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

Man that would be so cool.

 

The big twist is that Lando is The Last Jedi. He wins the Eclipse from Snoke in a game of sabbac.

 

I think I've already made it pretty clear what I want for ST Lando. That said, "existing" seems like a required minimum.

 

Luke is wearing a brown leather glove in The Last Jedi, did he suddenly get sensitive about his robo-hand around Rey? Was it leather glove washing laundry day? Will there be a shot of him putting on the glove?!

Anyway, I went to see GotGV2 again and they had the Last Jedi trailer infront of it but I was running late so came in around Rey's line of "The balance".... so I had a decision to make, should I go to my seat while the trailer is playing or stand off to the side so I don't miss seeing a second of it? I chose the latter. I believe it was a good choice.

Also I rewatched (which I hadn't seen since it came out) Rian Johnson's 2nd movie "The Brothers Bloom", definitely different from "Brick" tonally that it's much more upbeat and quippy (but still kinda dark). My least favourite Johnson film but I definitely remember liking it more watching it now. Also they have a non-talking sidekick character named "Bang Bang" who only says one line (which is awesome) and she's absolutely perfect. Has me hoping for some good quirky sidekick character bits in TLJ.

 

I would forgive this movie pretty much anything for that.

 

I watched The Founder tonight, and had no idea that Laura Dern was in that, too. 2017 is turning into a big year for her. Founder, Last Jedi, Wilson, Twin Peaks, spots on Kimmy Schmidt and Last Man on Earth... seems like she's everywhere after me not remembering seeing her in anything since The Master.

 

But reckless brother falls into dark side's eye...

 

I will admit I'm looking forward to seeing who Admiral Holdo is and how she fits in with the Resistance. From early leaks, she either clashes with Poe or clashes with Leia. Personally, I'd like to see her as one of Leia's closest allies and a veteran of the Rebel Alliance who became a senator for a time before resigning to join the paramilitary group and works with Ackbar and Leia.

 

From the image, she looks like one of Lady Carise Sindian's gang. Like someone out of the Capital in the Hunger Games.

Perhaps she's the highest-ranked remaining official in the New Republic, but only got her status due to family connections and privilege, and comes waltzing in to the Resistance to take charge.

 

See, this is a shame why they wasted Ackbar in TFA. We could have gotten a great Destiny's Way type moment.

 

I'm not happy about the brown, humanoid aliens I keep seeing in the ST. It's like Abrams and now Johnson keep not wanting to use CGI or other colors beyond earth tones for the new species. Or even showing the older, non-earth tone ones.

 

I've seen some theories that the excess of lumpy brown aliens is because of fear of PT haters, but I'm not really convinced - it seems like the general look is (for whatever reason) "in" these days. Whatever the reason, though, I don't like them either.

 

They end up using the same brown humanoids in a lot of mainstream sci-fi. It gets boring and makes SW into something less special in the visual direction.

 

To be fair, even the OT used mostly earth tones or muted colors. It wasn't until the Prequels where we truly started seeing a lot of brighter, more vivid colors among alien species.

--Adm. Nick

 

I remember the earliest rumor about her character after Laura Dern's casting was that she was a New Republic admiral. But that might have just been the case that whoever got the information confused Republic with Resistance or something like that. The earliest rumor for Benicio was that he was the guy who steps in to take over the remnants of the Republic but was opposed by Poe (so Pwoe basically), but given that "DJ" seems to be part of the casino planet story, that doesn't seem to really hold water.

I really hope that, even if the movie doesn't address it, the visual dictionary or whatever finds some way to justify how the Resistance, which consist of a few X-wings on a remote planet, are still leading the fight against the FO in any meaningful way, given that even with its capitol and main fleet destroyed, the New Republic's forces have to be orders of magnitude beyond the Resistance. The Resistance still being the main people in any way is like saying that if China nuked Washington DC, that would immediately leave only the Michigan Militia to lead the American war effort.

I still think it's funny that the Resistance appears to have more admirals than fighter pilots in its membership.

In other words, according to io9 today,

Spoiler

Snoke is not going to really be explored in any way in TLJ. And Mark Hamill apparently completely dislikes the direction that Johnson took Luke's character.

 

"Rian, it says here that I tell Rey, 'You've taken to this like a duck to water', and I don't approve."

