Finally seen it today, so here’s a bit of unstructured drivel.
First of all, elephants in the thread: Snoke and Phasma - They were underplayed massively, but I expect Snoke’s involvment and backstory to be further explained in the next film, and I expect Phasma to do the ol’ magic reappearing act.
Overall, I really enjoyed it. I can look past all of the little imperfections, because I think it did well at continuing where TFA left off. I do like Rian Johnson’s directing style, and I thought the cinematography was top-notch, including the full on CG parts. I’ll possibly be echoing the majority here, but Holdo jumping into the fleet was 100% my favourite scene. Everything about it was just perfect.
Don’t fully understand all of the hate for it. We wanted Star Wars, and we got it - a space opera - complete with the big battles, hyperbolic drama, and a lot of cheese. These films have never been about being serious with the genre (coughhttps://youtu.be/-OT_SlO-M2gcough).
Ah yes, and Porgs! Just read that they were included to make covering up the puffins on Skellig a lot easier in post, rather than just being a lovely marketable mammal-bird-thing.
Rebellions are built on hope, and multi-billion dollar box office hits are built on pre-existing franchises.
Not bothered about most of the film. It was good, but not perfect. Had some bits that I liked, some I loved, and some plot elements and characters that I absolutely loathed. Luke is still the whiny little bitch that has pissed me off since I watched 4, 5 and 6. The purple-haired admiral looks like she’s dressed for a ballroom dance rather than a survival-combat situation, and I’m trying to figure out how their sensors didn’t pick up that conveniently uncharted planet with an old rebel base on it the second their ship came out of lightspeed.
But I did enjoy it. A lot. That said, I just want the film to come out on physical media so that I can have my .gif of that hyperdrive ram. That was hands-down my favorite scene in any sci-fi series yet…
Problem is, it just kind of breaks the combat. If a small cruiser can tear a Supremacy Super Star Destroyer in half and obliterate a fleet of star destroyers, what stopped the Rebel Alliance from flying (or better yet, remote-controlling, if you can’t find a sufficiently suicidal rebel) a couple of X-Wings into the Death Star? If we’re following Star Wars physics, that would surely be enough to crack it wide open or at least disable it. If we followed IRL physics, the people on board wouldn’t have time to ask what happened because the X-Wing would turn into a fusion bomb on impact. I mean, I know why they didn’t do it all the time - because then there would be no conflict or storyline, but they’ve done it now, so…
Phasma I can see. But I don’t get this weird obsession with Snoke. As Star Wars stories go, he’s a nobody. Tarkin was a nobody. Emperor Palpatine (in the Holy Trilogy) was a nobody. In fact, I think Palpatine’s screen time in Episodes V and VI add up to about as much time as Snoke’s in Episodes VII and VIII. In any case, the major dude in power is never important, and has never been important. Snoke’s death was not a surprise.
Phasma is gonna come back. I mean, she fell into that fire/explosion, yes … but that blaster didn’t even leave a mark on her armor. So my guess is scarfaced Phasma for IX.
Funnies thing I’ve heard about the use of light speed as a weapon. “At the speed of light, the contents of my cat’s litter box becomes a weapon of mass destruction.”
It’s really an interesting problem, if you think about it. If we get to the point where craft are capable of light speed, or more specifically, small, easy to steal craft are capable of light speed. How do you stop someone from taking out a continent or two?
Does anybody know why the director for this most recent film refused to allow a serious scene to take place? I saw it this morning, and though I enjoyed it overall I was really annoyed how every time there was a chance for a serious scene the film stopped and made fun of itself. Disney can have serious scenes in Toy Story but not in Star Wars?
I’m specifically citing the scene where force-transmitted Luke walks out to face off with/distract Kylo Ren, and after the dust clears from the AT-ATs shooting at him he (in an attempt at physical comedy from the director, I guess) brushes the dust off his shoulder as if to say “bring it”. It absolutely killed the tension of the scene, and this same mechanism of cutting the tension with bad humor was present throughout. I feel like there needs to be a version available for viewing that was edited for grown-ups.
