A/V Episode VIII - THE LAST JEDI - Official Movie Discussion Thread

Nah it's like getting annoyed when people engage you about their own discussions they want to have that aren't necessarily the same as what you were shouting about, then ignoring any explanations to the contrary and continuing to engage you about their own discussions that you never really had issue with in the first place.

 

Uhuh.

Sure it is.

 

My only point was that TLJ almost certainly negatively affected the direction of the Star Wars film universe in a way that isn't happening with Marvel concurrently. You guys are the ones who kept moving goal posts, imagining that I'm saying "marvel is better than SW" or "marvel was doing better than SW was" or "Marvel has better reviews than SW", none of which was what I was saying. And you wasted like 4 pages in doing it.

As for the arguing about the veracity of rating sites on the internet, that's just been idiotic. They're clearly not a statistically significant or scientifically accurate measure, treating them as such is absurd. I never asked anyone to agree with why I don't put much stock in them, just pointing out why I don't think they refute my point.

 

It's not ambiguous. You said the Marvel films have better reviews and popularity. I showed you evidence to the contrary and you handwaved it away because you trust your anecdotal evidence better (which is a great way to educate yourself about the world). Then when people are confused by your logic you get upset that we just don't understand your point. Even when I repeat your point back to you you insist that we just don't get it.

 

Did I? My bad if I did I only meant the current ones eg. Black Panther, Infinity War v TLJ. And I don't think I said they had better reviews. At no stage was I taking critic reviews seriously.

You keep saying that, I keep explaining that it's clearly not hard evidence, hence why I don't put any stock in it. How many times do we have to have this conversation?

Pretty much. You clearly have an issue with it so why keep bringing it up?

No I don't. I directly said that it's my own opinion and I understand completely why someone would disagree.

You still haven't though lol

 

So we are at the point of 'I don't remember what I said':

 

As I said, I was talking about the current films. I'm sorry if you misunderstood. Not sure why you would think decade old films were particularly relevant though.

 

I was comparing the recent SW films to the Marvel films. The ones within a few years of eachother.

 

Then what's the issue?

 

Because I was clearly responding reasonably to your comment you're now walking back .

You dismissed it because your anecdotal evidence is more reliable and you have yet to explain why beyond 'just because'.

 

Nah I've explained it. You just don't agree. We're not talking about a massive clinical trial with thousands of tightly controlled subjects undergoing strenuous monitoring. It's a movie review site. It's not scientific evidence. If you want to treat it as such then feel free, but don't get all upset because not everyone else does.

 

You can't see how, no matter the flaws, it's far more accurate than your anecdotal evidence.

 

Yes, you honestly believe that, which is fine, and even a sensible stance to have. But that is where we disagree. It's been clear for pages. I've been trying to tell you that.

 

Can you explain why? Please.

 

TLJ RT score is 47%, IMDB is 7.3/10, there are trolls everywhere giving fake ratings. I've explained repeatedly why I don't have any faith in it. It's not a controlled study or review. It's people giving rating online. Treating it as if it's hard scientific fact is pure ignorance.

I've seen far more negativity online and in real life for TLJ than positivity, yes it's anecdotal, but it's a pretty big sample size. I could collate every person I've talked to, comment or "like" I've seen on facebook and put it into a table and assign a number to it and it would have just as much veracity than whatever rating site you choose to use. And I can tell you it would be much worse than any recent Marvel film.

 

To say "these films are better reviewed and more popular" but then disagree with the metrics used to measure both of those things, and continue to assert it's your "feeling" that the films are still better reviews and more popular, while explicitly not being able to quantify that feeling, is not particularly a great way to present your opinion.

To actually get into opinions rather than claimed facts, what is it about the Marvel films you think Star Wars could borrow from?

 

I think it also depends on who we hang around. Everyone I hang out with aren't Star Wars fans anymore than they're Marvel fans. Alas, I don't know many real life nerds. When TLJ came out, I don't know anyone who complained about it (minor things, but not the whole film).

Actually I hang out with a lot of vets (er, veterinarians) -- they all loved the Canto Bight scenes because of the animal focus. They just kept talking about them. I know those scenes got the most hate here, but I suspect they were popular with other crowds. People like movies for weird reasons, especially if they can relate to it.

Marvel has a different history than Star Wars also, and I don't think Disney should try to make them exactly alike. They're both franchises with lots of fans, often the same fans (like most of us in this discussion). It's splitting hairs saying one is "better" or "more liked" than the other.

 

It's inevitably how an opinion is going to come across in an instance like this where there is no definitive measure.

