Rumor - Ryan Johnson Trilogy pulled?

[Cikomyr]

So I heard rumors and seen website hypothesing that preproduction work has halted on the Ryan Johnson trilogy.

I personally believe its probably a good idea overall. Not that i didnt liked the Last Jedi, but I understand that at the moment, the name is a bit toxic in the fandom and betting three films on what could potentially be a dealbreaker is risky as heck.

Now, i dont believe that Disney would *not* do another series of films after the ST. They depend on a constant source of return from their Star Wars IP. So they need someone at the helm, and i feel they are realizing that half-assing movies or stories is not a long term winning formula. You can strike lightning a few times, but your streak of luck will run out.

With the recent James Gunn firing fiasco, MovieBob made the great argument that the current leadership struggle at Disney make it impossible for the company to outright reverse a decision taken at the highest level.

Do you think Disney could use the opportunity to maybe hand over the direction of the next trilogy of Star Wars to James Gunn? A storyteller who has proven his chops in making space adventure that yet ties emotionally with their audience?

Disney would stop suffering the backlash against firing Gunn (effectively promoting him!), Would have a proven director who is almost unanimously acclaimed as the leader of their 2nd most profitable franchise.

So;

1- do you think Johnson is out?
2- do you think Gunn could be a good replacement?

[AMFV]

Too early to speculate on if Johnson is out. I can tell you that at this juncture I don't think it's super likely that Disney will give anything to Gunn, just because of the negative media attention on him.

[Phexar]

I read up on this news and it seems to center around Cinemablend's interview with LucasFilm production designer Neil Lamont:

https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2455795/star-wars-production-designer-confirms-tatooine-was-part-of-an-upcoming-spin-off-film

It just says that he comments that a spin-off movie involving Tatooine that he was working on has been shelved. Sounds more like he's talking about the Obi-Wan movie to me. So I don't think Rian's out.

[AMFV]

I think it's mostly going to depend on how IX does. If it does well then it'll show that the downturn (relative to expectations at least) is in part Rian's fault, and that'll make them less likely to give him a whole trilogy, whereas if it also underperforms, then there might not be blood in that stone.

[Peelee]

Im a firm believer in rumors being worth their weight in gold.

[Anonymouswizard]

Disney would stop suffering the backlash against firing Gunn (effectively promoting him!), Would have a proven director who is almost unanimously acclaimed as the leader of their 2nd most profitable franchise.

*Googles James Gunn*

You want them to put the person responsible for the worst space opera film in recent history in charge of Star Wars?

In all seriousness, I don't suspect that Disney is going to can the RJ trilogy until at least the first film is out, and if that performs poorly I suspect that he'll be fired or kicked upstairs while somebody else directs the other two.

[Sapphire Guard]

Ehh... I wouldn't put much weight to this, at least until someone has a named source.

Re hiring James Gunn would defeat the point of firing him in the first place.

[Cikomyr]

*Googles James Gunn*

You want them to put the person responsible for the worst space opera film in recent history in charge of Star Wars?


You.. are joking?

[Anonymouswizard]

You.. are joking?

A cliche ridden cliche fest that ignores three decades of development in the genre?

Yeah, pretty sure I'm not joking. As a massive space opera fan, both Guardians of the Galaxy and The Last Jedi are lazy and decades behind the times (so is The Force Awakens, but considering it's position the nostalgia pandering is more understandable). In the last two decades we've had Revelation Space, the Commonwealth Saga, and The Expanse as three big works of literary space opera, and series like Honor Harrigan are still ongoing (although I've not read it yet). I'm not expecting something to be as modern as the latest space opera being published, but the first Culture book was in 1987 and I could easily believe that nobody involved in films has seen the boom that kicked off (ironically I find out exactly now that Consider Phlebas is getting adapted into a series, that'll be interesting).

So yeah, as much as I loathe Interstellar it's actually a much better space opera than Guardians of the Galaxy. At least I can see influences from some more recent stuff and an attempt to break away from Attack of the Cliches.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Ehh... I wouldn't put much weight to this, at least until someone has a named source.

Re hiring James Gunn would defeat the point of firing him in the first place.

That's kind of the point, since it's apparent to even the House of Mouse that said move was a boner of the first water.

Not that Gunn will ever work for them again. He has tentative offers from literally every other major and mid-tier studio in the country (even Fox, hedging their bets against the merger collapsing). The only reason he isn't attached to another project already is because Disney is deliberately prolonging the exit to prevent it.

[Cikomyr]

Well... Lets just say that I, and the box office, disagree with you.

[Lord Joeltion]

The rumor is probably less factual than something out of the parody show called TMZ, but if that were true, I don't think there's any way it cannot somehow backfire.

I was the first to say (and still believe) that censoring unifying the rich universe that Star Wars has always been was the dumbest decision ever. Many Worlds Interpretation of the universe is always better (Marvel has proven it) except for the most snobbish fanbois who want a CERTIFIED criteria to follow, no matter how inconsequential endorsement actually is for enjoying a piece of artwork. More side stories, contradicting or not, are more things people can enjoy, not less. This is the criterion followed by comics, games, and other story lines barely related to the film-verse; which has proven you don't even need to watch the films to enjoy Star Wars. Maybe the films has gathered the most fans; but it wasn't the films who expanded that public, it was all the other parallel elements which helped to ingrain SW in the culture. If SW never have had an Expanded universe, today it wouldn't be greater than Back To the Future or The Matrix. The greater fandom it could aspire it would be one akin to the Godfather, ie: a cult film fanbase; not an actual "franchise" by 2000's definition.

But stopping the trilogy midway, without finishing the work only generates more speculation; and people will never get over it until the trilogy is over (and people DO need to get over it, whether they love/hate it). If they finish it and people decide it's pure garbage, then people will demand some retribution. Which means, more interest in the franchise; which means more sequels and series; which means more products and memorabilia will be sold. That is the worst that could happen. After all, that was was happened with the Prequels, wasn't it? The prequels never killed the franchise, for all the hate (rightful and not so much) they received. The most hardcore haters are the first in line to buy this Mace Windu toy featuring a brand new hat. Hate is also a powerful tool to make people demand more of your products.

If people are offered with opportunity of speculation, this tested-and-proven formula of hate-based demand wouldn't work; people will demand explanations instead of new films/toys/games/series; and will soon be tired of the release of semi-related products (the Stories) which only serve to placate a demand that was never there in the first place. For every time Disney fails to deliver a consistent answer to public demand; trust in their management will be chipped away. Maybe it's not too late, and they deliver a high-note ending to this pile of [insert whatever you felt for TLJ], like it happened with the prequels. So people who hate have a finished product to let their hate flow; but are still able to channel a renewed passion for the next SW Story (eg: the awesome Clone Wars series finale!). This many doubts are probably understandable for such a big company like Disney, who needs to appease what is probably the widest range of public in the whole media(Disney's, not just SW's); who keeps juggling with various different/contradictory concepts at the same time; who doesn't know when to stop expanding; and who is opening a whole new section of their amusement park which obviously requires Ultimate Success on every SW related new release.

tldr; while removing Johnson could be the most sensible move; it is my humble opinion that stopping production because of that isn't worth their time. Better remove the bandaid and start from scratch than to make this mess greater than it needs to be.



James Gunn should have directed all the new Star Wars movies. I mean, GotG vol 1 and 2 feel more like the Star Wars I've always dreamed of than anything we have seen on the big screens. Alien races, weird techno cultures clashing for power, the scene with the Nova Corp Ships attempting a planet sized force shield... it's Expanded Universe at its best all over the place! And done well! With good humor and jokes! With truly relatable non-humanoid-speaking humanoids! With droids that are more than just noisy background! With a main cast that aren't pure breed Homo Sapiens! With a nice message that isn't hamfisted and contradictory both at the same time!

But it won't happen even in a galaxy far far away. We live in the crappy alternate Earth :smallsigh::smallsigh:

[Hopeless]

Well... Lets just say that I, and the box office, disagree with you.

James Gunn or Rian Johnson?

[Hopeless]

I'd love a Rogue One sequel dealing with how and why so many Bothan's died getting them into that trap!😉

But that would involve revealing that beach end sequence was a dream revealing they passed out in the lift and it shot down inside the hardened Imperial facilities hidden underground bunker surviving the miss by a low yield Death Star blast!

[Cikomyr]

James Gunn or Rian Johnson?

James Gunn.

Ryan Johnson is a lot less clear-cut, in my opinion

[Anonymouswizard]

Well... Lets just say that I, and the box office, disagree with you.

While I admit I'm being snobbish, it's been three decades, and no significant evolution in cinematic space opera. In fact anything that intentionally copies things from three decades ago is 'good', while trying to adapt to any of the changes in the genre is generally seen as a recipe for disaster. Why aren't we allowed evolution? Why can we have books in the genre dealing with the apparent emptyness of the universe but not films? Why can't we see future societies changed by more advanced technology, instead of being essentially the same? (Although I'll admit a lot of books mess that one up.) If it's not Star Wars or Star Trek then it has to look like Star Wars or Star Trek or Alien, we can't have people riding trains from planet to planet, there's no way that could be cool.

I'll admit that I'm looking more at GotG (which had an excellent opportunity to mix superhero and space opera and didn't, we had to wait until Thor: Ragnarok for that) tha Star Wars, which has to stay within the constraints of an established universe (except apparently when they can just make stuff up).

[Knaight]

Yeah, pretty sure I'm not joking. As a massive space opera fan, both Guardians of the Galaxy and The Last Jedi are lazy and decades behind the times (so is The Force Awakens, but considering it's position the nostalgia pandering is more understandable). In the last two decades we've had Revelation Space, the Commonwealth Saga, and The Expanse as three big works of literary space opera, and series like Honor Harrigan are still ongoing (although I've not read it yet). I'm not expecting something to be as modern as the latest space opera being published, but the first Culture book was in 1987 and I could easily believe that nobody involved in films has seen the boom that kicked off (ironically I find out exactly now that Consider Phlebas is getting adapted into a series, that'll be interesting).

This list is pretty heavy on military sci-fi and medium-hard science fiction for a list of space opera. Beyond that there's also the whole question of what behind the times even means in this context, and whether chasing current trends is necessarily a good thing.

[Cikomyr]

While I admit I'm being snobbish, it's been three decades, and no significant evolution in cinematic space opera. In fact anything that intentionally copies things from three decades ago is 'good', while trying to adapt to any of the changes in the genre is generally seen as a recipe for disaster. Why aren't we allowed evolution? Why can we have books in the genre dealing with the apparent emptyness of the universe but not films? Why can't we see future societies changed by more advanced technology, instead of being essentially the same? (Although I'll admit a lot of books mess that one up.) If it's not Star Wars or Star Trek then it has to look like Star Wars or Star Trek or Alien, we can't have people riding trains from planet to planet, there's no way that could be cool.


Because movies are more of a visual medium whereas books are closer to a cognitive medium?

[Calemyr]

I'm conflicted, for my part. Johnson probably could have done wonders with a new trilogy, but he should have never been given Last Jedi. The theme of divorcing from the past (killing it if you have to) would have been perfect for "another story", where some separation is expected if not required.

I'll admit I haven't seen Last Jedi myself. If half of plot decisions I've heard are true, it's just not worth the couple of hours on Netflix to do so, much less a buck or two to Redbox it. And that's just it. The movie itself might be fine in acting and writing (don't think it is), but to have every single arc thread from Force Awakens severed in the least satisfying ways possible is a horrible thing to do in the middle of a trilogy. Part 3? Yeah, you can get away with subverting a buildup or two - not all of them, perhaps, but maybe a couple if you're clever about it. To do so in Part 2 is to kill all momentum in the trilogy, unless your characters are just that stellar that you have to watch them. Sadly, they then apparently systematically assassinate every returning character from previous episodes. But that's what you get when you set three directors on three movies with no overarching plan - each one applies their own sensibilities to their work and nothing matches up. Abrams loves the Mystery Box and employs it at any excuse, Johnson loathes them and takes pleasure in crushing them like a raw egg pinata. Putting them in sequence like this has won the prequels the dubious upgrade to being considered part of the "good" movies. Think about that.

A full trilogy under the vision of one man, even Johnson's, would probably result in something worth watching. Pity his pitch of "one story over three movies" wasn't something he took to heart with the project in his hands at the time.

[Darth Credence]

I'd love a Rogue One sequel dealing with how and why so many Bothan's died getting them into that trap!😉

But that would involve revealing that beach end sequence was a dream revealing they passed out in the lift and it shot down inside the hardened Imperial facilities hidden underground bunker surviving the miss by a low yield Death Star blast!

The Bothans died getting the information about the second Death Star, especially the fact that the Emperor would be on it. Rogue One has nothing to do with that.

[NRSASD]

The Bothans died getting the information about the second Death Star, especially the fact that the Emperor would be on it. Rogue One has nothing to do with that.

Fair enough. I want a Rogue Two then, with a triple digit Bothan body count.
Bonus points if the Bothans are killed by the score without the Empire noticing

[sktarq]

But stopping the trilogy midway, without finishing the work only generates more speculation; and people will never get over it until the trilogy is over (and people DO need to get over it, whether they love/hate it). If they finish it and people decide it's pure garbage, then people will demand some retribution. Which means, more interest in the franchise; which means more sequels and series; which means more products and memorabilia will be sold. That is the worst that could happen. After all, that was was happened with the Prequels, wasn't it? The prequels never killed the franchise, for all the hate (rightful and not so much) they received. The most hardcore haters are the first in line to buy this Mace Windu toy featuring a brand new hat. Hate is also a powerful tool to make people demand more of your products.

Or not...Or just loose another fan who goes quietly into the night...that happens enough and box office numbers do go down.

[Peelee]

Well... Lets just say that I, and the box office, disagree with you.

Your opinion I respect. The box office I don't.

[Lord Joeltion]

A cliche ridden cliche fest that ignores three decades of development in the genre?

Yeah, pretty sure I'm not joking. As a massive space opera fan, both Guardians of the Galaxy and The Last Jedi are lazy and decades behind the times (so is The Force Awakens, but considering it's position the nostalgia pandering is more understandable). In the last two decades we've had Revelation Space, the Commonwealth Saga, and The Expanse as three big works of literary space opera, and series like Honor Harrigan are still ongoing (although I've not read it yet). I'm not expecting something to be as modern as the latest space opera being published, but the first Culture book was in 1987 and I could easily believe that nobody involved in films has seen the boom that kicked off (ironically I find out exactly now that Consider Phlebas is getting adapted into a series, that'll be interesting).

So yeah, as much as I loathe Interstellar it's actually a much better space opera than Guardians of the Galaxy. At least I can see influences from some more recent stuff and an attempt to break away from Attack of the Cliches.

Calling Interstellar a space opera sounds to me like calling 2001:ASO a horror movie. Like, maybe from a very specific perspective, but not at all really? Space Opera is a fuzzy, ill defined genre in any case. You'll have to come with a much better definition than what is generally called space opera before calling those movies "lazy" because they stick to some apparently outdated aesthetic convention. After all, the Transformers franchise is one of the most Spacey Operas out there; and it has sticked to a very strict invariable formula of mechas doing war IN SPACE for the last 40-ish years. Even the names are repeated through most iterations. And no single Transformers fan* has complained. Space Opera may be niche, but it's still poorly defined. There isn't much to revolutionize or "evolve" because there isn't much of a genre in the first place. It's just soft sci-fi in space.

*Bayformers aren't Transformers.

[Peelee]

I'd like to second stuff about Interstellar; namely, that I didn't like it and it's not a space opera.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Interstellar bored me enough that I turned it off to watch Are You Being Served reruns instead.

[Mordar]

Wait...Guardians of the Galaxy was Space Opera?

I know it kind of is in space and kind of has a backdrop with a sort-of war...but I would never have called it Space Opera.

On topic - I am a fan of all things that relate to pulling Rian Johnson from anything I like. He should just go build his own projects.

- M

[Friv]

Wait...Guardians of the Galaxy was Space Opera?

I know it kind of is in space and kind of has a backdrop with a sort-of war...but I would never have called it Space Opera.

Space opera is a pretty fuzzy genre, but most definitions agree that it requires the following:
To be set in space
To not focus too much on the mechanics of how technology operates
To include a strong (often primary) element of melodrama.

Many space operas involve large-scale wars, because that's an easy source of both melodrama and Good Vs Evil, but it's not required. Personal-scale sci-fi can be space opera if it includes larger-than-life figures having big emotional moments with each other while using handwavy "science".

There's a lot of sci-fi around the edges of space opera, too, and people will disagree pretty stridently with each other about what qualifies. Wikipedia lists Star Trek as a space opera, whereas I would think of it as much more philosophical science fiction. It also lists a lot of space opera parodies, likes Futurama, which I would never have considered but actually does fit surprisingly well.

[Rogar Demonblud]

In that case, GOTG probably fits into the same space opera parody box. I viewed is as something more like, say, Red Dwarf: a comedy that happens to be set in space.

[Cikomyr]

In that case, GOTG probably fits into the same space opera parody box. I viewed is as something more like, say, Red Dwarf: a comedy that happens to be set in space.

Thats a good comparison. Although slighty more Adventurey-focused than Red Dwarf.

Still. The story takes itself seriously, even if events lead to comedy.

[The_Snark]

Why aren't we allowed evolution? Why can we have books in the genre dealing with the apparent emptyness of the universe but not films? Why can't we see future societies changed by more advanced technology, instead of being essentially the same?

I sympathize with this sentiment in general, but... you expected this from Guardians of the Galaxy, of all things? Superhero comics are kind of infamous for sticking with familiar settings, whether that be Earth With Superheroes (which somehow never shifts it too far from the Earth we know) or Classic Space Opera.

That aside, Guardians was made to be a goofy action-comedy with a sci-fi aesthetic. Judging it on its merits (or lack thereof) as an innovative science fiction movie feels... I dunno, kind of like saying Schindler's List is bad because it didn't have enough funny bits? It misses the point, is what I'm saying.

[Mechalich]

To get back to the original focus, this all seems to be mostly unconfirmed rumor. There's no hard evidence that Rian Johnson's supposed trilogy - which is in a nebulous pre-production stage in any case - has been cancelled, delayed, or otherwise halted.

However, this story has rocketed around the internet over the course of several days and there has been, seemingly no strong rebuttal from Disney/Lucasfilm saying that everyone is wrong. It is absolutely impossible for Disney to be unaware of this rumor, or that the general reaction has been wild cheering. So far they have issued no official statement either confirming or rebutting speculation. Now, Lucasfilm's relationship with the fandom has been so bad since the Disney takeover this probably doesn't mean anything, but one would think that if Lucasfilm remained strongly committed to producing this trilogy under Rian Johnson they would have answered the speculation by now. The ongoing silence is at least suggestive that commitment to this trilogy has waffled.

[JadedDM]

This is the first I've heard of such rumors. Where are they cropping up?

[Devonix]

This is the first I've heard of such rumors. Where are they cropping up?

The same places for months that Kathleen Kennedy was being fired. AKA the usual I know a guy who knows a guy rumors.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard
Why can we have books in the genre dealing with the apparent emptyness of the universe but not films?

In fact Interstellar did exactly this.

And in television, the new BSG took this and ran with it—or rather, jumped their way across several thousand lightyears without a single alien species, and without any hint of lifeforms more advanced than small frogs.

As for future societies changed by technology, or the lack thereof on the big screen, that’s not something unique to Star Wars by any means. Science fiction novels can afford to speculate as hard as they like, but for better or for worse, movies are designed for a broader appeal—or at least the mainstream blockbuster-hopefuls are.

The one example I can think of right now is Dune (1984), which gave us a glimpse of a society ten thousand years ahead, and it’s fair to say they were certainly changed by advanced technology. This may still be near-term on a cosmic scale, but it's decidedly far-future in terms of most cinematic science fiction. Anything further—say, humans evolving into five-dimensional entities and dropping wormholes in the past—tends to lose a large portion of the audience.

[JadedDM]

The same places for months that Kathleen Kennedy was being fired. AKA the usual I know a guy who knows a guy rumors.

So probably some kind of 4chan op. I figured as much.

[Knaight]

In that case, GOTG probably fits into the same space opera parody box. I viewed is as something more like, say, Red Dwarf: a comedy that happens to be set in space.

That doesn't make it a parody though - the comedic elements don't come from mockery of the genre or the depiction of the genre as farcical, they come from the interactions between characters with major comic streaks to their personality.

Compare this to something like Spaceballs, which absolutely mocks the genre in general and Star Wars in particular.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Oh, Guardians does that too. You did notice the fighters at Xandar, yes?

[Anonymouswizard]

In that case, GOTG probably fits into the same space opera parody box. I viewed is as something more like, say, Red Dwarf: a comedy that happens to be set in space.

Except it takes the space stuff completely seriously, the humour is bolted on around the space opera plot.

Although I understand why American films might not want to update their space opera stories, new space opera was created by the British and we still dominate the field.

Also, I do consider Interstellar space opera. A considerably downplayed example, without stereotypical larger than life characters, but it fits almost every other requirement down to a rubbish 'love is the only thing science can't measure' line.

@Knaight: yeah, I know it's focused on the medium-hard levels of Space Opera, but the list was pulling the biggest names of the genre from the last decade or so.

[Olinser]

At this stage Rian Johnson getting ANYTHING else from Star Wars, much less a full trilogy, is incredibly unlikely, especially since as we get further away from release more and more shills are finally willing to admit that yeah, Last Jedi was just plain not a good movie.

From Johnson ludicrously getting complete creative control and immediately throwing JJ Abrams draft script in the trash, to his arrogant and aggressive assault on the fan base that don't like the movie, Johnson has pretty conclusively proved that he should never get handed a major budge movie from ANY studio, much less an entire trilogy.

[Misereor]

I'd love a Rogue One sequel dealing with how and why so many Bothan's died getting them into that trap!😉

Tag and Bink accidentally shot Manny Bothanz. Mon Mothma just misheard when they told her.

[Androgeus]

especially since as we get further away from release more and more shills are finally willing to admit that yeah, Last Jedi was just plain not a good movie..

Because the only reason some one can have a differing opinion is if they are paid.

[Devonix]

Because the only reason some one can have a differing opinion is if they are paid.

Wait, you didn't get your check from Lucasfilm yet? I'm texting this from my latest Lambo bought from those Lucasfilm shillbucks.

[Cikomyr]

Oh, Guardians does that too. You did notice the fighters at Xandar, yes?

X-shaped starfighter doesnt meant its automatically a parody of X-shaped Star Wars fighters. Otherwise B5 would be a parody of Star Wars as well.

Parody would be there if there was a joke about the fact that the Nova Corp fighters are X-shaped. But there isnt. In fact, they make an epic and awesome plot point about the functionality of the Cross-shape, and what its meant to achieve

[Olinser]

X-shaped starfighter doesnt meant its automatically a parody of X-shaped Star Wars fighters. Otherwise B5 would be a parody of Star Wars as well.

Parody would be there if there was a joke about the fact that the Nova Corp fighters are X-shaped. But there isnt. In fact, they make an epic and awesome plot point about the functionality of the Cross-shape, and what its meant to achieve

I mean... it was epic but it certainly wasn't awesome. It was ridiculous and ended exactly as you would have expected it to end - with all of them dead because they'd locked themselves in one place with no way to defend themselves or actually damage their enemies. Even if Ronan hadn't used the Power Stone they would have been a turkey shoot for the enemy fighters. And given that the ship had already demonstrated to be vulnerable to concentrated fire when Quill had busted through it, it would have been far more effective if all of those fighters had used that coordination to focus their fire in a single point on a vital spot (like the engines). I actually laughed at how absurd it was in the theatre - but that's fine, it was in keeping with a lot of the rest of the movie in how ridiculous a lot of things are, and it did look moderately cool while they were doing it.

[AMFV]

Because the only reason some one can have a differing opinion is if they are paid.

I think it's the critics that made the critic score so different from the audience score that people are talking about.

[Devonix]

I think it's the critics that made the critic score so different from the audience score that people are talking about.

Yeah, but the idea of the critics being paid off is simply laughable. And only ever comes up when they disagree with someone. People have a hard time believing that someone liked, or didn't like something that they enjoyed. And so the whole accusations of buying reviews come out. Even though it's pretty much impossible to do.

[Calemyr]

So probably some kind of 4chan op. I figured as much.

Near as I can tell, it's an extrapolation from a set designer's comment that the majority of the Star Wars movies (that he'd been working on sets for) have been put on hold indefinitely. He mentioned Tatooine, which was read to mean the Obi Wan movie is in limbo, but also used some wording to refer to other planets that matched Johnson's description of what he wanted to do with his new trilogy. Given the amount of pre-planning required for the kind of sets a franchise like Star Wars needs, putting set design on hold is being read as a death knell to the related movies. And, with the difficulties the studio has faced with their last two movies, it's not a hard conclusion to jump to. Then add in the schadenfreude of it all and it's not hard to see why the rumor has spread so fast.

[Phexar]

This is the first I've heard of such rumors. Where are they cropping up?


The same places for months that Kathleen Kennedy was being fired. AKA the usual I know a guy who knows a guy rumors.

Pretty much. The only concrete info I could find was what I posted earlier from Cinemablend's interview with Neil Lamont, and it sounds like it's talking about the Obi-Wan spinoff movie considering the inclusion of Tatooine:


I read up on this news and it seems to center around Cinemablend's interview with LucasFilm production designer Neil Lamont:

https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2455795/star-wars-production-designer-confirms-tatooine-was-part-of-an-upcoming-spin-off-film

It just says that he comments that a spin-off movie involving Tatooine that he was working on has been shelved. Sounds more like he's talking about the Obi-Wan movie to me. So I don't think Rian's out.

[Peelee]

At this stage Rian Johnson getting ANYTHING else from Star Wars, much less a full trilogy, is incredibly unlikely, especially since as we get further away from release more and more shills are finally willing to admit that yeah, Last Jedi was just plain not a good movie.

Oh come off it dude. It's not as if people who like TLJ are obstinately refusing to accept universal truth here.

[Psyren]

I think it's the critics that made the critic score so different from the audience score that people are talking about.

And we're right back to the RT vs. CinemaScore 40-page thread where nobody is going to budge from their starting positions. Hopefully I saved folks some time.


Wait, you didn't get your check from Lucasfilm yet? I'm texting this from my latest Lambo bought from those Lucasfilm shillbucks.

Shh, don't tell them! Mine is still getting a few bonus features in the factory.

[Dr.Samurai]

You mean we won't have to deal with a thinks-he's-so-clever director subverting every expectation anyone might ever have just for the lulz, and painting every good guy as a bad guy because... why not? You mean the next trilogy might contain movies that follow consistently from the one before it, and lead up to a sequel in a compelling way?

Wow. Consider this a rumor I hope to be true.

[Rogar Demonblud]

X-shaped starfighter doesnt meant its automatically a parody of X-shaped Star Wars fighters. Otherwise B5 would be a parody of Star Wars as well.

Parody would be there if there was a joke about the fact that the Nova Corp fighters are X-shaped. But there isnt. In fact, they make an epic and awesome plot point about the functionality of the Cross-shape, and what its meant to achieve

Wow. I think everyone in my theater caught it immediately, but it looks like you didn't. You have enemy craft that consist of a bulb cockpit and two vertical wings shooting green lasers and hero fighters with a pointy nose and spread wings shooting red lasers. And if you listen, the standard Star Wars turbolaser noise is in minor key each time they shoot.


