ST The Sanctuary - (Dissenters Unite! - Warning on page 232)

One of the many things that bugged me about TLJ was the music.

1. I can’t stand Rose’s theme. It was so overused. I don’t even know why Rose has her own theme. One particular example was Finn, BB-8 and Rose escaping the Dreadnought. It was supposed to be tense and dramatic, but they had that sappy theme playing.

2. The general overuse of character themes. You couldn’t have a single mention of Leia, Han, Luke, Rey or Kylo without having their themes play. It was overkill.

3. The out of place use of the Emperors theme in Snokes Throne Room - total rip off of ROTJ.

4. Very, very few parts of TLJ just let the scene do the talking without incessant background music.

 

While I’m having a moan, I have to say how awful CGI Snoke was in the Throne Room. When he gets up to walk, it’s dreadful, almost like a string puppet. His face was so obviously CGI. Compare this hack to Caesar in War for the Planet of the Apes and it just shows what a bad job they did.

I can’t believe that garbage has been nominated for an Oscar for VFX.

 

Yeah WFTPOTA had amazing VFX. In comparison or otherwise.

 

There actually is no Rose's theme. I don't know how this thing got started online but it did. But the track is called "Fun With Finn and Rose," it's not her theme, it's just a track played when Rose and Finn go on their mission. Although I agree with you, it playing during their escape from the Supremacy was terrible and stupid.

Of course everything about Snoke's throne room was a ripoff of ROTJ.

I liked "The Spark" and "The Last Jedi." Felt really awesome. I have them on my Spotify playlist. It's a terrible shame that they weren't playing during a better story events.

 

I always wanted to point that out too but nobody ever gave any indication of agreeing and I forgot about it. I remember reading a leak before I went to see the movie and it said "Snoke walks with a terrifying gait that will literally scare you out of your seat like a horror movie."

To say the least, I couldn't have been more disappointed. It wasn't scary at all; it looked like below average CGI work.

 

I actually think LF likes to talk about criticisms of TLJ from misogynists. It feeds into an, imo, false narrative that TLJ is a feminist movie.

 

They literally screwed up all three of the characters. Luke is the biggest victim certainly, but he is not the only one. Han/Leia are just as much victims of the sequels. Han goes from a smuggler turned general dedicated to the Rebellion at the end of ROTJ to a deadbeat dad who finally does something about his son who has turned to the darkside, but far too late as he is killed off a) for the sake of the movie box office and b) Kasdan/Ford's desire to off him since ROTJ. The same for Leia instead of becoming a politician and possibly running the New Republic, she becomes a Resistance general because apparently Abrams/Kasdan/Arndt didn't have a clue what to do with her and I guess because of the perennial hatred of politics due to the prequels making her a general is better than a politician.

As for Luke, what is even more frustrating besides his cowardice and doing nothing about Kylo Ren and FO is the fact he started so late in establishing a Jedi temple. What was he doing in the first 20 years since Endor? I think this fact just shows they really didn't think this stuff out very well. Given how far they were in the timeline, the NJO should have been an established thing and Luke and Rey should NOT have been the last jedi.

It certainly is evidence that the leadership is deaf to criticism and doesn't want to acknowledge there is a loss of support for their actions from the fanbase. I think the drops in merchandising sales as well as the weak legs TLJ had at the box office (compared to RO) are signs there are bigger problems . Not everything can be attributed to the malice of a small minority.

I mean if Solo or Episode 9 does badly, I don't think believe blaming it on misogynists will be an excuse in front of Disney.

 

Taking all the heat out of the finished product, going back to KK's comments leading into the release she did something interesting. In Nov 2017 she differentiated between new characters and old characters by referring to the OT characters as "legacy" characters. She also talked publicly about LFL taking the "next step".

Seems innocent enough, right?

Not so much. I didn't think much on it at the time, but in hindsight it's quite revealing.

"Legacy" in business jargon almost always refers to systems which are outdated and in need of being phased out.

I've quite often heard staff in a transition of ownership that were dispensable being referred to as legacy staff.

And contractual arrangemrnts/systems that were no longer in line with the strategic strategy of the business as being legacy systems that need to be suffered until they expire.

Another version of this term is "non-core".

I hate jargon, but business is KK's world.

Looking back it is very clear to me that LFL as 'policy' has decided to move away from what LFL handed down to Disney.

When RJ claimed he didn't plan the movie to be divisive, this now seems disingenuous. I see TLJ as a firm step by KK to start over from scratch. And anyone not on board with this vision is outside looking in.

To paraphrase Luke, "I've seen this before. It didn't scare me then. But it does now".

 

Please for godsake NEVER ever in a million years quote a line from that film and certainly NEVER say it was Luke who said it, if you insist as least call him Jake Skywalker as Hammil intended.

 

double post

 

Mea culpa*.