TFA and RO I think were great. They seemed to be received really well and IMO were excellent films. I've expressed my issues with TLJ in this thread, on the whole I think it was a bit ambitious, and tried doing things that it hadn't earned. It also had a lot of scenes that seemed irrelevant and messed with a lot of established lore. I don't want to say they should stop trying new things, or trying to be "deep" films and be more simple like Marvel, but they pissed off a lot of long-term Star Wars fans and maybe tried a bit too much with TLJ, being Episode 8, a saga film.

Solo looks really, really good though, I have a feeling I'm going to like it a lot and that the general feeling among audiences will be more positive than TLJ, even if critic ratings are down. Assuming the "boycott Solo", anti-Disney crew don't mess with ratings too much I think it will rate well too.

 

My roommate is, like, eight years younger than me, so she and her friends were much more attached to Harry Potter than they were to Star Wars growing up. I've been introducing them to the series now that there are new movies coming out. Things I've learned:

The "space fantasy" setting really throws people if they didn't grow up with it. They see space and expect sci-fi, so "it seemed dumb" was a common remark. When I explained it's more like Lord of the Rings in space, more about magic and philosophy than science and ethics, that got everyone in the right frame of mind and they really started to get into it.

Episode order works REALLY well. I've argued for a long time that the "twists" in the prequel trilogy lose more from watching the original trilogy first than vise versa, and that really seems to be the case during this watch-through.

A few of them avoided Star Wars for a long time because "everyone" says they're good so "how good could they actually be". Their reaction so far? "Oh wow, no, it actually is that good."

And most importantly to this discussion? Everybody loves The Last Jedi.

My roommate and her best friend both think it's their favorite. Their friends, my best friend and his boyfriend, my girlfriend, we love watching this movie together.

Now I also live my life in Star Wars fan circles so I know that certain people are real vocal about disliking it. But if I extrapolate out from my personal experience, I can only conclude that that's a statistically insignificant group. Every time I've watched it, it has been a joy, so that's clearly the universal truth right?

 

I definitely agree that TLJ seems to be far more popular with younger audiences than those who grew up with Star Wars, which does make sense when you take the major complaints into consideration

 

That's fine, but try to avoid phrasing your opinion as if it has a definitive measure.

Ratings again.

But I asked what could Star Wars borrow from Marvel?

 

I grew up with Star Wars, and liked TLJ quite a lot.

 

Obviously much of ANH's allusions are featured in the prequels retroactively, but the prequels suggest a larger world beyond what is happening before you - even in the opening crawls this is evident. But there's also things like the "revenge of the Sith" and attitudes towards droids and whatnot. My mind more goes to ANH admittedly: the Senate, the Emperor, the Jedi Knights and the purge, the Academy - even Alderaan itself demands imagination because we don't see it. The restrictions of filmmaking create innovation, just as the Hays code created some of the most clever and wry visual suggestions in cinema.

 

I don't even know what the major complaints actually are, and I do not care to relitigate them, because I did grow up with Star Wars.

My mother was seventeen in 1977, she was a massive fan. I wore Star Wars onesies as a baby, I slept on my mom's hand-me-down Star Wars bedsheets, and long before I was "old enough" to see the (then) trilogy, I knew the story by heart because my mom had told it to me so many times. When I was ten, the THX-remastered trilogy was released on VHS, and I begged my parents for it, I tried to convince my dad to buy it as an anniversary gift for mom. We bought it from Sam's Club, and we watched them one night at a time on a tv that would now be considered tiny and massive at the same time. When the Special Editions came out, my parents could only afford to take us to one of them; I picked A New Hope, but we got there late and wound up watching it from the front row. At my size then, I really could only hear the movie, the picture was frustratingly distorted.

But then I saw The Phantom Menace in the biggest movie theater I had ever seen when I was fourteen years old, and I was in love all over again. My friends were pretty negative about the later prequels (and I won't deny a bit of this rubbed off at the time), but I saw The Phantom Menace before I met them and that love carried through to the next two regardless.

And then ten years after I thought I'd never see a real Star Wars movie again, here's The Force Awakens. And I wasn't in love with it. I was in love with parts of it (the new trios, good and evil; the return of Leia and Luke), but I found a lot of it kinda empty and cynical.

But The Last Jedi? That movie I am in love with. And I am trying not to take it personally, but a part of me resents the implication that that's because I somehow don't understand Star Wars.

 

That's an absurd implication if you somehow got that from my post. I never said everyone who liked it didn't grow up with Star Wars, or doesn't "understand Star Wars". That's ridiculous.

Yes, we've been over that many times, but thank you for re-iterating it just in case I somehow missed it.