Star Wars 8 complaint box

[Bazza]

I remember an article from years ago that stated that the look of sci-fi really changed from a hardware to software aesthetic with Star Trek TNG. 

[Michael Hopcroft]

Mom was actually slightly jealous when I told her I'd already seen this (even though she doesn't especially like this sort of movie anymore). I told her it was very dark and that Luke is a deeply wounded character. I quoted the "legacy of failure and hubris" line to give her some idea of that. It's a natural progression, but one that makes the wide-eyed idealist of A New Hope seem like a totally different person -- who had died long ago. She had asked if Luke had become a "curmudgeon".

 

Luke has had a lot to deal with, and much of the film is about his belief that everything he has done his entire life has turned out to be a waste of time. He is staring his own mortality in the face, to the point that he is actually looking forward to dying. He does not want an apprentice, and is more than happy to see the Jedi Order die out, Rey's sudden appearance alarms him and he wants nothing more than for her to go away and leave him alone. And he never really comes to like Rey, or find her presence much more tolerable than it is at first.

[Christopher]

8 hours ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

Mom was actually slightly jealous when I told her I'd already seen this (even though she doesn't especially like this sort of movie anymore). I told her it was very dark and that Luke is a deeply wounded character. I quoted the "legacy of failure and hubris" line to give her some idea of that. It's a natural progression, but one that makes the wide-eyed idealist of A New Hope seem like a totally different person -- who had died long ago. She had asked if Luke had become a "curmudgeon".

 

Luke has had a lot to deal with, and much of the film is about his belief that everything he has done his entire life has turned out to be a waste of time. He is staring his own mortality in the face, to the point that he is actually looking forward to dying. He does not want an apprentice, and is more than happy to see the Jedi Order die out, Rey's sudden appearance alarms him and he wants nothing more than for her to go away and leave him alone. And he never really comes to like Rey, or find her presence much more tolerable than it is at first.

Basically he is a old man that says "get off my Island", but the young girl is simply not listening.

[zslane]

Rubber science just “works” (because it is magic after all), and the visual aesthetics are totally irrelevant to that. Therefore, the tech aesthetics get to convey other things in a movie. In Star Wars, part of the magic of its rubber science is that the tech functions on a reality-defying level while being “low tech” in appearance.

[Michael Hopcroft]

The rubber science bothers me less than the main thing that bugs me -- Poe Dameron fouling up everything that can conceivably be fouled up. And that unsettling situation may be part of the point of the movie.

 

Poe does not learn from his mistakes. When he fouls up he refuses to accept responsibility, but insists that he can react to the situation effectively even though he doesn't really understand his situation. He is unclear on the very objective -- instead of understanding that the Resistance needs to salvage and preserve whatever resources they can so they can rebuild and regroup out of the First Order's reach, Poe insists that damaging the First Order's easily-replaceable military assets is a primary goal. Even sitting him down, rebuking him, and trying to make him understand the situation does no good. He insists he knows more than seasoned veteran leaders like Leia. The press has described him as a prime example of toxic masculinity. And although he doesn't say anything outright that he thinks he knows best for that reason, it's easy to see the connection.

 

Why does anyone listen to Poe?

[Old Man]

Because he is a really good pilot.

 

One of the best things about this film is that it reversed some of the main tropes (such as the mutinous hero, and the suicide mission) and as a result it became a much more original film.  Compared to TFA which felt a lot like a reshoot of Episode IV.

[Christopher]

1 hour ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

The rubber science bothers me less than the main thing that bugs me -- Poe Dameron fouling up everything that can conceivably be fouled up. And that unsettling situation may be part of the point of the movie.

Poes attack did loose them the bulk of the fighters (Kylo took out the rest). But it did kill the Mandator, wich would propably have killed the Radus in less then 3 days during the chase.

 

1 hour ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

Poe does not learn from his mistakes.

Yes he does. When the cancled the attack on teh Assault Ram, that was him learning. Learning that he can not do everything by "hotshoot fliying". That sometimes retreating is the only sensible way.

