It probably didn't help that my second viewing of Rogue One was with someone who strongly disliked it.
He also thought The Force Awakens was really good, in contrast to me being much more bothered by its plot being the third time they blew up the Death Star and other repeated tropes. I'm still bothered by that, but I guess it still has plenty of other positive qualities.
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Originally Posted by Ari
IMO The force awakens gets a huge amount of leeway as it had the additional responsibility of showing the fans they understood why the first movie was enjoyed and that they could still do that. It would have been nice to not be a thinly veiled remake but that was the safest way to go.
I can have a strong positive reaction coming out of the theater but after either some reflection or reading some critiques come away with a lesser opinion of a movie. Plus I can plain forget or incidentally overlook things that bothered me by the time I get home.
The Force Awakens captured a spirit of the Star Wars but I think over did it. That can be the blessing and curse of having a fanboy working on it. The Destroy the Great Weapon McGuffin thing Star Wars keeps doing simply has to stop. I can suspend my disbelief only so far even for a galaxy far far away. A planet or star killing thing? Yeah, I can dig it. But a weapon that is the size of a planet that can shoot at things light years away - or whatever that thing was really supposed to be? I'm not Plastic Man, you know. Come on. And I'm still not clear on who is or is not running the galaxy.
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And now I have seen Solo. It was fine, but it's the weakest of the recent films.
Agreed still yet again some more. It was okay, I guess. There's really no reason to put anything aside to make plans and go see it. A few neat things happen but by and large it's all right. I'm a little nerd-upset that they treknobabbled in my star wars though. And some other offense happened while I was frowning about that.
Solo was pretty bland but ultimately inoffensive. Maybe tried to jam too many adventures into a single film IMHO, but that could just be movies these days.
In the Last Jedi I can't get over the fact that they left in the middle of a chase scene to spend some time on a casino planet, the returned and resumed the chase. Kind of colours the whole film for me. That, and that it didn't feel StarWarsy. Many people loved that it was "something different", but I actually wanted to see a Star Wars movie, which is why I got tickets for that.
I think Solo tried to cram too much of Han's back story into the movie as well.
He is sort of mysterious, a long-time outlaw and hardened cynic in A New Hope.
But they had to cram: How Hanny Met Chewy, how Han met Lando and
got the Millennium Falcon, how he made the Kessel run (and how using a distance measure made sense), and some of his backstory as a pilot (he trained in the Imperial Academy).
And then they sort of imply he provided the seed money for the Rebellion as an act of goodwill. Which seems like maybe it would be a bigger deal in the later films.
And then there's of course also a romantic subplot.
It seems like a big too much. And the thing is they didn't need to explain all of how those things happened and it could've worked just as well if not better. Maybe Han meets Lando and doesn't end up winning the Falcon... we still know he wins it eventually.
I guess they'll do Solo 2 next and explain how Han got to be in debt to Jabba, how Lando got to be in charge of Cloud City, and end with Han going into the cantina in Mos Eisley followed by Greedo.
this is the universe where some kid from the galaxy's version of bu-fu nowhere rolls up and is all WELL I CAN SHOOT RATS FROM MY CAR and so the military force gives him a fighter jet they just have laying around and put him in their critical attack run https://t.co/mht3Gykke7
— Razorblade Snowflake (Sephiroth But Also A Wolf) (@Keffy) June 27, 2018
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Peering from the top of Mount Stupid
I finally got around to seeing the last Jedi, yes I know I'm always slow with these things. So some thoughts.
On Luke. His journey makes sense.
Let's look back on what we know about Luke from the first three movies. He's a kid dreaming of spacebattles when one shows up on his front door and immediately kills his adopted parents. He meets a master who starts his training, and them promptly dies, leaving Luke alone to deal with the giant space station of doom. After winning Luke goes off to complete his training with another master, who then up and dies. Returning to save his friends he must battle his father, who he finally converts only to watch die. In short the force is a dick to Luke, seemingly enjoying giving him things only to quickly snatch them back away from him. Fast forward a number of years and it seems like things are going great, only to have the force again suggest it's going to take everything he loves. In a moment of fear he gives in to the dark side and tries to get one ahead of the force's dickishness, only to have that be exactly what it wanted to screw with him. At that point it's not just shame that causes him to leave but it seems quite reasonable for anyone to decide to close themselves off from everyone else. The force can't toy with him and take away things if he has nothing.
If we accept the immaculate conception of Annakin it would also seem that to the force the Skywalkers are just a tool to balance things with, using them to teeter back and forth, from one who is strong with the dark, to one that is strong with the light but with a touch of dark, to another who is strong with the dark but may have some good in him. At a certain point the only two options are to accept himself as the tool of the force or to not play the game at all.
I can also see why fans are upset with Luke calling the things they have begun to worship bullshit, but he's quite right. The Jedi order may have served the light but they were pretty rigid and evil in their own ways. Both the order and the Sith were using the force to their own gains, average mortals who disagree be damned. It reminds me quite a bit of the Vorlons and the Shadows. The Vorlons may have convinced themselves and others they were on the side of the light, but they still wanted control and obedience from the lesser races. We have seen with others that one can be force sensitive and not choose a side or become part of the order. Both the Jedi and the Sith seem like corruptions of the universal binding energy who have justified their use and abuse of a power that belongs to none.