I mean... it was epic but it certainly wasn't awesome. It was ridiculous and ended exactly as you would have expected it to end - with all of them dead because they'd locked themselves in one place with no way to defend themselves or actually damage their enemies. Even if Ronan hadn't used the Power Stone they would have been a turkey shoot for the enemy fighters. And given that the ship had already demonstrated to be vulnerable to concentrated fire when Quill had busted through it, it would have been far more effective if all of those fighters had used that coordination to focus their fire in a single point on a vital spot (like the engines). I actually laughed at how absurd it was in the theatre - but that's fine, it was in keeping with a lot of the rest of the movie in how ridiculous a lot of things are, and it did look moderately cool while they were doing it.

Oh, wonderful idea. Let's blow up the engines so the guy we're trying to keep off the planet can crash there and wipe us all out!

The name of the game is keep away, remember. Keep Ronan away from Xandar long enough for the strike team to assassinate him.

[Devonix]

Oh, Guardians does that too. You did notice the fighters at Xandar, yes?

The Star fighters on Xandar weren't in anyway an homage to starwars or anything else. That shape that the Star fighters have. That is literally, just the Nova Corps Logo in 3D. They are flying around in ships shaped like their badges.

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic3.comicvine.com%2Fuploads%2 Fscale_small%2F10%2F103503%2F5706811-nova%2Bhelmet.jpg&f=1


https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-A0_sFwc1FAg/VC1hKHizW5I/AAAAAAAAv4A/5A8gRrQLhWA/s280/Guardians_of_the_Galaxy_concept_art_by_Po_Sing_Chu _07.jpg

[Aotrs Commander]

Also, speaking as professional in the starship designing field "Things With Four Slanted Wings" are not even remotely Star Wars' sole purview. It is merely something that looks good.

[Lord Joeltion]

Interstellar is a documentary, and you can't prove me wrong. It's also the first big film to depict wormholes as they actually are, so that already makes it the hardest scifi ever :smalltongue:


Wow. I think everyone in my theater caught it immediately, but it looks like you didn't. You have enemy craft that consist of a bulb cockpit and two vertical wings shooting green lasers and hero fighters with a pointy nose and spread wings shooting red lasers. And if you listen, the standard Star Wars turbolaser noise is in minor key each time they shoot.

Homage =/= parody, I think that should be pretty clear. Being both products now belonging to the same company, easter eggs are pretty much taken for granted. Also, what Devonix said.


The Star fighters on Xandar weren't in anyway an homage to starwars or anything else. That shape that the Star fighters have. That is literally, just the Nova Corps Logo in 3D. They are flying around in ships shaped like their badges.

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fstatic3.comicvine.com%2Fuploads%2 Fscale_small%2F10%2F103503%2F5706811-nova%2Bhelmet.jpg&f=1


https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-A0_sFwc1FAg/VC1hKHizW5I/AAAAAAAAv4A/5A8gRrQLhWA/s280/Guardians_of_the_Galaxy_concept_art_by_Po_Sing_Chu _07.jpg

I remember reading an article about the turbolasers and also other minor easter eggs related to Star Wars in GotG and other MCU films; but yeah, while there is plenty homage, truth is, space battles are staple of GotG*; not a reference to anything directly.

*After all, the comic is basically a Space Opera. It's not your average superhero comic book. There are also some Journey into Mystery storylines and the StarJammers comics that belong to the same genre.

[Jayngfet]

My two cents is that Johnson got greenlit for a trilogy before his first movie even came out. This tells us primarily that Lucasfilm was happy with the movie and they've been overly defensive even by corporate standards over its quality. However let's keep in mind how many directors Lucasfilm has lost and how much money they're dumping into new projects. 100 million for a streaming show. 200 million per movie. The merchandise isn't bringing in revenue anymore and the other material takes time and money as well. By contrast Lucasfilm has lost more directors than have turned in a finished film, which is never a good look. J.J. Abrams has always been visibly iffy about being involved before he even signed off on it. A large number of directors have said they refuse to even work on a SW movie.

Odds are Lucasfilm needs Rian Johnson. Not because he's great, or even good, but because the money is already spent and nobody else will take the job. They NEED 8 to be good because they're already bankrolling three extra movies and they e committed to them and Johnson is effectively their only option. Most of their other projects on that level don't even have directors named yet.

[Rodin]

Except it takes the space stuff completely seriously, the humour is bolted on around the space opera plot.

Does it really? GotG2 had them try to escape a fleet of ships piloted by guys playing video games (complete with 80s sound effects) by flying their ships through a field of spontaneously teleporting asteroids. That was certainly the point where my suspension of disbelief got up and walked out of the theater, and I enjoyed the movie all the more for it.

Other than that, I really can't remember all that much actual space stuff even happening in either movie. The majority of the plot happens outside the ships, it being primarily a superhero movie.

I'm also rather baffled by the accusation that GotG feels out of date. The movie revels in being out of date, that's the entire point. There's 80s references all over the place, our main character carries around a Walkman, and basically everything in the films is referencing something classic from the genre.

On the actual main topic of discussion here...yeah, I'm not touching that one with a 10-foot pole. What's gonna happen is gonna happen.

[Rogar Demonblud]

The 'taking space stuff seriously' is generally code for Gamora and Quill's little EVA trip without suits.

[Clertar]

They should stop the main trilogy series, and also stop thinking about trilogies. Just make one bloody good original film in the SW universe. Just one. If it's good enough sequels will follow naturally.

[Anonymouswizard]

Does it really? GotG2 had them try to escape a fleet of ships piloted by guys playing video games (complete with 80s sound effects) by flying their ships through a field of spontaneously teleporting asteroids. That was certainly the point where my suspension of disbelief got up and walked out of the theater, and I enjoyed the movie all the more for it.

I didn't see that film, the first one was so bland that I just skipped it entirely.


I'm also rather baffled by the accusation that GotG feels out of date. The movie revels in being out of date, that's the entire point. There's 80s references all over the place, our main character carries around a Walkman, and basically everything in the films is referencing something classic from the genre.

On the one hand yes. On the other hand I went in not expecting all of that, because nobody had informed me, so I was attacked with references to a time before I existed alongside a generic plot I could call 90% of before it happened.


They should stop the main trilogy series, and also stop thinking about trilogies. Just make one bloody good original film in the SW universe. Just one. If it's good enough sequels will follow naturally.

I think that's unlikely, seeing as how even their non 'Sequel Trilogy' films are trying to cash in on 'hey, remember this bit of Original Trilogy'. Although I haven't seen Solo, because TLJ made me boycott Star Wars until they can actually impress me, so maybe it's the next best thing since the bread-slicing implement and I'd be ignorant.

But this is what they need to do. Stop with this Sequel Trilogy nonsense, pick a point in their timeline (I suggest hundreds of years before The Phantom Menace at minimum, to avoid any 'using existing characters' issues), and just try to create an amazing movie. A movie that'll make people want to buy it's figures as much as they did after the first Star Wars film was released, that they'll be talking about for decades to come.

[The_Snark]

But this is what they need to do. Stop with this Sequel Trilogy nonsense, pick a point in their timeline (I suggest hundreds of years before The Phantom Menace at minimum, to avoid any 'using existing characters' issues)...

Hundreds of years ago is no good; you need to go at least a thousand years back, or else someone will suggest having Yoda show up. :smalltongue:

[JadedDM]

Pretty much. The only concrete info I could find was what I posted earlier from Cinemablend's interview with Neil Lamont, and it sounds like it's talking about the Obi-Wan spinoff movie considering the inclusion of Tatooine:
Ah, I see. I have heard rumors about them delaying the Obi-Wan film, or possibly even canceling it. And I've heard talk that they are rethinking the whole 'release a Star Wars movie every year' thing. Which I think is a good idea, on both counts. We don't need origin stories for every single (https://thehardtimes.net/harddrive/disney-announces-young-aunt-beru-spinoff-film/) Star Wars character. And saturating the market is a bad idea.

(Personally, I have no interest whatsoever in an Obi-Wan movie and if it is released, I'll likely skip it.)


They should stop the main trilogy series, and also stop thinking about trilogies. Just make one bloody good original film in the SW universe. Just one. If it's good enough sequels will follow naturally.
I agree, and this is advice I think the rest of Hollywood should take.

[Anonymouswizard]

Hundreds of years ago is no good; you need to go at least a thousand years back, or else someone will suggest having Yoda show up. :smalltongue:

Yoda nine hundred years old is, therefore minimum is approximately 870 years before Phantom Menance (in all seriousness, we don't actually know Yoda's age and it's possible he's exaggerating for humourous effect, but we have about 100 years between 'hitting a thousand years before' and 'Yoda: Jedi Babies').

[Rodin]

Ah, I see. I have heard rumors about them delaying the Obi-Wan film, or possibly even canceling it. And I've heard talk that they are rethinking the whole 'release a Star Wars movie every year' thing. Which I think is a good idea, on both counts. We don't need origin stories for every single (https://thehardtimes.net/harddrive/disney-announces-young-aunt-beru-spinoff-film/) Star Wars character. And saturating the market is a bad idea.

(Personally, I have no interest whatsoever in an Obi-Wan movie and if it is released, I'll likely skip it.)



I mean, isn't Obi-Wan's backstory the prequels? I guess there's the time he spent becoming a Jedi and the time he spent hanging out with Qui-Gon, but does anybody care about that? Han's life story at least hadn't been explored before on screen, which gave plenty of scope for Solo to fill in the details. We know all the defining life events for Obi-Wan already.

Of course, they could go a completely different direction with it. Set it after the prequels, and have be a slow-paced study of the life of a hermit. We see him going into town shopping for blue milk, tidying up his hovel, and the big climax is him going partying with the Sand People where something goes horribly wrong that explains why they hate him in A New Hope. It'll be a new paradigm!

[Knaight]

I think it's the critics that made the critic score so different from the audience score that people are talking about.

It's almost like people who watch movies with an eye towards detailed analysis for later writing, and who watch huge masses of movies because they do so as a job have different tastes than people who occasionally go to a movie theater to watch just what they like.

[Rogar Demonblud]

I mean, isn't Obi-Wan's backstory the prequels? I guess there's the time he spent becoming a Jedi and the time he spent hanging out with Qui-Gon, but does anybody care about that? Han's life story at least hadn't been explored before on screen, which gave plenty of scope for Solo to fill in the details. We know all the defining life events for Obi-Wan already.

Of course, they could go a completely different direction with it. Set it after the prequels, and have be a slow-paced study of the life of a hermit. We see him going into town shopping for blue milk, tidying up his hovel, and the big climax is him going partying with the Sand People where something goes horribly wrong that explains why they hate him in A New Hope. It'll be a new paradigm!

If I'm remembering everything right, the movie was supposed to be redoing the comic where he has to protect an infant Luke from Darth Maul, who obviously can't die from being bisected and tossed down a reactor shaft.

[warty goblin]

It's almost like people who watch movies with an eye towards detailed analysis for later writing, and who watch huge masses of movies because they do so as a job have different tastes than people who occasionally go to a movie theater to watch just what they like.

Not to mention that the audience score on something like Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes is in no way shape or form a representative sample. Any attempts to treat it as such will be firmly penalized by the statistics police. By which I mean I'll write a cranky post about convenience sampling bias if I feel like it.

(Short version, a convenience sample will produce a biased estimate. A very large convenience sample will produce a biased estimate with very small variance; i.e. a very precise estimate of exactly the wrong thing.)

[Devonix]

If I'm remembering everything right, the movie was supposed to be redoing the comic where he has to protect an infant Luke from Darth Maul, who obviously can't die from being bisected and tossed down a reactor shaft.

They couldn't do that. They already did a canonical last battle with Maul and Obiwan. So we already know that doesn't happen.

[Zevox]

Yeah, rumors like this are worth about as much as the paper they're not printed on. If and when this enters the realm of confirmed reality, I'll care.

If then, really. I mean, after TLJ I probably wouldn't go see another Star Wars film by the guy anyway, and I don't care much about the new canon of the series at this point, so it really makes little difference to me whether he makes more films or not. Save insofar as him not being signed up for those might possibly mean the time and funds get devoted to something better I guess, but no telling whether that would actually happen.

[Olinser]

Wow. I think everyone in my theater caught it immediately, but it looks like you didn't. You have enemy craft that consist of a bulb cockpit and two vertical wings shooting green lasers and hero fighters with a pointy nose and spread wings shooting red lasers. And if you listen, the standard Star Wars turbolaser noise is in minor key each time they shoot.



Oh, wonderful idea. Let's blow up the engines so the guy we're trying to keep off the planet can crash there and wipe us all out!

The name of the game is keep away, remember. Keep Ronan away from Xandar long enough for the strike team to assassinate him.

No - blow up his engines and THEN push him back out into space so it floats out there until you can deal with it at your convenience. It makes a heck of a lot more sense than trying to push a ship back with its engines still working.

[Olinser]

Yeah, but the idea of the critics being paid off is simply laughable. And only ever comes up when they disagree with someone. People have a hard time believing that someone liked, or didn't like something that they enjoyed. And so the whole accusations of buying reviews come out. Even though it's pretty much impossible to do.

YOU said they were paid, not me. And I find it interesting that the only defense is that they couldn't have been paid - not that they weren't coordinating or that they weren't FAR out of line with fan reaction. I said they were shills. Most shills these days are, in fact, NOT paid, but they have some interest in seeing a movie/game succeed or fail. And it has been conclusively demonstrated many times in the past that yes, many many movie critics coordinate when they want a movie to receive a good or bad review.

There are plenty of Youtubers, paper/news writers, etc that shill for various bad (or good) products for various reasons that are never paid by the company/game/movie they are shilling.

[Psyren]

YOU said they were paid, not me. And I find it interesting that the only defense is that they couldn't have been paid - not that they weren't coordinating or that they weren't FAR out of line with fan reaction.

TLJ Cinemascore = A. Is that not "fan reaction" for you? I'm guessing because you disagree with it?

[JadedDM]

And it has been conclusively demonstrated many times in the past that yes, many many movie critics coordinate when they want a movie to receive a good or bad review.
Has it now? Should be easy to prove then, if it has been so conclusively demonstrated then, and multiple times at that. I look forward to seeing this proof, that I'm sure absolutely exists and is readily on hand.

(Why would critics even care enough to coordinate? What possible reason would they have to see a movie succeed or fail? To what end? Also, if this is really a thing, then how do you explain movies that make a metric ton of cash but critics hate them? Like say, Bayformers?)

[Cikomyr]

Wow. I think everyone in my theater caught it immediately, but it looks like you didn't. You have enemy craft that consist of a bulb cockpit and two vertical wings shooting green lasers and hero fighters with a pointy nose and spread wings shooting red lasers. And if you listen, the standard Star Wars turbolaser noise is in minor key each time they shoot.

Aaaand how does that make it a parody ?

References, winks, sure. But were they taking a jab at Star Wars with these references?

[Devonix]

YOU said they were paid, not me. And I find it interesting that the only defense is that they couldn't have been paid - not that they weren't coordinating or that they weren't FAR out of line with fan reaction. I said they were shills. Most shills these days are, in fact, NOT paid, but they have some interest in seeing a movie/game succeed or fail. And it has been conclusively demonstrated many times in the past that yes, many many movie critics coordinate when they want a movie to receive a good or bad review.

There are plenty of Youtubers, paper/news writers, etc that shill for various bad (or good) products for various reasons that are never paid by the company/game/movie they are shilling.

Film critics aren't a single organization. You'd need to have paid off each and everyone of them separately. And for that to happen. And no one spilling the beans. It's pretty much impossible. Someone would talk. People would know. And the second it becomes known that something shady was going on with a critic, they'd immediatly lose all credibility.

A Film critic's only asset is their credibility.

[Peelee]

Yeah, rumors like this are worth about as much as the paper they're not printed on.

Im a firm believer in rumors being worth their weight in gold.
I liked mine better.:smalltongue:

[Olinser]

Film critics aren't a single organization. You'd need to have paid off each and everyone of them separately. And for that to happen. And no one spilling the beans. It's pretty much impossible. Someone would talk. People would know. And the second it becomes known that something shady was going on with a critic, they'd immediatly lose all credibility.

A Film critic's only asset is their credibility.

Once again - YOU are the one claiming they were 'paid'. I have not. And once again, you're trying to deflect from the ACTUAL claim - that they gave it a review much better than it deserved because they wanted it to succeed, not that it was actually that good a movie. Many prominent critics throughout the years have flat-out admitted that they've given movies different scores than they deserved because of outside factors - ESPECIALLY when the subject is political or seen as sending some variety of message - and the agenda being pushed concurrently with Last Jedi has already been done to death in multiple other threads.

For example, freaking Roger Ebert flat out admitted that he gave some movies terrible or great scores not because of the actual movie but because of the message or politics he thought they were pushing - he infamously gave The Happening 3 stars, for instance, and he gave bad or low scores to Clockwork Orange and Dirty Harry explicitly because of what he viewed as the movie's politics (although there are many more examples).

And this goes both ways - positive and negative. There are a large number of movies that critics hated but fans enjoyed. Boondock Saints has a 20% critic rating and a 91% fan rating, for instance, with a number of critics saying literally nothing about the actual movie and soap boxing about vigilante justice.

[Olinser]

TLJ Cinemascore = A. Is that not "fan reaction" for you? I'm guessing because you disagree with it?

Uh huh. 67.5% dropoff in ticket sales from week 1 to week 2, that says a heck of a lot more 'fan reaction' than Cinemascore (and fun fact - it was 94% dropoff in China, though that's not super relevant its just an interesting fact). For reference - the Force Awakens was released in exactly the same week its previous year, and only dropped off 39%.

Cinemascore is based on exit polls of people on opening weekend - and has been pointed out many, many times, people that attend early shows and weekend openings are generally biased to like the movie to begin with. Too many movies to count have had good cinemascores and were flops or bad to mediocre fan reviews. ALL THREE Prequels got A-, for instance.

The biggest one off the top of my head is that Transformers Dark of the Moon got an A cinemascore.

[Knaight]

For example, freaking Roger Ebert flat out admitted that he gave some movies terrible or great scores not because of the actual movie but because of the message or politics he thought they were pushing - he infamously gave The Happening 3 stars, for instance, and he gave bad or low scores to Clockwork Orange and Dirty Harry explicitly because of what he viewed as the movie's politics (although there are many more examples).

Last I checked the message and/or politics pushed by the movie was part of the movie. See: theme. That's also a perfectly good reason to like a movie more or less; if a message is constantly coming up throughout and your reaction is "ugh, this crap again" that absolutely should reflect in a lower score. Similarly if the themes explored are interesting and the time the movie spends exploring them more enjoyable because of that it absolutely should reflect in a higher score.

[Zalabim]

Once again - YOU are the one claiming they were 'paid'. I have not. And once again, you're trying to deflect from the ACTUAL claim - that they gave it a review much better than it deserved because they wanted it to succeed, not that it was actually that good a movie. Many prominent critics throughout the years have flat-out admitted that they've given movies different scores than they deserved because of outside factors - ESPECIALLY when the subject is political or seen as sending some variety of message - and the agenda being pushed concurrently with Last Jedi has already been done to death in multiple other threads.

For example, freaking Roger Ebert flat out admitted that he gave some movies terrible or great scores not because of the actual movie but because of the message or politics he thought they were pushing - he infamously gave The Happening 3 stars, for instance, and he gave bad or low scores to Clockwork Orange and Dirty Harry explicitly because of what he viewed as the movie's politics (although there are many more examples).

And this goes both ways - positive and negative. There are a large number of movies that critics hated but fans enjoyed. Boondock Saints has a 20% critic rating and a 91% fan rating, for instance, with a number of critics saying literally nothing about the actual movie and soap boxing about vigilante justice.

On RT, the critical average is 8.1/10 and the viewer reviews average 2.9/5, right now. There are 382 critic reviews counted, and putting them on the same scale, the viewer score is 2.3 points lower. Certainly there are some reviewers who openly state some consideration of the political message in or around the movie as part of their score, but that's on both sides, in both directions. If you can point to some critics who give it a higher rating because of a political message, certainly you can also point to some viewer reviews that go in the opposite direction.

As far as the up/down percents, it's still 91% with critics and 46% with viewers. To align those two numbers with this theory, it would seem that about 1/3 of critics, 124 people, were persuaded to change their rating of this movie because they want to shill it, for free, of their own accord, with or without discussing it with each other, but certainly without the vast majority of them ever admitting it.

In either case, I don't think "critics are unpaid shills" is sufficient to explain the difference in reaction, nor do I think I can point to either method of scoring the movie as right or wrong anyway. What if every review, by critic or common viewer, was decided by how that person feels about the movie's perceived political stance, does that make the critics wrong and the viewers right? Does that tell us anything useful or interesting about either party? What if each review completely ignored any perceived political stance instead? Does it matter? From my perspective, critics are usually out of touch with my own reaction to movies anyways. That they generally liked, for whatever reasons, a good movie that I enjoyed is a refreshing change of pace this time, but I don't expect it to mark a change in their relevance to me going forward. I don't know what insanity has gripped the negative audience reaction here. The general trend sounds like they just didn't watch the same movie, if they watched the movie at all.

Uh huh. 67.5% dropoff in ticket sales from week 1 to week 2, that says a heck of a lot more 'fan reaction' than Cinemascore (and fun fact - it was 94% dropoff in China, though that's not super relevant its just an interesting fact). For reference - the Force Awakens was released in exactly the same week its previous year, and only dropped off 39%.

Cinemascore is based on exit polls of people on opening weekend - and has been pointed out many, many times, people that attend early shows and weekend openings are generally biased to like the movie to begin with. Too many movies to count have had good cinemascores and were flops or bad to mediocre fan reviews. ALL THREE Prequels got A-, for instance.

The biggest one off the top of my head is that Transformers Dark of the Moon got an A cinemascore.
Is that drop off from bad word of mouth on The Last Jedi or is that from fatigue after recent Star Wars movies? Does viewer reaction and word of mouth even determine if a movie is good or bad? It's an important metric for movie-making, but not necessarily important for movie-judging. Obviously it's not always a simple matter to squeeze the useful information out of the available data either.

[Mechalich]

Is that drop off from bad word of mouth on The Last Jedi or is that from fatigue after recent Star Wars movies? Does viewer reaction and word of mouth even determine if a movie is good or bad? It's an important metric for movie-making, but not necessarily important for movie-judging. Obviously it's not always a simple matter to squeeze the useful information out of the available data either.

Whether or not the movie is good or bad is not really at issue when it comes to greenlighting, or not, future installations in the franchise. What matters is only whether or not it is sufficiently popular - which can be measured different ways - to justify making a another film. A franchise can descend into the most ridiculous dreck imaginable - see Michael Bay's Transformers - and remain sufficiently profitable to justify making more.

The concept of 'Star Wars' fatigue is largely much ado about nothing. Marvel managed to release three feature films in the MCU this year and all of them were successes. Instead, there are specific issues regarding the Star Wars franchise that had an impact on the box office results of TLJ, Solo, and any potential future films. One is cost - Solo cost too much. Various failures during production led to a film that cost far more to make and market than was reasonable, resulting in a movie that made 425 million dollars globally serving as a massive flop. Lucasfilm apparently thought Star Wars was a surefire winner and was unwilling to properly manage spending, whereas Marvel, by contrast, exercises much tighter budgetary oversight so that smaller films like Ant Man & The Wasp don't break the bank. Another is China - Star Wars has a very specific China problem. The franchise simply does not play effectively in what is now the world's second largest movie market and closing on parity with the US domestic box office. Until Star Wars figures out a way to get a proportional size of the China box office every Star Wars film basically does the equivalent of lighting 50 million dollars on fire. Third PR mismanagement - Lucasfilm has handled pretty much all fan reaction poorly since the moment Disney acquired the franchise. The actually arguments about who's right or wrong are largely immaterial, what matters is that the most passionate portion of the Star Wars fanbase is currently relentlessly and fanatically negative towards the present management and production, that creates a huge headwind against all new Star Wars films and associated productions (though it seems to be limited to the new canon, the TCW re-launch has faced little to no opposition) which is a problem in the current marketing environment.

Take these issues together and you have a fairly classic case of overreach. It's frankly not that dissimilar to what happened with the DC live-action movie franchise.

[Zalabim]

The concept of 'Star Wars' fatigue is largely much ado about nothing. Marvel managed to release three feature films in the MCU this year and all of them were successes.

Take these issues together and you have a fairly classic case of overreach. It's frankly not that dissimilar to what happened with the DC live-action movie franchise.
Budgeting, yeah, that's been a problem. China is a problem. I don't really notice the PR problem, and PR usually isn't a problem. Any press is good press and all. Anyway, Marvel gets away with releasing more movies because it's releasing different movies, as well as doing all those other things right. If the movies aren't new or aren't enjoyed, then sequels do start to wind down. The studio doesn't get so much praise for Thor 2, for example. In the case of the new Star Wars movie, The Force Awakens was often called as repeating A New Hope too much. I still enjoyed it, and I think Rogue One, Solo, and TLJ are all different stories as well, so the normal kind of sequel fatigue shouldn't be the issue here. On the DC side, the live-action movies have a trend of repeating the stories that are already well-known by osmosis, and in many cases, literally have already been done better in their animated works. I know a lot more people are willing to see a blockbuster movie than a direct to video or tv animated work, but either way they're repeating well-known stories, like batman's origin story, again and again. How many times can Superman get killed by Doomsday? They're doing it again right now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice_League:_Throne_of_Atlantis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquaman_(film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Superman_(film)
No, not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superman:_Doomsday.
Probably not their biggest issue, next to just sucking all the entertainment out of much of their movies, but I know I'm chillier on Aquaman for noticing it.

[Hopeless]

The Bothans died getting the information about the second Death Star, especially the fact that the Emperor would be on it. Rogue One has nothing to do with that.

That's why its called a SEQUEL and given a reason WHY it could happen.
It wouldn't even stretch imagination given it makes more sense than what's left of the ST!

[Olinser]

On RT, the critical average is 8.1/10 and the viewer reviews average 2.9/5, right now. There are 382 critic reviews counted, and putting them on the same scale, the viewer score is 2.3 points lower. Certainly there are some reviewers who openly state some consideration of the political message in or around the movie as part of their score, but that's on both sides, in both directions. If you can point to some critics who give it a higher rating because of a political message, certainly you can also point to some viewer reviews that go in the opposite direction.

As far as the up/down percents, it's still 91% with critics and 46% with viewers. To align those two numbers with this theory, it would seem that about 1/3 of critics, 124 people, were persuaded to change their rating of this movie because they want to shill it, for free, of their own accord, with or without discussing it with each other, but certainly without the vast majority of them ever admitting it.

In either case, I don't think "critics are unpaid shills" is sufficient to explain the difference in reaction, nor do I think I can point to either method of scoring the movie as right or wrong anyway. What if every review, by critic or common viewer, was decided by how that person feels about the movie's perceived political stance, does that make the critics wrong and the viewers right? Does that tell us anything useful or interesting about either party? What if each review completely ignored any perceived political stance instead? Does it matter? From my perspective, critics are usually out of touch with my own reaction to movies anyways. That they generally liked, for whatever reasons, a good movie that I enjoyed is a refreshing change of pace this time, but I don't expect it to mark a change in their relevance to me going forward. I don't know what insanity has gripped the negative audience reaction here. The general trend sounds like they just didn't watch the same movie, if they watched the movie at all.

Is that drop off from bad word of mouth on The Last Jedi or is that from fatigue after recent Star Wars movies? Does viewer reaction and word of mouth even determine if a movie is good or bad? It's an important metric for movie-making, but not necessarily important for movie-judging. Obviously it's not always a simple matter to squeeze the useful information out of the available data either.

In the first place, the idea of 'Star Wars fatigue' is ridiculous, given Marvel has been churning out blockbuster after blockbuster to positive reception and box offices mere months apart. Hell, Black Panther and Infinity War were barely TWO MONTHS apart in release date and they were both smash hits (and then Deadpool 2 came out 1 month later and was ANOTHER hit). That's 3 Marvel superhero movies in 5 months, all huge successes.