 

I do not know how they could have made that clearer.

[mrinku]

For me the main annoyances were structural. All the false starts that led nowhere just got annoying... they may not have cause me to suspend disbelief, but they didn't feel particularly Star Wars.

 

Even the prequels managed to keep the action kicking along at a hectic pace. My biggest complaint was that the opening establishment scene just dragged on and on. They just don't do that in this series.

[Bazza]

I had the question about a week ago wondering if the current two films are Star Wars, or Hollywood pastiches. 

 

Posting for mrinku. 

[zslane]

There is a recent article on io9 that examines the fan reaction to The Empire Strikes Back when it first came out. Fans were somewhat divided on that one too. Sequels can be a mixed blessing for a movie studio.

 

I, however, was not as impressed with Empire as many were, and I am not one of those people whose opinion of it has changed over time. I am not among the multitudes who have elevated it to the top spot on their rankings of all the Star Wars movies. In fact, I still rank it far below A New Hope. But I feel confident that a decade from now, many of the people who are criticizing The Last Jedi now will speak of it glowingly, forgetting utterly the reasons why it disappointed them originally.

[Badger]

Well, Empire Strikes Back was my first movie, I can remember seeing in a theater (or Fox and the Hound, they are 1 and 2 at least).  So, for that or not, it has always been my top one.  A New Hope and Return of the Jedi have levelled downward since my youth (especially the latter) but Empire Strikes Back hasn't.  (A New Hope makes for a great starter movie, but I do feel it drags a little in the first hour here and there, introducing Luke and Ben and stuff, though it is good for putting something in to grab back attention before you wander too much)

 

 

[Old Man]

3 hours ago, zslane said:

There is a recent article on io9 that examines the fan reaction to The Empire Strikes Back when it first came out. Fans were somewhat divided on that one too. Sequels can be a mixed blessing for a movie studio.

 

I, however, was not as impressed with Empire as many were, and I am not one of those people whose opinion of it has changed over time. I am not among the multitudes who have elevated it to the top spot on their rankings of all the Star Wars movies. In fact, I still rank it far below A New Hope. But I feel confident that a decade from now, many of the people who are criticizing The Last Jedi now will speak of it glowingly, forgetting utterly the reasons why it disappointed them originally.

 

I, too, didn't care for Empire.  I get that it subverted the tropes of sci-fi adventure up to that point, and it was grimdark and therefore cool, but it was slow and uneven and really depressing.

[mrinku]

Yeah, I've never rated Empire over Star Wars, and the fact that I don't use the New Hope title probably clues you in on my vintage.

 

It was very much a different era - no internet, no home video. I saw Star Wars in the theatre once, at age 11, and between 1977 and 1980 all I had to feed my fandom was the novelization, the Kenner toys, one precious magazine, the Star Wars Holiday Special when it aired and Splinter of the Mind's Eye. Empire Strikes Back was only the second chance to actually see it all on screen again.

[Starlord]

8 hours ago, zslane said:

There is a recent article on io9 that examines the fan reaction to The Empire Strikes Back when it first came out. Fans were somewhat divided on that one too. Sequels can be a mixed blessing for a movie studio.

 

I, however, was not as impressed with Empire as many were, and I am not one of those people whose opinion of it has changed over time. I am not among the multitudes who have elevated it to the top spot on their rankings of all the Star Wars movies. In fact, I still rank it far below A New Hope. But I feel confident that a decade from now, many of the people who are criticizing The Last Jedi now will speak of it glowingly, forgetting utterly the reasons why it disappointed them originally.

 

*Ponders silently*

 

Yep...the prequels still suck.

[Starlord]

Hamill's disagreement about Luke and fan reaction at about 50/50 right now.

[Hugh Neilson]

I think what I found most disappointing was that everything after the Dreadnought was destroyed before landing on Krait would have gone as well or better if the main characters (Poe, Finn and Rose) had simply done nothing and sat on their bunks.  The Luke/Rey/Kylo Ren scenes advanced the story.  Poe, Finn and Rose were worse than filler - they caused the detection of the escaping transports.  Heroic Fantasy generally gives the heroes something heroic to do.