Was this the case in the original trilogy and I’m just blocking it out? I remember plenty of cheesy humor in episodes 1-3 but it was separate from the tense scenes and this was a good thing.
The comedy is what made it a movie I enjoyed rather than one I didn’t.
It’s Star Wars. The cheese alone ruined anything I could’ve taken seriously for me. I get it’s supposed to be cheesie. But there are good and bad kinds of cheesie. Some movies thrive on bad cheese, but Star Wars isn’t that, I think.
I don’t know. Maybe the director thought the movie wasn’t good enough without the humor. I would’ve agreed. I don’t really go to Star Wars for tension personally.
On the other hand, Rogue One was a movie I ended up enjoying, and I guess I could say a lot of it was “serious.” But again, I consider that a very “not Star Wars” Star Wars movie.
I saw the opening part of the film where Poe is stalling Hux by pretending not to hear him. My initial reaction was “wow, yeah, this was funny, but it’s also kinda dumb. Why is Star Wars being this immature?”. Later though, I remembered that Star Wars Episode IV did something similar when Han and Luke were in the brig rescuing Leia.
I realized now that even though they kinda went overboard with it in Ep. VIII imo, they’ve always done stuff like this in star wars films.
ignoring the dumbass one-liners from I, II and III, of course.
I think people were so disenfranchised by the memes that were prequels that 4, 5 and 6 seemed super serious by comparison, and they expected something significantly less silly in the reboot. But they forgot that the original trilogy had a lot of silly moments too.
The problem for me was that there was nothing clever about these “funny” bits. There’s nothing clever about overplayed pieces of physical comedy, and it just ruins what could otherwise be a good, serious (in the Star Wars overplayed drama) scene.
I’m not the world’s biggest Star Wars fan, but traditionally it feels to me like the humorous scenes have been separate from the intense scenes, and that’s an important part of pacing the movie. These moments that have the potential tension killed by un-funny attempts at humor bothered me. Again, if the humor had been good then it’s fine, but I felt like the humor was pretty poorly written/designed.
To me, the difference is between when it’s well done and poorly done. The poorly done bits of humor far outnumbered the well done ones in this film, in my opinion. I think that the humorous bits in the original trilogy were funny given the times and the tone/pacing of those films, and in this episode the humor felt like a bad SNL skit making fun of IV, V, and VI.
Again, it’s not that it’s supposed to be a serious movie, but the series has always had serious moments which is what made them enjoyable. You could chuckle at the funny bits but still be invested in the characters and the story. In this most recent one I felt like every serious moment was killed by humor that was executed poorly.
Maybe all just my opinion, and maybe unpopular. The humor just felt immature to me.
A specific scene comes up when I read this sentence but it is less about humor I guess.
When Rey is in the … mirror thing and she snaps her fingers and smiles.
That bothered me because it was right after this interesting and serious moment where she’s going to see the darkness or whatever. Then we’re met with this playful scene that disarms the whole thing.
I can see why you’d say that given that specific scene.
That one didn’t bother me as I guess I didn’t interpret it as humor, but looking back on it I get what you’re saying. In the moment it didn’t derail me from the scene.
Off the top of my head, I was bothered by Luke brushing off his shoulder after getting blasted by all the AT-ATs (and the scene’s pacing change to focus on his shoulder brush), the bridge call between Poe and Hux (a fine joke but they overplayed it, should have ended sooner), and Rey telling Kylo Ren to cover himself during one of their force bond things (as if his belly up is so scandalous, and as if she should care). There was plenty of humor in the film without dumping it into these scenes.
I’ll add that I still really liked it and I’ll watch it again when I can download it, but it could have been better executed in these moments which should otherwise be scenes I’d remember fondly. The Luke scene is really good because it hints at the fact that he’s not actually physically there, but I’ll just remember the dumb joke. The bridge call is a joke I’d be quoting and smiling at if it was better executed. And I enjoyed the entire way they chose to portray the connection between Rey and Ren with the straight cuts, but I’m stuck thinking about this bad joke instead.