In contrast, it had been a full year since Rogue One had released, there had been no Star Wars movie for a full year before Last Jedi, so the idea of fatigue impacting it is pretty ridiculous.

So in the second place, even if you believe 'Star Wars fatigue' exists, that's a poor excuse for Solo, not Last Jedi. I can't really see how it can reasonably be claimed that a movie released 1 year after the last movie in the franchise and 2 full years after its predecessor in the trilogy is creating 'fatigue'.

[Dr.Samurai]

Star Wars fatigue?

Lmao.

How many reasons can we come up with for TLJ’s performance without landing on “bad, alienating movie”?

Everyone is so clever these days 🙄.

[Keltest]

Star Wars fatigue?

Lmao.

How many reasons can we come up with for TLJ’s performance without landing on “bad, alienating movie”?

Everyone is so clever these days 🙄.
Clever enough to think that there is a massive conspiracy among critics to make a movie seem good?

[Psyren]

Uh huh. 67.5% dropoff in ticket sales from week 1 to week 2, that says a heck of a lot more 'fan reaction' than Cinemascore (and fun fact - it was 94% dropoff in China, though that's not super relevant its just an interesting fact). For reference - the Force Awakens was released in exactly the same week its previous year, and only dropped off 39%.

You know Star Wars was never popular in China right?



Cinemascore is based on exit polls of people on opening weekend - and has been pointed out many, many times, people that attend early shows and weekend openings are generally biased to like the movie to begin with.

So in other words, they're fans? You know, the group you were talking about to begin with? Well now, fancy that.

Also, good point, that explains why every single movie gets a CinemaScore of A, because only the folks who already know they like it before watching it go see it on opening night. (Oh, wait.)

[Devonix]

Star Wars fatigue?

Lmao.

How many reasons can we come up with for TLJ’s performance without landing on “bad, alienating movie”?

Everyone is so clever these days 🙄.

Because being one of the top grossing films of all time is a bad performance. I still don't get this.

Force Awakens did as well as it did in a main part because it was the first Starwars film in over a decade. Last Jedi still did HUGE numbers, just not as much as an actual cultural milestone for incredibly obvious reasons. Someone can say that they didn't like the film, even say it was a bad film. But it was by no stretch a badly performing film.

[Peelee]

YOU said they were paid, not me.

No.
Because the only reason some one can have a differing opinion is if they are paid.
First off, Andeogeus put that forth first, not Devonix. Second, that clearly reads as sarcasm to me (and i believe to most other people here as well). Third, everyone who chimed in on the affirmative after that were unmistakably tongue in cheek.

https://pics.me.me/never-thought-id-die-fighting-side-by-side-with-an-5376465.png

[Devonix]

No.
First off, Andeogeus put that forth first, not Devonix. Second, that clearly reads as sarcasm to me (and i believe to most other people here as well). Third, everyone who chimed in on the affirmative after that were unmistakably tongue in cheek.

https://pics.me.me/never-thought-id-die-fighting-side-by-side-with-an-5376465.png


Thanks Peelee. People are allowed to like a movie, allowed to hate a movie. It's quality can be subjective in many ways. But the idea that people who enjoy something aren't really enjoying it. That they're pretending, or lying for some nefarious reason... That's far worse than just calling a movie bad. It's insulting the character of the other side.

[Psyren]

Because being one of the top grossing films of all time is a bad performance. I still don't get this.

Force Awakens did as well as it did in a main part because it was the first Starwars film in over a decade. Last Jedi still did HUGE numbers, just not as much as an actual cultural milestone for incredibly obvious reasons. Someone can say that they didn't like the film, even say it was a bad film. But it was by no stretch a badly performing film.

Yep.


Thanks Peelee. People are allowed to like a movie, allowed to hate a movie. It's quality can be subjective in many ways. But the idea that people who enjoy something aren't really enjoying it. That they're pretending, or lying for some nefarious reason... That's far worse than just calling a movie bad. It's insulting the character of the other side.

It's why I can't take the haters seriously. They always leap to some kind of conspiracy nutbar theory about Disney paying off reviewers or some clandestine cabal of SJW overlords that seek to run the critical side of Hollywood.

And when e9 does similarly well, you're going to hear "well, it may have made over a billion dollars again, but not in China!" and "It's because no Rian Johnson, the new trilogy still sux!"

[Palanan]

I have to say I’m mystified at some of the opinions here, or rather the perspectives underlying them.

I fully expect to be attacked from all sides for saying this, but I loved The Last Jedi, and I really liked Interstellar as well.

Clearly my perspective is different from some of the more vocal critics of these movies. I’ve been a fan of Star Wars since early childhood; I saw the original movies when they first came out in theaters, and somewhere in the garage I still have a box of all the first Star Wars figures. I even have the LP of the first Star Wars soundtrack that my parents got me for Christmas of 1977.

I’ve grown up loving these movies, and over the years I’ve come to appreciate them for what they are, flaws included, and what they aren’t. I have had plenty of conversations with friends about various aspects of these movies—but those conversations have generally been mellow and appreciative, with the exception of one or two Star Trek fans who took old rivalries a little too far.

But the raw hatred and venom I’ve been hearing over the past couple years is something new—and quite apart from the sheer unpleasantness, I’m just not sure exactly where it comes from. Strident criticism is one thing; but there is a tone of savage judgement, of pure righteous denunciation, that’s unlike anything I’ve heard before.

Now, I’m certainly familiar with movies which have profoundly disappointed my expectations. For me, the recent hobbit movies were an utter betrayal of my other childhood delight, which was my introduction to Middle-Earth through a charming and thoughtful little book. Seeing that perverted into a vastly bloated, utterly unnecessary “epic” was frustrating and painful, to the point that I never bothered to see the third movie in the theaters.

But I’m not perpetually angry about it. I’d rather just watch something else, or better yet write something of my own, rather than continually rehash how much I didn’t like it. But the hatred of The Last Jedi seems to have an unnatural staying power, to judge by how quickly almost every Star Wars thread quickly veers in that direction.

As I mentioned above, I expect to be attacked for acknowledging that I liked this movie, because attacking people who liked it seems to be part and parcel of attacking the movie itself. And that, too, is something that I genuinely don’t understand.

[137beth]

Yep.



It's why I can't take the haters seriously. They always leap to some kind of conspiracy nutbar theory about Disney paying off reviewers or some clandestine cabal of SJW overlords that seek to run the critical side of Hollywood.

And when e9 does similarly well, you're going to hear "well, it may have made over a billion dollars again, but not in China!" and "It's because no Rian Johnson, the new trilogy still sux!"

Also strange is that some people insist that the MCU movies must be good because of their high box office performance, but that TLJ is terrible in spite of its high box office performance. I haven't even seen TLJ (or TFA, or Solo, for that matter), and I certainly don't have an opinion about whether it is a good movie or not. But it definitely made money, and that is not a matter of opinion.

[Mystic Muse]

For what it's worth Palanan, I don't like TLJ at all. I will not see it again. Buf I won't attack anyone who does like it for doing so.

If Disney decides to make more movies like TLJ, I'll just take if as a sign Star Wars is no longer for me, stick to the stuff I DO like about it, and move on.

Star Wars doesn't have to be for me, and if enough people like TLJ, and similar things that come after, that's fine.

[Mordar]

For what it's worth Palanan, I don't like TLJ at all. I will not see it again. Buf I won't attack anyone who does like it for doing so.

If Disney decides to make more movies like TLJ, I'll just take if as a sign Star Wars is no longer for me, stick to the stuff I DO like about it, and move on.

Star Wars doesn't have to be for me, and if enough people like TLJ, and similar things that come after, that's fine.

I want Star Wars to be for me. I really liked The Force Awakens (for the most part...some I liked a lot, most I liked, and like 3 or 4 minutes of I didn't like). I thought Rogue One was fine, and I thought Solo was better than I expected.

I HATED The Last Jedi because I thought it was poorly written and executed *as a Star Wars movie*. The acting all seemed fine. The visuals and effects were good, but I thought it was by far the worst of the 10, and I desperately hope IX gets back to good.

I think the critical reviews were maybe more on technical merit and "innovation" (what many might see as subversion, self included) rather than a more fan-centric perspective. I think that long-haul fan review has certainly skewed downward as more people see it and the NEW SW MOVIE OMG! effect wears off (I remembered loving Phantom Menace leaving the theater...and then watched it again a couple weeks later and started to revise my opinion).

I do believe that writers/directors who sign on to franchises or licensed properties should approach the project differently than de novo projects...at least until they have banked an enormous amount of credibility in the field/genre. I don't think Johnson has anywhere near what it takes to helm a franchise project, and that's why I hope he doesn't get any more of them.

- M

[Zevox]

Thanks Peelee. People are allowed to like a movie, allowed to hate a movie. It's quality can be subjective in many ways. But the idea that people who enjoy something aren't really enjoying it. That they're pretending, or lying for some nefarious reason... That's far worse than just calling a movie bad. It's insulting the character of the other side.
Going to chime in to concur with that statement from the other side of the coin. I don't like TLJ to the point where I no longer care enough to want to see Episode 9, but I also think it ridiculous to conclude that people who say they liked it, whether they be normal fans or critics, are lying, unless you have some pretty concrete evidence of that.


For what it's worth Palanan, I don't like TLJ at all. I will not see it again. Buf I won't attack anyone who does like it for doing so.

If Disney decides to make more movies like TLJ, I'll just take if as a sign Star Wars is no longer for me, stick to the stuff I DO like about it, and move on.

Star Wars doesn't have to be for me, and if enough people like TLJ, and similar things that come after, that's fine.
Same. At this point, my attitude is, I'm skipping episode 9 - aside from hoping Kylo Ren gets killed so we can have better villains going forward, I don't care what happens in it. I'm still going to see the "A Star Wars Story" films, because I liked Rogue One and found Solo decent, so those still strike me as worth my time. Whether I go to see whatever comes after episode 9 in the main series remains to be seen and depends on what that turns out to be. If it's a bunch of Rian Johnson films that all come across as similar to TLJ in terms of quality, oh well, guess mainline Star Wars isn't for me anymore.

[Peelee]

Going to chime in to concur with that statement from the other side of the coin. I don't like TLJ to the point where I no longer care enough to want to see Episode 9, but I also think it ridiculous to conclude that people who say they liked it, whether they be normal fans or critics, are lying, unless you have some pretty concrete evidence of that.


Same. At this point, my attitude is, I'm skipping episode 9 - aside from hoping Kylo Ren gets killed so we can have better villains going forward, I don't care what happens in it. I'm still going to see the "A Star Wars Story" films, because I liked Rogue One and found Solo decent, so those still strike me as worth my time. Whether I go to see whatever comes after episode 9 in the main series remains to be seen and depends on what that turns out to be. If it's a bunch of Rian Johnson films that all come across as similar to TLJ in terms of quality, oh well, guess mainline Star Wars isn't for me anymore.

Remind me to let you know how it is, if you're interested.

[Zevox]

Remind me to let you know how it is, if you're interested.
You mean episode 9? Eh, not really. Unless I hear surprisingly high praise for it from people who also disliked TLJ for similar reasons to me, I'm pretty set in my decision here. I don't care one way or the other about the new heroes, actively dislike the new villains, and all the legacy characters I cared about are either dead or, in Leia's case, inevitably have to die in E9. There's just nothing about the state of the story after TLJ that appeals to me in any way.

[Peelee]

You mean episode 9? Eh, not really. Unless I hear surprisingly high praise for it from people who also disliked TLJ for similar reasons to me

That's what I was getting at, really. I just have a horrible memory and will likely forget to let you know if I love it.

[Zevox]

That's what I was getting at, really. I just have a horrible memory and will likely forget to let you know if I love it.
Well, if you're going to post about it here, I'm sure I'll see if you do. I'll be watching the reaction thread here I'm sure - partially for the off chance it winds up unexpectedly good, mostly out of curiosity whether the general reaction will be closer to TFA because it's Abrams or to TLJ because it's building on that foundation.

[Peelee]

Well, if you're going to post about it here, I'm sure I'll see if you do. I'll be watching the reaction thread here I'm sure - partially for the off chance it winds up unexpectedly good, mostly out of curiosity whether the general reaction will be closer to TFA because it's Abrams or to TLJ because it's building on that foundation.

Well, that works out well then!

[Sapphire Guard]

I don't think the hate is new, the PT got it in spades. But at that stage it was just unrelenting hate, whereas this time it's more of a civil war. There wasn't nearly as much resistance to things like calling Lucas a rapist and such. Unless anyone would like to correct me?

In terms of objective truth, we don't really know. TLJ did perform slightly under expectations, but 1.4 billion is nothing close to a failure any way you try to look at it. Solo underperformed, but I don't think that necessarily had much to do with TLJ. There was nothing in the trailer that made me want to go see Solo. But I'd totally go and see a Kenobi film on the name alone.

Supposing Star Wars films do underperform, that might even be part of the plan. Disney could easily prefer regular somewhat profitable instalments to absurdly profitable but rare new movies.

I have issues with the ST, I find them dishonest, but any and all namecalling and abuse is unacceptable conduct. TLJ feels like it was set up for a fall by TFA to me, and Rian et al are getting abuse they don't deserve.

To get (somewhat) back on topic, I don't think the GotG model would work for Star Wars. Too quippy and self aware.

[Kyberwulf]

The thing about "Star Wars Fatigue", is that it's not that so many are coming out in such a short time. I mean for one, you can't really compare the movies franchises of MCU and Star Wars.

I mean one set of movies have been out for almost 3 times as long. Of course, I am talking about movies, not other tie ins.

I think "Star Wars fatigue" is pertaining to just... the conflicts around the movies that almost always comes with the movies. I mean you had the prequel movies, had so much going on. Even now, they have some haters. Now with the new sets of movies. You always seem to have to defend you reasons for liking, or disliking the movies.

I mean, due to the high levels of Nostalgia, the Old moves now seem to have reached some level of Mythic Legendary status. Which, they aren't.. really that amazing. I mean for the time, the technical show was really amazing. The plots are pretty solid, and the acting is alright. I think they were just one of those things that people wanted to see, and it did it job pretty well.

I know a lot of people are going to say I am wrong, and the OG series was amazing. I just don't think so anymore. I think about those movies like I think of G.I. Joe, Thundercats, He-man, and old nintendo games. They were great for the time. I just can't look back anymore, and say there are some masterpieces anymore.

[GloatingSwine]

Solo underperformed, but I don't think that necessarily had much to do with TLJ.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that releasing Solo into an absolutely packed couple of months, with Infinity War, Deadpool 2, Incredibles 2, and Jurassic World all coming out between the end of April and the end of June was calculated.

My guess is that its production troubles caused the studio to lose faith and they buried it in a dead slot they knew nobody would notice.

[Mordar]

Supposing Star Wars films do underperform, that might even be part of the plan. Disney could easily prefer regular somewhat profitable instalments to absurdly profitable but rare new movies.

I for one would like to see more non-blockbuster movies in general, and Star Wars in particular...something done technically well but without the need to make it make $1.4B and be "underperforming". That would allow more exploration, more themes, more things we never knew we never knew. It might also allow for some bombs...and some real gems that didn't have to make it through committee before being approved.


The thing about "Star Wars Fatigue", is that it's not that so many are coming out in such a short time. I mean for one, you can't really compare the movies franchises of MCU and Star Wars.

I mean one set of movies have been out for almost 3 times as long. Of course, I am talking about movies, not other tie ins.

I think "Star Wars fatigue" is pertaining to just... the conflicts around the movies that almost always comes with the movies. I mean you had the prequel movies, had so much going on. Even now, they have some haters. Now with the new sets of movies. You always seem to have to defend you reasons for liking, or disliking the movies.

I'll buy that to some degree...that the conflict we have seen post-TFA and post-TLJ continues to escalate and makes some things less fun...but the production house using "fatigue" as an excuse for the underperformance of a product is deflection and hardly evaluative.

I HATED TLJ. I believe many of the reasons I disliked it are legitimate, and it muted my interest in Solo. Production issues, reshoots and acting coaches further muted my interest. I did not see Solo in the first month of release. I liked it better than I expected to.

Should there be a new Star Wars movie each month from now until next summer, and each were at least as good as Solo, I would go to each and every one.

My delay in seeing Solo (which does impact the studio's take, by the way) was not fatigue. It was a direct result of the last product they put in front of me and factual issues surrounding the new product. (Remember, if you will, that I liked TFA).


I mean, due to the high levels of Nostalgia, the Old moves now seem to have reached some level of Mythic Legendary status. Which, they aren't.. really that amazing. I mean for the time, the technical show was really amazing. The plots are pretty solid, and the acting is alright. I think they were just one of those things that people wanted to see, and it did it job pretty well.

I know a lot of people are going to say I am wrong, and the OG series was amazing. I just don't think so anymore. I think about those movies like I think of G.I. Joe, Thundercats, He-man, and old nintendo games. They were great for the time. I just can't look back anymore, and say there are some masterpieces anymore.

This is a soap-box issue of mine. I'll try not to stand on it too long.

Without Star Wars there isn't [insert tons of stuff here]*. No big-screen Sci-Fi or fantasy like LotR, Indiana Jones, Matrix, MCU and so on. No TV like Battlestar, St:TNG/DS9/Voyager (well...that would have been okay IMO)/etc and so on.

Star Wars was seminal in major motion picture special effects, science fiction/fantasy, universe building, scoring...and probably a lot more. (No, not seminal in dialogue...that's for sure). It is the shoulders on which future successes stood. The sequels have continued to innovate, if at a lesser level and pace. Even the hated Jar Jar represents giant technical growth (and I hate the hell out of Jar Jar).

Star Wars (screw the "A New Hope" thing :smallyuk:) was also 1977. Forty-one years ago. Of course it doesn't look like much to someone born in the 1990s. Those of us (Kyberwulf included, I suspect) that have seen it a bijillion times can be extra critical because of familiarity...we see tiny wrinkles that we'd like to iron out. That doesn't diminish the value, though. Greedo shooting first, on the other hand...

Consider this: There are probably well over a million people on this planet that could replicate or even improve on Rembrandt's "The Night Watch". That doesn't diminish it or reduce it from "master piece" quality. Star Wars as executed in 1977 was probably more innovative and advanced than The Night Watch (my favorite of the period), simply because there were others even in 1642 that were producing similar quality, if smaller, works. A Koln Cathedral or Notre Dame could be tossed up in a few months in this day and age. They are classical buildings because of when they were erected in the history of architecture. Star Wars is a classical/seminal sci-fi film because of when it was created in the history of film. Its technical merits may have been exceeded, but that doesn't diminish what it means to the industry and to this fan.

- M

* - Yes, I know, something else might have come along to take its place, but there's no certainty of when that would have been. It might have been so late that we'd only now be getting the Flash Gordon movie, and there'd be no Queen for the soundtrack

[Aotrs Commander]

Same. At this point, my attitude is, I'm skipping episode 9 - aside from hoping Kylo Ren gets killed so we can have better villains going forward, I don't care what happens in it. I'm still going to see the "A Star Wars Story" films, because I liked Rogue One and found Solo decent, so those still strike me as worth my time. Whether I go to see whatever comes after episode 9 in the main series remains to be seen and depends on what that turns out to be. If it's a bunch of Rian Johnson films that all come across as similar to TLJ in terms of quality, oh well, guess mainline Star Wars isn't for me anymore.

They lost me, really, at the Force Awakens (and with Rebels, to be honest, when they slapped another couple of Jedi in).

None of the subsequent films appealed to me enough to go watch - the trailer for TLJ didn't even excite me with the prospect of starship combat. Me!

(Though this is probably as well for other cinema goers, since me screaming about how gravity feed bombs don't work in space and rocket launchering the screen probably wouldn't have gone down well; that's probably a bigger deal to me than Han or Luke...!)

Transformers did the same, actually. I watched one through three at the cinema and i have all three on DVD, but I have only watched the first and have no inclination to watch any more.

[Olinser]

Yep.



It's why I can't take the haters seriously. They always leap to some kind of conspiracy nutbar theory about Disney paying off reviewers or some clandestine cabal of SJW overlords that seek to run the critical side of Hollywood.

And when e9 does similarly well, you're going to hear "well, it may have made over a billion dollars again, but not in China!" and "It's because no Rian Johnson, the new trilogy still sux!"

And thats why you can't take them seriously - because you strawman and project things that haven't actually been said. Namely that people are claiming there is a vast 'conspiracy' paying off reviewers - LITERALLY THE ONLY PEOPLE CLAIMING THAT HERE ARE PEOPLE SAYING IT ISN'T POSSIBLE, or a 'clandestine cabal'. There's no 'cabal', YOU are saying that. There's a lot of people independently doing it - and if they'd actually coordinated initially its actually more likely they would have given lower reviews because they would have realized they weren't outside the norm. The power of peer pressure is real.

They gave good reviews to a movie that didn't deserve it because A) they wanted to see it succeed because they like the message it was pushing B) they ASSUMED it would be well received because Star Wars and they didn't want to face backlash for saying a good Star Wars movie was bad.

And the fans were the same way. INITIAL reviews of Last Jedi were significantly higher than reviews after a few weeks. As time goes by the audience score gets lower and lower as fewer people are willing to defend it.

You see this to some degree with Marvel right now as well - if you compare 'good' reviews of their movies and the actual scores they get, the actual scores are lower than you'd expect with the extremely high % positive reviews of movies after the last couple years. People just assume that Marvel makes good movies now - they're in a Catch 22 of winning as long as they make 7 or 8 out of 10 movies.

And the exact same thing happened with Phantom Menace. Fans gave it an A- cinemascore, early reviews were high and everybody was gushing about how awesome it was. For a few weeks. Then people realized that it actually WASN'T uber popular, there were some serious problems with the movie that they weren't initially willing to admit, and a whole lot of people were only saying it was great because they didn't want to be the ones to rag on Star Wars. As soon as the dam broke the floodgates opened and people let things like Jar Jar and Anakin's performance and the.... less than stellar plot have it with interest.

[Zevox]

They lost me, really, at the Force Awakens (and with Rebels, to be honest, when they slapped another couple of Jedi in).
Eh, I found TFA disappointing for sure, but I think the sequels were still salvageable after that. Episode 8 needed to do some work showing that it could tell a story that didn't rehash the originals and improving on the characters in various ways, but that could have been done. It wasn't, but it could have been.

And I personally liked Rebels on the whole. Oh there's parts of it I dislike to be sure (Zeb acting like a child in the first couple of seasons, Chopper in general, helicopter lightsabers, Maul, the ending...), but on the balance I found it enjoyable, which definitely includes both Ezra and (especially) Kanan as characters.

[Olinser]

Eh, I found TFA disappointing for sure, but I think the sequels were still salvageable after that. Episode 8 needed to do some work showing that it could tell a story that didn't rehash the originals and improving on the characters in various ways, but that could have been done. It wasn't, but it could have been.

And I personally liked Rebels on the whole. Oh there's parts of it I dislike to be sure (Zeb acting like a child in the first couple of seasons, Chopper in general, helicopter lightsabers, Maul, the ending...), but on the balance I found it enjoyable, which definitely includes both Ezra and (especially) Kanan as characters.

Oh, sure. I wasn't the biggest fan of TFA, but it was an acceptable starting point for the franchise. Plenty of setup for potential future payoffs had happened, a whole bunch of hanging plot threads were there for resolution in a number of ways, the characters definitely had some problems - Rey being ridiculously overpowered, Finn being a generic plot device rather than a real character with character development, and Kylo being a borderline whiny emo rather than actually imposing and threatening, but that could have all been worked out with a good sequel. You had a lot of potential there - Snoke hadn't actually been a real character on screen yet, the Resistance vs Order in the vacuum created by the destruction of the Republic could have been explored, the whole history of Kylo, the Knights of Ren and why he went crazy and destroyed the Jedi Academy, 1and there was plenty of room for Rey and Finn to get some character growth.

Instead Johnson decided to throw Abrams story in the trash, doubled down on everything bad about TFA, went for spectacle over any kind of substance, and introduced pointless new characters while killing off major characters in the setting and relegating the existing characters to plot devices when he wasn't 'subverting expectations' by turning them into caricatures of themselves. I mean seriously - my brain literally can't comprehend how they thought it was a good idea to kill off Snoke in the 2nd movie in a trilogy when he still hadn't actually gotten any kind of development as a character.

[Cikomyr]

Star Wars fatigue is only a thing, in my opinion, if they are not careful in managing the types of stories and feels they make. Not sure where TLJ stands about that - its both too familiar and too different - but a good comparison point would be to consider the "Superhero fatigue" thing, which people keeps claiming is happening, and yet we just had two of the most successful Marvel movies in their history.

Superhero fatigue is.. Iron Man 2. Thor The Dark World. Age of Ultron. Its making a movie without having a objective where you want to go with it. Its making a movie because you need to generate the income, not because you have a story to tell.

Compare The Dark World with Ragnarok. Or hell, just consider the Captain America sequels, who all shook the status quo and made true original tales within their genre. Nobody claimed Superhero fatigue when Winter Soldier or Civil War came a knockin'.

Well, Star Wars should seek that. Rogue One was a fantastic start to this. A grey tale of grey people, who proves that even the shady members of a rebellion can be true hero. Its not a perfect movie - faaaaar from it - but it had its story to tell damnit, and it did brilliantly.

Solo. What the **** was Solo's story? Solo had his character arc during A New Hope, goddamnit. Why make a prequel about the guy who had his shining moment LATER in his life?

[Devonix]

Star Wars fatigue is only a thing, in my opinion, if they are not careful in managing the types of stories and feels they make. Not sure where TLJ stands about that - its both too familiar and too different - but a good comparison point would be to consider the "Superhero fatigue" thing, which people keeps claiming is happening, and yet we just had two of the most successful Marvel movies in their history.

Superhero fatigue is.. Iron Man 2. Thor The Dark World. Age of Ultron. Its making a movie without having a objective where you want to go with it. Its making a movie because you need to generate the income, not because you have a story to tell.

Compare The Dark World with Ragnarok. Or hell, just consider the Captain America sequels, who all shook the status quo and made true original tales within their genre. Nobody claimed Superhero fatigue when Winter Soldier or Civil War came a knockin'.

Well, Star Wars should seek that. Rogue One was a fantastic start to this. A grey tale of grey people, who proves that even the shady members of a rebellion can be true hero. Its not a perfect movie - faaaaar from it - but it had its story to tell damnit, and it did brilliantly.

Solo. What the **** was Solo's story? Solo had his character arc during A New Hope, goddamnit. Why make a prequel about the guy who had his shining moment LATER in his life?

I've mellowed on Rogue One. I still think it's a really really bad film. But I also see how it can help the franchise. It's a film that some people seem to really like. And that's ok. If Starwars can branch out and make films that aren't for me. it's ok, as long as I still get the ones I do like. It just means that I won't be watching Starwars as a franchise, and just pick which ones I want to see.

[Legato Endless]

I don't know why anyone who has a public profile on the internet and a genuine love of Star Wars would want to make a film. The fanbase is fractured enough that no matter what you make a minimum of thousands will devote large amounts of time hating you for treading on the franchise.

Lucas was smart to take the money and duck out of a no win scenario.

[Peelee]

Lucas was smart to take the money and duck out of a no win scenario.

Lucas's brain: "OK, I've finally figured this out. I take the money and bow out gracefully. I take zero heat for this, if anyone doesn't like the deal they'll blame Disney. This is about as sure a thing as I'll ever get, there's no way anyone will think 'oh goddammit George,' it's almost impossible to mess up."

Lucas's mouth: "I sold Star Wars to white slavers."

