There’s a small vocal minority who are irrationally angry towards it .But most people who didn’t like it just disliked it, which is completely fine.
4 Likes
Am I the only one that though this was worse than the prequels? Also, it really is just Empire 2.0 and the fact that people are praising it for how ‘subversive’ and ‘different’ it is is honestly baffling.
1 Like
It did the “Big Bad’s Throne Room” scene a film earlier than expected, which makes it feel different when doing direct comparisons to Empire. The plot structure, other than the idea that the good guys are on the run while our heroic force user trains in isolation, is different than Empire. Our battle of Hoth type sequence was at the end of the film rather than the beginning, same with the Bespin-type setting with Canto Bight being in the first third instead of the last. Tossing around the timing of when these happen makes the film feel different from Empire while subverting expectations by doing some things a film earlier than expected, opening IX to be completely original. That’s why I praise it. Familiar at times? Maybe, but it wasn’t blatantly familiar like VII was.
7 Likes
It’s less of Empire 2.0 and more of a meld of Empire and ROTJ.
But worse than the Prequels? That’s something I can’t understand, given the Prequels and their blatantly apparent flaws. I get some of the complaints about TLJ, but in no way is it worse than the Prequels, at least to me…
4 Likes
Yes. Yes you are.
1 Like
No, he’s not. While I may not agree with him, it’s his opinion and it’s not worth getting into a fight over.
2 Likes
Is that really so different as to be praise worthy though? I’d say the movie took as many steps back as steps forward in terms of originality. We’re pretty much back to the conflict being ‘evil empire’ vs ‘good guy rebels’ as opposed to TFA where the overall conflict was pretty much the opposite. Partway through the movie they even give up differentiating between the Resistance and the Rebels.
The prequels had a lot more originality to them, and even though the writing and acting was poor a lot of the time, I could see what George was going for. In TLJ the acting is better, but the writing still suffers, and it kills ideas more than it creates, but I guess that’s okay because it’s ‘subversive’.
1 Like
When VII reeked of “here we go again”, and Disney has been pushing the “grand-ole days” of the Original Trilogy, to me it is. Episode IX has the potential be a more original film for what Episode VIII did.
1 Like
Disclaimer: I love TLJ and hate the prequels. That being said, I’m going to try to explain my thoughts as neutrally as I can.
I think the key here is Jar-Jar is to look purely at what tangibly, demonstrably is seen in the films in question. The prequels may have had creative ideas behind them like “epic forbidden romance,” “blindness and hypocrisy of the Jedi leading to their downfall,” and “how a good person can become evil,” but what’s actually there on screen? “I hate sand,” “From my point of view the Jedi are evil,” “NOOOOOOOO!” etc. If movies can be “objectively bad,” then the prequels are textbook examples, because whatever good ideas they had, the execution completely missed the human element that’s needed for an audience to connect with a story. Whether or not you like the direction TLJ went in, it has far better acting, more natural dialogue, and most if not all of the characters have clear motivations and serve a purpose in the larger narrative. You don’t have to like it, but TLJ gets most if not all of the basics right. The prequels may or may not have been better from a more abstract or thematic perspective–I don’t wanna get into that debate–but on the simplest level of basic competency, I think TLJ completely blows the prequels out of the water.
14 Likes
Ya know, while I may still like The Last Jedi more, I love the Prequels. I feel like I’m fighting a losing battle, but what else do you call RO-XIII?
1 Like
As opposed to the cringe-worthy dialogue in TLJ?
Weren’t the prequels well-liked when they first came out though? If that’s the case this is clearly wrong.
Aside from this not even applying to TLJ, this applies to most of the characters in the prequels as well. I don’t even think the prequels are good films either, but I have a much better time with them than I did with TLJ.
What’s Rey’s motivations? How did anything Finn or Rose do add to the larger narrative?
Most of the praise I’ve seen for TLJ is about how good the themes are and how ‘this is the deepest Star Wars has ever been’.
Do you have examples? Personally speaking, I remember TLJ having good dialogue.
Rey wants to find out who her parents are and what her place is in everything. This is evidenced in her excursion into the dark-side-place and in her interactions with Kylo. As for Finn and Rose, they were trying to find a solution to the fact that they were trapped by the First Order fleet.
3 Likes
Ever watch a movie where someone tried something but failed? There you go.
3 Likes
cough Holdo cough
1 Like
The entire beginning scene with Hux and Poe
Everything at Canto Bite
“You were always scum” “Yeah, Rebel scum!”
“We must save what we love, not destroy what we hate!”
Okay, so what is it now that that’s been resolved?
