Platypus Bureaucracy wrote:Eternal Lotharia wrote:I actually initially *really* liked both movies, but having studied the writing…they pale in comparison to even the prequels. They aren’t bad, just overhyped mediocrity personified-like the Prequels. The originals, while not my personal favorites-As I’m more of a Legends guy-had much better writing, better plot lines, and dialogue. Don’t insult fans by putting that in quotation marks, I know many who are deep into it, didn’t care about the theorizing, and disliked the plot and film overall. In fact, I looked over it and found that despite the flashiness of the prequels which could get ridiculous, The Last Jedi’s action sequences were terrible choreography. Even the prequels, despite their flashiness, had solid choreography. It actually sucks all the tension out of the scene, and emotion, as Rey is a Mary Sue and achieved all of this which, canonically and even in lore and Legends, would take years to achieve. Even Anakin, canonically and in Legends the most prodigious lightsaber duelist, took years to get that good. The plot in comparison to all other Star Wars media-yes even the prequels-was predictable and bland. Luke was seriously underpowered and his death was predictable and disappointing, though I admit it was funny to see him trick Kylo. He compared to his Legends counterpart-which shaped Star Wars fans who wanted more than the movies for decades-is seriously underpowered, which…fine. I can deal with that. But, the issue here is not that he is not overpowered, but his presumed significant lack of ability in comparison to most other Jedi, which does not stack up to precedent for Grandmasters or Jedi in general. There is no visual indication he had any significant skill, and force projection is usually not as taxing. He would have been much more useful as a guide and mentor, teaching Rey and them. Remember this is the son of the chosen one. With the ridiculous crap shown in legends and even canon, especially with Vader, this seems extremely pathetic and ham-fisted. One would think his years of meditation, discussion with Yoda, presence near that force nexus, and teaching an entire academy would amount to more than that.
Furthermore, Snoke’s death had no impact, and no backstory. In fact, while I admit Kylo Ren killing him was enjoyable to watch at first, I quickly don’t consider it as finely pulled off as other major villain character deaths. As well, while Kylo does have potential to be a good villain, I feel the way they are presenting him is poor in nature, and feels like it will not be a gratifying villain in Episode IX. He has many flaws, as him being the grandson of the chosen one should make him far more skilled than he is shown to be-he seems quite weak at this moment. We should not forget, at this point, Anakin Skywalker and many other Jedis were prodigies, with significant skill, canonically in every canon source, not even detailing legends source material.
As well, why was Snoke able to turn him so easily? Who is Snoke? If he’s an original character, shouldn’t we have a reason to understand why he was able to, what he did, who he is? Vader and Sidious worked in this circumstance due to Star Wars being new, without precedent for a character lineage to follow. Fair enough. However the Empire was the basis of the worldbuilding and there was nothing precipitating it that we knew of at that point-Here it was defeated in Legends and Sidious died in canon. There still needs to be an explanation for why it did not collapse, and how or why Snoke rose to power, how he turned Kylo, how he contacted Kylo, how the hell the New Galactic Republic formed-which Starkiller base apparently destroyed. Just so much stuff that it leaves out. You cannot timeskip and have so many events and have so many important plot points without leaving fans frustrated. With The Force Awakens, people understood but were still frustrated as Disney played it safe. As well, the original Trilogy built it’s lore and world to make it seem like there was much more to tell.
You could argue they are doing the same here with Snoke, but here I offer a counterpoint-
As with game design(As I am an avid analyst and student of), lack of backstory coupled with a character implied to be originally good going evil is not a compelling backstory in itself, which in game design translates to:
“Your game can lead to people wanting to know and enjoying the mystery of identity or mechanics, history, or wanting more of the gameplay they set up, or can lead to frustration of how underdeveloped and ham-fisted, as well as how short, it feels. It’s more than simply leaving people wanting more, it’s a carefully calculated tool that must be executed well in order to not piss off the player base and be an objectively bad decision.”
Same thing applies here, roughly. A concept is not necessarily good or bad in itself, it depends on execution.
While all this technical jargon may go off the average fan’s or moviegoer’s head, they do feel the same emotions, for the same reasons, even if they cannot articulate it.
The biggest problem people have with The Last Jedi is massive missed potential. It was indeed a huge misstep, and destroyed the universe’s logic, lore, and characters we all knew about, making them feel warped and twisted, not by life, but by directorial insistence. It felt forced, and was held up by solid actors, good production values, and excellent screenplay-minus the abysmal combat sequences.
The lore and lore potential it created was bland and generic, as well as underdeveloped and could have been explored deeper if only worded differently or a few more seconds or moments was spent on a couple things.
It also felt unnecessarily political. I fully recognize the political setting of the prequels and how Lucas executed it poorly, and will detail the prequels in a moment. However here, it felt ham-fisted, it promoted an agenda-not a SJW Feminist agenda as some argue, or a hippy peace loving agenda-, but rather an odd agenda difficult to explain. Ultimately, the issue is not the agenda itself I find, but rather how it felt forced into the plot and unnatural. It didn’t need to be there. Sure, it may be planned to be explored later down the line, however, it may have been a good concept, but was executed *terribly* and could have been handled much better. I could explain but this is already super long as is and I have a couple more points.