Lucas's brain: "OH GODDAMMIT GEORGE!"

[LaZodiac]

At this stage Rian Johnson getting ANYTHING else from Star Wars, much less a full trilogy, is incredibly unlikely, especially since as we get further away from release more and more shills are finally willing to admit that yeah, Last Jedi was just plain not a good movie.

From Johnson ludicrously getting complete creative control and immediately throwing JJ Abrams draft script in the trash, to his arrogant and aggressive assault on the fan base that don't like the movie, Johnson has pretty conclusively proved that he should never get handed a major budge movie from ANY studio, much less an entire trilogy.

Droppin' by to say this is the first instance of anyone mentioning in this thread about reviewers being paid off.

You've completely misunderstood why Ryan Johnson said the things he did and explaining it will accomplish nothing so I'll just leave it at that.

[Olinser]

Droppin' by to say this is the first instance of anyone mentioning in this thread about reviewers being paid off.

You've completely misunderstood why Ryan Johnson said the things he did and explaining it will accomplish nothing so I'll just leave it at that.

Calling somebody a shill is not claiming they were being paid. Shilling is most commonly NOT paid, but its somebody knows that the product/service they are endorsing isn't very good, but they have an interest in pushing whatever is being sold. These days its far more often to be shilling because they buy into the agenda or political message. In-story character shilling is also very common - when writers pet characters get introduced they have all of the existing beloved characters gush about how awesome amazing they are at everything they do. It was originally known as Shilling the Wesley because on Star Trek TNG everybody gushed about how amazing Wesley was at everything he did despite several of the problems he 'solved' being caused by him n the first place.

And I haven't misunderstood anything. Rian Johnson couldn't take criticism and responded by lashing out at his critics, insulting the fan base repeatedly over a large period of time - seriously people have put together entire compilations of him calling the entire fanbase 'haters' and 'manbabies', which seemed to be his favorite insults among many.

Frankly Rian Johnson reminds me of Uwe Boll. All he's missing is an announcement that he's 'the only ****ing genius in Hollywood' and demanding to fight his critics.

[Dr.Samurai]

Clever enough to think that there is a massive conspiracy among critics to make a movie seem good?
Who cares? I can understand why people didn't like the movie. I can explain why I thought the movie was awful. I don't need to do mental gymnastics to hold the views that I do.

You tell me that you liked it and explain why, and I take you at your word. I don't need to invent something like "star wars fatigue" or "russian bots hacked Rotten Tomatoes".

Because being one of the top grossing films of all time is a bad performance.

I still don't get this.
Someone mentioned the drop-off percentage at the box office. Someone else explained that as Star Wars fatigue. I didn't say it performed "bad"ly, you said the word "bad". I think that's your confusion there.

But the idea that people who enjoy something aren't really enjoying it. That they're pretending, or lying for some nefarious reason... That's far worse than just calling a movie bad. It's insulting the character of the other side.
But the idea that people who criticize something aren't really honest; that they're racists, or bigots for some nefarious reason... that's far worse than just calling a movie amazing. It's insulting the character of the other side.

But the hatred of The Last Jedi seems to have an unnatural staying power, to judge by how quickly almost every Star Wars thread quickly veers in that direction.

As I mentioned above, I expect to be attacked for acknowledging that I liked this movie, because attacking people who liked it seems to be part and parcel of attacking the movie itself. And that, too, is something that I genuinely don’t understand.
The fanbase has been divided. Your experience, or lack of maybe, has been very different to mine. You don't get attacked for "liking" the movie. You get props for liking the movie. You actually get attacked for not liking the movie. And even better, people will tell you exactly why you don't like the movie. Reasons range through:

1. You suffer from hero worship.
2. You hate women.
3. You want the same old thing all the time.
4. You're a racist.
5. You actually are incapable of being pleased.
6. You're lashing out because it's no longer about you.
7. You're a troll actually and just arguing for the sake of it.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some. But yeah, the bad feelings are lingering, because a large portion of the fanbase was outright attacked and accused of some heinous stuff by people that should know better. I mean... you spend so much time on an internet forum, you should know that it doesn't take much to collect some tweets, write a vapid article in ten seconds, and blam! you have your headline "toxic star wars fans are racist and sexist". And instead of knowing better, a large portion of the fanbase swallowed the BS and asked for more. So yeah, will people be salty when they're told the reason they don't like some pretty ****ty star wars movies is because they're closet racists and misogynists? I think the answer is pretty obvious. It's actually surprising and a little disturbing that people in this thread are painting fans of the movies as some sort of victims given the way critics of the movie have been treated online by just about... everyone else. And I don't say that as someone that considers himself a victim, but as someone who wants to point out the very obvious, plain as day reason why the fanbase is divided on this still.

Don't be confused about this. You go around calling people racists and sexists and constantly guessing at their thoughts and motivations, you're going to upset people. It's not rocket science.

[Psyren]

I'm utterly baffled by the folks who think the supporters of the movie are the aggressors here. We're not the ones who drove Kelly Marie Tran off social media (https://www.salon.com/2018/06/08/the-treatment-of-kelly-marie-tran-exposes-the-worst-elements-of-fandom_partner/) with death threats and trolling. We're also not the ones who went out and wasted a bunch of time creating a "de-feminized" edit (http://digg.com/2018/last-jedi-mra-no-women-fans) of the entire movie. We didn't go out and create Down With Disney either. Certainly I don't think everyone who hates the movie falls into these camps, but those are nevertheless the folks the pro-TLJ thinkpieces are primarily responding to, very much reactively.

And to the folks who see JJ Abrams as some kind of "savior" who will somehow salvage the franchise from Rian Johnson, he seems pretty clear on what he thinks the source of the backlash (https://ew.com/movies/2018/02/17/jj-abrams-star-wars-backlash-threatened-by-women/) was too, so it's worth considering if he's that chosen one after all.

[Dr.Samurai]

Why do any work when Psyren will just prove my point for me :smallamused:.

[Olinser]

I'm utterly baffled by the folks who think the supporters of the movie are the aggressors here. We're not the ones who drove Kelly Marie Tran off social media (https://www.salon.com/2018/06/08/the-treatment-of-kelly-marie-tran-exposes-the-worst-elements-of-fandom_partner/) with death threats and trolling. We're also not the ones who went out and wasted a bunch of time creating a "de-feminized" edit (http://digg.com/2018/last-jedi-mra-no-women-fans) of the entire movie. We didn't go out and create Down With Disney either. Certainly I don't think everyone who hates the movie falls into these camps, but those are nevertheless the folks the pro-TLJ thinkpieces are primarily responding to, very much reactively.

And to the folks who see JJ Abrams as some kind of "savior" who will somehow salvage the franchise from Rian Johnson, he seems pretty clear on what he thinks the source of the backlash (https://ew.com/movies/2018/02/17/jj-abrams-star-wars-backlash-threatened-by-women/) was too, so it's worth considering if he's that chosen one after all.

Oh look, its more BS false equivalency of smearing the fan base and acting like you're not. As far as Tran goes - I was initially sympathetic, but at this point I just plain DON'T CARE. Stop acting like her quitting Instagram means you have a license to smear millions of fans. Nobody cares, EVERYBODY that has an online presence is trolled, absolutely no evidence has been provided that this so-called trolling was unusual or even existed (as people have posted screenshots of her timeline before quitting showing NOTHING unusual), so stop trying to use it as a shield from criticism of the movie and the terrible MESS of a character that was Rose Tico.

Yeah, they created a de-feminized version. So what? People created de-Jar Jarified and de-Anakinized versions of the Phantom Menace 15 years ago. After having Kennedy's The Force is Female BS pushed in their faces, insulted for months, fans hit back. Admiral Gender Studies was one of the worst written characters I've seen in years, but isn't unequivocally the worse thing with the movie because Rose Tico and Benicio Del Plot Contrivance existed. The character shouldn't have even existed in the first place, Leia should have been in command and Finn should have been doing something actually useful - and if they were going to take Leia out Ackbar should have been in command. Nope. Leia is Space Jesus and falls into a Coma of Plot, Ackbar is killed off screen. Then Rose contributes nothing useful to the plot, and takes away time that SHOULD have been spent on letting Finn have character development and growth and meaningfully affect the plot. Instead they tossed in a pointless duel with Phasma that accomplished nothing but killing off a criminally under-utilized character in Phasma.

And yes. Down With Disney exists. It's almost like people are tired of being smeared as 'man babies', 'haters', 'toxic', and told they didn't need fans like them.

And I actually agree, Abrams isn't the savior. Disney THINKS he's the savior, but Abrams is the king of 7 out of 10 reboots of properties that have large existing fan bases. I don't think ANYBODY could salvage the mess Johnson left, but given his track record Abrams definitely won't given the existing state of the franchise. It's a demonstration that Disney is aware that SOMETHING needs to change but is only vaguely aware of what the problem is.

[Androgeus]

Sounds like confirmation bias on both sides to me.

[Cikomyr]

Sounds like confirmation bias on both sides to me.

Lets call a Gamergate and agree never to talk about it again? ;)

[LaZodiac]

I extremely enjoy how the reaction to all that pretty clear cut evidence of people harassing Loan and the rest of the crew is effectively "aha, my face is bleeding, making me the victor".

Let me put it this way; if someone says "the haters of this film harassed an actor off social media" and your response is "you're painting a bad picture of people who just didn't like the film" you're missing the obviously implication that, of course, we are not referring to the people who just disliked the film. But for sooome reason, you sure seem to think it applies to you, specifically. You don't see Mystic Muse or whoever reacting with "hey don't say people who hate the film are harassers". They're smart enough to realize that doesn't refer to them.

[Cikomyr]

SO GUYS

Do you think James Gunn would do good things with Star Wars? Obviously if you didnt liked GotG, you wont. But for those who do;

His movies pulled off solid character chemistry, epic adventure, scum characters and still have a solid emotional core that, i think, is key to really good Star Wars. I still get shivers at the final "take my hand". So much that it makes me not mind at all the corny "We are the Guardians of the Galaxy"

[Devonix]

SO GUYS

Do you think James Gunn would do good things with Star Wars? Obviously if you didnt liked GotG, you wont. But for those who do;

His movies pulled off solid character chemistry, epic adventure, scum characters and still have a solid emotional core that, i think, is key to really good Star Wars. I still get shivers at the final "take my hand". So much that it makes me not mind at all the corny "We are the Guardians of the Galaxy"

Could James Gunn make a good Starwars film. Sure. I'd love him to do a Tales from Jabba's Palace style film.

[Olinser]

I extremely enjoy how the reaction to all that pretty clear cut evidence of people harassing Loan and the rest of the crew is effectively "aha, my face is bleeding, making me the victor".

Let me put it this way; if someone says "the haters of this film harassed an actor off social media" and your response is "you're painting a bad picture of people who just didn't like the film" you're missing the obviously implication that, of course, we are not referring to the people who just disliked the film. But for sooome reason, you sure seem to think it applies to you, specifically. You don't see Mystic Muse or whoever reacting with "hey don't say people who hate the film are harassers". They're smart enough to realize that doesn't refer to them.

If, as you claim, it doesn't apply to anybody here, then why was it brought up. And why is it brought up EVERY SINGLE TIME a discussion about Last Jedi takes place. Oh, that's right, it was brought up here just like every other time its brought up - to claim that people that don't like the movie contributed to the harassment and they have to prove they aren't harassers.

It has ZERO RELEVANCE to discussion of the film. And yet literally not a single discussion about Last Jedi can take place without somebody whining OMG KELLY TRAN GOT HARASSED OFF SOCIAL MEDIA. And then if you try to answer that they either scream OH MY GOD YOU'RE A HARASSER AND SUPPORT HARASSMENT, or they snidely say they weren't refering to YOU, but if you object then you must be one of THEM. Like you just did.

And here you are. Doing the same predictable thing. Again. 'Oh SOME PEOPLE' are smart enough to realize it doesn't refer to 'them'. So we're just not allowed to respond unless we're one of 'them'. We're just supposed to sit here and accept the smear that fans harassed an actress because they didn't like the movie. No. Just no. You don't get to smear a fanbase based on vague claims about 'harassment', and you certainly don't get to imply that just because I refuse to accept it that I'm one of 'them'.

I repeat. What sympathy I had has been long worn out by people like you trying to use that BS again and again and again as a shield against criticism of the movie and of the character of Rose Tico.

[Peelee]

If, as you claim, it doesn't apply to anybody here, then why was it brought up. And why is it brought up EVERY SINGLE TIME a discussion about Last Jedi takes place.

Because it's a REALLY BIG DEAL. This shouldn't be happening. People shouldn't be getting death threats or harassment campaigns because they wrote a story that some people didn't like, or acted in the same. Of course it's not representative of everyone who disliked it, but it's absolutely the most important thing to address and work against, because this actually affects peoples lives.

[Devonix]

Because it's a REALLY BIG DEAL. This shouldn't be happening. People shouldn't be getting death threats or harassment campaigns because they wrote a story that some people didn't like, or acted in the same. Of course it's not representative of everyone who disliked it, but it's absolutely the most important thing to address and work against, because this actually affects peoples lives.

I have lots of friends who disliked the film. And you know what? When I'm complaining about the harassment and terrible things that people are doing. They don't automatically assume I'm ignoring their complaints with the film.

Just because you're talking about people doing bad things, doesn't mean that it's all you're talking about. Unfortunatly, you REALLY need to talk about those bad things.

It also keeps getting brought up, because every time the film gets discussed even when it has no baring on the conversation. Like how it started here. Because people keep saying that the one side is insulting the other side by calling them all bigots And then we get bogged down explaining that No No one is calling you that. So relax.

[zimmerwald1915]

Because it's a REALLY BIG DEAL. This shouldn't be happening. People shouldn't be getting death threats or harassment campaigns because they wrote a story that some people didn't like, or acted in the same.
This is a thing fandoms have always done, ever since they successfully drafted Arthur Conan Doyle's mom into their campaign to resurrect Sherlock Holmes. It's not going to stop until fans are all rounded up and put into camps in Wyoming or or Siberia or wherever. Which would be great, don't get me wrong, but I don't think anyone has the stomach for it.

[Keltest]

I have lots of friends who disliked the film. And you know what? When I'm complaining about the harassment and terrible things that people are doing. They don't automatically assume I'm ignoring their complaints with the film.

Just because you're talking about people doing bad things, doesn't mean that it's all you're talking about. Unfortunatly, you REALLY need to talk about those bad things.

It also keeps getting brought up, because every time the film gets discussed even when it has no baring on the conversation. Like how it started here. Because people keep saying that the one side is insulting the other side by calling them all bigots And then we get bogged down explaining that No No one is calling you that. So relax.

If youre going to divide the issue into two sides (and yes, "all the people who like TLJ are shills" counts), you need to own the fact that a non-trivial portion of the people in your side are absolutely terrible. To do otherwise, or worse try to stifle awareness of that fact, is tantamount to endorsing their behavior.

[Peelee]

I have lots of friends who disliked the film. And you know what? When I'm complaining about the harassment and terrible things that people are doing. They don't automatically assume I'm ignoring their complaints with the film.

Just because you're talking about people doing bad things, doesn't mean that it's all you're talking about. Unfortunatly, you REALLY need to talk about those bad things.

It also keeps getting brought up, because every time the film gets discussed even when it has no baring on the conversation. Like how it started here. Because people keep saying that the one side is insulting the other side by calling them all bigots And then we get bogged down explaining that No No one is calling you that. So relax.
Exactly. If we're all in a house, I don't like the layout or the furniture, and the house starts burning down, the proper response to people yelling "FIRE!" is not "stop accusing me of arson!"

[Olinser]

If youre going to divide the issue into two sides (and yes, "all the people who like TLJ are shills" counts), you need to own the fact that a non-trivial portion of the people in your side are absolutely terrible. To do otherwise, or worse try to stifle awareness of that fact, is tantamount to endorsing their behavior.

Ah yes. There it is again. I'm now REQUIRED to agree that a large portion of the fan base is 'absolutely terrible' or I'm 'endorsing their behavior'.

Same predictable claims, AGAIN.

No.

YOU prove that it A) happened, and B) was done by a 'non-trivial' portion of people. You can't. All you have are vague claims of 'harassment' with no actual evidence.

[Daimbert]

Because it's a REALLY BIG DEAL. This shouldn't be happening. People shouldn't be getting death threats or harassment campaigns because they wrote a story that some people didn't like, or acted in the same. Of course it's not representative of everyone who disliked it, but it's absolutely the most important thing to address and work against, because this actually affects peoples lives.

Sure, but does that mean that you have to bring it up in any discussion about the critics of the new Star Wars trilogy? What purpose can it serve other than to try to represent the Star Wars fanbase as being toxic or, rather, PARTICULARLY toxic, and through that diminish their concerns and criticisms?

What most of the people here, at least, have been reacting badly to are the implications that if you don't like the movies then it's because you're racist, sexist, regressive, a Gamergater, alt-Right, whatever, when the simple fact of the matter that the movies are, at best, not very good. In fact, I'd say that objectively they're pretty bad. And objectively they don't seem to capture the spirit of the original movies at all, and they also seem to be doing that while trying to tap into the current cultural debate over representation, as even the people producing them flat-out say, in tones ranging from enthusiastic about their new course to utterly condemning of anyone that might challenge their vision. There are a lot of legitimate reasons to both dislike them and to think that part of the problem is a focus on agendas that don't line up well with the series.

That being said, it is entirely possible to like things that aren't very good. I'm rewatching all of the previous He-Man series and found myself liking the poorly animated and often clunky voiced original series the best, despite its flaws. I like the original BSG series better than the remake, so much so that it isn't even close despite ITS flaws. Here, people might like at least the perception of it doing something different or something more than the original Star Wars series did. Some people might indeed LIKE the inclusion and find that that appeals to them. I'm not here to tell people what to like or not like. But there are lots of reasons to find the new movies annoying other than being opposed to that agenda, and retreating to "Well, look at the bad things that some fans are doing" is always at best a distraction and at worst an attempt to derail and slur the people who think the movie sucks.

That being said, a big part of the problem is the culture war that's going on now and the impact that might have on various media. Neither side wants the other to "win" and make movies and culture over into their vision. I can sympathize, because I also don't want to see the extremes of EITHER side win because the extreme views on both sides absolutely suck. But in this context even innocuous statements often get interpreted as signalling more than they actually do, to the detriment of any possible discussion. We can't even get into how a subconscious bias against making the heroine seem weak might hurt the movie because they can't let her fail, even as she does stupid or dangerous things without bringing in the "You don't like female main characters!" response which might even be true and even be true unconsciously at times but is not the first response someone that might be acting in good faith should get. And Star Wars and even the media is just a reflection of what is happening in politics and pretty much every other field.

So, yes, it's important to talk about it, but when you use it in the context of disagreements over the movie it doesn't really seem relevant, and that leads people to think you have a reason for doing so, and then things always get worse.

[Keltest]

Ah yes. There it is again. I'm now REQUIRED to agree that a large portion of the fan base is 'absolutely terrible' or I'm 'endorsing their behavior'.

Same predictable claims, AGAIN.

No.

YOU prove that it A) happened, and B) was done by a 'non-trivial' portion of people. You can't. All you have are vague claims of 'harassment' with no actual evidence.

If you didn't click the links the first time, I fail to see why linking them a second time would have different results.

And im still not the person who described people who liked the movie as "shills". That was all you.

[Olinser]

SO GUYS

Do you think James Gunn would do good things with Star Wars? Obviously if you didnt liked GotG, you wont. But for those who do;

His movies pulled off solid character chemistry, epic adventure, scum characters and still have a solid emotional core that, i think, is key to really good Star Wars. I still get shivers at the final "take my hand". So much that it makes me not mind at all the corny "We are the Guardians of the Galaxy"

James Gunn is gone and not coming back. There was apparently a meeting between Gunn and the heads of Disney a few days ago where he was allowed to plead his case, and they stuck with the firing.

Gunn exhibited an extremely troubling pattern of behavior over a long period of time. Maybe Disney was aware that he'd made some jokes, but they clearly were not aware of the EXTENT of the material.

Now don't get me wrong, I've made my share of edgy jokes, I've made dead baby and Helen Keller jokes. People are allowed to make jokes.

But when it comes out Gunn was doing stuff like attending a pedophile-themed Halloween party? Sorry dude, I'm out, when your primary market is children he's got to go.

[Olinser]

If you didn't click the links the first time, I fail to see why linking them a second time would have different results.

And im still not the person who described people who liked the movie as "shills". That was all you.

What links. There are no links. There is no proof. Literally the only 'proof' is the her, and her friends, claiming it happened. I'm sure there were trolls. But YOU made the claim it was a 'non-trivial' amount. Prove it.

I'll save you some time - you can't.

EDIT - if you're referring to Peelee's links on the last page - there's zero proof there. There is, as usual, vague claims about 'harassment' with no evidence.

[Keltest]

What links. There are no links. There is no proof. Literally the only 'proof' is the her, and her friends, claiming it happened. I'm sure there were trolls. But YOU made the claim it was a 'non-trivial' amount. Prove it.

I'll save you some time - you can't.

The links:


I'm utterly baffled by the folks who think the supporters of the movie are the aggressors here. We're not the ones who drove Kelly Marie Tran off social media (https://www.salon.com/2018/06/08/the-treatment-of-kelly-marie-tran-exposes-the-worst-elements-of-fandom_partner/) with death threats and trolling. We're also not the ones who went out and wasted a bunch of time creating a "de-feminized" edit (http://digg.com/2018/last-jedi-mra-no-women-fans) of the entire movie. We didn't go out and create Down With Disney either. Certainly I don't think everyone who hates the movie falls into these camps, but those are nevertheless the folks the pro-TLJ thinkpieces are primarily responding to, very much reactively.

And to the folks who see JJ Abrams as some kind of "savior" who will somehow salvage the franchise from Rian Johnson, he seems pretty clear on what he thinks the source of the backlash (https://ew.com/movies/2018/02/17/jj-abrams-star-wars-backlash-threatened-by-women/) was too, so it's worth considering if he's that chosen one after all.

That was from almost the very beginning of this topic. They've been there the whole time.

Anyway, im done. You aren't interested in an actual examination of the topic, you just want to grouse at people for having the wrong opinion about a movie. Well im not interested in providing you an outlet for that behavior.

[Olinser]

The links:



That was from almost the very beginning of this topic. They've been there the whole time.

Anyway, im done. You aren't interested in an actual examination of the topic, you just want to grouse at people for having the wrong opinion about a movie. Well im not interested in providing you an outlet for that behavior.

Clearly you haven't read the article. It makes vague claims about harassment, links to the 'original' article, which itself provides as 'proof' a single screengrab edit of Wookiepedia. Look at the history of any public figure on Wikipedia. That's pretty weak tea and certainly nothing that would 'harass' her off social media. You think she read her Wookiepedia page? For the few seconds that was active before mods caught it? Don't make me laugh.

So are you actually claiming a troll edit of Wookiepedia made her quit instagram? Because that's pretty hilarious, actually.

YOU made the claim. YOU said it was a 'non-trivial' portion of the fanbase. Once again - prove it.

[Dr.Samurai]

{scrubbed}

[Kyrell1978]

{scrubbed}

This is better than tv. I don't even hate the movie and I completely agree with this. There were some definite problems with it, but I thought it was overall and enjoyable film to watch. Carry on.:smallbiggrin:

[Lord Joeltion]

I mean, isn't Obi-Wan's backstory the prequels? I guess there's the time he spent becoming a Jedi and the time he spent hanging out with Qui-Gon, but does anybody care about that? Han's life story at least hadn't been explored before on screen, which gave plenty of scope for Solo to fill in the details. We know all the defining life events for Obi-Wan already.
There's the whole love affair he had with a certain member of Mandalorian aristocracy most people probably don't know about yet. I'd watch a film of young Obi Wan courting a cute blondie as long as it doesn't derail into a musical.


I fully expect to be attacked from all sides for saying this, but I loved The Last Jedi, and I really liked Interstellar as well.

HOW DARE YOU LOVE THE THING THAT BORED ME TO DEATH AND LIKE THE THING I ENJOYED A LOT AT THE SAME TIME?!?! HOW CAN I PROPERLY CRITICIZE YOU NOW???


But the raw hatred and venom I’ve been hearing over the past couple years is something new—and quite apart from the sheer unpleasantness, I’m just not sure exactly where it comes from. Strident criticism is one thing; but there is a tone of savage judgement, of pure righteous denunciation, that’s unlike anything I’ve heard before.
We live in the twitter era. It's all about venom and hatred (both ways). Incidentally, your argument defines the worst specimen from both sides of the discussion that you can find our there.

IMHO, a big part of the problem is that people confuse opinion with hard facts. The same applies by confusing the terms "flop" with "underperformance", occasionally confused with "below expectations". The same kind of confusion comes up whenever uses the term "critic" as if it actually meant "qualified people that utters objective truths". But seriously, you can't expect better from the same environment that promotes second-guessing your rival's "agenda" and also spams you with sensationalist, poorly written, clic-baiting and usually meaningless news.


Solo. What the **** was Solo's story? Solo had his character arc during A New Hope, goddamnit. Why make a prequel about the guy who had his shining moment LATER in his life?
Dunno about you, but my life had no meaning until I knew where his last name came from. Like, gosh, I spent entire sleepless years wondering how a person, in space, in a galaxy far far away, could be named "Solo" instead of... IDK, "Shlock'd34@". Now I sleep tight :smalltongue:


I've mellowed on Rogue One. I still think it's a really really bad film. But I also see how it can help the franchise. It's a film that some people seem to really like. And that's ok. If Starwars can branch out and make films that aren't for me. it's ok, as long as I still get the ones I do like. It just means that I won't be watching Starwars as a franchise, and just pick which ones I want to see.

So... basically: "Please Disney, give me back my Expanded Universe and its artistic freedom"? Yeah, I would endorse such a position.


Lucas's brain: "OK, I've finally figured this out. I take the money and bow out gracefully. I take zero heat for this, if anyone doesn't like the deal they'll blame Disney. This is about as sure a thing as I'll ever get, there's no way anyone will think 'oh goddammit George,' it's almost impossible to mess up."

Lucas's mouth: "I sold Star Wars to white slavers."

Lucas's brain: "OH GODDAMMIT GEORGE!"
I think if there's one guy we can talk about suffering from SW fatigue for the last two decades, it's George Lucas.


SO GUYS

Do you think James Gunn would do good things with Star Wars? Obviously if you didnt liked GotG, you wont. But for those who do;

His movies pulled off solid character chemistry, epic adventure, scum characters and still have a solid emotional core that, i think, is key to really good Star Wars. I still get shivers at the final "take my hand". So much that it makes me not mind at all the corny "We are the Guardians of the Galaxy"

Since we are back on topic: Off the top of my head, I don't only think Gunn is the perfect guy for the job; I can also draw a few comparisons between GotG and some SW characters/archetypes:

-Starlord is the scoundrel. He is kinda like Han Solo, but with Lando's sense of style. But when he goes all "kill Thanos" kind of stupid; he is more like young Boba Fett from Clone Wars.
-Gamora is a Leia, but more awesome. Actually, she reminds me a lot of Jarael (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Jarael) from the comics; coincidentally sharing similar backstories.
-Rocket is the weirdo. Rocket is a mesh between HK-47 and Fives, with his contempt for humanoids and his love for explosions.
-Groot is a middlegroung between the lovable Wookiee and the incomprehensible astromech. It's curious how the three of them share an indecipherable speech pattern.
-Drax is Drax. Okay, he is kinda like K2SO, because of his quirky humor. But Drax's take from the films is actually hard to define, imo.
-Yondu is clearly a Mandalorian. Anyone from the warrior class would fit.

