ST The TLJ constructive catch-all analysis and debate thread

Can't get the cloning concept out of my head since the cave-mirror thing. There's nothing else supporting it. Even if it's just an oblique reference though, me-sa like-a dis!

 

I think it would have to stay Leia and Poe for that relationship. But I feel similarly about Poe. I like that his character isn't a cardboard cutout like in TFA, but the whole Resistance plot is a mess. I rather like the mutiny idea though (just not how it was in the movie...).

In any case where I really agree is that I think Finn should have been the more central character in the Resistance plot. And they took risks with Rey's character a bit, revealing more about her. They should have taken risks with Finn and revealed more about him. And by risks, I don't mean wet leaky bag.

And I agree with @cerealbox about Finn and Han. They had great chemistry in their TFA dynamic, and that could have certainly been made richer.

 

Not been here for a while as really had nothing to add beyond what I had said after TLJ was released in cinemas (and my strong reaction actualy drove me to finding this place).

I was one of those who did not hate but certainly didn't love TLJ. I find it very polarising for myself (let alone the fanbase). There were certainly many things I loved but there were also some things I hated, vehemently hated. Even the PT didn't do that for me (well apart from kiddie Anakin perhaps).

So with TLJ now out on DVD I bought it (obviously) and have now watched it a few more times and...

Generally speaking I was somewhat harsh. It works well. Beautifully shot. Has some great and even a few awesome scenes. Some of my criticisms were a little unfair. Some of the "plot holes" (let's not get into what is an actual plot hole, I am using that as a catch all phrase) are explained through dialogue etc.

However, there are still a few things that I just cannot get past and allow myself to love this film and it really irks me. It is a good film that could have been a great film IMHO.

Obviously personal taste comes into it (mine clearly) but I still don't like:

1. Hux on hold. I hate it with a vengeance and repeat viewing only increases that. For me it just doesn't work. I doesn't feel right (to me) as an in universe activity. Feels so 21st century real world. Hate it hate it hate it. Also it really does undermine the character of Hux and makes him a joke (in film and for the audience). Basically that scene destroys one of the three key antagonists and does irreprobable damage. Awful choice by RJ that could have so easily been avoided creating an awesome scene.

2. Canto Bight and the uselessness of Finn. I mean I get that Finn is being used for some light relief but does the guy have to be so dumb! Parking on the beach! Really! Why is that even a thing and why is it necessary. Why is it that someone who was a slave soldier finds himself being lectured by Rose about the Farriers (sp?) etc. If anything that scene would work better the other way around. Oh and get the Master Code Breaker only don't! Instead settle for some complete stranger you meet in jail for a few seconds! This whole plot had potential but it is a farce. Looks good though!

3. Rose crashing into Finn. For me this would ONLY work if Rose had A) Done this to save Finn who she now saw was a hero and had discovered his courage etc and B) Rose had crashed into the cannon and sacrificed herself rather than surviving to give Finn her weird twisted logic lecture and a peck on the lips!

Change those things and I would have been happy and considered this an almost great film.

There are other things still but they are certainly nitpicks and very much personal taste issues such as...

4. I would have had Snoke's ship arrive later in the film to up the ante even further. Perhaps as they reached Crait?

5. Connected to that I would not have had Snoke as anything but a hologram until his ship arrived later in the film keeping back the reveal.

6. The slow chase and tracking through hyperspace (but only from the lead FO ship) still feels a bit dumb and convenient. It is ok but I am sure there is something better that could have been done. Perhaps have the engines of the Raddus (sp?) sabotaged and have a traitor on board. Perhaps everyone could suspect Finn after all just a few days before in TFA he was a storm trooper of the First Order! Finn trying to "escape" and go find Rey would lead others to think he was a traitor?

7. Running time permitting, yes I would have liked to see the third lesson with Luke/Rey.

8. RJ breaks the cardinal rule of filmmaking...show don't tell. It was a poor choice to have Kylo Ren tell us that Rey took Snoke's shuttle to escape. Just give us a few seconds showing Rey taking the shuttle and it would have worked just fine!

And finally one thing that is most certainly a personal preference but doesn't actually distract from the film as it is (ie. It is fine as is but I would have preferred it if...)

9. Luke had been even more badass when he projected himself onto Crait. I would have liked to see him so powerful that he took out the walkers. Why?

