8 ms·

> Star Wars is quite loose in its narrative, requiring a significant amount of suspension of disbelief "Hey, kid, it ain't that kind of movie"

by davidw 3y ago

ethbr1 3y ago
The maddening thing is that it is that kind of movie in many places. It has rules, it has structure, it has proposed reasons that things work the way they do. People wouldn't be nearly as obsessed about Star Wars if it were all just handwavey reasoning. One reason, for all it's flaws, Last Jedi is my favorite new film. It simultaneously admits (through character dialog) that "there are rules" and "there are egregiously no rules".
- throw_m239339 3y ago
  > One reason, for all it's flaws, Last Jedi is my favorite new film. It simultaneously admits (through character dialog) that "there are rules" and "there are egregiously no rules". To each of their own, the meta in the Last Jedi is precisely why I hated that movie. Too many times it was the director speaking directly to the audience, in particular "the fans". This is simply not why I watch Star Wars. It also plagiarized a Battle Star Galactica episode a bit too much, and who the hell puts an epilogue in the middle of trilogy? Clearly Rian Johnson didn't care about what was going to be next.
  - quacked 3y ago
    I can't stand that guy. In Johnson's last three movies, the only skill as a storyteller he demonstrates is castigation of the audience for their provincial admiration of "traditional" values like strength, heroism, stoicism, self-sacrifice, elitism, narrative predictability, etc. Oscar Isaac's mistrust of Laura Dern's brilliant plan to mock him in front of the soldiers and then take no action against the pursuers, Mark Hamill's apathy and cowardice in the face of renewed galactic domination, Chris Evans's deception and murderous intent to acquire his inheritance defend "his birthright" (which was actually built by a foreigner in 1980.) I've heard he's making a third Knives Out sequel. To save time, here's the twist: whichever character(s) Johnson has picked to represent "Norman Rockwell America" did the crime, and they did it for a stupid reason they didn't think through. Whichever characters Johnson picked to represent the antithesis of tradition will come through and expose the villainy and stupidity of the old guard, while remaining morally pure of heart.
- everdrive 3y ago
  The Last Jedi was an abomination, filled with misdirection for misdirection’s sake, at the cost of a coherent or entertaining narrative. It’s also filled with awful postmodern tropes that it conjures out of nowhere. “Hey, it turns out there are ancient Jedi texts” But their whole purpose in the film is so that they can be burned and discarded. “Oh, they were never all that important anyhow, just make your own rules.”
  - IggleSniggle 3y ago
    I dunno, compare that to any holy book. It's incredibly important, but also it never really mattered anyhow. Of course it matters because of its impact on society, but the lessons are universal with or without the sacred text.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - everdrive 3y ago
      But what if you’re 15 books into your fictional universe, and during one chapter, it turns out a major faction has extremely important ancient texts. And then as soon as those texts are discovered, they’re flippantly burned because actually they’re not important at all! The most important thing is to just be yourself. It’s bad writing. If they wanted to discard something sacred, they could have taken something which was actually in the series and discarded _that_. They sort of did this by ruining Luke’s character, only to reverse it at the end and have him save the day anyway. Really, Luke’s characterization really follows the same pattern. He was strongly characterized in all the other Star Wars films. Then Last Jedi throws this out the window for no reason whatsoever. Then by the time you’ve accepted that he’s a loser now, he steps up and saves the day. All more or less within the blink of an eye. They’re just setting up a subverting expectations for the sake of doing so. It’s terrible writing, and terrible storytelling.
      - hotnfresh 3y ago
        > They sort of did this by ruining Luke’s character, only to reverse it at the end and have him save the day anyway. Really, Luke’s characterization really follows the same pattern. He was strongly characterized in all the other Star Wars films. This was thrown out the window for no reason whatsoever. This complaint about TLJ resonates the least with me, as a (super, at one time) fan from well before the prequels. The seeds of this later Luke and of the situation of the Jedi are there in the OT, and I’m not sure what else you do with hermit-Luke in the setting established for the new trilogy. Sticking with “he’s still a gung-ho hero” doesn’t break “routine” (Johnstone’s terminology) and wouldn’t be good storytelling, and the way in which the routine will be broken has already been hemmed in by choices in VII (he’s withdrawn from taking an active role in galactic politics). At least with this direction, there’s somewhere to go with the character, and conflict for his scenes that’s not a straight repeat of him and Yoda in Empire.
- dbingham 3y ago
  There are a lot of things I really loved about Last Jedi and a lot of things I really hated about Last Jedi. It was such a mixed bag. I hate the way it threw out the Star Wars universe's physics - because it took me right out of the universe. Yes, the Star Wars universe never had realistic physics, but it did have reasonably self-consistent physics and Last Jedi threw them away. It had bombs falling in space (as opposed to being projected as missiles), it had turbolasers arcing (not something it ever had before), it introduced hyperspace fuel in order to make the finale escape make sense (they could have just used an interdictor instead). It was maddening. But they almost did something really cool with the force, throwing out the dark/light dichotomy and replacing it with balance. They could have had Rey and Ben actually see eye to eye and both become grey Jedi after dispatching Snoke and finally obtaining the prophesied balance in the force. That would have opened up all kinds of interesting new places to take Star Wars and new stories to explore. But they chickened out at the last second. And then yeah, the whole last half of the movie with the slow space chase, escape plan, side quest... none of that made any sense in terms of its writing.
  - iainmerrick 3y ago
    I strongly agree on all counts. Overall, the bad outweighed the good for me; but at least it tried and I give it points for that. The other two sequels were just lazy. The best modern Star Wars movie by far was Rogue One. In some ways Rogue One had an easier job because it was explicitly an exercise in elaborating on the original movies, rather than trying to expand in a brand new direction. But it did its job tremendously well. (And the TV show Andor is taking things in cool new directions.)
    - ethbr1 3y ago
      At this point with movies, especially franchise movies, I'm more interested in how high the highest points of a film hit than the average level. If you do 1 really cool thing and 99 shitty things? Still into it! And TLJ does better than that. There's far too much average pablum out there. Or almost worse, a movie that's entirely just slightly better than average... but never exceed slightly better.
    - 3y ago