[Calemyr]

SO GUYS

Do you think James Gunn would do good things with Star Wars? Obviously if you didnt liked GotG, you wont. But for those who do;

His movies pulled off solid character chemistry, epic adventure, scum characters and still have a solid emotional core that, i think, is key to really good Star Wars. I still get shivers at the final "take my hand". So much that it makes me not mind at all the corny "We are the Guardians of the Galaxy"

I don't think James Gunn would be a good choice, not because of his current troubles, but for the same reason I don't think Joss Whedon would be a good choice: tone.

Star Wars needs a very specific tone that requires a very delicate balancing act by simultaneously being deadly serious about its story and being knowingly ludicrous about its setting. It takes a setting with quasi-Buddhist space wizards wielding laser swords, surrounded by growling humanoid furballs, ugly-cute bug people, and little gray jazz playing aliens led by a cute blue octopus on the piano, and uses this to tell a truly epic hero's journey that takes itself seriously, never trying to detract from novelty but never treating it as part of the act, either. In so doing, it finds a way to be both serious and fun, as well as vast and personal.

It's a difficult balance to strike. The prequels largely failed because they to make the movies too serious (boring, even) and then lighten it up with Jar Jar, and to use a personal perspective to paint a vast picture. Gunn or Whedon do "personal' and "fun" very well, but they don't do "serious" or "vast". That may sound strange for two space-oriented stories, but I think it's accurate. Neither Firefly nor Guardians focus on the vastness of space, such as just how massive the universe around them is, that's just a backdrop to a personal story. Star Wars, on the other hand, thrives on the thought that galaxy far away is filled to bursting with life of such diversity and splendor, such that it's heroes struggling not to get lost in the immensity of it all.

And, while I adore the witty style Gunn and Whedon employ, it doesn't work well here. It wouldn't be unlike Thor Ragnarok in that regard. Don't get me wrong, the movie was all kinds of wonderful, but there were times they simply derailed things for a laugh. Such as the opening, with Thor spinning on that rope and interrupting the exposition as his rotation forced him to repeatedly break eye contact. The new Star Wars episodes had similar moments, such as Poe trying to hash out protocol when being interrogated by Kylo Ren or Poe (again) prank calling Hux on an open frequency. These instances break the pacing of the story for the sake of a joke when it shouldn't be needed - the setting is bizarre enough to be fun, and the juxtaposition between the strangeness of the setting and the sincerity of the narrative should bring the entertainment on its own.

Well, that's my two cents, anyway. Hope it's coherent...

[Peelee]

I don't think James Gunn would be a good choice, not because of his current troubles, but for the same reason I don't think Joss Whedon would be a good choice: tone.

Star Wars needs a very specific tone that requires a very delicate balancing act by simultaneously being deadly serious about its story and being knowingly ludicrous about its setting. It takes a setting with quasi-Buddhist space wizards wielding laser swords, surrounded by growling humanoid furballs, ugly-cute bug people, and little gray jazz playing aliens led by a cute blue octopus on the piano, and uses this to tell a truly epic hero's journey that takes itself seriously, never trying to detract from novelty but never treating it as part of the act, either. In so doing, it finds a way to be both serious and fun, as well as vast and personal.

It's a difficult balance to strike. The prequels largely failed because they to make the movies too serious (boring, even) and then lighten it up with Jar Jar, and to use a personal perspective to paint a vast picture. Gunn or Whedon do "personal' and "fun" very well, but they don't do "serious" or "vast". That may sound strange for two space-oriented stories, but I think it's accurate. Neither Firefly nor Guardians focus on the vastness of space, such as just how massive the universe around them is, that's just a backdrop to a personal story. Star Wars, on the other hand, thrives on the thought that galaxy far away is filled to bursting with life of such diversity and splendor, such that it's heroes struggling not to get lost in the immensity of it all.

And, while I adore the witty style Gunn and Whedon employ, it doesn't work well here. It wouldn't be unlike Thor Ragnarok in that regard. Don't get me wrong, the movie was all kinds of wonderful, but there were times they simply derailed things for a laugh. Such as the opening, with Thor spinning on that rope and interrupting the exposition as his rotation forced him to repeatedly break eye contact. The new Star Wars episodes had similar moments, such as Poe trying to hash out protocol when being interrogated by Kylo Ren or Poe (again) prank calling Hux on an open frequency. These instances break the pacing of the story for the sake of a joke when it shouldn't be needed - the setting is bizarre enough to be fun, and the juxtaposition between the strangeness of the setting and the sincerity of the narrative should bring the entertainment on its own.

Well, that's my two cents, anyway. Hope it's coherent...

Not only coherent, I wholeheartedly agree.

[LeSwordfish]

And, while I adore the witty style Gunn and Whedon employ, it doesn't work well here. It wouldn't be unlike Thor Ragnarok in that regard. Don't get me wrong, the movie was all kinds of wonderful, but there were times they simply derailed things for a laugh. Such as the opening, with Thor spinning on that rope and interrupting the exposition as his rotation forced him to repeatedly break eye contact. The new Star Wars episodes had similar moments, such as Poe trying to hash out protocol when being interrogated by Kylo Ren or Poe (again) prank calling Hux on an open frequency. These instances break the pacing of the story for the sake of a joke when it shouldn't be needed - the setting is bizarre enough to be fun, and the juxtaposition between the strangeness of the setting and the sincerity of the narrative should bring the entertainment on its own.

This is a really good articulation of the problems I had with all three films - I loved all three of them (put me down in the "TLJ was one of the best SW films" camp) but it kept needling at me how, though absolutely less bad than anything Whedon's ever written, they kept breaking tension, pathos, or character to get a quick yuk in and move on. Can we not have one moment of sadness at the destruction of Asgard without making a quip? etc etc.

I'm not sure who I can think of to take over SW's reins. I would perfectly accept either Johnson or Abrams, but I don't know who I'd recommend in terms of a thought exercise.

[Malimar]

The only person I can think of that they could hand Star Wars to that I would say "oh, that's a brilliant idea, he's perfectly capable of making a good Star Wars movie" is Spielberg.

My second choice would be giving it back to Lucas. I liked all six Lucas movies better than any of the Disney movies.

My third choice would be... hm... Peter Jackson, maybe? That would certainly be something, I don't know if it would be good.

[Peelee]

I'd watch a George Miller Mandalorian movie.

[Mordar]

Usual qualifier: I absolutely HATED TLJ and want it bleached from the series. It is 100% Johnson's fault, and I believe it to be because he is the "artiste" type that wants to subvert popular things because...I don't know...either someone pees in his Cheerios regularly, or he didn't get the cool $280 Millennium Falcon when he was a kid. Don't care which. He should go make his own franchise to destroy...

New qualifier: Totally not any of the actors' fault. None of them should take the heat for Johnson, particularly not a tertiary character. Yes, Rose is tertiary.


I'm utterly baffled by the folks who think the supporters of the movie are the aggressors here. We're not the ones who drove Kelly Marie Tran off social media (https://www.salon.com/2018/06/08/the-treatment-of-kelly-marie-tran-exposes-the-worst-elements-of-fandom_partner/) with death threats and trolling. We're also not the ones who went out and wasted a bunch of time creating a "de-feminized" edit (http://digg.com/2018/last-jedi-mra-no-women-fans) of the entire movie. We didn't go out and create Down With Disney either. Certainly I don't think everyone who hates the movie falls into these camps, but those are nevertheless the folks the pro-TLJ thinkpieces are primarily responding to, very much reactively.

And to the folks who see JJ Abrams as some kind of "savior" who will somehow salvage the franchise from Rian Johnson, he seems pretty clear on what he thinks the source of the backlash (https://ew.com/movies/2018/02/17/jj-abrams-star-wars-backlash-threatened-by-women/) was too, so it's worth considering if he's that chosen one after all.

Part 1 - I think there's something very interesting (and bad) going on in the US right now as relates specifically to Star Wars and comic movies (mostly, but not exclusively, MCU). I believe there is a group (not necessarily organized, or even intentional) that are practically false-flagging. I am stunned by the number of comments I am seeing in relatively fan-centric articles decrying any failures, shortfalls, dislikes, or high critic scores (among others) on "SJW" types ruining "our" franchises. Shuri being too smart? SJWs tanking comics. Good reviews for Panther? Woke SJW critics. TLJ bad? SJWs making women able to do things. I think the type making these statements align tightly to the type with unwavering support for a certain public office holder.

The funny/worrisome thing? I would never equate that with people who grew up loving Star Wars or comics. Not to say we can't be found across the political spectrum...but this isn't a political spectrum question. It is a particular breed of basement troll, and I think they are using the things we love to try to make their basement trolly points. At least, that's my hope...they're trying to pretend they belong to our group (not because they want to destroy our group from within, but because they desperately want to belong to things) and take the dislike of some portion of us to, say, TLJ, and use that as their own little "Me too!" moment (not related to #metoo) to try and come on board.

Part 2 - Abrams is good at starting stories/series. And he has to toe certain lines (like an athlete can't call a team member out...and you don't poop where you eat). Do I think he is a savior? Absolutely not. Do I think he is parsecs ahead of Johnson in the "likely to make a movie I like" category? Oh heck yes.


I extremely enjoy how the reaction to all that pretty clear cut evidence of people harassing Loan and the rest of the crew is effectively "aha, my face is bleeding, making me the victor".

Let me put it this way; if someone says "the haters of this film harassed an actor off social media" and your response is "you're painting a bad picture of people who just didn't like the film" you're missing the obviously implication that, of course, we are not referring to the people who just disliked the film. But for sooome reason, you sure seem to think it applies to you, specifically. You don't see Mystic Muse or whoever reacting with "hey don't say people who hate the film are harassers". They're smart enough to realize that doesn't refer to them.

How about this: Claiming that an entire group of people did a thing because some members of that group did a thing generally isn't a very good idea. There might even be a word for it. Even if other people in that group know it doesn't apply to them, because they didn't do it. Some implication about "...but not the good ones" doesn't wash.

When your statement (and yours is more overt than many) begins with words that identify a group you could say I qualify for based on my posts in this thread alone, there isn't some deep-seated seed of guilt in me that makes me miss your "obvious" implication and says I better respond or else people will think I did it.

I know that people said crappy things and made an actor shut down their social media account. I know they at least present themselves as fans. Let's pretend they really are, and their only motive in saying what they said was their hurt fandom. Hugely unlikeky, but let's pretend. I know the number is tiny compared to the number of fans...even the number of fans who disliked TLJ. The fraction is small enough that even the most strident Kelly Marie Tran fans should realize that there is probably some other commonality linking the trolls and not paint the fandom (or even TLJ hating subset) with that brush.


Because it's a REALLY BIG DEAL. This shouldn't be happening. People shouldn't be getting death threats or harassment campaigns because they wrote a story that some people didn't like, or acted in the same. Of course it's not representative of everyone who disliked it, but it's absolutely the most important thing to address and work against, because this actually affects peoples lives.

It really does create a conundrum, right? If, for instance, TLJ were the exact same story...but Holdo was an androgynous alien, Rose was a white guy (make whatever adjustment to Finn makes you happy), and everything else went exactly as written...I believe some of the more venomous "haters" would be less so, but I also think more of the strident supporters would also be less so. With so few examples of female leads in non-romantic dramas or non-victim roles I think it is hard to criticize the performance (or, in this case, the writing/direction) without fear of damaging the future opportunities for those roles. Hence my defending Daisy Ridley/Rey (primarily writing, but a bit in performance) a bit more than I might otherwise...but not Danai Gurira/Okoye and Letitia Wright/Shuri, for instance, because they aren't taking the same kind of criticism.

So I want both to be taken at my word when we say "She did a great job!"/"That was a great character!" but also be mindful of the potential impacts of "She was horrible"/"That was a bad character".


TLJ's performance and divisiveness among the fandom is blamed on racism and sexism. I mean... you're just full of **** if you deny this. This is absolutely why this issue is so charged within the fandom. They make a bad movie and fans hate it and complain and they're racists and sexists and entitled and they need to move on because it's not about them anymore and on and on and on. It's a very hostile attitude to take towards the fans and they're doing it to save face.

I really agree here - I believe Johnson feels he made a great piece of art and can't comprehend how the plebians are unable to accept the generous gift he has provided to us, so it must be something other than the quality of his work. It must be that the people that didn't like it are backwards-thinking intolerant mouth-breathers who think girls should be in the kitchen, not kicking butts.

Okay, so that's a little inflated, but you get the idea. Plus, they have a multi-billion dollar franchise to protect, so it is a bigger risk to say "Huh, this didn't pan out" instead of "the people that disliked it are racist/sexist/whatever". Particularly given it made money (good money!). But it underperformed versus projections, and Solo did worse (even though projections were downgraded).


So before you tell other people what they need to do, make sure you can weather critiques of the movie without wondering if the person is secretly an alt-right neo-nazi. It seems to me that I can definitely have a conversation about the movie and its merits and shortcomings without ever even thinking about Kelly Marie Tran deleting her Twitter account, or people driving the the RT score down purposely. It's not opponents of the movie that bring these things up. We don't need to because we can just talk **** about the movie itself. It's supporters of the movie that bring these topics up to muddy the waters.

I do think there is a loud enough group of people who are muddying the waters, blaming the TLJ suckness on Holdo being a woman and Rose being an Asian woman (and Rey not being a damsel in distress) that gives supporters an easy, if not reasonable, response. So, this isn't a "there are good people on both sides" kind of stupidity, but because of the volume of those specific kind of critics (see my comments way up above) I can understand why a TLJ supporter, not knowing me at all, might wonder what makes me dislike the movie. So as long as they aren't rabidly calling me a sexist racist hater, I give them the benefit of the doubt and try to explain what I didn't like.

So...would we rather see Yoda, Obi-Wan (the Hermit Years), or a non-primary character (maybe even a new character?) movie next?

I vote new character.

- M

[Kyrell1978]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qy9_lfjQopU
and the countdown begins.

[Darth Credence]

...
TLJ's performance and divisiveness among the fandom is blamed on racism and sexism. I mean... you're just full of **** if you deny this. This is absolutely why this issue is so charged within the fandom. They make a bad movie and fans hate it and complain and they're racists and sexists and entitled and they need to move on because it's not about them anymore and on and on and on...

I want to focus on just this, specifically the bolded part. Saying this is a big part of the problem. They made a movie - bad here is completely subjective - that a subset of fans hated, and a subset of fans loved, and another subset thought it was just all right. "Fans" in general can not be said to harbor any particular position, because there are a wide range of opinions about the movie. Yes, some are absolutely painting everyone who dislikes it as racist and misogynistic, and they are wrong. But saying that "fans hate it" is also wrong. Far too many on both sides of the debate are saying that all fans have the same opinion and if you don't agree you aren't really a fan. I don't think that you are particularly doing this, but the way you formed the statement certainly lends itself to that interpretation.

FTR, I enjoyed watching TLJ, while also thinking that it is the worst Star Wars movie since Attack of the Clones (or The Clone Wars, if we would like to include the animated movie in there). My particular problems with it are mostly due to the ridiculous plot holes, almost all revolving around the tracking through hyperspace bit. Prior to TLJ, the movies firmly established that it is possible to track a ship through hyperspace. (They did have a short story published to eliminate that, but movie watchers would never get that story.) The Empire sees the Tantive IV escape with the plans to the Death Star, and the next movie in the timeline shows the Empire has chased down the ship and is getting the plans back. Ergo, tracked through hyperspace, and the entire plot of TLJ falls apart. Beyond that, it doesn't even work if we know of the short story and accept that ships can't be tracked through hyperspace. TLJ occurs within hours of TFA, so there was not a technological leap between them. Therefore, they could have tracked a ship from Takodana to D'Qar, and blown up the Resistance before they attacked the Republic. In addition, they teased that the reason they could track them was that either they could track any stormtrooper, or they had broken the binary link code and could track that. Hux says they have them on a string, and then it cuts to Finn. Sure seemed to be a setup that that is why they can track. Again it was mentioned by the Empire they could track them, then it cut to the binary locator. Another possibility. Yet in the end it was new technology, that we were supposed to believe that the Supreme Leader had no idea existed.

I could list other problems, but that sums up my issues with the movie pretty well. And yet, I was entertained watching it, while I wasn't entertained watching The Phantom Menace. The only reason that isn't good enough is the movie's position as the middle of a movie trilogy/quadrology.


I'd watch a George Miller Mandalorian movie.

I would watch the crap out of that. I would think that George Miller would be a good choice for anything Star Wars that doesn't have a big Jedi presence. I really like Solo, but an imagined version by Miller would blow it away.

I'm not generally a fan, but James Cameron might be one of the best choices for a Jedi-centric movie. He can certainly do epic movies and technologically advanced movies. Guillermo del Toro would be my choice for a Tales of... type of movie. Kathryn Bigelow would be good for a movie more focused on the war itself and the grunts fighting it.

[Dr.Samurai]

I do think there is a loud enough group of people who are muddying the waters, blaming the TLJ suckness on Holdo being a woman and Rose being an Asian woman (and Rey not being a damsel in distress) that gives supporters an easy, if not reasonable, response. So, this isn't a "there are good people on both sides" kind of stupidity, but because of the volume of those specific kind of critics (see my comments way up above) I can understand why a TLJ supporter, not knowing me at all, might wonder what makes me dislike the movie. So as long as they aren't rabidly calling me a sexist racist hater, I give them the benefit of the doubt and try to explain what I didn't like.
To my knowledge (I admit I haven't scoured the thread), I don't think those accusations were hurled here. I mentioned them because it's tiring to see people just wonder aloud at the state of things, like pure untouched naive angels of innocence and good intentions that don't know why bad things happen and question why evil exists in the world. It's like... grow the **** up already. People are upset because you did a bad thing. You don't know how to communicate, you're self righteous and childish and you insulted people and mischaracterized them for the sake of a movie and your superficial virtues. And now that there's a division in the fandom and resentment, you stand back like a doe-eyed moron and, with hand to mouth, gasp in horror at all the negativity that offends your "high-minded" sensibilities.

It irritates me, obviously, that these people would create the problem in the first place and then feign ignorance after the fact.

So...would we rather see Yoda, Obi-Wan (the Hermit Years), or a non-primary character (maybe even a new character?) movie next?

I vote new character.
Agreed. New character. They established a universe and should use it. Expand the stories. No need to stick with what we're all familiar with at this point.

@Darth Credence: Understood. But my use of the word "fans" is not to say that "all fans" hated the movie. But rather that fans of Star Wars hated the movie and those fans have been attacked by other fans, by the media, and by the producers/directors/actors.

Anyone who is confused about the hurt feelings in the fandom has either not paid attention to what's been happening beyond the posts in this thread, or pretending.

[Mordar]

I want to focus on just this, specifically the bolded part. Saying this is a big part of the problem. They made a movie - bad here is completely subjective - that a subset of fans hated, and a subset of fans loved, and another subset thought it was just all right. "Fans" in general can not be said to harbor any particular position, because there are a wide range of opinions about the movie. Yes, some are absolutely painting everyone who dislikes it as racist and misogynistic, and they are wrong. But saying that "fans hate it" is also wrong. Far too many on both sides of the debate are saying that all fans have the same opinion and if you don't agree you aren't really a fan. I don't think that you are particularly doing this, but the way you formed the statement certainly lends itself to that interpretation.

A good point. My perception is that TLJ had a greater degree of dislike among fans than TFA, and probably more than any individual prequel. Does the Playground think that is fair/accurate, lacking any solid metrics? In effect, I'm suggesting that ranging from +10 (love) to -10 (hate) the prequels might have had a floor of *maybe* -5, but a mean closer to -2. TFA less so (primary complaints seemed to be "retread", not "uniquely bad") so maybe -2 and 0, and then along comes TLJ with outliers at -10 but I think a reasonable number of people in the -5 range.

My perception is that the timbre has changed as well. When we hated any of the prequels we blamed Lucas primarily, Jar Jar second (which is straight Lucas too), and then Hayden Christensen and then Jake Lloyd. In my opinion, that seems reasonable - the person in charge should get the heat, and it should diminish (exponentially) as it rolls down hill. Now some people are spreading that blame far and wide (maybe fans, maybe not) and that colors the conversation and may encourage reactionary love out of people that really liked the movie/characters/actors.

So, we certainly have more sound and fury about the movie, driven I think by the negative. But we can't just say it is the result of social media...Star Wars fans have been on the internet in high volume since day one. So, what is amplifying the noise?

- M

[Kyrell1978]

A good point. My perception is that TLJ had a greater degree of dislike among fans than TFA, and probably more than any individual prequel. Does the Playground think that is fair/accurate, lacking any solid metrics? In effect, I'm suggesting that ranging from +10 (love) to -10 (hate) the prequels might have had a floor of *maybe* -5, but a mean closer to -2. TFA less so (primary complaints seemed to be "retread", not "uniquely bad") so maybe -2 and 0, and then along comes TLJ with outliers at -10 but I think a reasonable number of people in the -5 range.

My perception is that the timbre has changed as well. When we hated any of the prequels we blamed Lucas primarily, Jar Jar second (which is straight Lucas too), and then Hayden Christensen and then Jake Lloyd. In my opinion, that seems reasonable - the person in charge should get the heat, and it should diminish (exponentially) as it rolls down hill. Now some people are spreading that blame far and wide (maybe fans, maybe not) and that colors the conversation and may encourage reactionary love out of people that really liked the movie/characters/actors.

So, we certainly have more sound and fury about the movie, driven I think by the negative. But we can't just say it is the result of social media...Star Wars fans have been on the internet in high volume since day one. So, what is amplifying the noise?

- M
This is a valid point. I'd put TLJ above the first two prequels, but below all of the rest of the movies, but at the end of the day that's just my opinion. Some of the criticisms are valid, some are not (some of the valid ones don't bother me).

[PairO'Dice Lost]

So...would we rather see Yoda, Obi-Wan (the Hermit Years), or a non-primary character (maybe even a new character?) movie next?

I vote new character.

I would give Disney roughly all of my money for an on-screen trilogy adaptation of the X-Wing novels (both the Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron books), assuming it's a straight adaptation and not an inferior NewCanon reinterpretation like what they did to Wedge's backstory in Rebels.

They've got a great ensemble cast (two casts with some overlap, technically), only a single Force-sensitive character (and one who hasn't gone through Jedi training yet, so it's more "I've got a bad feeling about this" and less "Lightsabers everywhere!"), both space battles and commando missions to appeal to different tastes, and Imperial warlords instead of a Sith Lord or Discount Sith Lord as the main villains; what's not to love?


A good point. My perception is that TLJ had a greater degree of dislike among fans than TFA, and probably more than any individual prequel. Does the Playground think that is fair/accurate, lacking any solid metrics?

I'd agree. In general, whatever problems people may have had with TFA were exacerbated by TLJ, and then TLJ added a bunch more, so there are fans who liked TFA and disliked TLJ, fans who liked both, and fans who disliked both, but I don't know of any fans who disliked TFA and liked TLJ (though of course some might exist). That was mostly the territory of non-fans who liked all the "witty and highbrow subversion of Star Wars tropes" and suchlike, who probably weren't going to like either TFA or TLJ as Star Wars movies anyway so they found the deconstruction of TLJ "refreshing" and "risk-taking" and so forth.

To sum up my own views on the matter, I'd say that the PT movies were bad movies but good Star Wars movies (having done a pretty good job of capturing the stuff that made the OT good, but with bad acting, clunky dialog, some dumb retcons, etc. bringing them down quite a bit), while the ST movies were okay movies but terrible Star Wars movies (having great effects, relatively good acting, etc. but being blatant ripoffs of the OT and several EU storylines that nuked canon, changed or killed off OT characters pointlessly, rendered the OT and PT nonsensical with some of their retcons, and were in all ways inferior to the movies and books that they stole from).


This is a valid point. I'd put TLJ above the first two prequels, but below all of the rest of the movies, but at the end of the day that's just my opinion. Some of the criticisms are valid, some are not (some of the valid ones don't bother me).

Personally, I would rather be tied to a chair for 8 hours and forced to watch the Prequel Trilogy all the way through (or just TPM on repeat) than watch TFA again, and I'd rather do that three times than watch TLJ again (with appropriate bathroom breaks, of course). :smallamused:

[Peelee]

Personally, I would rather be tied to a chair for 8 hours and forced to watch the Prequel Trilogy all the way through (or just TPM on repeat) than watch TFA again, and I'd rather do that three times than watch TLJ again (with appropriate bathroom breaks, of course). :smallamused:

This level of dislike I don't share. Even the worst Star Wars movie is still a Star Wars movie. Even TLJ (which certainly ranks as the worst for me, even below The Clone Wars movie) I'll gladly watch at the drop of a hat. But I totally get where you're coming from; if they ever have a Ryan Reynolds Star Wars movie, I'll buy out the torches and pitchforks.

[Kyrell1978]

This level of dislike I don't share. Even the worst Star Wars movie is still a Star Wars movie. Even TLJ (which certainly ranks as the worst for me, even below The Clone Wars movie) I'll gladly watch at the drop of a hat. But I totally get where you're coming from; if they ever have a Ryan Reynolds Star Wars movie, I'll buy out the torches and pitchforks.
What if it was about the Cantina and he was the lead server though? Would that still bring pitchforks out?

[Peelee]

What if it was about the Cantina and he was the lead server though? Would that still bring pitchforks out?

Yes. Do not underestimate how much I hate Ryan Reynolds. It's worse than underestimating the power of the Force in front of Vader.

[Jayngfet]

So supported by absolutely nothing one rumor that's been spreading around the internet this week is that Rian Johnson is going over to DC to direct a Superman movie. I doubt they'll bear any fruit even if true but I think it's an interesting discussion in and of itself.

[Sapphire Guard]

I don't like to see complaints about specific people, because it's very difficult to know who is responsible for what. Was that the Director's choice, or was it mandated by the Producer/CEO/Parent Company/Focus Group etc? What influence did the editor or DP have?

TLJ got handed a bad hand by TFA , it's not all on Rian.

I'm also still interested why relatively few people jumped to the defense of Lucas when he was the one getting the abuse, which is not to diminish any of the abuse levelled at the ST and those involved.

[Jayngfet]

Lucas owns the company as well as acting as director and writer as Rian did. He had total creative control.

[Devonix]

I don't like to see complaints about specific people, because it's very difficult to know who is responsible for what. Was that the Director's choice, or was it mandated by the Producer/CEO/Parent Company/Focus Group etc? What influence did the editor or DP have?

TLJ got handed a bad hand by TFA , it's not all on Rian.

I'm also still interested why relatively few people jumped to the defense of Lucas when he was the one getting the abuse, which is not to diminish any of the abuse levelled at the ST and those involved.

He also had to keep with the framework for what Abrams wanted to have happen in Episode 9 So he couldn't go too far off doing his own thing.

[Olinser]

Lucas owns the company as well as acting as director and writer as Rian did. He had total creative control.

Which, while Lucas did some pretty bad things with the prequel, at least he had a vision and he executed that vision. The prequels had a clear continuous plot running through them. Not a great plot, but at least an internally consistent plot. Seeds and foreshadowing in the 1st and 2nd movie were tied off before end of the trilogy, generally with acceptable payoffs.

The primary problem with Last Jedi (caused by Johnson), is that there was NOBODY with an actual vision of the trilogy in charge.

JJ Abrams made a movie. Not a great movie, but a decent movie, that had some problems but was acceptable as a starting point for a trilogy. I'd certainly argue that it was a far better starting point than Phantom Menace was, despite TFA's problems.

But then JJ Abrams wandered off to do other things, as he tends to do after rebooting franchises. And Rian Johnson was given TOTAL creative control with no supervision. And apparently now Abrams has been given TOTAL creative control again for Episode 9 (which was originally intended to be a 3rd director).

