Star Trek (09)
Super 8
Star Trek: Into Darkness
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
MI3 I remember being fun nonsense but not much else.
The rest I think all have some great direction but tend to fall apart as the film goes on because of a lack of attention to coherence and good storytelling.
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i'm not arguing the point of the message of the movie but this quote is kind of rough because the movie goes on to state Holdo was wrong, or at least, that's the implied message. no one shows up to help them. if people get Leia's message, they don't care or don't care enough to put their lives on the line.
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How are Luke’s actions supposed to reach across the galaxy? They were observed by the first order, which certainly isn’t going to talk about them, and maybe 20 surviving resistance dudes, who nobody was willing help. Broom kid is certainly partial to the resistance for breaking up the monotony of his life, but knows zip about Luke Skywalker.
Maybe that was supposed to be blindingly obvious, but I’ve seen the movie at least 3 times and didn’t pick up on it. It sets up the possibility for things to rebuild in about 20 years but that’s pretty much it.
You can't give someone a pirate ship in one game, and then take it back in the next game. It's rude.
I don't disagree with the rest of what you're saying, just that part specifically.
It was wrong for Poe to disobey orders and try to stop the dreadnought... that apparently would have destroyed the whole fleet. (Ends up being moot 'cause that happens anyway, good job I guess.)
People will come and help us... but they don't, and the Resistance is reduced to one freighter-load of walking wounded.
No one uses their damn words because that might actually prevent some of the dumb decisions RJ needs to deliver his idiot plot moral lessons.
That it's still possibly the best of the ST is more the fault of JJ and that the bar isn't just lying on the ground, it's in a ditch.
TROS makes the same mistake again but it is even more egregious because it gives no time for the events of the pervious film to impact the galaxy, which would have solved some of its more glaring issues. Because JJ Abrams and Chris Terrio have no idea how to write a narratively coherent, fulfilling film.