 

Reflecting on it, Luke may have nailed it.  He was a legend.  So were Han, Leia etc..  Are the new characters likely to be legends?  Have they been given anything legendary to do?

 

In the original trilogy, the characters improvised using the resources they had, and things worked.  The SnowSpeeder cables were effective against the Walkers, for example.  Similar use of the resources given on Krait just got most of the rest of the pilots killed off, without impeding their opponents.  It almost feels like a bad RPG - the players come up with various ideas, all of which come to nothing (or worse, assist the opposition).  Even Rey's noble attempt to turn Kylo Ren just exchanges one Supreme Leader for another. 

 

It feels like the Heroes are not permitted to succeed in being Heroic.  Even a win (the destruction of the Dreadnought) is painted as a loss (all bombers and most fighters destroyed and all we did was buy a little time). 

 

The Rogue 1 characters felt heroic - their sacrifices meant something.

 

The new trilogy seems to say "it's all futile".  The new characters seem overwhelmed by a no-win situation.

[TheDarkness]

In Empire, the plans of the characters, especially at the end, come to naught. Luke interrupts his training to save his friends, yet his actions have no bearing on their rescue, Han takes them all to Bespin to lay low, and is led right into an Imperial trap, threepio discovers the trap early only to be taken out of commission so that he ends up being unable to reveal this until it's too late, Han pays for choosing Cloud City by being frozen in carbonite(and that fate is specifically tied to his not settling his debts earlier in the movie because of acting as the hero). Luke loses his hand.

 

In the new movie, the bad planning does not succeed, but is generally tied to character development, much like Empire, and likely as a thematic homage.

 

The idea that sci-fi fantasy or fantasy requires all plans to be heroic and successful is at odds with a lot of cornerstones of the genres. Moria was a clusterf$%#$ that further established the stupidly incautious behavior of one hobbit. Sirius Black dies because Harry was impetuous. It is very hard to establish a threat if the heroes never fail of their own accord.

 

That said, I strongly believe that the only course open in the new trilogy is one in which the very context of us vs. them is eroded, which would be in keeping with what they've done so far. Kylo Ren is an enemy we understand too well to provide the kind of drama necessary as an inscrutable adversary, so Kylo's redemption or ultimate fall, not the focus on an enemy, as well as the fall of the dynamics at play that drive the constant war, seems the likely theme.

 

And, for the record, the constant need to have force powers fall into family lines and tied to genetics should be called midichlorian theory, and I am quite happy that Rey is not somehow yet another skywalker, that she's not a clone of a jedi, etc. You'll note that, at the end of the movie, a slave kid moves a broom with the force after listening to the story of the fall of Luke. Just some slave kid, not a kid made in a vat by Palpatine, or the long lost line of Darth Bane, just a kid who happens to have force abilities, which would seem to be a prerequisite for any organization that once was able to staff a force large enough to police the galaxy with a host of non-skywalkers/palpatines, etc.

 

Forgive my curmudgeonness, it's ironic that I dislike making everyone related to a past major character, but could care less about midichlorians, since the latter is the only actual explanation ever provided for the former in force sensitives.

[Christopher]

27 minutes ago, TheDarkness said:

And, for the record, the constant need to have force powers fall into family lines and tied to genetics should be called midichlorian theory, and I am quite happy that Rey is not somehow yet another skywalker, that she's not a clone of a jedi, etc. You'll note that, at the end of the movie, a slave kid moves a broom with the force after listening to the story of the fall of Luke. Just some slave kid, not a kid made in a vat by Palpatine, or the long lost line of Darth Bane, just a kid who happens to have force abilities, which would seem to be a prerequisite for any organization that once was able to staff a force large enough to police the galaxy with a host of non-skywalkers/palpatines, etc.

As I udnerdstand it:

If you wipe out a Forcewielder Line, another will simply "spawn". Like Anakin Skywalker spawned without a father.