*I actually don't mind that line

 

I agree with @Nadroj ilain in that while you are right @Pro Scoundrel there are a lot of clickbait headlines linked with that story, you are looking at the glass half full with JJ's comments, and that's fine. I read the story you linked, and while I clearly see he was addressing the fringe in the first long quote, it is the second one that troubles me. I am sure JJ doesn't 100 percent believe that EVERYONE who disliked TLJ did so for -ist reasons. Heck, he can go ask Mark Hamill, right? However, I do think he's cha

Vader lost any cool points he ever had with me when he choked Padme. NOT COOL, man.

 

I'm glad you mentioned Han because, yes, they screwed him up as well. Ford did a great job with what he was given, and I actually love the "Chewie, we're home" line. But in universe, there is no reason at all for him to go back to smuggling and being sought after by gangs, when he's a war hero. Completely goes against the development we saw from his character in the OT. It literally baffles me how bad the writing was in these new films.

 

yes, there is a lot wrong with the ST and TLJ specifically but the unforgivable part to me is the ruining of the Big 3's lives as has already been mention but I will again

1) Luke tried to start a New Order which was a total failure, tried to kill his nephew which goes against the entire character of him from the OT, and ran away to a island to DIE

2) Han Solo had a kid, who turned to the dark, so he left his wife, went back to smuggling as an old has been, and got killed by his own kid

3) Leia I'm assuming attempted to found the NR, but it obviously went to crap too, her son went bad, her husband left her, her brother went MIA leaving her to try to clean up the mess, her husband got killed by her son, and her Resistance has basically gotten shattered...

there is no other way to look at their futures from ROTJ onward as anything but disasters and horrible lives and that's just totally sad and like I said UNFORGIVEABLE

 

Really I think the main issue with TLJ is that it's plot driven > character driven, despite having a character focus, and even though it's the character arcs themselves that ARE the plot.

The characters just don't seem to click right. I feel like I am watching them on their predetermined courses. They must do what they do at certain points for plot reasons, and the illusion that is the story isn't holding.

 

Yeah, they're ending as failures, and that's the problem. It's fine to give the OT3 challenges, tragedies, hardships. Broken relationships. As long as in the end, it gets fixed, and there is some level of happiness. But there isn't. Nothing is being repaired. That is the failure of the ST.

 

You haven't even seen the whole trilogy yet so you can't know what can and can't be repaired. Unfortunately Carrie's death means we won't see Leia and Ben together, which isn't their fault. But Luke can still talk to Ben and Rey, and Han's sacrifice sticks with him. It's not complete doom and gloom just yet.

 

Of course it is. Han is dead after years of struggling to deal with Ben’s exploits. It doesn’t help a dead Han that the thought of him haunts his Son. Luke is dead after failing to restore the Jedi Order and years of solitude and depression. Who cares if he can still talk to Rey and Ben? Hardly a great legacy. Leia has also had to deal with Ben’s exploits, the breakdown of her relationship with Han and a missing brother. She’ll also be dead in the next episode. There is no positive spin you can put on this.

 

I’m taking this from the BO thread because it made me laugh and I want to add in here, remember how we kept hearing cousin vs. cousin = boring? Good thing they avoided that train wreck.

To be fair, there aren’t only specific parameters in which stories can work. A cousin vs. cousin story doesn’t have to be a “sins of the fathers” story, and the parents don’t have to be dead. Fighting over the family legacy can happen in all kinds of contexts, including surviving family wanting to save the evil outcast from his grandfather’s fate.

In any event, Black Panther was better for this plot, for the intimate, personal connection between hero and villain. Personal stakes enrich stories and they aren’t boring. They’re not story elements that can’t “work.”

 

Sure I can, it's Star Wars. It's taught me to do such a thing.

 

LOL. Yeah BP killed all the arguments against cousin vs cousin.

 

I think people are just as disappointed with the missed opportunity for meaningful dialogue from luke as they are with what was portrayed on screen.

This is Luke Skywalker. The character that is shown to have a growth in understanding of the force over any other character before him. The evolution of the force should have stemmed from lukes character. That would have been a better resting place for the character vs any action scene could portray.

Instead we have him receiving lessons from a cameo? "... As masters we are what we grow beyond. .."? Um, that is what Luke had done in return of the jedi.

Yodas dialogue would have worked better if it was Luke speaking to rey(yes structural changes all around but you get the idea).

 

Spoilers for Black Panther:

Spoiler

Not just cousins, but cousins who didn't even know each other before the movie! We all know that kind of situation is just inherently boring, no wonder no one is talking about Killmonger and his dynamic with T'Challa.

Also, it's funny to see that Black Panther's RT audience score has actually been rising as more people go to see it and it currently sits at a respectable 78%. Makes the idea that TLJ's 48% is just due to alt-right trolls that much less convincing.

 

That absolutely ignores the fact that they wiped out all of Han's character development from ANH onwards and instead reverts him to some pre-ANH state except with the extra baggage of abandoning his friends and doing nothing to stop his son until it's too late. Regardless of his death, that horrible writing is stuck to his character much like post-ROTJ Luke is going to be remembered for his failure with Ben and contemplating the murder of his nephew.