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

That's the main problem with The Last Jedi. It doesn't have a clear protagonist. The film can't make up its mind between Rey, Luke, and Kylo. It's The Phantom Menace all over again.

 

That's the one I'm curious about. I don't care how fast it's selling relative to other 2018 movies, I want to know how it's doing relative to R1 and TFA.

 

https://www.the-numbers.com/alltime-bluray-sales-chart (their estimates since summer 2009 including DVDs)

 

I tell you what I bought TLJ Blu-ray and when I put it in last weekend I got 30 min in before I switched sources back to the TV. I like certain parts but it’s the first Star Wars movie I have never watched from start to finish which is really a shame and I’m not in any rush to get to it. TFA was on tnt the other week and couldn’t even get through that movie

I’ll see episode 9 but unless the trailer reveals ghost luke or something that really grabs me I won’t see t on launch night like I’ve done since 1999

 

Hey, cut The Phantom Menace some slack. At least we know beforehand of who the three main protagonists we are following: Anakin, Obi-Wan and Padmé. Both TFA and TLJ had failed to properly set up a classical Power Trio in the form of Rey, Finn and Poe. Only now have Rey and Poe finally interact as people. And the fact that Rey had more time talking to Kylo Ren than with Finn or Poe in TLJ is quite sad. I wouldn't be surprised if people who went into TLJ thought Rey, Kylo Ren and Luke are the Power Trio of ST with Poe and Finn being nothing more than some annoying subplot that wasted their time.

 

Yet another good direction they could have gone in. Seeing someone like Kylo subvert the rightful government maybe like Sheev maybe like Caedus maybe he really thinks he is doing good. Luke tries to produce reform calling memories of the PT. Instead we just get a throw away line that isn’t even right.


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Dunkirk (and Battlestar Galactica) were also one long evacuation/ retreat, and that doesn’t mean their plots were bad. I give RJ a lot of credit for daring to go with a Dunkirk-style story in Star Wars. We’re used to heroes rushing headlong into danger with impossible odds, not fleeing in order to survive. And that’s hard for a lot of fans to accept. It was a bold move, and that should be recognized.

That said, I do agree that this dynamic hurts the rewatchability of the film. It’s probably the most “one and done” of the Star Wars films for me, mostly for that reason.

 

Doesn't hurt BSG S1 rewatchability at all IMO. Why on earth should RJ get recognition for trying to do what BSG's 33 did elegantly and infinitly better in 45 minutes with a superior ensemble more than a decade ago? Jesus.

 

As someone who has watched the full (new) BSG series many times, I agree. But that’s because it’s a dense, complex and multiple-season show with so, so much story. And great characters. No way one film could compete with that.

Which is also why Dunkirk’s a better example. Great film, but hard to watch more than once. That’s where TLJ is for me (though I don’t rank it as highly as Dunkirk).

 

There's no excuse for how terribly boring the space chase is in The Last Jedi. Didn't Johnson watch Mad Max Furry Road when it came out? That's how you make a chase interesting. There's not even that much dialogue in Mad Max Furry Road, which makes it even more impressive.

 

They messed up by splitting the characters up. Especially with the ease that they were able to split up. Writing in a "Oh, well, they can't detect small craft!" line was pretty weak to me.

Poe, Finn and Rose should have had their own subplot on the Rebel cruiser, with Rey returning to find her friends in peril and deciding to turn herself over to Kylo Ren to save them. TLJ doesn't work becasue everything is so separate and watered down, ultimately being pointless in the end (ie Poe being wrong, Rose/Finn's mission being meaningless, Rey just going to Kylo's ship and not effecting anything)

It would have been much more compelling with Finn and Rose being part of Poe's insurrection and it failing, with Rey needing to step in for Act Three (and Luke needing to step in at the end for the save).

 

It's the exact opposite for me, I can't stop watching it. It's like seeing a tragic event on the news, my eyeballs are just glued to the TV in shock and despair. Each time I watch it I find more wrong with it and come up with new ideas of how things went wrong.

For instance I'm now convinced the reason the Canto Bight stuff along with Finn and Rose as characters were so bad is because RJ went in not caring about that aspect of the trilogy, I don't care what he says that story and the character motivations are so bad it reeks of laziness and indifference. At least with the Rey, Kylo and Luke stuff i can say he put in the effort, that he cared about the story even if I strongly disagree with his choices. And the humor throughout the film is just his incompetence as a writer, It comes off like "Yes this is good, the dark tone is like ESB, they'll love it! Oh wait, maybe this is too dark, this is a film for everyone after all. I can't take the scene out though? Oh, I know, I'll place a joke in there to lighten the mood just like the guys over at Marvel do, everybody loves those movies!" - RJ's head.

 

Whats so strange about the awful, cringe bathos humor in TLJ is that if you watch Looper none of that exists. In that film you had a consistent tone that stayed serious and elevated. It wasn't a movie making fun of itself or the audience. If there had been a different writer on TLJ I could blame them but it boggles my mind that Rian got hired based on Looper and then went ahead and completely altered his voice as a filmmaker because he was terrified of making a serious blockbuster movie with gravitas and weight.

 

Exactly, a man out of his element. If you listen to the TLJ commentary RJ says at the beginning of the film that he knew people would come in expecting a dark movie so he put in a joke (the hux/poe one) at the beginning to tell people it's okay to laugh at the film, that he wanted to continue the fun that JJ started in TFA. That kind of thinking is what did him in, TLJ should've been a overall darker in tone film. The first film can be fun because it's introducing characters and trying to win you over, the second is supposed to get you more invested and ready for a conclusion in the third. Look at ESB, the film is overall dark and serious, even the Han/Leia stuff. Did it have jokes? Sure but it was just the right amount to not harm the tone they we're going for.

RJ overcompensated when it came to the humor because he's inexperienced in these kinds of films, he should've had a partner to help him with the writing. Even JJ had a co-writer, why does Rian get a chance at being sole writer?

 

In this heartbreaking video, Mark Hamill tells an audience of Rian fans "I told Rian you've got to think of the fans." Rian says "No, I've got to make MY movie." Audience cheers, Mark nearly cries.

 

It's heartbreaking looking at Marks face in a lot of the promotional tour stuff...

 

Was that panel before or after the movie release?

 

To be fair, I think Rian is right, in essence. It's just that the movie he made ended up being horrible.

 

It was part of the DVD/Blu Ray apology tour I think...

 

Agreed. He was just the wrong man for the job.

The film shouldn't have been made going by what the makers thought the fans wanted, they should have a clear artistic vision of their own. BUT, they should've done that within the context of the entire saga and with a respect for already well-established characters (which, incidentally is what fans would've been more happy with).

 

On a side note (rumours about Mara like character casted) i predict JJ wants to justify Luke's OOC by using the flashbacks where Kylo kills Luke's wife. I believe current story has no place for such an important alive character, so they gonna show us Mara-like character in flashback. With that they will add fanservice and make an attempt to justify Luke's apathy. Both attempts will fail for obvious reasons. You cant justify Luke now, and no one will be happy to see Mara just to witness her death. But i bet they will misleadingly show us Mara alive in trailers to get some fans attention. Thoughts?

 

Whatever happens in IX, it will have a very fine line to tread as I think if they try and fix anything that TLJ ruined, it will be seen as an admission that TLJ really is crap. Which it is.

I like Mara Jade, but I don’t think she will appear unless they decide Luke is Reys dad after all - which leads back to my first paragraph: solving the parent thing is admission that TLJ was a mistake.

Personally I hope they correct everything that TLJ destroyed. I’d even like the power of the Force to resurrect Luke and let him have a better finale. If Gandalf the Grey can do it, why not Luke? I’ve strayed off topic here, so sorry for that, but the basis is still that TLJ is the worst episode yet.

 

Also the problem was that he kept asking the question, “what would the fans not expect?” It’s one thing to ignore the fans for your vision, which in itself lacks the vision we’ve come to expect from Lucas. It’s another to try to subvert the fans, the latter still being a kind of fan pandering, similar to JJ, though in the opposite direction. And so you have two directors, one fan pandering and the other fan subverting, but neither with a unique story to tell.

And that’s the difference. Lucas has a story to tell where everyone else is hired to tell a story. Even now, with his new trilogy, Rian doesn’t know what he wants to write about. Lucas dreams about his world in his head, drawing back to his love of fast cars, westerns, samurai movies, Flash Gordon, anthropology, and Joseph Campbell. All he wants to do is to take those dreams and put it on script and film. Neither JJ nor Rian have their own true unique vision and spend too much time thinking about what the fans want or don’t want. Disney had the opportunity to take Lucas’s vision and put it in the hands of skilled directors. But they ultimately chose not to and we are left to ask what might have been.

 

While you make a good point about the advantages a complex seasons-long show has over a single movie, I think it's worth pointing out that the episode "33" that TLJ rips off is literally the very first episode of the proper BSG show. But the show is way, way more successful at using this premise of a slow, grinding space chase while creating a real sense of suspense and tension (and it does it all with a fraction of the budget and a lot of unknown, less experienced actors). Sure, there was an introductory mini-series beforehand that introduced the characters and the bad guys, but even considering all that, the run-time of the mini-series plus first episode of BSG is definitely less than the combined run-time of TFA and TLJ.

 

This has basically been my thought this entire discussion. 33 happened when I thought BSG was fantastic. You get into seasons 4 and 5, especially the finale, and BSG starts looking like TLJ to me.