 

If the Jedi become to strong, more Sith/Darkside wielder will appear (even from within their Ranks).

If the Sith become to strong, more Jedi/Lightside wielders will appear. Like Rey.

 

29 minutes ago, TheDarkness said:

In Empire, the plans of the characters, especially at the end, come to naught. Luke interrupts his training to save his friends, yet his actions have no bearing on their rescue, Han takes them all to Bespin to lay low, and is led right into an Imperial trap, threepio discovers the trap early only to be taken out of commission so that he ends up being unable to reveal this until it's too late, Han pays for choosing Cloud City by being frozen in carbonite(and that fate is specifically tied to his not settling his debts earlier in the movie because of acting as the hero). Luke loses his hand.

Interesting take on it. Indeed the only one that does not Screw up in ESB might be R2-D2 - he actually saves teh day by restoring the Hyperdrive.

Even Ben and Yoda screwed up, by not telling Luke who his daddy is.

[zslane]

I guess this is another case of the new trilogy aping the structure of the original trilogy, for better or for worse.

 

Fans didn’t like the taste of it when they got their first dose back in 1980, and a lot of fans are turning their noses up at it now. I guess it will only be in the context of the 7-8-9 trilogy as a whole that we will be able to fully assess (and judge) any of the individual films. I mean, if you are the kind of person who believes ESB is the best of all the Star Wars films, then you believe that a middle chapter can be great even if it isn’t a satisfying standalone movie.

 

As for Force lineages, well, we didn’t know Luke was anything more than a lowly farmboy until ESB. For all we know, that stable boy is part of some other powerful Force bloodline, and is also destined to be a legend one day. And when Rian Johnson writes his new trilogy, and has the villain hold out his hand to the now-grown stable boy and say, “I am your father!” there will be a strange sense of deja vù, and my eyes will do the same roll they did back in 1980.

[slikmar]

2 hours ago, zslane said:

As for Force lineages, well, we didn’t know Luke was anything more than a lowly farmboy until ESB.

Actually, we did. When Obi Wan hands him the light saber and says it belonged to his father, someone who the force was very strong in. And he comments that the force is strong in Luke also.

[TheDarkness]

For me, the problem is, in a galaxy wide story, bloodlines are irrelevant. Literally, if the jedi are dependent on bloodlines, there is no way they could have ever been as influential as they are. And, to top it off, if one accepts bloodlines as relevant, then why aren't the cloners the most powerful producers of jedi and sith? Even in the stories with Thrawn, the clone sith was substandard, when, in reality, breeding programs and cloning would be the only efficient way to make either the sith or jedi anything but a tiny, tiny fringe too small to preserve their own traditions.

 

And the new movies seem to be accepting the limits of that. Luke and Annakin never equaled Yoda, and yet, there is little focus on Yoda's lineage. Even the Emperor could not best Yoda.

 

There is literally no consistent logic with an order dependent on transferring genetic potential to maintain effectiveness to be a celibate order.

 

The OT never actually states that it is genetic. It is far more thematically and philosophically(in a jedi sense) useful to view the fact that Vader's two children had congruence with the force to be the will of the force, that Vader's power became balanced by the force settling around those most likely to finally balance him as an individual.

 

Everything one would expect to be at play in a universe where family lines carried seriously relevant force potential is absent in the Star Wars universe for everyone but the Skywalkers. Yes, that's likely a result of poor world development matched by pop philosophy's influence on how the jedi were written, but it is what is written.

 

There is absolutely no need for the idea that the existence of the jedi without sith would lead to a new sith/dark jedi, and vice versa, through some convoluted rule or mechanic. The allure of the dark side already guarantees the tendency for some force users to turn to evil just like normal people do, and the depiction of the heartbreak and self delusion required to pursue the sith way already guarantees the seed of redemption. When Yoda says that the dark side forever clouds one's destiny, Vader proves that Yoda misinterprets this idea by showing his destiny to end through redemption; yes, a redemption that means his own destruction because of his dark past, but ending as a jedi capable of moving past death.