"Why's that, Mark?"

"Well... I mean, like."

"Yes?"

"What's a duck?"

 

My assumption is that one of two things will happen:

1. With the destruction of the Senate and the Republic High Command, remaining New Republic forces not at Hosnian Prime link up with the Resistance, rallying to Leia, Ackbar, & Co
2. The New Republic will be in disarray, with member worlds and scattered fleets struggling to hold together as the First Order presses it's attack. The Resistance eventually (maybe in IX) rallies the remnants of the NR fleet and it's members to fight the FO in a final, Endor style battle.

Given that there is a lot of hints that Rian's film will be a bit more political (plus it's effecting the writing of Bloodline), I think that both the film and it's Pablo helmed Visual Guide will answer a lot of these questions.

--Adm. Nick

 

Spoiler

Well, I believe that was Mark's initial reaction. After he sat down and talked with Johnson he was okay with it. Interestingly, after reading the TLJ script, Daisy Ridley also allegedly went to Johnson with concerns, but after talking to him her concerns were alleviated. And in an interview recently, John Boyega said TLJ takes everything from the end of TFA and turns it on its head–which could relate to Mark's and Daisy's concerns, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a bad thing. And I love Mark, but I've heard he's had some rather strange ideas for Luke in the past. Maybe his concerns with Johnson's script just have to do with the fact that he has wildly different ideas for Luke.

 

The prequels definitely stepped up the alien design, but even the OT had blue Duros, green and white Twi'leks, green Trandoshans, blue Ortolans, green Rodians, purple Dressellians, green Gamorreans, orange Quarren, black and white and gray Ewoks -- there was color. And just as importantly, there was flair to the designs. As I've said chatting with people, it's not so much that most of the new designs are terrible in themselves as that they look like the designs you might see three or four of in the background of Jabba's Palace. But there are none of the more distinctive, wilder designs to spice things up. None of the really inventive designs you see in the featured aliens like Greedo, Oola, Jabba, Bib Fortuna, Salacious Crumb, Bossk, etc, etc. Everybody's just a beige blob, like a clumsily made clay figure of a humanoid. There are no reptilians, no avians, no three-eyed goat-faced Gran, no insectoid-reptilian Rodians, no bizarre fishy Mon Calamari. Just blobs.



Compare that to this much bigger collection:



The OT aliens have more color, in their design and their costuming. And they have more diversity of weird features in just that small sample. And I don't think it helps that not only have the crowd scene aliens been flat, but there haven't been any memorable featured alien designs. The most prominent alien in TFA, Maz Kanata, was just another humanoid clay-blob-faced alien whose distinguishing feature was having orange skin. The featured alien on Jakku was . . . blobface Simon Pegg. Literally just an ugly blob for a face. If most of the Disney aliens are about the same level of creativity as Ugnaughts, Snivvians, and Whiphids, that's not terrible . . . but when are we going to also get the striking designs, the Rodians, Twi'leks, Yodas, Mon Calamari, Hutts, and Aqualish, featured in a movie? Maybe this is the flip side for Disney -- in three movies that we've seen the work for, there's only been one new alien character of any significance (Snoke, the gray blob, may or may not count), and in two movies there are few if any particularly memorable featured alien roles, and none of those are filled with any particularly memorable designs.

 

Havac I'll definitely give you that the alien designs have been wanting. I mean, Abednedo aren't quite blobs, and there was Moroff (who has been, sure, called a Gigoran, but he looks different enough from the few illustrations of Legends Gigorans we've seen that I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say they designed him as a new alien) and Bistan (and sort of Pao, but he kind of suffers from blob-face too) in R1, but overall there haven't been a lot of fantastically out-there alien designs. It's one of the few quibbles that I've 100% agreed with about these movies. Give us some wild, crazy stuff. I mean, sure, there are going to be designs that never should've happened. But there are also going to be some winners. They just need to get creative.

 

And I miss that. So much. The Prequels were bright and shiny and vivid. A breath of fresh air after the used universe feel we got with the OT.

 

Most were in the background, but some were also prominent, like the Rodians, Amanaman, Max Rebo, Jabba, Yoda...

I guess Jabba would be runny mud-color.

 

This Vanity Fair quote is beyond belief: