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"The scene where Finn falls into poop is good. The scene with Jar Jar stepping in poop is proof Lucas raped my childhood."
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Jun 18, 2020 07:42
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 12:55 |
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"The scene where Luke calls the Jedi out on their hubristic dogma and how it allowed the Empire to rise is incredible. The trilogy where Lucas showed that happen gangbanged my childhood and/or isn't supported by the films."
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Jun 18, 2020 07:48
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"Ahmed Best played an abominable racist caricature who was present on the night that Lucas did his dark deeds to my nostalgic gnosis. Finn was a deep and complex character with a wonderful arc and contributed interestingly - nay, monumentally - to cinema as a whole."
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Jun 18, 2020 08:09
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To be serious... The sequel trilogy as a whole is a series of interesting moments strung together by corporate slop. It's virtually the opposite of the prequels, where you could say it's a a peculiar trilogy that came from the ideas of one man. In fact, it was the sequel trilogy that made me appreciate the prequels. But I came out of TLJ just as disappointed as I did coming out of Attack of the Clones. It isn't that TLJ is bad in every way - that'd be too easy. It's the fact that it has glimmers of an interesting story constrained by the needs of the Disney machine. TFA is the same way. TRoS is what you get when the product is just bad from start to finish, and I'm glad that it took the crown of worst Star Wars film. Consider Luke. Iconoclast Luke is a great take on the character. I have no problem with this as a concept. Where it falls apart is that there's a big flaw in the overall storytelling. Well, two flaws that are part of the same problem. 1. The story of Luke's rise and fall doesn't engage with the climax of Return of the Jedi in any real way. We don't even know what Luke is famous for. Did he tell everyone he killed Vader and Sheev? Did people put that on him? Did Luke try to explain that Vader saved his life and was his father? Or did he carry that inside him? 2. Luke's Jedi Academy is perhaps the most important part of the sequel trilogy and it's relegated to confusing exposition. Did Luke begin it out of obligation, or because he thought he was Luke Skywalker, Sith Slayer? What was the darkness inside Kylo? Prophecies - which is what Luke basically got from him - are frequently cheap tricks to justify a plot, and TLJ's was. How did Snoke reach out to Kylo and corrupt him? What really happened on that fateful night? (Turns out Kylo Ren didn't even burn down the temple, if you happen to read the EU, so, that's fun.) Sometimes ambiguity can be great, but it has to serve a purpose. Ambiguity of ambiguity's sake is a big problem in a lot of modern blockbusters. Both of these read like things that the writers couldn't figure out, because they're virtually whole stories in and of themselves. Instead, it's skipped over. Daisy Ridley was great as Rey and I'm even down with Rey as this 'Force vessel' with a ton of raw power. But that kind of character needs to do more than just conquer problems and fail upward. For all the people who talk about how great the sequel trilogy is for being a feminist power story or whatever, they neglect to notice that the film is hardly Rey's story - it's Kylo Ren's. Honestly, I'm not sure I have a single bad thing to say about Kylo. Adam Driver carried the films. The character is great but the films never knew how to handle him. TFA paints him as a powerful child, TLJ paints him as a furious warlord, TRoS makes him Emperor but also stupid. They never figured out what to do with Poe after he survived the crash, even in TFA. Having him re-enact a poor man's Battlestar Galactica in TLJ just felt weird and depends on serious tortured storytelling logic. On the other hand, it seems like Disney actively worked to minimize Finn because he's a black man. The way Rian talks about breaking up Finn and Poe's adventure to Canto Bight makes it pretty clear that there was executive meddling involved. That or he's a bad writer. Neither one reflects well. Hux was never necessary, and neither was Phasma. The films suffered from having way too many characters, and the fact they kept adding to the cast in every film was part of the reason the stories are so weird and disjointed. Snoke was a joke, always intended to be Darth Plagueis until fans guessed it and/or Rian killed him. Rose was squandered even in TLJ. The first two films have moments that I'd say rank up there as great Star Wars moments. Say, Rey and Ren duelling in the snow forest, for example. But the prequels also have great moments and have a unified vision to go with it. And that's not even going into some of the more odious stuff that Abrams did over the sequel trilogy. The 'I'll Put My Friend in Star Wars!' stuff. Sometimes I feel like an issue with the ST is that every person they brought on got giddy with the idea of making their mark on Star Wars. And what the gently caress is up with Palpatine's return? Again, it's obviously coporate bullshit that they had to put in the trailer to try and retain fans after the terrible reception of TLJ. But you know how that might've been more interesting? Have the first scene be Kylo ruling the galaxy with a petulant, wrathful iron fist - and then Sheev kicks in the throne room doors and says, hey, that's my chair, idiot! Oh no, Kylo has to form an alliance of convenience with Rey! Maybe that's generic but generic is better than a disasterpiece. I probably wouldn't have liked Lucas' original outline or Trevorrow's take on Episode 9, but I'd say they'd both be more interesting. Ultimately, the issue I have with the sequels is - and to use a Plinkett bit here, as is anti-prequel custom - "They can never be undone." Fisher is dead. Ford came back because she's dead. Hamill fundamentally disagreed with what happened to Luke and shares 'what could've been' memes on Twitter. There can never be another ST featuring the original cast. That's all there will be. Three janky-at-best films, a film where Han gets the name Solo because he's alone, and Rogue One... which is maybe the only interesting film but even that has some serious issues. I think Rian Johnson could actually do an interesting Star Wars film. His trilogy could've been good, I think. But, hey, that's dead too.
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Jun 18, 2020 09:23
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Sanguinia posted:I suppose you could argue that Kylo's story can stand on its own without the Rey parts whereas Rey's story can't, but I wouldn't find such an argument very credulous. Well, buddy, that's basically how the argument works so not finding it credulous reflects more on that you don't like the result than the process. Rey is a supporting character to Ren's story. She provides some additional context but, ultimately, you could follow Ren for the whole time and have Rey just show up and wreck poo poo as she does from his perspective and lose very little. Hell, it'd probably be more interesting. Who is this girl who shows up and ruins him time and time again? Is she a Skywalker? No, she's just a simple peasant girl and she's ruining your noble bloodline. Following Rey gives us, what, fun parts of TFA and the Luke stuff? Okay it's fun, but it's also the source of some of TLJ's bigger storytellling problems. But then TLJ's problems rest on the setup of TFA, too, so... Sanguinia posted:...and the movie probably would have been significantly better if they'd scrapped it and just had Poe go on a better-written version of the Casino Adventure with Finn and learn his lesson as part of getting betrayed by DJ as a direct result of his impulsive need to DO THINGS. Funnily enough, this was the original take on the story. But Rian Johnson claims that he felt Finn and Poe were too similar and therefore replaced Poe with Rose. Can you imagine how different the film would've been without the weird mutiny subplot? Anyway, another thing I found interesting about Star Wars is how my fiance responded to them. She basically missed out on Star Wars growing up and never actually saw the films before TFA came out, and that was the only one she saw in a cinema. She can't even name the titles and if you ask her to describe any of the films you get a weird mash-up of prequel and original trilogy elements. Then one day, she decided to sit down and watch them all. A New Hope and Empire she felt were great but RotJ wasn't nearly as good. The prequels she thought were overall weird but she liked a lot of their visual designs which I think is what kept her watching. She didn't like TFA or Rogue One, even if the latter had Donnie Yen. She stopped watching Last Jedi during Canto Bight, and she was bewildered by Rise of Skywalker right from the start. Inexplicably, the only film beyond ANH and ESB that she seemed to like as a whole was Solo. Yeah, I don't get it either. Milkfred E. Moore fucked around with this message at 09:43 on Jun 18, 2020 |
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Jun 18, 2020 09:36
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Sanguinia posted:I think Solo is a pretty underrated film even if I wouldn't call it "great," so I'd probably agree with her, but that's a whole other giant argument I'm sure. Solo has a lot of interesting parts that should've been part of the ST. Droid rights, L3, droid liberation? Chuck that in the sequel trilogy! God knows she'd have been more interesting than BB-8.
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Jun 18, 2020 09:42
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Angry Salami posted:The prequels just have great designs in general. Like how the Trade Federation has its own visual language that doesn't echo anything from the OT, yet still feels like part of the same universe. Or the fantastic detail that the Jedi star-fighters have elements of the TIE fighters in them; the Jedi are already part of the Imperial machine, they just never noticed. I do actually like the design of the new Star Destroyer in TFA. It's weird and asymmetrical and the bare scaffolding/structural bars or whatever evokes a skeleton. It's like a weird, skeletal version of a familiar ship. Sounds about right for the First Order! But just about the rest of the designs suck, vehicle and alien. The Dreadnaught is awful and Snoke's ship is just a squished and widened Executor.
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Jun 18, 2020 10:10
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I believe they interfered with Solo because Lawrence Kasdan felt Lord and Miller weren't respecting the Han Solo character and kicked up a fuss about it.
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Jun 18, 2020 10:27
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Cease to Hope posted:My least favorite part of TROS is where Rey looks at the camera and says, "Masks are for stupid baby nerds." Wasn't that part in TLJ as well?
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Jun 18, 2020 11:56
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I don't know, Poe seems to put a ton of trust in Finn and Rose when they come up with a zany plan based on technology no one knew existed until five minutes ago and he's never even met Rose before. Additionally, in no particular order: 1. Luke Skywalker would've accomplished jack poo poo if not for Vader saving him and the rest of the Rebellion taking out the Imperial fleet and Death Star. Even on Hoth, he does nothing to change the loss of Echo Base. 2. Part of the reason why Anakin falls is because of the Jedi belief in the chosen one and treating him as this messiah figure instead of a person. You either will see Great Man History in everything if that's your take on it, or it is the nature of cinematic entertainment to inadvertantly push such an idea because it makes for a better story when our characters are also the movers and shakers.
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Jun 19, 2020 06:45
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 12:55 |
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I think it's important to note, Cease, that there are surviving fighters. Kylo just hits the hangar deck with a missile and blows up every single one of them before they can launch. So, really, sacrificing the bombers to kill a capship is an even better idea when they were all about to be destroyed anyway.
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Jun 19, 2020 08:29
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