 

This is actually something I like about the new trilogy. Many complain about Kylo Ren being a brat, but honestly, sith are brats, evil is pretty much selfishness taken to its extreme, which is likewise why I find the idea of grey force users silly, the jedi's problem was not their central philosophy whatsoever, but their execution of it, the idea that more ideas that are merely steps toward the dark would make for a less destructive order. Taking children, acting as a police force working in a regimented way, these are not central to jedi philosophy, but customs they came to accept to their detriment. Vader and Palpatine hid the bulk of their baseness, but when their goals are observed, they are as childish as Kylo Ren's. Kylo Ren, in real world terms, acts out of rage far more purely than either did, and it is unseemly, because rage is unseemly, but that is supposed to be the source of their power.

 

This is why I think the final movie might prove interesting. We are in no doubt of what Ren is, he cannot play the role of mysterious villain like any of the others did, and it seems like the new movies are already specifically playing against types. Whether they pull it off or not is yet to be seen. And Ren did claim to see Rey turning to the darkside in his vision.

 

As for using the originals as templates, getting into a debate about how derivative they are, or whether their interpretation is novel in its own sense, gets messy. I'm sure there are more than a few that would sum up the OT as samurai movies set in Flash Gordon.

[TheDarkness]

As far as the movies go, the Skywalkers are the only important lineage, without exception. For my own viewing pleasure, correlation is genetic, causation is the force. They have genetics in common, but, barring acceptance of midichlorians, a coincidence that Skywalkers just are super delicious to force cooties, the actual cause is the will of the force giving them all force powers, not genetics.

 

I mean, skill with the force starts with mindfulness, does this sound like a trait any Skywalker other than Leiah, the only one raised by non-family, had any measure of in their youth? If it isn't a tendency to traits one associates with jedi, but it's genetic, then it's force cooties.

 

It's either midichlorians or the will of the force, so thematically the will of the force is so much better an explanation.

 

Conversely, one could say that the midichlorian theory is it, and that the jedi sought to end their own genetic lines specifically to spare others the danger of accumulated power and knowledge in powerful lines.

 

My biggest problem with the movie, however, is one line. In the bomber attack, the bombers were told to keep a tight formation. I'm not sure why, that seemed to be a bad idea.

[Christopher]

22 minutes ago, TheDarkness said:

The OT never actually states that it is genetic.

Obi-Wan explicitly stated in EP4 that "Lukes father was strong in the force". Directly inferring that luke had inheretited it from his father.

 

22 minutes ago, TheDarkness said:

There is literally no consistent logic with an order dependent on transferring genetic potential to maintain effectiveness to be a celibate order.

Who said anything about Celibacy???

 

Attachments were forbidden. Marriage. Not sex.

While one usually leads to the other, it is not always so.

 

And as long as the force itself maintains the Jedi Ratio by "spawning" new Jedi Bloodlines, it does not mater in the end.

[Badger]

course, the only thing I disagree on your 2 posts is on Vader's bringing balance to the force.  For me, he brought balance to the force by killing most of the Jedi, only way it makes sense to me.  Besides, it makes for a good lesson on listening to prophecies, you might get what you expect out of that prophecy if you seek to fulfill.  (or you can go with, "balance" and killing Jedi, removed a stale corrupted regime, for a chance at a better new one eventually)

[zslane]

Obi-Wan says that Luke’s father was “the best starfighter pilot in the galaxy,” and a “cunning warrior”. It is implied that he was a Jedi Knight (because he owned a lightsabre and followed Obi-Wan on a “damned-fool idealistic crusade”). But I can’t find anywhere in the Star Wars script where anyone says Luke’s father was “strong with the Force”. I think we must assume he was pretty strong if he was a Jedi Knight, but being strong enough to become a Jedi Knight and being strong enough to become Darth Vader are two very different things. There is nothing in the first film that indicates Luke comes from a particularly powerful line of Force users, only that his father was idealistic and skilled (i.e., by way of analogy, the implication is that he was merely one of Arthur’s knights, not that he was Lancelot).