STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI (HUGE SPOILERS EVERYWHERE)

I'm just rewatching The Empire Strikes Back after quite a while, and damn, it still holds up. There are plot holes, and I can't for the life of me get over the weird-ass slippy timescales they employed there (Luke training for seemingly weeks or months even while the rest on the Millenium Falcon seem to hang around Hoth for a few hours, maybe days tops, and then manage to limp to another star system without hyperdrive [although it's maybe a backup hyperdrive in use, but then they could have used that before]).
I think I'll reread the novelization, dunno how the timescales were in that one.
Still, loving the movie as much as I did back then. It just works.
 
Hassknecht said:
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Still, loving the movie as much as I did back then. It just works.
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Of course it does. You know why? Because while not free from silly mistakes here and there, in general the plot is written and all actors are playing their roles as if the thing's real. Heck real _war_ between heck real _stars_. Stanislavsky's art of playing a character, and overall dignity of everything's going on.

You ain't getting any crap like single X-Wing blowing up whole side of a dreadnought point defense turrets as if people who were building dreadnoughts had no freaking idea what one signel X-Wing could do to it.

You ain't getting Emperor-like fella literally wiping the floor with some Tobin-like guy (though i must apologize to both Emperor and Tobin for even drawing such a comparison), because you know, emperors know better than to humiliate their generals in front of many subordinates. They can choke 'em or kill 'em if need be, but humiliating them is a direct demotivator for subordinates, only stupid empreror would do it, but then no stupid person could be an empreror, so it just does not compute however angle you'd look at it.

You ain't getting "rebel" commanding officer looking as if she's relaxing on a beach while her people fight the enemy and die in droves.

You ain't getting R2D2-like droid "fixing" a malfunctioning panel by buttheading it. Geez, if anything, that would completely fry it off.

In other, shorter, words, - the old ones "work" because they are made by people who got some non-zero amount of common sense, actors who all know a thing or two how to do actor's job quite well, and story writers who know a thing or two about how to make a good, interesting story. Nothing too complex, eh.
 
I wonder if there's a program somewhere which generates negative and absolutely dismissive opinions about the most recent Star Wars movie, and then links a video on the same tone, and then you can set two more variables; saying that it was actually great a decade later, and blaming SJWs somewhere. Could explain a lot of things :lalala:
 
Hassknecht said:
I'm just rewatching The Empire Strikes Back after quite a while, and damn, it still holds up. There are plot holes, and I can't for the life of me get over the weird-ass slippy timescales they employed there (Luke training for seemingly weeks or months even while the rest on the Millenium Falcon seem to hang around Hoth for a few hours, maybe days tops, and then manage to limp to another star system without hyperdrive [although it's maybe a backup hyperdrive in use, but then they could have used that before]).
I think I'll reread the novelization, dunno how the timescales were in that one.
Still, loving the movie as much as I did back then. It just works.
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You know recently I listened to a youtuber who claims the new Star Wars movies suffer from a form of Post-Modern-Nihilism-issue with the writers, since nothing is true, nothing ultimately matters! Where they 'try' to write a Black-Vs-White story, but they fail at it, because the whole concept of morality escapes them.

And now that I have seen The Last Jedy I can't help it, but think the guy has a point. All those cringy scenes like Space-Dancing-Leia asside, it really feels like the writers try to do two things at once, painting the resistance as the good guys ... who also do shady stuff, showing that there is grey in a black and white scenario ...?

I still try to wrap my head around it what the actuall message here was. That it's good to stand for your principles but you have to remember that all the progress you achieve is for nothing?

I know the old Star Wars movies are also just schlock and not exaclty literature, it was always kinda a kidz movie, but at least the story was solid and simple enough to be entertaining. With this travesty ... man. Is that what postermodern culture feels like?
 
I just wanted to leave my thoughts here on the movie as well. I thought it was "okay" at best.
What it did well at (in my opinion) is what I enjoyed the most which is:
Some of nice visual moments like Admiral Holdo hyperdriving the ship into the First Order.

The lightsaber fight scene after Snoke dies.

Also the way Snoke dies was cool imo.

Luke taking on the First Order by force projecting himself.

The explanation for where the blue milk comes from (yes really).