Well we know that Snoke is powerful enough to create the force connection across the Galaxy between Rey and Kylo. We know that Rey and Kylo are strong enough to hold their conversations (without dying). So for me I need something more immense to explain why Luke is so exhausted by his force projection. Battling and destroying things such as the walkers would explain away that huge effort as being different and a step up from the Rey/Kylo discussions.

Now maybe Luke decided to allow himself to be absorbed into the Force like Ben Kenobi years earlier but for me he was clearly exhausted by his efforts so give him a major major reason for it.

I think that is it. I enjoyed it for what it is. Not perfect and not as good as it could have been. However, I will watch it multiple times. In the final assessment how I view it will only become apparent once we have episode IX to set the context.

 

Great review that I believe supports a lot of what I was saying a few months back. Also vindicates some of the changes I suggested including the tracking through hyperspace thing and having Phasma on Canto Bight. Also doing more with Finn and the wasted opportunity that was Canto Bight. Most importantly for me though is the need to dial down the humour early on in the film which totally undermines the drama (for me).

Really think it is a shame that Lucasfilm are not doing a Peter Jackson and releasing Extended Editions. Some of the deleted scenes sound great and it would be good to see them edited back in.

 

You're allowed to tell sometimes

 

Nah

 

Trust me, it's true.

 

No really no...

LOL

Yeah I know you can sometimes tell but it would have been better to show. Like I said for the sake of a few seconds show Rey escaping.

 

Ideally, yes, but there's always little trade offs in the script and (I'm guessing in this case) the edit. Sometimes it's pacing, sometimes it may even be cost. It's in your nitpicks anyway, so no biggie.

 

As someone who thoroughly enjoyed Infinity War, I find myself agreeing with much of this (massive IW spoilers ahead):

https://slate.com/culture/2018/05/a...nt-approaches-to-long-running-franchises.html

Thoughts?

 

The takeaway I get from that is that Kennedy, in the spirit of Lucas, is encouraging bold, thoughtful and personal film-making in the Star Wars cinematic universe, very much unlike Feige. I'm thrilled that she's thus far shied away from fan worship or fan pandering. That's the thing I like least about the MCU. Feige throws a bunch of fan-pleasing stuff at the wall. For many, it works. For me, I find it tedious and devoid of art. With some exceptions to the rule, such as Black Panther and Thor: Ragnarok.

 

Without reading that article (I haven't seen IW yet) - I think that two things are true about the KK era:

1 - as Pablo has suggested, the kind of output we're getting now - saga films intermixed with stand-alones, all written and helmed by different storytellers - is very similar to George's plan prior to being burned out after ESB and wrapping things up neatly with ROTJ.

2 - I agree about the boldness. A lot of the choices, especially in the saga films - and especially TLJ - feel like the kind of counter-intuitive choices George would have made. Bold, but always with the inherent potential for fan division. And that's not because either George or RJ were trying to piss off anyone, but because they all know that there is no pleasing everyone and you're ultimately going to get something more interesting if you swing for the fences on something you believe in, rather than trying to thread the needle and tick every safe fan boy box.

 

1) I recall that George Lucas abandoned that plan during TESB production. If he wanted other storytellers to take the helm, he wouldn't have begun to take over the story outline and rewrite many aspects by himself (including the "I am your father" moment). From what I can understand, there was an impracticality to that idealized plan. When you have too many cooks with no head chef monitoring the entire workforce closely, it falls into chaos. Note, this applies to the saga episodes. Anthology series are easier to work with.

2) Boldness can either be very noble... or very foolish. It depends on the context. Many people loved Winter Soldier comic book arc that boldly reinvented a long accepted dead character Bucky back to life in the early 2000s, but despise Civil War even though it boldly changed status quo. For me, if I want boldness of someone fresh and new with no connection to the previous episodes, I prefer they make something original instead of making an official sequel to a saga done by someone else. Especially since films are not like comic books. You cannot go back and retcon the whole thing.

 

Some people seem to see the dialogue of an equal of light meeting dark as some kind of huge retcon of Force lore but to me it’s just a matter of semantics around dynamics we already largely knew about and accepted.

It’s entirely possible, for example, that the equals to Vader on the Dark was literally the twins themselves on the Light born on the exact same day he joined the Dark.

Perhaps Anakin was born of the Force specifically to counter Sidious pending rise but Sidious simply delayed that by co-opting him.