I mean when your actual plan is to give 3 different directors creative control over 3 movies in a trilogy that's supposed to be in sequence, what do you EXPECT is going to happen?

And then the guys with Solo apparently had no supervision until Kennedy looked up and they'd spent $150 million on something bad enough they got fired. If they're performing badly enough to be fired there is zero excuse for them to get that far into production and throw that much money down the drain before being removed.

Marvel, by contrast, keeps VERY tight control over their continuity. Directors are given control over their stories, but they're kept in a pretty tight box as to what they're allowed to change with the shared universe, and not allowed to make major changes to other heroes and whatnot without approval from Kevin Feige. And that has worked, very, VERY well for them.

Disney badly needs a Kevin Feige - somebody who actually oversees (not micromanages - oversees) the overall creative process with the authority to tell the director's 'NO, that's a bad idea, you can't do it', and who is actually willing to do that.

[Mechalich]

I mean when your actual plan is to give 3 different directors creative control over 3 movies in a trilogy that's supposed to be in sequence, what do you EXPECT is going to happen?

The worst part is that Star Wars had run this specific experiment twice before - with the Legacy of the Force and Fate of the Jedi book series in the EU. Each of those nine book undertakings was written round-robin style switching between three different authors with vastly different visions of what should happen. They were disasters, with diminishing sales and massive fan anger. They even had the same kind of blatant digressions in regards to characters and places that had no business in the overarching plot that plague TLJ.

Disney acquired Lucasfilm and they immediately implemented a content production strategy that was a known failure for the franchise. It's mind-boggling in the lack of due diligence.


Disney badly needs a Kevin Feige - somebody who actually oversees (not micromanages - oversees) the overall creative process with the authority to tell the director's 'NO, that's a bad idea, you can't do it', and who is actually willing to do that.

Bizarrely, they've managed to do this on the animation side. Dave Filoni rules that roost and exercises significant control in terms of what various directors and writers are allowed to do, so that while the quality of various arcs of TCW (and presumably Rebels, though I have not seen it) vary, they all manage to be recognizably Star Wars and avoid disparaging the rest of the franchise. TCW managed to make episodes that feature Jar-Jar which, while just as terrible as you'd expect, are miserable in an entirely self-contained fashion.

Honestly, if I were in charge of Lucasfilm I'd be trying pretty hard to draft Filoni to take on an oversight role on the post-Episode IX live action films (bribe him with Embo cameos if you must, that's a win-win as far as I'm concerned), since he's the only person with a recent history of success and who has the confidence a good chunk of the fanbase. He's wasted making kiddie rated Star Wars animation for the Disney channel.

[Dragonexx]

Honestly, if I had to voice my biggest complaint about the ST it's that it doesn't really bring anything new to the setting. It's almost entirely rehashes of already existing material (Rey herself is a microcosm of this) and usually done worse in that regard. One of the things that I always liked about Star Wars is that makes you feel that the setting is bigger that what you see on screen. That kind of thing inspires the imagination, and gives side works good jumping off points. Heck, for all their failures, the prequel trilogy was even better at doing this than the original trilogy, and of all the movie era's the prequel era is still the most interesting of them.

Inversely, the sequel era is worse in this regard. Abrams and Johnson haven't done any worldbuilding to get to where things are 30 years after RotJ and have no intention of doing that. Again, say what you will about the prequels, but Lucas had a ton of ideas, details and notes of how the state of things in the galaxy lead to the Empire (that actually seem more plausible nowadays) as well as numerous side details that can lead EU works. Heck, skipping time between movies might actually be a good idea. There's 10 years between TPM and AotC and 3 years from there to RotS that open up space for all sorts of side stories. Between TFA and TLJ explicitly no time has passed, and the movie doesn't really present anything interesting to jump off from there.

[warty goblin]

Honestly, if I had to voice my biggest complaint about the ST it's that it doesn't really bring anything new to the setting. It's almost entirely rehashes of already existing material (Rey herself is a microcosm of this) and usually done worse in that regard. One of the things that I always liked about Star Wars is that makes you feel that the setting is bigger that what you see on screen. That kind of thing inspires the imagination, and gives side works good jumping off points. Heck, for all their failures, the prequel trilogy was even better at doing this than the original trilogy, and of all the movie era's the prequel era is still the most interesting of them.

Inversely, the sequel era is worse in this regard. Abrams and Johnson haven't done any worldbuilding to get to where things are 30 years after RotJ and have no intention of doing that. Again, say what you will about the prequels, but Lucas had a ton of ideas, details and notes of how the state of things in the galaxy lead to the Empire (that actually seem more plausible nowadays) as well as numerous side details that can lead EU works. Heck, skipping time between movies might actually be a good idea. There's 10 years between TPM and AotC and 3 years from there to RotS that open up space for all sorts of side stories. Between TFA and TLJ explicitly no time has passed, and the movie doesn't really present anything interesting to jump off from there.

This I would absolutely agree with. TFA took us to a desert planet even more boring that Tatooine, a place that looked like my back yard but with more ferns, and a place that looked like my back yard in winter. And after Jakku, no cool alien wildlife either. TLJ was even worse in this regard; we had a rocky island, Vegas, and discount Hoth. And for wildlife we got weird blue milk space manatees, lumpy race horses, actually cool crystal fox thingies, and what looked suspiciously like goddamn Minions. Which, right there, is grounds for serious dislike.

Maybe I'm just being old and crotchety, but the ST universe feels sort of safe and packaged to me. I think because there's very rarely a sense of life existing or mattering much beyond our heroes. When alien wildlife shows up it's so that the hero can learn some sort of lesson from it, not because it's cool and just there doin' its own thing.

[Forum Explorer]

A good point. My perception is that TLJ had a greater degree of dislike among fans than TFA, and probably more than any individual prequel. Does the Playground think that is fair/accurate, lacking any solid metrics? In effect, I'm suggesting that ranging from +10 (love) to -10 (hate) the prequels might have had a floor of *maybe* -5, but a mean closer to -2. TFA less so (primary complaints seemed to be "retread", not "uniquely bad") so maybe -2 and 0, and then along comes TLJ with outliers at -10 but I think a reasonable number of people in the -5 range.

My perception is that the timbre has changed as well. When we hated any of the prequels we blamed Lucas primarily, Jar Jar second (which is straight Lucas too), and then Hayden Christensen and then Jake Lloyd. In my opinion, that seems reasonable - the person in charge should get the heat, and it should diminish (exponentially) as it rolls down hill. Now some people are spreading that blame far and wide (maybe fans, maybe not) and that colors the conversation and may encourage reactionary love out of people that really liked the movie/characters/actors.

So, we certainly have more sound and fury about the movie, driven I think by the negative. But we can't just say it is the result of social media...Star Wars fans have been on the internet in high volume since day one. So, what is amplifying the noise?

- M

For my two cents, I liked the TFA and TLJ, but I liked TLJ more.


This I would absolutely agree with. TFA took us to a desert planet even more boring that Tatooine, a place that looked like my back yard but with more ferns, and a place that looked like my back yard in winter. And after Jakku, no cool alien wildlife either. TLJ was even worse in this regard; we had a rocky island, Vegas, and discount Hoth. And for wildlife we got weird blue milk space manatees, lumpy race horses, actually cool crystal fox thingies, and what looked suspiciously like goddamn Minions. Which, right there, is grounds for serious dislike.

Maybe I'm just being old and crotchety, but the ST universe feels sort of safe and packaged to me. I think because there's very rarely a sense of life existing or mattering much beyond our heroes. When alien wildlife shows up it's so that the hero can learn some sort of lesson from it, not because it's cool and just there doin' its own thing.

I think because of this. Sorta. TFA was a rehash of a New Hope. I actually really what they did from an artistic perspective, going back to their roots, while simultaneously clearing the stage for new stories. But it did bring almost nothing new to the franchise in doing so.

TLJ I loved. I disagree in what you are talking about environment wise, I thought all of them were very cool, particularly the discount Hoth, where it is salt instead of snow. And overall, it did bring in much more new ideas, and overall I'm quite excited for the next one.

[Rogar Demonblud]

They've got a great ensemble cast (two casts with some overlap, technically), only a single Force-sensitive character (and one who hasn't gone through Jedi training yet, so it's more "I've got a bad feeling about this" and less "Lightsabers everywhere!"), both space battles and commando missions to appeal to different tastes, and Imperial warlords instead of a Sith Lord or Discount Sith Lord as the main villains; what's not to love?

Actually, two Force sensitives, Horn and Sarkin. And Horn definitely has a lightsaber starting in the third book.

If they're going to adapt those for film, I want Mike Stackpole and Tim Zahn doing the writing.

[Zevox]

SO GUYS

Do you think James Gunn would do good things with Star Wars? Obviously if you didnt liked GotG, you wont. But for those who do;

His movies pulled off solid character chemistry, epic adventure, scum characters and still have a solid emotional core that, i think, is key to really good Star Wars. I still get shivers at the final "take my hand". So much that it makes me not mind at all the corny "We are the Guardians of the Galaxy"
That depends on what sort of Star Wars film he was signed up to make. A mainline "Episode X" film? No, I don't think I'd want that, at least not if we're assuming that him as the director immediately means a Guardians of the Galaxy-style film. That more humorous tone is at odds with how the main Star Wars films work, and I don't particularly want to change that.

An "X: A Star Wars Story" side-story film? Oh heck yes, I'd be all over that.


A good point. My perception is that TLJ had a greater degree of dislike among fans than TFA,
Sounds about right to me. My impression, while based on fairly limited casual observation, was that TFA had a mostly-positive reaction, with a moderate size subset of people who found the film disappointing but mostly for being rehashy, and only a small minority that truly thought it was just bad. By contrast, I'm not totally clear on whether the negative reaction to TLJ is the dominant side or simply the louder side, but there's definitely a large amount of people who strongly dislike it, sometimes to frightening extremes; while others like it, some quite strongly; and there seems to be a dearth of people who fall into any sort of middle ground of thinking it was only okay, or just mildly disappointing.

I fall into the categories of TFA was disappointing but mediocre, and TLJ was bad (but not as bad as some portray it, and I don't agree with some of the reasons others think it's bad). Actually, that's perhaps an interesting thing about the reaction to TLJ that doesn't get explored a lot - the side that dislikes it is hardly a monolith. There's a surprising range of reasons for people to dislike the film - while the handling of Luke is probably the most widespread and possibly one of the highest on most people's list, once you get past that, there's criticism of everything from broad plot holes or the pointlessness of the Finn/Rose subplot to minutia like Ackbar's off-screen death, and you can't really assume that any given person who dislikes the film does so for any given one of those many reasons. For instance, while I definitely agree with the criticism of Luke's handling as one of my major problems with it, my other biggest criticism is that the villains are portrayed terribly and don't come across as serious threat, especially in the aftermath of Snoke's death. Meanwhile, a common criticism that I don't share is that Rey's parents should have been important and/or someone we knew - I think making them nobodies is one of the very few things the film did absolutely right.

[Olinser]

That depends on what sort of Star Wars film he was signed up to make. A mainline "Episode X" film? No, I don't think I'd want that, at least not if we're assuming that him as the director immediately means a Guardians of the Galaxy-style film. That more humorous tone is at odds with how the main Star Wars films work, and I don't particularly want to change that.

An "X: A Star Wars Story" side-story film? Oh heck yes, I'd be all over that.


Sounds about right to me. My impression, while based on fairly limited casual observation, was that TFA had a mostly-positive reaction, with a moderate size subset of people who found the film disappointing but mostly for being rehashy, and only a small minority that truly thought it was just bad. By contrast, I'm not totally clear on whether the negative reaction to TLJ is the dominant side or simply the louder side, but there's definitely a large amount of people who strongly dislike it, sometimes to frightening extremes; while others like it, some quite strongly; and there seems to be a dearth of people who fall into any sort of middle ground of thinking it was only okay, or just mildly disappointing.

I fall into the categories of TFA was disappointing but mediocre, and TLJ was bad (but not as bad as some portray it, and I don't agree with some of the reasons others think it's bad). Actually, that's perhaps an interesting thing about the reaction to TLJ that doesn't get explored a lot - the side that dislikes it is hardly a monolith. There's a surprising range of reasons for people to dislike the film - while the handling of Luke is probably the most widespread and possibly one of the highest on most people's list, once you get past that, there's criticism of everything from broad plot holes or the pointlessness of the Finn/Rose subplot to minutia like Ackbar's off-screen death, and you can't really assume that any given person who dislikes the film does so for any given one of those many reasons. For instance, while I definitely agree with the criticism of Luke's handling as one of my major problems with it, my other biggest criticism is that the villains are portrayed terribly and don't come across as serious threat, especially in the aftermath of Snoke's death. Meanwhile, a common criticism that I don't share is that Rey's parents should have been important and/or someone we knew - I think making them nobodies is one of the very few things the film did absolutely right.

I think most fans reacted the way that I did to TFA. Decent movie with some plotholes and really generic overpowered characters and under-utilized other characters, and obviously rehashing A New Hope, but an acceptable reboot and jumping off point for the new trilogy, but a serviceable start and a lot of setup for the rest of the trilogy to make its own mark. Certainly a better start than Phantom Menace.

My problem with the whole Rey's parents thing is not that they're nobodies. It's that it was HEAVILY implied that Rey had some kind of heritage/connection with Luke and the Academy. And then Johnson threw that away because SUBVERTING EXPECTATIONS LUL

Now I was really afraid they were going to go down the road of Rey Skywalker - which would have seen a fan backlash like you wouldn't believe.

But to claim the parents are just irrelevant and she's just a random kid abandoned on a planet? That makes no sense in the context of TFA.

If she's nobody with no connection to the Academy then why in the HELL would she get a vision of the destruction of the Academy on touching Luke's original lightsaber? The lightsaber that he'd lost years before getting to the Academy and was never anywhere near it? Why does she have a connection to the lightsaber at all? It makes no sense unless she was physically at the Academy at the time of the destruction or had some relationship with Luke. And why did Kylo suddenly go ape**** when they generically mentioned the 'girl' from Jakku? If Rey is nobody from nowhere, none of that makes any sense at all.

To be honest I fully expect JJ Abrams to pull out a, "Kylo was a liar this is Rey's actual heritage" in the 3rd movie. And if he does that and goes with Rey Skywalker - the backlash is going to be EPIIIIIIIIC.

Honestly I think the safest way out is to have Rey turn out to be the grandchild of Obi-Wan and Satine Kryze from Clone Wars, have her be the only survivor of the Academy because Kylo didn't want to actually kill a small child, and have Kylo be the one that abandoned her on Jakku, and explicitly lied to her about it.

[Mechalich]

Honestly I think the safest way out is to have Rey turn out to be the grandchild of Obi-Wan and Satine Kryze from Clone Wars, have her be the only survivor of the Academy because Kylo didn't want to actually kill a small child, and have Kylo be the one that abandoned her on Jakku, and explicitly lied to her about it.

I don't believe Kylo's old enough to have done that. The safest move, actually, is to have Kylo be telling the truth, and have Rey be the grandchild of Obi-Wan and Satine. These things can both be true. Force sensitivity can skip generations, Obi-Wan's illegitimate child could easily have floundered during the dark times and ended up as a wastrel junk trader (especially if Satine had been doing the rearing, leaving the child to be raised by someone else). That way her lineage still matters, she was just wrong about which part of it. You could even have it that Luke went looking for her before retreating to the Skelligs but was unable to find her due to Snoke's influence, which would actually help justify a number of things regarding Luke's behavior in TLJ (and every little bit helps). Alternatively, it could be that those who left Rey on Jakku were not her parents at all (who could still be junk traders) but rather Ahsoka Tano and Sabine Wren, who had taken over caring for her. Ahsoka spent time on Mandalore teaching children at Sabine's request, so this isn't even a stretch.

Unfortunately, while the connection I just made took about 30 seconds of Wookieepedia browsing, I don't believe for a second that JJ Abrams or whoever's working for him as a writer has the Star Wars lore knowledge to put the pieces together appropriately. In fact, I seriously doubt he knows who Satine even is.

[Knaight]

Unfortunately, while the connection I just made took about 30 seconds of Wookieepedia browsing, I don't believe for a second that JJ Abrams or whoever's working for him as a writer has the Star Wars lore knowledge to put the pieces together appropriately. In fact, I seriously doubt he knows who Satine even is.

Neither does the bulk of the audience - Satine is a side character in a peripheral work, and while both the character and the work are generally solid this is essentially just making up content about a character not in the movie but probably known about (Obi Wan), to relate them to a character actually in the movie via what is effectively a total unknown.

This isn't good storytelling - it's fanservice, in a very non-euphemistic way. That Abrams et. al. are likely to focus more on storytelling than on trivia for the most obsessive fans is a good thing.

[Zalabim]

Someone in this thread has already claimed that it's a bad movie propped up with positive reviews solely to support some agenda. It's a ridiculous claim and invites accusations of the reverse: it's a good movie knocked down by negative reviews only by people against some agenda. The truth is that the views and opinions expressed by the makers of the film after the film is already made are exactly the kind of out-of-movie considerations that don't matter when it comes to reviewing the movie. I'd more trust a review from opening night than I would trust a review from after this whole sexism back and forth argument started.

As for the comments from those in charge, they can be explained as Viewers Are Morons (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ViewersAreMorons) at work. "On top of that, not only are viewers stupid, they are also intolerant of people and things unlike themselves, ignorant, hate change, need to be instantly satisfied, and have the attention span of a goldfish." Please check all that apply. While this is normally about what TV executives think about TV audiences, there's clearly some members of the fanbase striving to live down to this image.


I want to focus on just this, specifically the bolded part. Saying this is a big part of the problem. They made a movie - bad here is completely subjective - that a subset of fans hated, and a subset of fans loved, and another subset thought it was just all right. "Fans" in general can not be said to harbor any particular position, because there are a wide range of opinions about the movie. Yes, some are absolutely painting everyone who dislikes it as racist and misogynistic, and they are wrong. But saying that "fans hate it" is also wrong. Far too many on both sides of the debate are saying that all fans have the same opinion and if you don't agree you aren't really a fan. I don't think that you are particularly doing this, but the way you formed the statement certainly lends itself to that interpretation.
This is exactly right. I don't have anything to add here, but I'm already quoting you so I figured I could repeat this for emphasis.

Personally, I enjoyed TFA but it had some problems and trailers for TLJ weren't filling me with any enthusiasm at all (fatigue or something), but then I watched the movie and it was actually great. Not perfect, it has its flaws, but it was a great movie.


FTR, I enjoyed watching TLJ, while also thinking that it is the worst Star Wars movie since Attack of the Clones (or The Clone Wars, if we would like to include the animated movie in there). My particular problems with it are mostly due to the ridiculous plot holes, almost all revolving around the tracking through hyperspace bit. Prior to TLJ, the movies firmly established that it is possible to track a ship through hyperspace. (They did have a short story published to eliminate that, but movie watchers would never get that story.) The Empire sees the Tantive IV escape with the plans to the Death Star, and the next movie in the timeline shows the Empire has chased down the ship and is getting the plans back. Ergo, tracked through hyperspace, and the entire plot of TLJ falls apart. Beyond that, it doesn't even work if we know of the short story and accept that ships can't be tracked through hyperspace. TLJ occurs within hours of TFA, so there was not a technological leap between them. Therefore, they could have tracked a ship from Takodana to D'Qar, and blown up the Resistance before they attacked the Republic. In addition, they teased that the reason they could track them was that either they could track any stormtrooper, or they had broken the binary link code and could track that. Hux says they have them on a string, and then it cuts to Finn. Sure seemed to be a setup that that is why they can track. Again it was mentioned by the Empire they could track them, then it cut to the binary locator. Another possibility. Yet in the end it was new technology, that we were supposed to believe that the Supreme Leader had no idea existed.
That's not a plot hole. That's foreshadowing. You immediately thought of half a dozen better explanations for the tracking than what the characters are actually deciding is the cause and trying to solve, then they come up with what is really a non-starter of a longshot of a desperate plan and I'm thinking "that is a terrible plan. There is no way that plan works." Then the movie spends too much time trying to convince you that it's seriously going to do this plan and it could actually work, just to pay off in the end by confirming your first impression. That it would never work. That's why I don't consider it a subversion, but reality ensuing with a payoff on my natural expectation.

It's not a brilliant story or masterfully executed simple story, or clever writing or too-witty-for-you subversion. It presupposes each member of the audience has come up with their own prospective story that would have been a better idea, after all. However, each such story is likely subtly or substantially different from each other, and this one we got is the story that serves the broader narrative the movie required. Tracking Leia-Rey's paired beacons has different implications and resolutions than tracking their escaped stormtrooper, or relying on residual brainwashing on a previous prisoner or stormtrooper, or having some delicate and previously unused technology at work, or just treating following ships through hyperspace as routine practice. They've used tracking devices for this purpose before, so I'd question this being a normal capability.

And just for the record, the plan fails when Dark BB8 recognizes that Light BB8 is an intruder and reports them, so extra squads can be placed in all the secure areas and the intruders are easily captured when they go for their target. That plan really was never going to work. Nothing they did could change that. Clearly they have some other effects beyond the bare success or failure of their mission.

My problem with the whole Rey's parents thing is not that they're nobodies. It's that it was HEAVILY implied that Rey had some kind of heritage/connection with Luke and the Academy. And then Johnson threw that away because SUBVERTING EXPECTATIONS LUL
Johnson threw that away because every other option was ****ing terrible. I've said it before, I'll not blame TLJ for bad writing that was done in TFA. If you seriously expected something terrible, then that's on you. Some people knew better. You being wrong doesn't mean it was an intentional subversion.

[Mechalich]

Neither does the bulk of the audience - Satine is a side character in a peripheral work, and while both the character and the work are generally solid this is essentially just making up content about a character not in the movie but probably known about (Obi Wan), to relate them to a character actually in the movie via what is effectively a total unknown.

This isn't good storytelling - it's fanservice, in a very non-euphemistic way. That Abrams et. al. are likely to focus more on storytelling than on trivia for the most obsessive fans is a good thing.

Connecting to other parts of the universe, even if obscure, is not merely fanservice, it's drawing on the strengths of the franchise. The MCU films regularly include fairly obscure references and by pulling out of those as opposed to inventing things whole cloth they are actually able to improve the experience for the fraction of the fanbase that knows what's going on. For example, in Infinity War all of Thanos' minions were taken directly from the comics. Those characters were incredibly obscure, but choosing to use them not only provided a call back to fans, it also saved time and money developing new character designs (it may even have made portions of fight choreography easier to plan).

If Rey's heritage matters she has to be related to someone from the past, probably a Jedi. Obi-Wan is the obvious candidate based on the timeline (you can't use Mace Windu, the rest of the council is far less impacting and also mostly aliens). Satine is a canonical romantic interest of Obi-Wan's. If you're going to write him as having had an illegitimate child she's the obvious choice. There's every reason to use her rather than making up someone completely new (she's also conveniently dead in canon). On the economic side this would also serve as useful cross-promotion for TCW - highly valuable.

More broadly, even if Abrams and the writers choose to go another route, they need to be aware of this option. The people writing the ST should be freaking savants of Star Wars lore, especially of what is still canon. Satine is hardly obscure. She appears in fully 11 episodes of TCW. She's certainly a top-25 non-film character. If Saw Gerrera - considerably less prominent in TCW - can appear in Rogue One then other characters can too.


Johnson threw that away because every other option was ****ing terrible. I've said it before, I'll not blame TLJ for bad writing that was done in TFA. If you seriously expected something terrible, then that's on you. Some people knew better. You being wrong doesn't mean it was an intentional subversion.

There are any number of non-terrible options for Rey having a significant heritage and her parents (or caretakers) leaving her behind. The leaving behind part is trivially simple - they left her behind to confront Snoke, and he killed them. A bit cliche perhaps, but easily tied into Snoke's (still nonexistent) backstory. She could have been any number of people's grandchild and have it be fine - the only terrible option is Rey being a Skywalker. If her lineage is Kenobi, that's also a bit cliche, but fine. If you want to be a bit subversive, she can be Palpatine's granddaughter - a particularly good choice if Snoke is Plagueis that ties all the legacies together. And even if she's not the direct descendant of anyone important, if she were the ward of someone important - like Ahsoka Tano - that works too.

PT-OT-ST its a three generation story. Once they put Kylo Ren/Ben Solo into play that was the formula. Someone on the good guys side needs to connect back. It can't be Finn, and it isn't Poe (who was not even intended to survive TFA initially), so it has to be Rey. Her lack of connection to anything in the previous trilogies violates all conventional storytelling, and Star Wars, whatever else it may be, it one of the most conventional stories ever written. At least until Rian Johnson somehow failed to recognize that.

The progression of movies is like having three classical symphonies by a middling composer, then three symphonies by f-ing Beethoven, then a knock-off symphony imitating Beethoven, and then suddenly you're listening to an bizarre experimental harmonic by Phillip Glass. The merits of Phillip Glass' work compared to the classical composers are largely immaterial, it doesn't fit on a list with a bunch of other extremely traditional works.

[Zevox]

My problem with the whole Rey's parents thing is not that they're nobodies. It's that it was HEAVILY implied that Rey had some kind of heritage/connection with Luke and the Academy.
Yes, it was. And personally, I rolled my eyes at that and thought it was a very dumb piece of writing that would only result in yet more rehashing - Rey's version of the "I am your father" reveal. Ditching it is the best way to go, I'd say. Better for them to build Rey up as her own character than make her important because she's related to someone else we already know was important in the past. Not that they've done that, mind you, she's weirdly of tangential importance to the actual plots of the films so far despite being the nominal main character, but it would be better.

I will agree with you on one thing though - if Abrams undoes that, anything would be better than making her a Skywalker. They already screwed up Luke's character badly enough, having him also have abandoned his daughter on a random planet and then never mention anything when she later tracked him down would be even more atrocious.

[Peelee]

It's that it was HEAVILY implied that Rey had some kind of heritage/connection with Luke and the Academy.

I keep hearing this, but it really wasn't. That was 100% on the fans.

[Zevox]

I keep hearing this, but it really wasn't. That was 100% on the fans.
The whole vision sequence when she found Luke's lightsaber and was somehow being "called" by it certainly implied a connection to Luke, at least. Not sure where he's getting the Academy from, but that whole set of scenes was screaming "important connection between Rey and Luke" for all to see.

[Peelee]

The whole vision sequence when she found Luke's lightsaber and was somehow being "called" by it certainly implied a connection to Luke, at least. Not sure where he's getting the Academy from, but that whole set of scenes was screaming "important connection between Rey and Luke" for all to see.

Funny, because that didn't happen to Luke when he got it from Obi-Wan despite his connection to Anakin. Which was a much stronger connection, seeing as how Anakin made it and used it extensively while Luke only had it for a couple years. It certainly screamed out "connection to the Force," but that was the extent of it. Again, all the buildup was pure fan work.

So yeah, I'm not seeing it.

[LaZodiac]

The whole vision sequence when she found Luke's lightsaber and was somehow being "called" by it certainly implied a connection to Luke, at least. Not sure where he's getting the Academy from, but that whole set of scenes was screaming "important connection between Rey and Luke" for all to see.

Or it could just be that an item with a traumatic connection to the force (it DID see Luke see his father reveal and get this hand cut off) radiate a lot of memories. She's drawn to it because she's strong in the force.

It's like a spirit medium walking into a concentration camp. You're gonna sense that emotion.

[Peelee]

Or it could just be that an item with a traumatic connection to the force (it DID see Luke see his father reveal and get this hand cut off) radiate a lot of memories. She's drawn to it because she's strong in the force.