Oh and the animals the introduce besides the Casino planet one. The Crystal Fox and the Porgs.

And that's kinda it for what i liked....................

What I disliked:

Admiral Ackbar being killed unceremoniously off screen. I think he should have been the person that drove the ship into the First Order. It would have gave him a badass sendoff (in my opinion).

Admiral Holdo being an idiotic fool the entire time. From when she's introduced to when she dies, I cringed at her actions.

Luke Skywalker feeling very out of character like 99% of the time. I really couldn't bring my self to believe that Luke Skywalker would try to kill his nephew just because he had conflicting thoughts. Like, this is the same guy who saw hope in the 2nd most evil man in the galaxy (Darth Vader) whom also was his father. And guess what He never gave up and he saved him in the end. They turned him from a persistent, confident, and optimistic individual to a hermit. It made no sense to me.
And also, Mark Hamill himself definitely agrees about Luke being out of character.


Most of the OT characters taking a backseat in general, R2D2, Chewbacca, C3PO, and of course Admiral Ackbar feel honestly wasted here. They're just there, to be there because they apparently still exist. That's how it felt watching C3PO most of the time atleast and that feeling bled into the other characters I mentioned.

Similar to the previous point above, Finn is just useless and "there" as well. Rose is a dumb addition the cast of characters and when she stopped Finn from blowing up one of the First Order weaponry I winced really badly. Especially that incredibly forced kiss...........ugh....

Also the Casino Planet sucks, it feels like watching the really awful parts of the prequels at some moments. The setting in general doesn't feel like a Star Wars setting, it just feels like it's on a futuristic Earth. That's it.

Killing Snoke before the final movie and we don't know anything about him still. The way he died was cool but I expected him to live until the final movie of the trilogy. Also I do understand that Emperor Palpatine lacked backstory when the OT came out because to most people back then they just thought of him as the "OP Space Wizard that controls Darth Vader until he betrays him." That issue would be fixed with the Prequels. So yeah, feeling like Snoke being a nobody with no history bugs me.

The humor was turned into Marvel's humor and I HATED that. I mean, only one joke I chuckled at (Rey getting her hand slapped, it reminded me of Yoda training Luke). Otherwise it felt out of place and not one bit unique. Star Wars has it's own style of humor which is very subtle at times and that's what I like about it. At least J.J. Abrams understood that in TFA.

Oh also the text crawl is useless in this movie, it immediately picks up where the last movie left off with no time skip that the other two trilogies use. It wouldn't be useless if it told us mostly new information, but instead it just recaps what happens in TFA.

What I'm neutral on:
Leia flying back to the ship. I was cool with seeing her using her force powers because she's force sensitive, but the way it was portrayed in the movie just looked weird to me.

Also just seeing Carrie Fisher on screen the entire time just felt off and weird to me since she is deceased IRL.

That's all that comes to mind right now. And to be honest, the more I think about the movie the worse it seems.
 
The reason why the Emperor nor Vader really needed a back story, is because it was clear to the audience from the first moment you saw them, what they represented. Star Wars has grown to large for it's own good.
 
Crni Vuk said:
You know recently I listened to a youtuber who claims the new Star Wars movies suffer from a form of Post-Modern-Nihilism-issue with the writers, since nothing is true, nothing ultimately matters! Where they 'try' to write a Black-Vs-White story, but they fail at it, because the whole concept of morality escapes them.

And now that I have seen The Last Jedy I can't help it, but think the guy has a point. All those cringy scenes like Space-Dancing-Leia asside, it really feels like the writers try to do two things at once, painting the resistance as the good guys ... who also do shady stuff, showing that there is grey in a black and white scenario ...?

I still try to wrap my head around it what the actuall message here was. That it's good to stand for your principles but you have to remember that all the progress you achieve is for nothing?

I know the old Star Wars movies are also just schlock and not exaclty literature, it was always kinda a kidz movie, but at least the story was solid and simple enough to be entertaining. With this travesty ... man. Is that what postermodern culture feels like?
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?

At the end of this trilogy the Resistance will win. The only way to reach that "anything they do is pointless" conclusion is if you consider the First Order as the protagonists or narrative core, which while for me they totally are in my perverted look on this series, the good gusy DO get across. Nobody important is dead (Lol Ackbar was a non-character, but it indeed would have been fucking awesome for him to replace Holdo's role), our scrappy heroes are fine and some of the bad guy villains are dead, to be repeated next time.