Okay, but what did they do?
Generally when characters fail there’s either consequences for it, or they learn something.
1 Like
That’s still a “generally”. Spider-Man failed a lot during Spider-Man Homecoming, but it didn’t really sure what he learned except for to never give up.
1 Like
I’ll grant that it had its wonky moments, but I don’t think it had as many of those moments as the prequels, and the better line delivery made the cringe-worthy lines that were there stick out less.
They were objects of derision nearly from the beginning. Source: I’m old enough to remember firsthand. 
Either way, though, the real measurement of how well a movie connects with people is the test of time, and obviously TLJ hasn’t been around nearly long enough for a verdict to be rendered on that front. I’m confident it’ll hold up better than the prequels have do to its greater competency, but in fairness, I could be wrong.
Gonna address the next few points out of sequence:
Apart from the obvious stuff like “she wants to help her friends and defeat the First Order,” at the start of the movie, she thinks she needs Luke to train her. After she sees how far off the path he’s fallen (partly due to Kylo Ren reaching out to her, partly due to her trippy vision in the cave), she realizes that she needs to take responsibility and not rely on Luke to solve all her problems. But despite becoming disillusioned with Luke, she still honors the Jedi traditions, which is why she takes the sacred texts. She also develops a desire to turn Kylo away from evil. That fails, but it adds depth to the final battle–Kylo’s actions are partly fueled by his rejection of Rey.
Compare that to Anakin in AotC–his main motivation is his love for Padmé. But why does he like her so much? It clearly has to do with fondly remembering her from his childhood, but that doesn’t really explain why he’s so obsessed with her that he’ll abandon the Jedi ideals and lie to everyone he knows so their relationship can work. Apart from that, he cares about his mother, which is more believable because the first movie actually did a decent job of making their relationship feel authentic, but that only comes into play for maybe half an hour and has little lasting effect on the story after they leave Tatooine.
TLJ has a few big themes. Each storyline is about one or two, and the end brings them all together. Finn and Rose’s storyline is about failure and the way people can lose sight of the big picture conflict of “good and evil” in favor of the more immediate and tangible matters of money and power. When Rose keeps Finn from pointlessly sacrificing himself, it takes the theme of failure and ties it to the movie’s biggest theme that permeates every storyline–that we can’t let shortsightedness distract us from what truly matters in the big picture. (Granted, Rose’s line is really cheesy.)
I could probably write at length about the other characters in TLJ vs the prequels, but I hope what I wrote above show the difference in a microcosm. TLJ’s characters grow, and we see why they act the way they do. The prequels give barebones explanations for “why” when they bother at all.
See, here’s the thing. I wasn’t trying to discuss enjoyment. Enjoyment and quality are distinct concepts. Batman and Robin is an awful, awful movie, but I enjoy watching it way more than 2001: A Space Odyssey, which is a vastly higher-quality work of art no matter how you slice it. So I can totally understand enjoying the prequels more than TLJ, even if I don’t fall into that camp myself. But enjoyment doesn’t necessarily correlate to quality/artistic craft/etc.
That’s true, but I was intentionally avoiding discussing the movies on that level, because it’s a much murkier and more subjective issue. Whatever one’s feelings on the thematic merits of the prequels vs TLJ, I think it’s clear that TLJ succeeds where the prequels totally fell flat–basic filmmaking competency (acting, dialogue, character definition and motivation, cinematography, etc.)
I’ve only actually seen TLJ once, so I wonder if there’s not more to him than meets the eye…but yeah, I think you’ve got me there. XD
6 Likes
When he fails during the scene on the boat he has the consequence of having his suit taken away. I don’t remember every single time he failed in the movie though. Also, none of those failures took up a whole entire third of the movie.
Why?
Why?
Why?
Do we even know if his sacrifice would’ve been pointless though? And couldn’t she have killed him herself by crashing into him?
Honestly, I never got these themes, and I don’t think they even excuse or redeem the subplot even if there is validity to them.
Okay, TLJ is an objectively bad movie. There are plot holes, the action is actually pretty bad, characters do stupid things for no reason, and speaking as someone who aspires to write my own stories, the way this movie ‘subverts’ things is nothing to be praised.
Edited for Double Post - Slime
don’t do that thanks
This isn’t about personal preference; this is about the quality of the movie. These are themes that the movie addressed. The fact that said themes don’t appeal to every person in the audience doesn’t discount the fact that they were a part of the movie, nor the fact that parts of the movie were tailored to address them.
3 Likes
A lot of bad movies have themes. Themes don’t make a movie good.
1 Like