And the bunch of kids and presumably bunch of padawans and knights that Anakin cut down with it, as well.

[Kyrell1978]

Funny, because that didn't happen to Luke when he got it from Obi-Wan despite his connection to Anakin. Which was a much stronger connection, seeing as how Anakin made it and used it extensively while Luke only had it for a couple years. It certainly screamed out "connection to the Force," but that was the extent of it. Again, all the buildup was pure fan work.

So yeah, I'm not seeing it.

This is exactly how I took that scene when I watched it.

[Friv]

My perception is that the timbre has changed as well. When we hated any of the prequels we blamed Lucas primarily, Jar Jar second (which is straight Lucas too), and then Hayden Christensen and then Jake Lloyd. In my opinion, that seems reasonable - the person in charge should get the heat, and it should diminish (exponentially) as it rolls down hill. Now some people are spreading that blame far and wide (maybe fans, maybe not) and that colors the conversation and may encourage reactionary love out of people that really liked the movie/characters/actors.

Sadly, your perception is not correct.

Jake Lloyd quit acting over the bullying and harassment that he received as Anakin in The Phantom Menace. Ahmed Best, who played Jar-Jar, attempted suicide over it.

The modern Internet has made it easier for those of us not involved to see the harassment going on, but Star Wars "fans" who were angry about the ruination of their childhood were being complete ****weasels twenty years ago, too.

[Zevox]

Funny, because that didn't happen to Luke when he got it from Obi-Wan despite his connection to Anakin. Which was a much stronger connection, seeing as how Anakin made it and used it extensively while Luke only had it for a couple years. It certainly screamed out "connection to the Force," but that was the extent of it. Again, all the buildup was pure fan work.

So yeah, I'm not seeing it.

Or it could just be that an item with a traumatic connection to the force (it DID see Luke see his father reveal and get this hand cut off) radiate a lot of memories. She's drawn to it because she's strong in the force.

It's like a spirit medium walking into a concentration camp. You're gonna sense that emotion.
But her visions had nothing to do with Luke or Anakin's pasts, but specifically included the moment her parents left her on Jakku. It was clearly meant to be taken as foreshadowing about her, specifically, and given it was coming from Luke's lightsaber, the connection is pretty clear.

[Peelee]

But her visions had nothing to do with Luke or Anakin's pasts, but specifically included the moment her parents left her on Jakku. It was clearly meant to be taken as foreshadowing about her, specifically, and given it was coming from Luke's lightsaber, the connection is pretty clear.

Anakin's lightsaber. Imean, if we're talking about people who had the lightsaber and then lost it, there's options. Even then, again, nothing like that had happened before, despite the much stronger connection the saber should have had between Anakin and Luke.

[Devonix]

Anakin's lightsaber. Imean, if we're talking about people who had the lightsaber and then lost it, there's options. Even then, again, nothing like that had happened before, despite the much stronger connection the saber should have had between Anakin and Luke.

Also if people want to blame someone blame Abrams. If he had planned for Rey to be related to anyone he would have said something. People forget that he was the Executive Producer for Episode 8 and it was known that he was going to make Episode 9. If he had something he wanted to do with Rey's parents.

If he had any idea in his head that he wanted her to be related to the Skywalkers. Then he would have told someone. He didn't because Her being related to anyone else was fan speculation, nothing more. Was it a reasonable speculation yes, the hints laid out could very easily be interpreted to her being related to and having a connection to them. But that is all it ever was, speculation. It was never fact.

[Peelee]

If he had any idea in his head that he wanted her to be related to the Skywalkers. Then he would have told someone. He didn't because Her being related to anyone else was fan speculation, nothing more. Was it a reasonable speculation yes, the hints laid out could very easily be interpreted to her being related to and having a connection to them. But that is all it ever was, speculation. It was never fact.

Replace the bolded with anyone and it still works. Also, seconding blaming Abrams as a fine avenue. Lord knows I do.

[Hopeless]

I'd have rather she be a Kenobi than a Skywalker.

Then could have revealed that the Force Ghost stuff required a conduit to work through which was Anakin's lightsaber in Obi-Wan's case.

Qui-Gon eventually managed without it by contacting Yoda himself or via Mortis if you watched TCW series, but that's not we're supposed to be talking about here.

Has this been officially announced or is it still heresay regarding cancelling his trilogy?

[Zevox]

Anakin's lightsaber. Imean, if we're talking about people who had the lightsaber and then lost it, there's options. Even then, again, nothing like that had happened before, despite the much stronger connection the saber should have had between Anakin and Luke.
Force visions aren't science where you repeat the same stimuli and get the same results every time. One not happening to Luke before doesn't mean anything.

[Peelee]

Force visions aren't science where you repeat the same stimuli and get the same results every time. One not happening to Luke before doesn't mean anything.

But it absolutely must have been referencing that her parentage was important? And when it later turns out that is not the case, instead of looking at it with an alternate reading, it must have still been the case, except now it's a mistake and/or was cast aside? And that somehow makes more sense than "it didn't mean that?"

[Devonix]

I'd have rather she be a Kenobi than a Skywalker.

Then could have revealed that the Force Ghost stuff required a conduit to work through which was Anakin's lightsaber in Obi-Wan's case.

Qui-Gon eventually managed without it by contacting Yoda himself or via Mortis if you watched TCW series, but that's not we're supposed to be talking about here.

Has this been officially announced or is it still heresay regarding cancelling his trilogy?

I always hated how they went about trying to make Force Ghosting some kind of learned skill. It was better when it was mysterious and I just assumed it had to do with accepting your place in the universe and the force. Surrendering yourself in peace. AKA how it used to work in the EU.

[Peelee]

It was better when it was mysterious

*coughhackwheezemidichlorians*

[Sapphire Guard]

It never made sense for Rey to be related to somebody. None of the characters we know are in a position to not notice a missing child or are likely to have one night stands on random Jakku locals.

[Kyrell1978]

*coughhackwheezemidichlorians*

Yay! Space herpes that come with super powers

[Peelee]

Yay! Space herpes that come with super powers

Ok that's hilarious enough that I almost don't mind it anymore.

[Kyrell1978]

Ok that's hilarious enough that I almost don't mind it anymore.

I do my best.

[Jayngfet]

On Rey's Vision:

It connects Rey to previous trilogies, explicitly. McGregor even came back to do ghost Obi-Wan and you can hear him in the background specifically addressing Rey as we segue from the OT into Rey's past.

The idea that she has all this connecting symbolism but is unrelated is just absurd. It clearly isn't meant to be any kind of generalized trauma given we have no reference to Anakin murdering a bunch of kids and his fellow Jedi but ONLY actions Anakin took directly relating to Padme and unborn Luke like learning about Plaguis and then leaping forward to the personal OT story. The content of what's in that vision is very specific and meant to link up Rey with the previous heroes in the context of the things that linked them up before. At one point I even picked apart the audio with my professional setup and the only other interpretation of some lines just explicitly mentions Rey as if she was also already related to the Jedi and third in a specific sequence.

Then you have all these awkward little touches like Leia hugging her over Chewbacca as if they're somehow related despite never having met, Ben mentioning in another sequence her visions of Ach-To, which are brought up again in TLJ before being cut short for a joke that didn't work, and Luke's expression at the end which certainly doesn't imply he's about to dismiss her the way he does.

Rey being actually no one as she claims is ridiculous. Not just that but for the fact that narrative drama demands that any no one who is suddenly important actually be someone important.

[Peelee]

On Rey's Vision:

It connects Rey to previous trilogies, explicitly. McGregor even came back to do ghost Obi-Wan and you can hear him in the background specifically addressing Rey as we segue from the OT into Rey's past.

The idea that she has all this connecting symbolism but is unrelated is just absurd. It clearly isn't meant to be any kind of generalized trauma given we have no reference to Anakin murdering a bunch of kids and his fellow Jedi but ONLY actions Anakin took directly relating to Padme and unborn Luke like learning about Plaguis and then leaping forward to the personal OT story. The content of what's in that vision is very specific and meant to link up Rey with the previous heroes in the context of the things that linked them up before. At one point I even picked apart the audio with my professional setup and the only other interpretation of some lines just explicitly mentions Rey as if she was also already related to the Jedi and third in a specific sequence.

Then you have all these awkward little touches like Leia hugging her over Chewbacca as if they're somehow related despite never having met, Ben mentioning in another sequence her visions of Ach-To, which are brought up again in TLJ before being cut short for a joke that didn't work, and Luke's expression at the end which certainly doesn't imply he's about to dismiss her the way he does.

Rey being actually no one as she claims is ridiculous. Not just that but for the fact that narrative drama demands that any no one who is suddenly important actually be someone important.

A.) Guiness says "Rey," not McGregor. It's editing from when he said "afraid."
2.) The symbolism being meaningless isn't absurd. Abrams has famously said that he creates mysteries without knowing the solution. The lightsaber visions are nothing more than an Abrams Mystery Box.

[warty goblin]

I never figured TFA was hinting directly that Rey was Luke's kid. I thought it the most probable - and groanworthy - reveal, simply because Star Wars gonna Star War, but not because the movie was explicitly pointing at that.

I did think the movie was pretty clearly hinting, if not outright showing, that Rey's background/parentage was important, and probably connected to Luke's academy in some way. Kylo certainly acted like a girl from Jakku was a big deal, which makes no sense if they aren't connected. If Rey had been a student at the Academy, or going to become one, and her parents left her on Jakku to keep Ren from catching her, that would have struck me as a reasonable resolution to the setup. What we got just took all that hinting at important stuff and chucked it right out the window, in some combination of "isn't surbverting expectations cool?" and mystery box nonsense.

(I'd note that Rey's parents being nobodies is entirely consistent with both hypotheses.)

[Devonix]

On Rey's Vision:

It connects Rey to previous trilogies, explicitly. McGregor even came back to do ghost Obi-Wan and you can hear him in the background specifically addressing Rey as we segue from the OT into Rey's past.

The idea that she has all this connecting symbolism but is unrelated is just absurd. It clearly isn't meant to be any kind of generalized trauma given we have no reference to Anakin murdering a bunch of kids and his fellow Jedi but ONLY actions Anakin took directly relating to Padme and unborn Luke like learning about Plaguis and then leaping forward to the personal OT story. The content of what's in that vision is very specific and meant to link up Rey with the previous heroes in the context of the things that linked them up before. At one point I even picked apart the audio with my professional setup and the only other interpretation of some lines just explicitly mentions Rey as if she was also already related to the Jedi and third in a specific sequence.

Then you have all these awkward little touches like Leia hugging her over Chewbacca as if they're somehow related despite never having met, Ben mentioning in another sequence her visions of Ach-To, which are brought up again in TLJ before being cut short for a joke that didn't work, and Luke's expression at the end which certainly doesn't imply he's about to dismiss her the way he does.

Rey being actually no one as she claims is ridiculous. Not just that but for the fact that narrative drama demands that any no one who is suddenly important actually be someone important.

As I said, there are reasons to assume the connection. But facts are that there isn't one. and that if there was, it means that Abrams changed his mind about it. This is how Abrams has always written. He tosses out a million ideas, has the audience connect the dots for him and then either goes off of the speculation or ignores it.

[Kyrell1978]

A.) Guiness says "Rey," not McGregor. It's editing from when he said "afraid."
2.) The symbolism being meaningless isn't absurd. Abrams has famously said that he creates mysteries without knowing the solution. The lightsaber visions are nothing more than an Abrams Mystery Box.

Guiness says "Rey" but McGregor finishes the line "these are your first steps." So....both of you are right?

I always just figured that since the lightsaber had been wielded by two of the most powerful jedi, it was sort of acting as a force aritfact or holocron or some such. In this manner it gave some things that were important to the force user and some things that were important to it or its former wielders.

[Mechalich]

Here's the thing, TFA sets up an explicit Chekov's Gun labelled 'Rey's Lineage.' There are any number of ways that gun can go off, but it has to go off, otherwise those scenes become nothing but a deceptive bait and switch to the audience which is bad storytelling, period. The reveal that Rey's parents are nobodies is bad for two reasons. First because it undercuts the foreshadowing and subverts expectations in a series that is not about subversion. And, second, because it amounts to nothing. If Rey had reacted to the revelation that her parents abandoning her by having a complete break down and choosing to join Kylo Ren - which is what he obviously hoped would happen - that would have been a viable plot twist based on the setup that would have worked. Fans might not have liked it, but it was a reasonable storytelling option. Instead, Rey shrugs the revelation off - Chekov's Gun jammed - and the whole thing goes nowhere.

This type of thing is one of the major storytelling issues with TLJ - various things are setup only to have no payoff. Finn and Rose accomplish nothing. Poe destroys the dreadnaught and it has no effect on the overall tactical order of battle. Poe's mutiny is strangled in the cradle. The sand-skimmer charge is curtailed at the last moment. Rey's vision in the cave reveals nothing. Snoke's grand plans are rendered irrelevant by his death. Luke's not really on Crait but dies anyway. Every time the movie sets up something to happen, it subsequently fails to resolve.

[LaZodiac]

Here's the thing, TFA sets up an explicit Chekov's Gun labelled 'Rey's Lineage.' There are any number of ways that gun can go off, but it has to go off, otherwise those scenes become nothing but a deceptive bait and switch to the audience which is bad storytelling, period. The reveal that Rey's parents are nobodies is bad for two reasons. First because it undercuts the foreshadowing and subverts expectations in a series that is not about subversion. And, second, because it amounts to nothing. If Rey had reacted to the revelation that her parents abandoning her by having a complete break down and choosing to join Kylo Ren - which is what he obviously hoped would happen - that would have been a viable plot twist based on the setup that would have worked. Fans might not have liked it, but it was a reasonable storytelling option. Instead, Rey shrugs the revelation off - Chekov's Gun jammed - and the whole thing goes nowhere.

This type of thing is one of the major storytelling issues with TLJ - various things are setup only to have no payoff. Finn and Rose accomplish nothing. Poe destroys the dreadnaught and it has no effect on the overall tactical order of battle. Poe's mutiny is strangled in the cradle. The sand-skimmer charge is curtailed at the last moment. Rey's vision in the cave reveals nothing. Snoke's grand plans are rendered irrelevant by his death. Luke's not really on Crait but dies anyway. Every time the movie sets up something to happen, it subsequently fails to resolve.

The gun went off you just didn't hear it. You can see throughout the film Rey trying to find people to be her parents (this could even explain hugging Lea, she's a big powerful mom related to the big powerful Dad who just died) and in TLJ Keylo Ren tries to manipulate her based on that weakness. It's paid off, you just don't like how it was paid off. That's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. And she HAD a break down, she almost DID join him.

Rey's vision in the cave is showing her what she's always known; she is alone. She isn't inherently special and has no grand destiny laid out for her. There is only herself, no matter how far she looks. They also set up that astral projecting can kill you so that's valid.

[Devonix]

The gun went off you just didn't hear it. You can see throughout the film Rey trying to find people to be her parents (this could even explain hugging Lea, she's a big powerful mom related to the big powerful Dad who just died) and in TLJ Keylo Ren tries to manipulate her based on that weakness. It's paid off, you just don't like how it was paid off. That's fine, there's nothing wrong with that. And she HAD a break down, she almost DID join him.

Rey's vision in the cave is showing her what she's always known; she is alone. She isn't inherently special and has no grand destiny laid out for her. There is only herself, no matter how far she looks. They also set up that astral projecting can kill you so that's valid.

Exactly, it was a bait and switch internally. Rey thought that she was " a part of this. " It's a plot point and weapon that the badguys use in the story against her. But she is a part of this, she's there because of who she is, not how she relates to other people. Its a lesson that the character is supposed to learn. I

[Dr.Samurai]

When you are subverting every expectation, they start not to pay off. You just come away thinking the director went "Hmm... what will the audience expect in this scene? Let's do the opposite of that thing!!"

So everyone is wondering who Rey is (read: who her parents are); Rey, Han, the alien woman with the thick lenses, Luke, etc. It's all a mystery that keeps getting alluded to. The alien woman asks who Rey is, cut to Rey being lured down the hall by the lightsaber and flashback scenes etc. We've all been through this already.

The "payoff" doesn't make sense. If her parents are nobody, the storytelling has failed. The only reason we were wondering who her parents were in the first place is because it was hyped up as a great mystery before the movie came out, and then in the actual movie. Otherwise, who cares? Do we know who Obi-wan's parents are? Or Yoda's? Or Mace Windu's? Or Han's? Chewie's? Palpatine's? Not a single word is wasted on the parentage of any of these characters. Meanwhile, TFA and TLJ want us to care about Rey's parentage, just to tell us "Hey, they're no one. Never mattered, still doesn't, thanks for participating".

[Jayngfet]

Exactly, it was a bait and switch internally. Rey thought that she was " a part of this. " It's a plot point and weapon that the badguys use in the story against her. But she is a part of this, she's there because of who she is, not how she relates to other people. Its a lesson that the character is supposed to learn. I

The thing is Rey wasn't a part of it in that sense. She never actually said she thought Luke was her dad and there was never anything to indicate that from *her perspective*.

There are like a million dudes who were fighting but not Skywalkers. There were a lot of Jedi candidates who also weren't Skywalkers. We, the audience, draw that conclusion because we have the luxury of time and introspection Rey never got. What was to Rey a couple of weird seconds is to us something people spent hours looking at in some cases and something we know has content. We as the audience know I'm thinking that two conversations are related and Rey only figures it out herself much later during a process we see in more or less real time when she does.

Likewise we as the audience also know Rey's parents being nobody makes no sense because we as the viewers have the luxury of going back and checking and we can see that for that to be true and consistent with 8 several characters in 7 would need to act very differently from their actual behavior there, or in any subsequent media. Rey and Unkar do not have an Anakin and Watto relationship despite the story asserting their equivalency in 8. Rey lives on her own and freelances for Unkar, she doesn't act like his literal slave sold to him for cheap. You can follow this through every other part of the story since Rey being nobody doesn't actually answer the questions asked in BOTH FILMS like why Rey has visions of Luke and the Temple. It's brought up again in 8 only to be interrupted with a joke and never answered despite very obviously being a question both parties involved wanting an answer to and having it in their power to discern.

[Scowling Dragon]

Also that Lightsaber connection.
The movie pulls that lightsaber out of the most literal darkest pit, implies connection and then never does anything with it.

"Shes just another chosen one" is replacing one bad cliche with a even worse cliche.

[Devonix]

Those million dudes that were fighting and weren't Skywalkers. They didn't matter. They're not really important to anything. Part of this movie is taking some random force sensitive and making them important.

This movie series is comprised almost entirely of people who would normally have been background characters and making them important.
A low level stormtrooper
A Rebel/Resistance Fighterpilot
A Common mechanic on a fleet ship
A Force user that isn't a Skywalker

In any other starwars movie this would describe people who die in the first 5 minutes of the story.

[Sapphire Guard]

Funny enough, I never thought Rey's parentage was an issue. No matter who her parents were, it wouldn't be such an instant power up. Anakin was literally a child of the force and was constantly beaten up by people with more training than him, which was a subversion of 'invincible chosen one'. Lineage wasn't the issue, because training has previously always been more important.

As far as Rey wanting a place in all this, that's also a question. Rey didn't want some grand destiny, not in TFA. She was offered a job as second mate on the falcon. She was offered a chance to literally take up Luke's sword by Maz. And she ran away from them both. She was handed a grand destiny on a silver platter and turned it down, because she wanted her parents. Not because they were superheroes, but because they were her parents.


A Rebel/Resistance Fighterpilot

Wedge.


A Common mechanic on a fleet ship

R2D2.


A Force user that isn't a Skywalker

Obi Wan Kenobi.

[warty goblin]

Those million dudes that were fighting and weren't Skywalkers. They didn't matter. They're not really important to anything. Part of this movie is taking some random force sensitive and making them important.

This movie series is comprised almost entirely of people who would normally have been background characters and making them important.
A low level stormtrooper
A Rebel/Resistance Fighterpilot
A Common mechanic on a fleet ship
A Force user that isn't a Skywalker

In any other starwars movie this would describe people who die in the first 5 minutes of the story.

But any other Star Wars movie (particularly the OT) would have actually recognized their deaths as meaning something. A New Hope payed a lot of attention to Red and Gold squadron getting killed off, Empire Strikes Back spends time with the soldiers in the trenches and emphasizes the importance of getting the transports out safely. Return of the Jedi spends substantial time with non-hero fighter pilots and lets them and their sacrifices be important.

TLJ takes approximately 99% of the Resistance dying pointless, meaningless deaths, and acts like it's a happy ending because a half dozen people who matter survived and they're totally gonna light a fire in the galaxy or something. If your model is that only the special people matter, I don't actually like it better just because a couple of the special people are mechanics.

[Devonix]

Funny enough, I never thought Rey's parentage was an issue. No matter who her parents were, it wouldn't be such an instant power up. Anakin was literally a child of the force and was constantly beaten up by people with more training than him, which was a subversion of 'invincible chosen one'. Lineage wasn't the issue, because training has previously always been more important.

As far as Rey wanting a place in all this, that's also a question. Rey didn't want some grand destiny, not in TFA. She was offered a job as second mate on the falcon. She was offered a chance to literally take up Luke's sword by Maz. And she ran away from them both. She was handed a grand destiny on a silver platter and turned it down, because she wanted her parents. Not because they were superheroes, but because they were her parents.



Wedge.



R2D2.



Obi Wan Kenobi.

Wedge is not important He's a glorified extra. R2D2 is the pet dog not a real character in the movies and we all know it. and Obiwan is important specifically because of his connection to Anakin/Vader.

[Devonix]

Starwars has never paid attention to the deaths of random rebel fighters or pilots. Their deaths have always been treated as less than nothing, other than a cursory Nooo. From someone as their wingman goes down. That's been a joke for decades.

[Dr.Samurai]

Those million dudes that were fighting and weren't Skywalkers. They didn't matter. They're not really important to anything. Part of this movie is taking some random force sensitive and making them important.
To what end? The series has more "random" force sensitives than Skywalkers, so why make a point that she's not a Skywalker in this way? I mean, you could literally have Luke tell her it's up to her and she says something like "I can't, I'm not a Skywalker, I don't have your power" and then Luke tells her "It's not about your bloodline, blah blah blah". I don't think anyone needs to hear that message, but if you feel it needs to be in there, this hyping up her parents and then revealing it was nothing was a bad way to do it. It just leaves everyone scratching their head.

This movie series is comprised almost entirely of people who would normally have been background characters and making them important.
A low level stormtrooper
A Rebel/Resistance Fighterpilot
A Common mechanic on a fleet ship
A Force user that isn't a Skywalker

In any other starwars movie this would describe people who die in the first 5 minutes of the story.
I don't think this is true. Like, I don't think this is a theme in the movie (beyond "anyone can use the Force"). Wedge is a rebel fighter pilot and survives all three OT movies. Han is a smuggler. There are more Force users that aren't Skywalkers than there are Skywalkers and none of them die within the first five minutes of any story. Yoda, Obi-wan, Mace, Qui-gon... all are integral to the story of Star Wars and none are Skywalkers.

Even Leia... I mean, you can say "well she was a Princess", but that didn't mean much in the Empire. Vader still captured her and tortured her and blew up her planet. What mattered more was that she was a rebel fighter.

I don't know. I really don't think that Star Wars traditionally says "you have to be special to be important" and I don't think TLJ is saying the opposite of that. TLJ does seem to have a message about anyone being able to use the Force but that was already true and seems to be an unnecessary point to make. What it does seem to change is that using the Force requires training.

[Peelee]

Starwars has never paid attention to the deaths of random rebel fighters or pilots. Their deaths have always been treated as less than nothing, other than a cursory Nooo. From someone as their wingman goes down. That's been a joke for decades.

That's news to me.

[Jayngfet]

We had a random unrated force user. His name was Obi-Wan Kenobi. You could say the same thing for anyone who isn't Luke or Anakin which means the majority of principal characters.

[Kyrell1978]

Starwars has never paid attention to the deaths of random rebel fighters or pilots. Their deaths have always been treated as less than nothing, other than a cursory Nooo. From someone as their wingman goes down. That's been a joke for decades.

But....many Bothans died to bring us this information. :frown:

[Devonix]

But....many Bothans died to bring us this information. :frown:

Yes Poor Poor Manuel Both Hanz.

[Mightymosy]

SO GUYS

Do you think James Gunn would do good things with Star Wars? Obviously if you didnt liked GotG, you wont. But for those who do;

His movies pulled off solid character chemistry, epic adventure, scum characters and still have a solid emotional core that, i think, is key to really good Star Wars. I still get shivers at the final "take my hand". So much that it makes me not mind at all the corny "We are the Guardians of the Galaxy"

Is James Gunn the one who made Guardians of the Galaxy?
If so, YES! I loved that movie!!! When I watched it in cinema, I literally thought "Wow, now THIS is our modern Star Wars! This is the worthy successor we have been waiting for!"
GotG does everything right what original Star Wars did right and what made it awesome - ESPECIALLY having likeable protagonists, an internally consistent story, and flashy and original alien creatures. That movie was f*cking awesome if there ever was one!
For me, the only important difference to old Star Wars is the tone - GotG clearly is more light hearted.


On current topic: are you people talking AGAIN how the new movies "democratise" the force? Oh man.

by the way:
@Dr. Samurai, you are a brave person, I admire your patience.

[Daimbert]

Wedge is not important He's a glorified extra.

And yet he's a nondescript character that survives all three movies and arguably pulls off all the important feats that the fighters do except destroying the first Death Star (that required Force abilities to hit). He survives both Death Star runs. He participates in destroying the second Death Star by destroying the power regulator. He's the one who actually pulls off the flying feat of bringing down a walker with tow cables. Other than being shown directly in command, what does Poe do that Wedge hasn't?


R2D2 is the pet dog not a real character in the movies and we all know it.

The same thing could be said for the mechanic character in TLJ, though, that she's a convenient plot device and not a real character either. And at least R2 manages to accomplish a LOT of things AND, in fact, sticks around for more than one movie.


and Obiwan is important specifically because of his connection to Anakin/Vader.

Actually, Obi-Wan is important because of his status as a Jedi. That's why Leia recruits him and why he sets out with Luke. The connection to Vader adds more MEANING to their fight and his training and mentorship of Luke, but that's not the essence of his character. They could easily have kept Obi-Wan as is in the movie without that direct connection.

And, to be honest, that's what the new series misses, and why making Rey's parents nobodies misses the mark. It doesn't come across as her not being special -- because anyone with that strong of Force powers is special by definition, and she is still seen to have some kind of destiny -- but simply takes away the idea that she has connections that make these things meaningful. Luke being a Skywalker and Vader being his father Anakin isn't interesting because it implies a family bloodline, but is instead interesting because it means that Luke has to face his father to stop the evil of the Empire. Giving Rey a connection to Kylo -- even just as childhood friends at the Academy -- makes that confrontation have additional meaning. Making her his twin sister -- as they did with Jacen and Jaina in Legacy of the Force (and while many don't like that series, I do, flaws and all) -- would again add meaning and provide hope that that connection can be exploited to turn him good (or her dark) EVEN IF IT DOESN'T HAPPEN.

By subverting that, they need to build connection in another way. Doing it over Rey's lusting over Kylo's hot bod REALLY doesn't work, and there isn't enough plot or characterization to have it be built over common interests. The entire movie series, starting from TFA, apes these sorts of things but misses the point of them entirely, leaving them all shallow copies of what made the OT interesting.

[Androgeus]

AND, in fact, sticks around for more than one movie.

How dare that character who’s only been around for two movies only be in one movie?

[Devonix]

Troops in Starwars have always been disposable. Rebels and Empire soldiers get cut down left and right and no one ever really bats an eye. Hell the Ewoks mourn their dead more than the Rebels or empire do.