Perhaps it’s always been this way? The Force nudges and pushes and influences counter balances but can only do so much. It’s always up to the individuals and some end up getting killed prolonging imbalance. Some are turned and prolong imbalance. It’s a battle as old as time. Someone on the Light always seems to be powerful enough in time to become an equal and challenge the person on the Dark. It’s just that that’s being told more specifically in this saga instead of midichlorians and to get to an idea potentially where the Force could possibly skip generations or awaken in people whose parents didn’t seem Force-sensitive so that more fans watching can better imagine what it would be like for that to happen to them.

 

I thought we always knew (since TPM anyway) that Anakin was conceived by the Force as a reaction to the imbalance caused by Palpatine. Anyway, the idea of light rising to meet the darkness is nothing new so I don't get the issue with it in TLJ anyway.

 

That’s how I feel as well.

 

You know, after rewatching TLJ this past weekend on video, one thing occurred to me: if the First Order was able to construct such a powerful and devastating weapon as the Starkiller base was, how come the "battering ram cannon" they used on Crait that was infused with Death-star like technology was pretty inefficient in the grand scheme of things? You'd think something like that could just reduce the entire base to ashes with a single blast.

 

Just gets better with every watch. I'm slightly embarrassed to admit this, but I think my initial negative reaction was because some of the ideas just went over my head on first viewing. It's not a put on and zone out to the pretty visuals film like RO, you have to use your head a bit while watching, something else that threw me off was you quite often didn't get any explanation as to why a character was doing something, did something or what the point was until mid way through or after they did it which made things confusing at first, but once you've seen the film a couple of time everything clicks together. The tonal difference and random humour also bother me a hell of a lot less now as well. While TLJ is obviously not as good as ESB I think in time it'll get past the initial backlash and be appreciated for the brilliant addition to the saga it is, much like with ESB back in the day.

I do have to wonder how the backlash will affect ep9 though, I get the feeling that regardless of what was originally planned we'll now get a straight down the middle crowd pleaser, which is fine, but part of me will always wonder where thing would have gone if people hadn't started turning against the ST. TLJ was finished even before TFA started getting criticised, it has the feel of a film made by people full of confidence in what they're doing, for better or worse, within a studio that feels at the top of their game and liberated creatively. I'm slightly worried the next one will be dumbed down a bit and will make TLJ feel more like the black sheep of the franchise, instead of being the film that kicked it into a different gear like what was originally intended. We'll see anyway. I hope more people come around soon though, one thing I'm absolutely certain of is that it doesn't deserve anywhere near as much criticism as it gets

 

Saw it for the second time (on home video, after cinema in December) and I must admit I was delighted.

Many things made more sense; Rey's and Kylo's Force bond, her idealistic view on him and his luring her on his side, I do think that Luke could've been used better, but Rian made him as he wanted so I have to work with that. It's nice to see how Rey's arrival made him use the Force again and had Rey not left when she did, I'm sure he would've left the island with her. If they decide to make Finn and Rose an item in the next movie, I'd see why. Finn and Rose shared some intimate moments (he saw her caring about animals and boy slaves, she saved him when he wanted to sacrifice himself), so that's a good foundation for more. Rian's worldbuilding is not on par with Eps 1-6, but it is better than TFA's as he presents us Anch-To, Crait and Cantonica, there are some hints about the FO, Luke's Jedi order, the visuals are superb here, it's a beautifully filmed movie. Yoda's cameo is wonderful, by the way.

Now, there are some things that could've been better. Like main character's motives, using Leia or the dice (that's a bit stretched, cameo for Solo).

And there's a couple of things that I think should've been better. I'm OK with the idea of arms dealers selling weapons to both sides, but to sell X-Wings and TIEs, old era equipment, that's just for filmmaker's sense, to reminisce the OT style. There's a scene where Kylo tells Rey to let the old things die, the Sith, the Jedi, the Rebels and so. But what exactly is he? Who was Snoke? What does he want? Rian stayed well within TFA parameters on these things, he didn't create the mythology for the ST that would expand the SW universe, Kylo and Snoke are just two random dark side users and that's it. He also remained in TFA ball park of keeping the galaxy small (well, except Cantonica... In a way) that the Resistance even fled to the old rebel base. I do realize that TLJ suffers from the events of TFA - the Republic was ditched in a matter of seconds so our heroes could be put in the underdog position to fight a mightier enemy, but the themes Rian chose to emphasize are a bit too much. They're the spark that'll light the fire and Luke's failure occupy probably too much on the expanse of main character's motives... Not to mention that those were the themes explored in the OT, in a shorter and IMO much efficient way.