The ONLY attempt with any kind of consequence to be morally grey of the Star Wars movies from 4-8 was Rogue One which threw a bone at hinting the Rebellion being partly badly directed and killing innocents in the way to their goals, which is something only natural to all kinds of warfare. It wasn't deep but it was something. Then there's a bit of ESB showing a massive setback of the Rebels and a bit of good old treason with immediate redemption.

Honestly all this makes me want to watch The Clone Wars which I haven't seen like half of it, piracy or not. Getting the itch bigger and bigger
 
Arnust said:
?

At the end of this trilogy the Resistance will win. The only way to reach that "anything they do is pointless" conclusion is if you consider the First Order as the protagonists or narrative core, which while for me they totally are in my perverted look on this series, the good gusy DO get across.
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You're missunderstanding my intentions, or I am not explaining it well enough.

This is the guy I am talking about, and he explains it much better than I could. As I said, yes there is a 'Black vs. White' narrative, but it is simply very poorly done and communicated and the new movies pretty much make the previous movies with their struggle against the Empire like ... completely pointless, as the new movies simply start at the exact same situation, where the old movies stoped. Just in a worse state. - Apparantly everything is simply bigger now, from the super weapons, to the struggle by the good guys and so on.

It's like as the empire was never gone, it even seems stronger than ever before. That's what I mean with, no matter how much you struggle fighting for the good thing and how much you sacrifice, it's all just in the end pointless, because it constantly repeats it self. The point is here, that when you look at the old movies, they had a closed narrative, the franchise was meant to stop after the last movie, with the emperor dead, Vader redeemed and the Galaxy finally at 'peace'. And now, bam, it's the same war all over again ... and if you think about it, the new movies kinda show a very dark turn of events compared to where episode 6 stoped. Leia with a lost son destroying the galaxy, a broken relationship with her love Han who simply goes back to his old ways, Luke failing as a Jedi master, making both Hans and his character arch from the previous movies pointless and so on.

I am not saying The Last Jedy is all about nihilism, it isn't. But it certainly feels a bit post modernistic in my opinion. Definetly A LOT more than the old movies, even the prequels.
 
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Sure, all that sounds sad and dark, but the consequence of those events and representation in the films is just a pretty safe" 'kay ". I think you're using "Post Modernistic" as a buzzword, unless the meaning you're atributing to it is "It doesn't have to make sense", which is kind of nonsense considering one could say that'd still apply to every artistic trend, when they actually do have something intentionally to do with them. That one's bad or unexperienced doesn't really mean they do use a more abstract method, and I say that using it as an argument for and against it.

Also...
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So after watching ESB, which I regard as easily the best movie of the series, I decided to watch the prequel trilogy for the first time in basically forever. I think I only watched them when they came out and then once again in a Star Wars film night.
I'm pretty sure I'm still not going to like them.
 
But two minutes into The Phantom Menace and I already want to gouge my eyes out. And it's only going to get worse.
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Jar Jar appeared.
I think I feel an aneurysm forming.
 
Arnust said:
Sure, all that sounds sad and dark, but the consequence of those events and representation in the films is just a pretty safe" 'kay ". I think you're using "Post Modernistic" as a buzzword, unless the meaning you're atributing to it is "It doesn't have to make sense", which is kind of nonsense considering one could say that'd still apply to every artistic trend, when they actually do have something intentionally to do with them. That one's bad or unexperienced doesn't really mean they do use a more abstract method, and I say that using it as an argument for and against it.
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You're right, the old movies where all about making the fight and struggle between the light, dark, the jedi and sith completely meaningless and nonsensical.

Boy, if you didn't mention it, I would have never spoted that one! Particularly A New Hope was so full of explaining how the Empire wasn't all evil and the Resistance and all just 'part of the machine' buying the weapons from the same guys, to quote The Last Jedi here ...

While encompassing a broad range of ideas, postmodernism is typically defined by an attitude of skepticism, irony, or rejection toward grand narratives, ideologies, and various tenets of universalism, including objective notions of reason, human nature, social progress, moral universalism, absolute truth, and objective reality.