This continued into the Prequel trilogy by making both sides use literal mass produced, disposable troops. Yes The Clone Wars series and later books made the Clones into actual characters. But the point of them being disposable was so that they could be mowed down without the audience feeling bad or being expected to care about them.

And to clarify, I am saying that the film doesn't show these deaths as important. It's not that in universe they don't care, of course they do. But the camera doesn't frame it that way. The closest you get is Akbar giving a wistful look when the Awing hits the Executor.

That's why taking a Rebel pilot, and Stormtrooper as actual characters is something exciting to me.

[Daimbert]

How dare that character who’s only been around for two movies only be in one movie?

Um, I was referring to Rose Tico (the mechanic, if I'm understanding the references right) and she wasn't in the first movie, and didn't she die in TLJ? I could be wrong about that, though, but I thought that was the point of it.

Anyway, not sure what your snark is aimed at here. Care to enlighten me?


And to clarify, I am saying that the film doesn't show these deaths as important. It's not that in universe they don't care, of course they do. But the camera doesn't frame it that way. The closest you get is Akbar giving a wistful look when the Awing hits the Executor.

But that's not true. In Star Wars itself, the movie adds in a pilot character that Luke has a direct attachment to who get killed and so we know that their lives matter, in Biggs. Luke reacts strongly to Red Leader being killed by Vader before he starts his run. Biggs reacts to Porkins' death. All of that is certainly far more than we get for the pilots in TFA -- who really ARE treated that way -- and even in Rogue One, where using the footage from Star Wars is supposed to get us that sort of connection and it never happens. In Empire, we get a direct link between Dack and Luke and even get to see one of those who die -- he rescues Han and Luke -- and so have a connection before he is killed. Yes, there are of course a number of extra deaths, but how much more of that do you want to happen in a war-scale battle scene?

And what more does Poe do in TFA than Wedge does in the other movies? You can talk about them adding to his character in TLJ but that seems more like character assassination than characterization, so I'm not sure you can count that.

Having a stormtrooper main character is interesting, sure. Making him an incompetent coward is not the way to do that if you want to explore them as actual main characters.

[Androgeus]

Um, I was referring to Rose Tico (the mechanic, if I'm understanding the references right) and she wasn't in the first movie, and didn't she die in TLJ? I could be wrong about that, though, but I thought that was the point of it.

TLJ and Solo. And she didn’t die.


Anyway, not sure what your snark is aimed at here. Care to enlighten me?

I’m a terrible person who has to say everything in a jokey non-serious manner.

[Daimbert]

TLJ and Solo. And she didn’t die.

I haven't seen Solo, but looking it up on the wiki page and even just noting the timelines, I don't think that's correct. She's human and far too young to have actually been in Solo in any meaningful way, other than as a "telling the story" sort of framing. But I am corrected on her living through TLJ; I've only watched it once and her actually dying would have been the far more reasonable dramatic outcome.

EDIT: Even still, it doesn't invalidate my point that it's disingenuous to dismiss R2 over her when R2 has been in and in general perform heroic deeds in pretty much every other movie while she's been in one (or two) and not done all that much.

[Devonix]

Um, I was referring to Rose Tico (the mechanic, if I'm understanding the references right) and she wasn't in the first movie, and didn't she die in TLJ? I could be wrong about that, though, but I thought that was the point of it.

Anyway, not sure what your snark is aimed at here. Care to enlighten me?



But that's not true. In Star Wars itself, the movie adds in a pilot character that Luke has a direct attachment to who get killed and so we know that their lives matter, in Biggs. Luke reacts strongly to Red Leader being killed by Vader before he starts his run. Biggs reacts to Porkins' death. All of that is certainly far more than we get for the pilots in TFA -- who really ARE treated that way -- and even in Rogue One, where using the footage from Star Wars is supposed to get us that sort of connection and it never happens. In Empire, we get a direct link between Dack and Luke and even get to see one of those who die -- he rescues Han and Luke -- and so have a connection before he is killed. Yes, there are of course a number of extra deaths, but how much more of that do you want to happen in a war-scale battle scene?

And what more does Poe do in TFA than Wedge does in the other movies? You can talk about them adding to his character in TLJ but that seems more like character assassination than characterization, so I'm not sure you can count that.

Having a stormtrooper main character is interesting, sure. Making him an incompetent coward is not the way to do that if you want to explore them as actual main characters.

What does Poe do that Wedge doesn't? Well have more than 5 lines of dialogue for one. Wedge even in Force awakens is given plot importance, Wedge isn't. He's a tagalong he's an extra with some speaking lines, to give Luke, more backstory. Not a character of his own until the EU got ahold of him. You're confusing Lucas Wedge with EU Wedge. and the history and connection you feel to him because of that.

Dack has one line and gets killed in the next scene with once again everyone ignoring the death, it's treated as unimportant. Hell When he dies on the speeder, Luke isn't going back for his body he goes and gets the graple line and there is no contemplating the death of his " Friend. "

It's why I say the Ewok deaths are given more importance. The Camera actually lingers on it, it gives the audience time to focus, and tells us that this is important.

[Daimbert]

What does Poe do that Wedge doesn't? Well have more than 5 lines of dialogue for one. Wedge even in Force awakens is given plot importance, Wedge isn't. He's a tagalong he's an extra with some speaking lines, to give Luke, more backstory. Not a character of his own until the EU got ahold of him. You're confusing Lucas Wedge with EU Wedge. and the history and connection you feel to him because of that.

Oooo, just for that I really can't resist tossing out an EU Wedge quote: I don't recall inviting you to attempt mind reading [grin].

Because it isn't that. Wedge doesn't get a lot of lines, but what he tends to get are, in fact, rather important ones, which can't really be said for Poe in TFA. In Star Wars, it's Wedge who asks if the computers can hit the exhaust port. It's Wedge who comments on the size of the Death Star. It's Wedge who saves Luke with an impressive display of flying (when Luke was calling out to Biggs to help him). Wedge is one of the three who start the last Death Star run and is the one who DOESN'T get destroyed but instead has to bail out due to damage. In Empire, HE'S the one who makes the tricky run that takes out a walker with the tow cables. In RotJ, they show him specifically in the briefing scene and he is commanding the X-wings in general AND he gives the warning about running out of room AND he participates in the actual destruction. The reason that he was expanded on so much in the EU was because he was always important although secondary, so he was visible and remembered but since he was more of a background character there was lots to explore in his background.

Poe, in TFA, does pretty much what Wedge would have done in a similar movie, as a pilot. The piloting rescue and the Starkiller Base attack are clearly what Wedge has been doing throughout the entire OT. The thing with the droid essentially places Poe in the position of the captain of the Tantive IV, except that he manages to live.


Dack has one line and gets killed in the next scene with once again everyone ignoring the death, it's treated as unimportant. Hell When he dies on the speeder, Luke isn't going back for his body he goes and gets the graple line and there is no contemplating the death of his " Friend. "

Having just rewatched it, Luke tries to free Dack from the wreckage, can't, and then grabs the grapple. It moves quickly, but that's clearly what's going on. But, again, number of lines doesn't matter, and he gets the important line where he is clearly friendly with Luke when they take off, which is what gives us the connection to him. The same thing applies to Biggs, Porkins, and Rogue 2. And, in fact, how well the movies give us that connection explains why those stories keep getting expanded on in the EU, to the delight of the fans (for the most part). We don't get that for anyone from the ST.


It's why I say the Ewok deaths are given more importance. The Camera actually lingers on it, it gives the audience time to focus, and tells us that this is important.

They do that once, in what is a great scene but isn't much more than they do for the others, especially considering how difficult it is to stop an active battle to do it. And that's more about characterizing the Ewoks than about showing that their lives have value.

[Sapphire Guard]

The older films have a lot more focus on the individual pilots, there's far more conversation and focus on the various people in the cockpits. They also come off as more professional, thanks to things like "Red 2, checking in."

You'd be right about Wedge if it was just A New Hope, but he survives multiple battles and ends up delivering one of the fatal shots to DS2.

R2D2 is a character, he has his own goals, relationships, and personality.

Obi Wan is co protagonist of the prequels, hardly a bit player.


I feel like Alderaan got more time spent on it than the Hosnian system. Still probably less than it should have, but the ST isn't particularly spending more time on the losses. Where it is, it's for a moral lesson to Poe, not dwelling on the losses themselves.

Why am I still talking TLJ in August?

[Devonix]

The older films have a lot more focus on the individual pilots, there's far more conversation and focus on the various people in the cockpits. They also come off as more professional, thanks to things like "Red 2, checking in."

You'd be right about Wedge if it was just A New Hope, but he survives multiple battles and ends up delivering one of the fatal shots to DS2.

R2D2 is a character, he has his own goals, relationships, and personality.

Obi Wan is co protagonist of the prequels, hardly a bit player.


I feel like Alderaan got more time spent on it than the Hosnian system. Still probably less than it should have, but the ST isn't particularly spending more time on the losses. Where it is, it's for a moral lesson to Poe, not dwelling on the losses themselves.

Why am I still talking TLJ in August?

This is Starwars. I was still talking about how much I hated the Prequels straight up until the Sequel Trilogy came out. It's what this fanbase does.

[Zevox]

But it absolutely must have been referencing that her parentage was important? And when it later turns out that is not the case, instead of looking at it with an alternate reading, it must have still been the case, except now it's a mistake and/or was cast aside? And that somehow makes more sense than "it didn't mean that?"
A force vision about something that wasn't important would just be a complete waste of screen time, and as much as I don't think Abrams did a great job with TFA, I don't see anything in it that would lead me to believe he's that bad at this. And that vision explicitly references the question of her parentage by focusing in on the moment she was left on the planet. So yes, the implication there is clear and it absolutely makes more sense that TLJ threw out a plot point than anything else.

Mind you, I'm not saying that Abrams had anything specific in mind for this plot point when he did that scene - his reputation would suggest that it's entirely possible he didn't - but I don't see how denying the obvious implication of that scene makes more sense than accepting that it was, at the time, implying one thing that was later thrown out. And again, bear in mind, this is coming from someone who prefers that Rey's parents be nobodies rather than important/someone we knew.

[Devonix]

A force vision about something that wasn't important would just be a complete waste of screen time, and as much as I don't think Abrams did a great job with TFA, I don't see anything in it that would lead me to believe he's that bad at this. And that vision explicitly references the question of her parentage by focusing in on the moment she was left on the planet. So yes, the implication there is clear and it absolutely makes more sense that TLJ threw out a plot point than anything else.

Mind you, I'm not saying that Abrams had anything specific in mind for this plot point when he did that scene - his reputation would suggest that it's entirely possible he didn't - but I don't see how denying the obvious implication of that scene makes more sense than accepting that it was, at the time, implying one thing that was later thrown out. And again, bear in mind, this is coming from someone who prefers that Rey's parents be nobodies rather than important/someone we knew.

I agree, the movie did imply that who her parents were was important. But that's all it was doing, implying so that we could spend two years debating who they were. Her parentige did end up being important though, important to her, if not to the universe. That her parents were nobodies colors her entire personality and all of her actions.

[warty goblin]

This is Starwars. I was still talking about how much I hated the Prequels straight up until the Sequel Trilogy came out. It's what this fanbase does.

Star Wars conversation is a flat circle, 95% of which is hate. Basically, any conversation about Star Wars is a path to the Dark Side.

[Zevox]

I agree, the movie did imply that who her parents were was important. But that's all it was doing, implying so that we could spend two years debating who they were. Her parentige did end up being important though, important to her, if not to the universe. That her parents were nobodies colors her entire personality and all of her actions.
That latter part strikes me as an overly-generous reinterpretation of that, personally.

[Jayngfet]

People wondering why tertiary characters in Star Wars don't get big death scenes should be reminded that it's Star Wars. It's a battle. People die left and right. This isn't Lord of the Rings where our protagonists can just stop at any spot and meet the locals and have a fun time before moving on and the battles only pick up towards the end. Most of the time the battles are already ongoing and people are dying and have died for a while. You don't have time to mourn because most of the time your life is still in immediate danger and everything happens quickly.

Star Wars is a war story told through a few personal perspectives and framed with their immediate relationships. Rey has essentially no dialogue until the very end of the film with anyone who's both alive and speaks english. She has no connection to anything going on.


I agree, the movie did imply that who her parents were was important. But that's all it was doing, implying so that we could spend two years debating who they were. Her parentige did end up being important though, important to her, if not to the universe. That her parents were nobodies colors her entire personality and all of her actions.

And now we have an entire sequence in a movie that amounted to nothing. It serves no purpose unless you're viewing it on release with no other context. That's not what a sequel should do with other material.

[LaZodiac]

And now we have an entire sequence in a movie that amounted to nothing. It serves no purpose unless you're viewing it on release with no other context. That's not what a sequel should do with other material.

You must be absolutely furious Luke kissed his sister then.

[Lurkmoar]

You must be absolutely furious Luke kissed his sister then.

I wasn't furious, but it did make the whole scene even more awkward that it originally was...

[Scowling Dragon]

You must be absolutely furious Luke kissed his sister then.

As we all know two wrongs make a right!

If a story suffered from a problem the correct answer is to repeat it again with 3 decades worth of hindsight.

[tomandtish]

I wasn't furious, but it did make the whole scene even more awkward that it originally was...

Especially when you consider Leia's "I know.. Somehow I've always known..." comment.

So you always knew, but you kissed him like that anyway?

[pendell]

Dack has one line and gets killed in the next scene with once again everyone ignoring the death, it's treated as unimportant. Hell When he dies on the speeder, Luke isn't going back for his body he goes and gets the graple line and there is no contemplating the death of his " Friend. "

In fairness, at the time Luke was less than a minute away from being stepped on by an AT-AT walker. I suggest the prospect had a way of concentrating the mind on the immediate issue and not, say, on grieving for friends. :smallamused:

ETA: Be that as it may, I wonder if someone who actually has been in real combat would like to comment on the fact that Luke never again mentions Dak, or Biggs, or any of the rest of red squadron.

I have to wonder whether it's some kind of mental self-defense mechanism. No one in the GFFA would give insurance to a rebel soldier; the entire complement of the Tantive IV was captured by the Empire and possibly killed to keep the capture of Princess Leia quiet. The entirety of Red Squadron during the battle of Yavin, as well as Gold Squadron, was wiped out except for Wedge. Pretty much everyone who went up in a snowspeeder on Hoth never came down in one piece again ... the list goes on and on.

It occurs to me that at some point he's going to have to not get too close to the people around him, because if he did, why, he'd go mad. There's a LOT of death in those movies.



Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Jayngfet]

You must be absolutely furious Luke kissed his sister then.

That did lead to other things though. Han had a jealous streak and in VI and that drove a wedge between them since he had a romance with her previously, was away, and now Luke has important information Han is the only one of the main trio who doesn't know about. It went places.

Rey's vision... doesn't. It gets brought up, but then never actually goes anywhere.

[Forum Explorer]

That did lead to other things though. Han had a jealous streak and in VI and that drove a wedge between them since he had a romance with her previously, was away, and now Luke has important information Han is the only one of the main trio who doesn't know about. It went places.

Rey's vision... doesn't. It gets brought up, but then never actually goes anywhere.

No it doesn't, and that's a flaw of TFA. Because really, that was actually a pretty crappy part of TFA in the first place was Rey's whole weird vision quest thing. Honestly, I'm very glad that TLJ reversed that implication by 'subverting' it. And if you don't like that subversion, well blame TFA for setting it up in the first place, because it was a bad idea to begin with.

[Scowling Dragon]

Honestly, I'm very glad that TLJ reversed that implication by 'subverting' it. And if you don't like that subversion, well blame TFA for setting it up in the first place, because it was a bad idea to begin with.

Personally, I find myself disliking both aspects. Its garbage setup, and garbage subversion.

[Mechalich]

Personally, I find myself disliking both aspects. Its garbage setup, and garbage subversion.

Yeah, two wrongs don't make a right in storytelling any more than they do in life. If the setup is bad, then you have to tweak the payoff to try and make it better somehow. You don't just claim it was a waste of space and make a mockery of it. That's a thing generally with TLJ: it's written and produced as if it's some high concept takedown of the very idea of producing a classical melodramatic epic in fantasy space, but it's actually a Star Wars movie in a sequence with a bunch of other Star Wars movies.

You absolutely can make a high concept takedown of standard genre tropes - heck it's part of what made ASOIAF so intriguing to many people (it's also why GRR Martin can't finish it, because to do so would require submitting to the tropes in the same way the TV series had too) - but you can't do that within an ongoing series that plays those same tropes straight up to the hilt. TLJ is like inserting an ASOIAF novel into the middle of LotR in place of the Two Towers. Even though ASOIAF novels are far better written than anything in TLJ, that still wouldn't work and the Tolkien fans would be braying for the scalps of the people involved just as loudly as the Star Wars fans are right now.

[Scowling Dragon]

Yeah, two wrongs don't make a right in storytelling any more than they do in life. If the setup is bad, then you have to tweak the payoff to try and make it better somehow. You don't just claim it was a waste of space and make a mockery of it. That's a thing generally with TLJ: it's written and produced as if it's some high concept takedown of the very idea of producing a classical melodramatic epic in fantasy space, but it's actually a Star Wars movie in a sequence with a bunch of other Star Wars movies.

And anyway here is a great video about how TLJ fails as a Star Wars Deconstruction in comparison to Kotor II

https://youtu.be/0tN0RuRSp0o

Star Wars Fans have LOVED deconstructions and subversions before, the answer is simply that TLJ is a sucky deconstruction. You can't suddenly say that Flying Solo heroes are a thing of the past WHEN POE ALMOST SINGLEHANDEDLY SAVED THE GALAXY THE LAST MOVIE.

Personally I say that ASOFAI cannot end because GRR made a big sales pitch but its only logical outcome would be "And then everybody died a long painful death to the unstoppable villain. The end". Anything that would not be that would be playing on the tropes that he mocks.

[Jayngfet]

Maybe I'm just going by my own perceptions here but Game of Thrones was always second fiddle to Wheel of Time in the long running fantasy market until one took off on HBO and the other series never even got the pilot. George R.R. Martin certainly had popularity, but lets not pretend he was top dog on any kind of level playing field.

The average person doesn't like a deconstruction. They buy projects because they like them and they have no particular loyalty to a set of tropes or a specific genre. Hell just this week a huge KOTOR 1 vs 2 debate flared up in social media and I love 2 but people preferred the straightforward story of 1 overall and any poll will have shown you that in the last decade. Yes there were other issues contributing to that but even a finished and modded 2 isn't as popular as 1. Hell you can look at any popular deconstruction of a genre and see popular works within that genre usually won't care or at best make a slight course correction and still wind up being more popular.

A deconstruction, even at it's best, is something only appreciated either by hardcore fans of the genre, who hated this movie, or critics who have this weird meta mindset because it's their job to overthink these things and watch basically everything that comes out. John Q. Public, the kind of person generally buying Star Wars products(hence why even the tie-ins people mocked made the NYT bestseller list), doesn't care if Star Wars goes meta. He only cares if it's good, and this movie very much wasn't.

[Dr.Samurai]

I honestly don't see the problem if ASoIaF ends by using the same old tropes. The series (the show, haven't read the books) strikes me as basically the elaborate backstories of all of the characters. How Bran becomes a wizard, Jon a warrior and king, Arya a shapeshifting assassin, the Hound an anointed Knight, etc. Everything that has happened so far is the nitty gritty stuff that shapes our heroes into who they become. Everyone has seemed to earn their power and place to be there at the War for the Dawn, so if they all become heroes and win, I'm fine with that.

[Knaight]

I honestly don't see the problem if ASoIaF ends by using the same old tropes. The series (the show, haven't read the books) strikes me as basically the elaborate backstories of all of the characters. How Bran becomes a wizard, Jon a warrior and king, Arya a shapeshifting assassin, the Hound an anointed Knight, etc. Everything that has happened so far is the nitty gritty stuff that shapes our heroes into who they become. Everyone has seemed to earn their power and place to be there at the War for the Dawn, so if they all become heroes and win, I'm fine with that.

I'm not seeing that at all - the Hound could potentially end up far more heroic than they've been, and a far better fit for the heroic knight archetype than any of the actual knights, but his beef against knighthood is pretty well entrenched.

[Z3ro]

I honestly don't see the problem if ASoIaF ends by using the same old tropes. The series (the show, haven't read the books) strikes me as basically the elaborate backstories of all of the characters. How Bran becomes a wizard, Jon a warrior and king, Arya a shapeshifting assassin, the Hound an anointed Knight, etc. Everything that has happened so far is the nitty gritty stuff that shapes our heroes into who they become. Everyone has seemed to earn their power and place to be there at the War for the Dawn, so if they all become heroes and win, I'm fine with that.

Yeah, but that's not why most people liked reading/watching it. They liked the series because it didn't use the tropes, most notably anyone could die. Go read any discussion from early in the show, this is often one of the main points brought up for why people like it.

Now I do agree with you that Martin did use a lot of the tropes he seemed to initially subvert (Jon Snow is a particularly bad example). Mainly he disguised who the main characters were, which is why people assumed the tropes had been subverted. Start the series over knowing who the main characters will be an suddenly it's just the same old tropes.

But lots of people don't like the show as much now that the tropes are becoming more obvious. Just look at all the people complaining about the plot-armor the main characters had, and how it was better before. Not that I think they're right; I like the tropes, that's why I like fantasy. But that's not why a lot of people liked the series.

[Dr.Samurai]

I'm not seeing that at all - the Hound could potentially end up far more heroic than they've been, and a far better fit for the heroic knight archetype than any of the actual knights, but his beef against knighthood is pretty well entrenched.
It's a longshot I think. I agree that he will end up being pivotal and heroic in the end. The reason I think he may be knighted is because of how vocal he's been about knighthood and his disdain for it. And since it would be a Stark (or Jon) that might knight him, and one of the last things Ned did as Hand of the King was denounce the Mountain and strip him of all lands and titles, I could see it being done in a way that makes sense.

Yeah, but that's not why most people liked reading/watching it. They liked the series because it didn't use the tropes, most notably anyone could die. Go read any discussion from early in the show, this is often one of the main points brought up for why people like it.
I agree. It's why I like the show so much as well. I'm not against the subversion of tropes or anything. I love that you don't know what will happen because not only does it keep things interesting, but it also feels like the people that make it out have earned it, and aren't just wearing plot armor.

Now I do agree with you that Martin did use a lot of the tropes he seemed to initially subvert (Jon Snow is a particularly bad example). Mainly he disguised who the main characters were, which is why people assumed the tropes had been subverted. Start the series over knowing who the main characters will be an suddenly it's just the same old tropes.
Agreed.

But lots of people don't like the show as much now that the tropes are becoming more obvious. Just look at all the people complaining about the plot-armor the main characters had, and how it was better before. Not that I think they're right; I like the tropes, that's why I like fantasy. But that's not why a lot of people liked the series.
I also don't like the show as much now, but I don't think it's specifically because the tropes are obvious. I think it's the writing. I think you can still use the tropes, but it has to be done in a compelling way. Can the heroes survive a trip north of the wall to fetch a zombie? Sure. But make it look justified, not like plot armor.

[Scowling Dragon]

GRR Martin sure wanted to deconstruct the tropes:


Ruling is hard. This was maybe my answer to Tolkien, whom, as much as I admire him, I do quibble with. Lord of the Rings had a very medieval philosophy: that if the king was a good man, the land would prosper. We look at real history and it’s not that simple. Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?

The war that Tolkien wrote about was a war for the fate of civilization and the future of humanity, and that’s become the template. I’m not sure that it’s a good template, though. The Tolkien model led generations of fantasy writers to produce these endless series of dark lords and their evil minions who are all very ugly and wear black clothes. But the vast majority of wars throughout history are not like that.

[Sapphire Guard]

In regards to Martin, he reminds me most of Raymond E Feist, which isn't a criticism, but I'm not sure he's as deconstructive as he's reputed to be



In regard to 'anyone can die', well, not really. Of all our POV characters, as of ADWD, the deaths that aren't the prologues and epilogues, we have four POV character deaths. Other characters die, but that happens in the average Feist or Jordan book too.

Arys, Quentyn, Cat, and Ned. The first two are very minor characters, and Cat returns from the dead. So it's really just Ned. Which is in itself a very tropey death
, the father dying so his children had to avenge him. We just spent a bit more time with him first. Rob, the only Stark child without a POV, was also the only one to die.

Honestly, reading Martin first, he seemed very tropey to me. 'Okay, what have we got, bluff simple northerners, decadent southern court, fortified North from which the main threat comes held out by a wall...all very conventional.'


Tolkien can say that Aragorn became king and reigned for a hundred years, and he was wise and good. But Tolkien doesn’t ask the question: What was Aragorn’s tax policy? Did he maintain a standing army? What did he do in times of flood and famine? And what about all these orcs? By the end of the war, Sauron is gone but all of the orcs aren’t gone – they’re in the mountains. Did Aragorn pursue a policy of systematic genocide and kill them? Even the little baby orcs, in their little orc cradles?

I don't actually see any of this in ASOIAF. The end of LOTR wasn't a 'happily ever after', many of the participants are scarred permanently, Aragorn does have a lot of mopping up to do, it's noted that Eomer has to ride to help him often enough. The Scouring of the Shire is a thing, lots of good kings screw up massively, especially if you read the Silmarillion.

[Mordar]

GRR Martin sure wanted to deconstruct the tropes:

I'm not entirely convinced this is deconstruction as much as...wanting more details? Thinking there is story beyond the big battle? Or maybe just wanting more flavor in the dark cloaks and big battles?

At least it isn't subversion.

- M

[Dr.Samurai]

Agreed Mordar. My interest in Game of Thrones is more to do with the realism than the "subversion", and that realism is grounded in details like food, money, people's self-interest, etc.

[Forum Explorer]

Yeah, two wrongs don't make a right in storytelling any more than they do in life. If the setup is bad, then you have to tweak the payoff to try and make it better somehow. You don't just claim it was a waste of space and make a mockery of it. That's a thing generally with TLJ: it's written and produced as if it's some high concept takedown of the very idea of producing a classical melodramatic epic in fantasy space, but it's actually a Star Wars movie in a sequence with a bunch of other Star Wars movies.

You absolutely can make a high concept takedown of standard genre tropes - heck it's part of what made ASOIAF so intriguing to many people (it's also why GRR Martin can't finish it, because to do so would require submitting to the tropes in the same way the TV series had too) - but you can't do that within an ongoing series that plays those same tropes straight up to the hilt. TLJ is like inserting an ASOIAF novel into the middle of LotR in place of the Two Towers. Even though ASOIAF novels are far better written than anything in TLJ, that still wouldn't work and the Tolkien fans would be braying for the scalps of the people involved just as loudly as the Star Wars fans are right now.

True. But it's a lot harder to make something great out of garbage, then working with nothing at all. TFA put TLJ in this awkward spot where they had to reveal Rey's past (or put it off even further, which would've been worse), and the only good answer was settling it as Rey's parents being nobodies. I really do think that it was the best answer they could have went with.

And it wasn't really a subversion of tropes as much as it was a subversion of expectations. Star Wars has always had the 'main' Jedi be related to each other, with the Prequel and Originals featuring the Skywalkers as the primary Jedi. And Rey was set up to be very much the same, but suddenly wasn't. And I do really think it was a good decision.

Anyways, I still think The Last Jedi was a great movie. But it had a lot of moments of 'but if they did this, it would've been even better.' Though what 'this' is, varies a lot from fan to fan. For example, I think they should've had Rey go to Luke, only to eventually discover that Luke has been dead the whole time and instead she's been interacting with his Force Ghost.