On Battle tactics.
I saw a lot of people complaining about the light speed suicide jump that takes out snokes ship and I can understand why and don't really have a problem with it. Really any oddities in battle plans can be summed up with the fact that this is a universe where laser swords that can cut through anything are relegated to ancient masters, giant walking tanks are seen as a smart idea and troops are given armor that doesn't protect them from anything. The rule of cool seems to govern the star wars universe over practicality. Ultimately it's an artifact of StarWars being a WWII battle in space, and that for some reason no one has thought beyond WWII style tactics and weaponry.
I don't think we've seen hyperspace missiles or other attacks in the manner in part for the same reason the US never fully went through with adding nukes to the battle field. Considering the cruiser not only split snokes ship in two but splash damage seemed to take out multiple star destroyers all in an instant, this attack as anything less than a last ditch approach by a single large (and probably pretty expensive) ship is just too much of a clusterfuck to be useful in real battle. Sure you can hyperdrive through an enemy ship, and maybe throw burning hyperspace debris into your own ships, onto the planet your protecting, etc. It's not the precision style weapon that leads to fighting another day. In addition we know very little about StarWars hyperspace, for all we know she could have damaged hyperspace in that area, making this type of weapon useless if you want to conquer and control and not just slash and burn and cause areas of space to be off limits. Similar again to nuclear fallout making many tactical type nukes useless if you want to control the land you just irradiated.
My personal thought or hope was more of an Happily Ever After in the post Return galaxy. But I didn't pin all my dreams on it. I read a few of the novels and such but not with a strict or overarching devotion. There are ideas and characters that I'll miss not being "official" or just relegated to "Legends" level canon; but as a whole I was never really invested in anything.
It totally makes sense that Luke might initially try to reform some kind of Jedi Order. It makes sense that there would be some students who would learn only to further their own goals. It makes sense that he'd feel like he's at the end of the line when his blood relative starts following and devoting himself to an ideology Luke thought to be evil. Plus all that Force Dickery Ari mentioned.
A person in that universe has to really work very hard to remain idealistic and hopeful, especially when at one point you feel like the Force itself is working against you.
My personal thought or hope was more of an Happily Ever After in the post Return galaxy.
IMO the Happily Ever After came more as a bittersweet moment when,
Luke realized he both needed to face his biggest failure and let it consume him, only then could he reach the balance needed to force ghost out and become one of the ghost Jedi, which the movie also suggested can influence more than just speaking in someone's mind. It also closes things nicely as he finally realized why Obi-Wan allowed Vader to strike him down so many years ago. I very much assume we will see both Luke and Yoda as force ghosts in the next movie with Yoda positioning himself as the voice of not the Jedi but the force itself.
While the movie on the whole had plenty of issues (like the odd codebreaker thing that felt like it came out of nowhere, that was both fun and I kept wondering what the hell we were doing there.) I'm quite interested to see what happens and what directions they take in the third movie. Which is way more than I can say after the second prequel where I just couldn't care less what was going to happen to our whiny wooden heros.
IMO the Happily Ever After came more as a bittersweet moment when, [spoiler]Luke realized he both needed to face his biggest failure and let it consume him, only then could he reach the balance needed to force ghost out and become one of the ghost Jedi,
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Peering from the top of Mount Stupid
My friend had the opposite reaction to me. I thought The Force Awakens was too derivative in general and specifically I thought the third Death Star was waaay too derivative. But it did a good job of recreating aspects of the original trilogy (especially A New Hope) and was decently entertaining. He hated the second film (not for whiny Gamegate-type reasons) whereas I thought it was a much better film and did more interesting things.
I remember saying something either around when it came out or before that their goal might have been to demonstrate that they can do a proper Star Wars without Lucas, and it would be more in line with the original trilogy than the prequels (although I wouldn't say that there's nothing worth salvaging from the prequels, it's mostly not). Then they'd do something more interesting with the second one. Which I was right about.
He hated Rogue One while I liked it. Rogue One had some aspects that didn't work and it drags a bit in parts, but it tried some different things and there were some parts that were great. It's trying to sort of explain a weird aspect of the plot of A New Hope but then it has its own plotholes. Overall entertaining but I can't decide which is better, TFA or R1 because they have different problems and it's hard to say which are worse.
Fortunately, I think people can mostly agree about Solo. That it was just... ok. Not Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones level bad though.
Haven’t seen Solo, but I thought R1 was by far a better film by most measures than TFW, although TFW was more popcorn-munchingly entertaining. So for me it’s really between Last Jedi and R1 for the top this-gen Star Wars film. I wasn’t blown away by any of them, but the surprises in TLJ were sorely needed at this stage of the franchise.
I now get why they never bothered to develop Snoak as a character, or even hint at his origins or why we should give a shit about him. But the red herring twist would’ve worked a helluva lot better if the Snoak plot thread had been ... an actual plot thread.
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"Her eyes in certain light were violet, and all her teeth were even. That's a rare, fair feature: even teeth. She smiled to excess, but she chewed with real distinction." - Eleanor of Aquitaine
Re: Is this Star Wars nerd-rage worthy?
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