Sounds familiar?
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Now we can talk about the old movies beeing good or bad in terms of quality or entertainment. But there can be no doubt about it that the narrative was crystial clear from the moment any of the main characters entered the screen, that the Jedi have been the absolutely good guys, fighting the ... what ever the evil Empire represented, and there was not much room for anything inbetween. Again, extremly simple story telling and moral absolutism.
 
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Speaking of the old movies being bad, The Phantom Menace is a goddamn atrocity, still after all this time.
It's time for the pod race now (which spawned a decent video game at least). I hate every waking second of this movie.
 
@Crni Vuk i'm not sure if I didn't express myself right or you got me wrong; but the OT is only a notch under LOTR in the complete binarity and lack of ambiguity when it comes to the main confrontation and character motivations.

I still don't see where you see that in TLJ/TFA, though. The good guys will win and nobody that really matters will die. The bad guys will immediately stop all action once their main baddy boss becomes good or dies, or does both in succesion. Such it was and so it shall be. "Good will triumph" isn't really some cerebral postmodern theory. Even the most snooty postmodern will have a degree of self awareness; to find that any of these movies are is, if true, likely a peak of irony never seen before.
 
Arnust said:
I still don't see where you see that in TLJ/TFA, though. The good guys will win and nobody that really matters will die. The bad guys will immediately stop all action once their main baddy boss becomes good or dies, or does both in succesion. Such it was and so it shall be. "Good will triumph" isn't really some cerebral postmodern theory. Even the most snooty postmodern will have a degree of self awareness; to find that any of these movies are is, if true, likely a peak of irony never seen before.
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You (probably?) missed the part where I talked about the writers. Whatch this video (again if you havn't already), where David Stewart explains his views and how he came to that idea, if you so will. He doesn't call the movie post-modernist or nihilistic nor that it aims to be such, just that there are post modernist/nihilistic influences, like a kind of undertone, which might come from the writer(s) following maybe a nihilistic/post-modern approach, where they TRY to write a good vs. evil story with a narrative where the good guys always win, but actually fail with delivering a compeling story, as a nihilist would not grasp the concept of moral absolutes. For them the Sith and Jedi are simply the two sides of the same coin, and it doesn't really matter which philosophy you follow in the end as it's all pointless in the end anyway! - Remember the dialog in The Last Jedi? Something along the lines of "Today they shoot you, tomorrow you shoot them, all the same". Wow. Very Star Wars like dialog.

For example, what will it mean for Star Wars 10 if the 'good' guys win in Star Wars 9, and the Second Order of the Empire strike back in SW 10 with yet another superweapon, bringing the republic yet again to its knees, Leia now comanding the nu-nu-rebells from her wheelchair, so Rey's trans-gender-mary-sue apprentice fights the son of Fin and Rose who's now on the dark side (no phun intended), killing his father, while some unknown super evil master-mind, no one has ever seen before, works somewhere in the background to take over the galaxay ... you get the idea.

If good would have triumphed in this franchise, there would have been no Star Wars 7, if you think about it.

But that's not the point anyway, it's more that when you look at the first 3 movies, they are so simplistic in their moral narrative, where you don't even need to see the characters, to know from the first 5 min. of the movie that the rebells are the good underdogs and the empire some evil nazi-like entity just from the size differnce of the ships and how they look - an extremly well done opening by the way. You will find no trace of moral relativism in either of the movies, the motivations of each character are always absolute. Vader as one of the main figures of the empire lies, kills and manipulates/intimidates where as the Jedi and the resistance with Luke and Leia are good, pure, disciplined etc.

The Last Jedi paints a very different picture particulary with Kylo, his conflict, Luke and his feelings for his nephew, Han and Leia braking up, and most partiuclarly the hacker and his role/dialog with the whole nonsensical sub plot. There is a very clear try of getting some 'gray' moralitiy into this, which simply put has absolutely no place in a Star Wars movie to be honest. You don't show Sauron buying his weapons from the same black smith like Gandalf just for giggles to show, yeah! Look Gandalf is not always super good.

Again, I am NOT(!) saying The Last Jedi is a post modern movie. Just that it has a lot more post modern influences compared to the first 3 movies of the franchise.
 
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