> Star Wars is quite loose in its narrative, requiring a significant amount of suspension of disbelief "Hey, kid, it ain't that kind of movie"

by davidw 3y ago

> Star Wars is quite loose in its narrative, requiring a significant amount of suspension of disbelief "Hey, kid, it ain't that kind of movie"

ethbr1 3y ago

The maddening thing is that it is that kind of movie in many places. It has rules, it has structure, it has proposed reasons that things work the way they do. People wouldn't be nearly as obsessed about Star Wars if it were all just handwavey reasoning. One reason, for all it's flaws, Last Jedi is my favorite new film. It simultaneously admits (through character dialog) that "there are rules" and "there are egregiously no rules".

throw_m239339 3y ago
> One reason, for all it's flaws, Last Jedi is my favorite new film. It simultaneously admits (through character dialog) that "there are rules" and "there are egregiously no rules". To each of their own, the meta in the Last Jedi is precisely why I hated that movie. Too many times it was the director speaking directly to the audience, in particular "the fans". This is simply not why I watch Star Wars. It also plagiarized a Battle Star Galactica episode a bit too much, and who the hell puts an epilogue in the middle of trilogy? Clearly Rian Johnson didn't care about what was going to be next.
- quacked 3y ago
  I can't stand that guy. In Johnson's last three movies, the only skill as a storyteller he demonstrates is castigation of the audience for their provincial admiration of "traditional" values like strength, heroism, stoicism, self-sacrifice, elitism, narrative predictability, etc. Oscar Isaac's mistrust of Laura Dern's brilliant plan to mock him in front of the soldiers and then take no action against the pursuers, Mark Hamill's apathy and cowardice in the face of renewed galactic domination, Chris Evans's deception and murderous intent to acquire his inheritance defend "his birthright" (which was actually built by a foreigner in 1980.) I've heard he's making a third Knives Out sequel. To save time, here's the twist: whichever character(s) Johnson has picked to represent "Norman Rockwell America" did the crime, and they did it for a stupid reason they didn't think through. Whichever characters Johnson picked to represent the antithesis of tradition will come through and expose the villainy and stupidity of the old guard, while remaining morally pure of heart.
everdrive 3y ago
The Last Jedi was an abomination, filled with misdirection for misdirection’s sake, at the cost of a coherent or entertaining narrative. It’s also filled with awful postmodern tropes that it conjures out of nowhere. “Hey, it turns out there are ancient Jedi texts” But their whole purpose in the film is so that they can be burned and discarded. “Oh, they were never all that important anyhow, just make your own rules.”
- IggleSniggle 3y ago
  I dunno, compare that to any holy book. It's incredibly important, but also it never really mattered anyhow. Of course it matters because of its impact on society, but the lessons are universal with or without the sacred text.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - everdrive 3y ago
    But what if you’re 15 books into your fictional universe, and during one chapter, it turns out a major faction has extremely important ancient texts. And then as soon as those texts are discovered, they’re flippantly burned because actually they’re not important at all! The most important thing is to just be yourself. It’s bad writing. If they wanted to discard something sacred, they could have taken something which was actually in the series and discarded _that_. They sort of did this by ruining Luke’s character, only to reverse it at the end and have him save the day anyway. Really, Luke’s characterization really follows the same pattern. He was strongly characterized in all the other Star Wars films. Then Last Jedi throws this out the window for no reason whatsoever. Then by the time you’ve accepted that he’s a loser now, he steps up and saves the day. All more or less within the blink of an eye. They’re just setting up a subverting expectations for the sake of doing so. It’s terrible writing, and terrible storytelling.
