Star Wars Episode VIII Build-Up

I never thought it could get worse than a midget alien that would hobble around till it was time to step into the octagon then morphing into a flying ninja. I mean, worse it can't be?

 

I thought it was a great hour and forty-five minute (or so) movie, stretched to two hours and thirty-five minutes. Way more things bugged me than I liked, but the thing I liked least was the end with a dozen or so alliance members on the Falcon, celebrating more than a group of people who just had 95% (or more) of their friends and colleagues killed. Not just relieved and then pensive; seemingly happy.

 

The bombers as used in a space battle were the worst for me. It's space; there's no gravity, so just fly at a different angle with a different kind of ship and shoot lasers or whatever straight at that vulnerable spot, rather than having to slowly fly over it to drop a payload.

 

Are you one of those guys that says there isn't fire in space when a TIE fighter blows up, or there isn't sound so we shouldn't hear the cool sounding lasers?

It is a fantasy.

 

Not even a little, because it's a fantasy. But even fantastical beings ought to have some idea of tactics, developed over the time when they were engaged in their version of warfare. And lumbering bombers that aren't tactically necessary in the first place seem out of place.

 

I didn't like TFA for rehashing much of ANH and RoTJ like a typical Hollywood remake, and The Last Jedi is guilty of that as well but in addition tries to undo anything that came before.

Luke is forced to become a mix of Obi-Wan and Yoda? Even though Mark Hamill has actually become a much actor and does a great job, it feels cheap.

The movie likes to play with expectations and subverts them, but ultimately those short term payoffs of surprise hurt the overall integrity and tone of the film. The Leia demise scene could have been powerful and same goes for the attempted suicide run by Finn but those are sacrificed for shock and awe. The side quest gone awry pretty much undoes all the events in the first two hours of the film . Why? To make Poe learn to trust the chain of command.

The out of tune humor has been remarked upon. Sure humor is part of star wars, but self referential jokes, not so much. Way to many cringe worthy moments too.

Personally I don't like it that the happy end of RotJ for the cast of the originals is now being undone. I would have preferred to start with a new cast completely.

In the end the prequels were not good films but at least they added to the background and characters of the star wars universe. These sequels are better movies in a technical sense, but add nothing beyond repetition and nihilism.

 

I loved it.

I had many of the same issues as the average detractor (some of the humour was poorly timed and out of place, the Princess Leia magical flying scene, I still have no idea who Snoke is, and so on) but unlike many, these things didn't significantly detract from the movie for me. They were momentary blips in an otherwise excellent film.

I was almost in a half-cringe from the last movie as I anticipated Rey being the daughter of some member of the main cast, the "family reveal" twist already having been stretched by the almost entirely pointless revelation that Luke and Leia are siblings (seriously think about it: aside from giving Luke a 756th reason to "give in to his anger" in ROTJ and a 30 year old incest jokes about that kiss on hoth, what purpose did it serve?). I was pleased when they just said "bollocks to it" and made her parentage irrelevant.

The rest of her story arc with Ren was great IMO. They didn't just go "You're expecting this, so we'll just do the opposite". I had no idea which way that was going to go and I still don't.

I thought Luke's reasons for being disillusioned and done with the Force were valid and believable. The originals always hinted at a broody (no pun intended) dark side to his character, as well as there being a hint of hubris about his character by the third movie.

Oh and seeing the mischievous Yoda return made me giddy.

Yes and I'm shocked how many people didn't notice this element, though I think you're selling a very powerful point a bit short. It's a massive movie cliche that the badass maverick get one over on the stuffy, by-the-book superiors with a high-stakes daring plan that saves them all in the end. This time it didn't work and that was refreshing. But your description makes it sound like it was a simple "Ooh! Now I get it! Chain of command! Well is my face red! Leia was right all along!".

Much like the Jedi story arc, it was about overcoming arrogance and hubris. Not only did his plan fail, but in order to make the other plan work, the person he'd been branding as a coward the entire movie (to the point of staging a mutiny) then goes and sacrifices their life. That should be transformational for that character, especially as his own "daring plan" at the start of the movie got many killed unnecessarily.

I thought the prequels were better than made out and that the worst thing about them was the background they added. C3PO being a droid Vader built, Boba Fett having his mystique (probably his defining characteristic) removed, medichlorians, etc.

 

In fairness In Empire Strikes Back, an Empire that has the technology and resources to build a planet-destroying gun, has the rebellion cornered on Hoth and their strategy is to deploy several lumbering dog-shaped tanks, presumably dropped in from space, an unnecessarily long distance from the base.

Hell, one of the first scenes in Star Wars sees some guys in a world where droids are commonplace, decide not to destroy an escape capsule from the ship they just boarded because they detected no lifeforms aboard.

And as for out of place humour - who could forget Han Solo finding his half-dead buddy, wounded, unconscious, and potentially suffering from hypothermia, slicing open a taun taun for warmth and in this life-or-death situation quipping "And I thought these things smelled bad on the outside"?

Oh and just about every dramatic action scene punctuated by a flaming golden droid shreiking "Oh my Wooorrrd R2!!!!".

Point being, if we had viewed the original movies with the same cynical eye as the subsequent movies, rather than the childlike wonder that we actually had, we'd find plenty to nitpick.

 

If you don't watch a movie on its own terms, you can be disappointed in anything.

 

If the only Star Wars movie was Star Wars, it would be great. But once you start making lots of movies, they can't only be enjoyable in-and-of-themselves, they need to have a coherent world view at large and they are judged that way. Sure the movies follow just a few people, but those people do what they do because of grand political, economic, military, and religious movements that are very poorly thought out. It is possible for these things to fall apart under the weight of their own stupidity, like what seems to have happened with the Transformers movie series.

 

In fairness, Michael Bay's Transformers aren't supposed to be coherent features that follow a strict narrative. They are more mood pieces centered around transforming cars, explosions and push-up bras.

 

Yes and no. You consider the previous material to a point, but artistic license is always there and to varying degrees, things change or are dispensed with in many series.

Again, if you applied that same criteria to the original series, it wouldn't hold up.

Darth Vader is Luke's father? Then why did Obi Wan spend the first movie lying about it? And no his piss-poor "true from a certain perspective" excuse doesn't wash. It was exceedingly weak but never has never been strenuously questioned.

But we don't care because it was a shocking twist (which BTW wasn't in the first draft of the ESB screenplay, which is the real reason) and we just went along for the ride.

The Force is always exactly as strong as the plot needs it to be.

 

The Transformers are such a powerful brand it can survive 5 movies by Michael Bay, I don't want to test that with star wars.

However, both movie franchises do have in common that most of the recent sequels are inferior to the cartoons.