The Prequels, for all their flaws, gave this view of a rich, breathing galaxy and realistic political setting where the politics made sense to an extent, and that they had a place. The Jedi had a need to get into politics-they were serving the Republic. And the Prequels show a fantastic job of how it enslaved and blinded them, in both Canon and Legends. Both Canon and Legends show how the Jedi in their service have become twisted, darker, and more monomaniacal, over the millennia serving the Galactic Republic. Both have an element of arguing for balance, with Legends doing it very well but subtly, and Canon beginning to dabble in it but doing it more outright.
It’s less of a political message or agenda that he is promoting rather than an interesting take on the order contrary to what many fans expected. And I applaud it. However that does not save it from poor execution and scripting, and wooden acting caused by Lucas’s intensive focus on CGI which limited the amount of emotion. Lucas himself struggled with writing the script, so it was a huge detriment. The love plot was poorly written and executed, and could have been scrapped or replaced with a love plot between Anakin and the then later created Ahsoka Tano who’s age could have been bumped up a little. Their relationship proved much more realistic, and some fans believe that if their age difference wasn’t a factor, they could have been a much more realistic and enjoyable relationship and better reason for Anakin to fall for the dark side.
…That being said, it still opened up a lot of possibilities and had a lot of potential, and the Protagonist still had viable weaknesses and lack of experience, and his character growth and literal physical growth made sense for him to become as skilled as he was. Even Luke spent years training and that’s how he became able to contend with Vader, at least Legends shows it, and Canonically it is implied that he spent years training his skills.
Episode 8…doesn’t have that. I already stated all my criticisms of it, and overall feel that while it’s not a bad movie, it is extremely mediocre and just skirts away from being a poor movie, and is slightly worse than Attack Of The Clones, the worst Star Wars movie to date which was still overall better now that I look at it than The Last Jedi, and actually really interests me. However if you place it as slightly better than that, I don’t blame you. Phantom Menace I feel was executed better than people give it credit for, and holds up to some extent, but was still aggressively “meh”, but still had better lore, and scripting-not writing-than The Last Jedi in my personal opinion. It could get boring at times, however It personally felt like there’s more there that holds up, such as both fights with Darth Maul, the Jedi Council scene which gives a lot of surface insight into the deep history of The Jedi Order, the introduction of Qui Gon Jinn who would later be expanded upon and was already given a better backstory than Rey in my opinion and was more of a vessel for Obi-Wan’s development, so it makes sense why he wasn’t developed as much, but there was something there, and he wasn’t a primary villain, which feels less excusable especially in Star Wars, we knew he was a secondary character who was a vessel for helping Anakin and Obi Wan meet the entire time, and he was developed enough for us to like him.
Overall…While I hesitate to call The Last Jedi a bad movie, I consider it painstakingly mediocre and worthy of a lot of the criticism, and think that the hate and vitriol is misguided in direction, but overall it deserves it’s harsh criticism overall and it was a good idea to boycott Solo-which I also now am disappointed by now that I consider the entire movie scene by scene, unlike all other star wars movies, it feels nostalgia baiting and manipulative-in an attempt not to attack the movie itself, but protest the direction Disney is taking the movie and how Rian Johnson handled everything. It was the only viable choice to save a franchise that has had a deep impact and impression on the fandom, that Disney would notice. A hit to their wallets will cause them to take notice much more than a hit to their image, in their case(Just look at their Mickey Mouse Protection Act, that’s blatantly corrupt, but it didn’t hurt them at all financially so they didn’t care despite some backlash, also with other backlash they experienced.).
So I do consider this justified and is a step in the right direction for star wars fans to take, though I think they get a bit too vitriolic and spiteful for my tastes and arguing “SJW and Feminism” when I more took issue with the technical and story aspects from a basic level and then a deeper level. Am I defending “SJW’s and Feminism”, saying I am one or I hate them? No, I just don’t want to take sides as I feel we should protect Star Wars from politicization, but the people saying that are often on the other side so I feel like it would do no good to the star wars fanbase, their reputation, or the star wars franchise as a whole to focus on that or bring that up in any debate as it is just a spiral into a black hole.
That sums it up. If you don’t read it, I assume you aren’t willing to take a look at detailed criticism that is well-considered and makes sense. If you call my argument “you’re overthinking this”, then really…You miss the entire point of Star Wars, which is meant to be thought over, and critical analysis in general. It built a community on purpose of people who would think and contemplate deeper meaning, to dismiss that would be to dismiss a foundation of Star Wars itself. While I think people can overthink and overanalyze which works to their detriment, when it comes to this, I constructed every criticism that would make the movie, it’s elements, plot, events, and details feel all out of place as well as mismanaged.
If they wanted to make a new Franchise, then they should have. They shouldn’t have used a Star Wars skin to sell it and to milk the fans for all the money they are worth without giving painstaking attention to detail which all other films did and even expanded on, giving each character weight, meaning, and making fans feel satisfied as every character was interconnected, even ones who appeared briefly.
They missed the core facets of Star Wars taking only a basic look and using the skeletal structure of what makes Star Wars Star Wars, and for that, they will be judged harshly.
Ugh, you said that the agenda wasn't an SJW/feminist one? Shame, I almost won a game of SW nerd bingo from this one post. Quick, Yusseria! Complain about Kathleen Kennedy's vagina and/or T-shirt for me!Idzequitch wrote:And you're the one writing paragraphs based off my self-admittedly petty complaint. *shrug*
Yet you clearly do care about it, because you're moaning about how it should still never have made it into the script.
With the last one I was not even conversing with this poster yet she still fills the need to try and draw me in. Textbook baiting.