    - hotnfresh 3y ago
      > They sort of did this by ruining Luke’s character, only to reverse it at the end and have him save the day anyway. Really, Luke’s characterization really follows the same pattern. He was strongly characterized in all the other Star Wars films. This was thrown out the window for no reason whatsoever. This complaint about TLJ resonates the least with me, as a (super, at one time) fan from well before the prequels. The seeds of this later Luke and of the situation of the Jedi are there in the OT, and I’m not sure what else you do with hermit-Luke in the setting established for the new trilogy. Sticking with “he’s still a gung-ho hero” doesn’t break “routine” (Johnstone’s terminology) and wouldn’t be good storytelling, and the way in which the routine will be broken has already been hemmed in by choices in VII (he’s withdrawn from taking an active role in galactic politics). At least with this direction, there’s somewhere to go with the character, and conflict for his scenes that’s not a straight repeat of him and Yoda in Empire.
dbingham 3y ago
There are a lot of things I really loved about Last Jedi and a lot of things I really hated about Last Jedi. It was such a mixed bag. I hate the way it threw out the Star Wars universe's physics - because it took me right out of the universe. Yes, the Star Wars universe never had realistic physics, but it did have reasonably self-consistent physics and Last Jedi threw them away. It had bombs falling in space (as opposed to being projected as missiles), it had turbolasers arcing (not something it ever had before), it introduced hyperspace fuel in order to make the finale escape make sense (they could have just used an interdictor instead). It was maddening. But they almost did something really cool with the force, throwing out the dark/light dichotomy and replacing it with balance. They could have had Rey and Ben actually see eye to eye and both become grey Jedi after dispatching Snoke and finally obtaining the prophesied balance in the force. That would have opened up all kinds of interesting new places to take Star Wars and new stories to explore. But they chickened out at the last second. And then yeah, the whole last half of the movie with the slow space chase, escape plan, side quest... none of that made any sense in terms of its writing.
- iainmerrick 3y ago
  I strongly agree on all counts. Overall, the bad outweighed the good for me; but at least it tried and I give it points for that. The other two sequels were just lazy. The best modern Star Wars movie by far was Rogue One. In some ways Rogue One had an easier job because it was explicitly an exercise in elaborating on the original movies, rather than trying to expand in a brand new direction. But it did its job tremendously well. (And the TV show Andor is taking things in cool new directions.)
  - ethbr1 3y ago
    At this point with movies, especially franchise movies, I'm more interested in how high the highest points of a film hit than the average level. If you do 1 really cool thing and 99 shitty things? Still into it! And TLJ does better than that. There's far too much average pablum out there. Or almost worse, a movie that's entirely just slightly better than average... but never exceed slightly better.
  - 3y ago