Anyway, as stated above, TLJ does not deserve all the criticism it gets, it is a very, very good movie - much better than TFA, but because Rian chose not to create a mythology for this movie, and trilogy, it's still fails to reach the Lucas' saga. Oh, and yes, as it's said in thedigitalbits.com review, Rian Johnson has a far more insightful understanding of Star Wars than people give him credit for.

 

I agree with a lot of that

 

It's similar but not the same. For one in Lucas' Star Wars Anakin has a choice to be Light or Dark. He ends up being both Light and Dark through his own choices and then balances the Force.

Second as Lucas says Anakin may have been created by a Super-Sith or the Force manipulating the midi-chlorians or the midi-chlorians creating him themselves due to the prophecy. Also Anakin was not simply Light to the Sith's Dark. The Sith were around for thousands of years as was the prophecy but there was no Chosen One before because no Sith as Dark side as they were ever put the Force out of balance. The Chosen One was specific to something beyond merely good vs evil or Light rising to fight Darkness. It was the whole of the Force being undone. It was really a step beyond the battle of good and evil hence why the Chosen One was the balance between the two.

Rey is an instrument of the Light side with no choice as to her destiny. She just does things without knowing or understanding why. The Force is not out of balance again. At this point it's about maintaining what has already been reset. Possibly the grandson of the Chosen One could upset the balance but there has been nothing really to go on.

Rey vs Ren so far is simply Light vs Dark as before the Force went out of balance.

 

It is not stated that Rey has no choice. The force picked her because she is in the light, it doesn't make her stay there. We don't even know what her destiny is because she doesn't have people telling her she's special. She is finding her own destiny and making her own choices. And the difference between Rey and Kylo is that she lets the force guide her and he tries to bend it to his will. I actually think her destiny is not set unlike Anakin's. Anakin was still an instrument if the light after decades of being on the dark side and completed his destiny no matter how darkness he caused. Anakin had no choice. They told us what he was going to do in TPM and he did it.
Luke's sacrifice is not just to save his friends and family, it's to help save Rey as well. "Lose Rey, we must not!" is what Yoda says. Not we will not, but MUST NOT. That means she can be lost. She's not in physical danger, but Luke is saving her from the person she would become if Finn and the rebels died at the hand of Kylo that would be consumed by revenge and darkness. The rebels living is what allowed her to stay on the Jedi path.

 

Lots of things are never stated in Star Wars. No one ever really knows in the story if Anakin is the Chosen One. That is only stated by Lucas in TCW but as far as I know it's stated by others but is never definite. It comes about by choices being made and acted upon. We only know for certain that Anakin is the Chosen One at the end because he choose to be by destroying the Sith in ROTJ. If he chose not to be then he wouldn't be. The prophecy was right because Anakin made it correct whereas in ROTS he didn't and so no one had any reason to believe it.

Maybe but there is no indication of that. Actually the reverse as Snoke says she is the rising light to Ren's darkness. In the wider canon I think it says she is an instrument of the cosmic Force itself and clearly the Light side. Now that last bit isn't in the movies but that she is on the Light side is. What shows she has any choice in the matter? She is said to have the spirit of a true Jedi, she's compelled to do what she does from dreaming of the island to fighting for the Light side. The dark holds no sway over her. It can call to her but her resistance is not only strong but she seems to gain strength from encountering the Dark side.

For one they don't have to for that is evident but since the two movies take place over a few days there is hardly time to. Someone who goes from virtual zero to 100 in Force use in a few dozen hours is special since it's never happened before ever as far as the movies go.

I'd say we don't really know about either yet but the indications are that neither has any real choice as such. Rey's nature is to be Light and Ren's is to be Dark. Thematically speaking they are akin to the Son and Daughter of Mortis. Nothing wrong with that as such of course and they should be different from Anakin because he did that story already.

Not at all. Anakin made the choice that made what was said the Chosen One would do true not the other way around. In ROTS his decisions made it untrue and no one thought that anything would change that.

The Chosen One chooses his destiny regardless of what everyone else says it is.

Except Luke does absolutely nothing to not lose Rey. Yoda is utterly confused in TLJ and seems to have totally forgotten what's already happened to himself and Luke.

What you're talking about could be the case but there is nothing in the movies to suggest it. There is truly no reason to believe Rey just isn't going to be Rey. That is what is in the mirror. She's herself already. Luke proclaims that she is going to be a Jedi yet as we know one without any training from Jedi. So a Jedi not of the Jedi. If the wider canon is to be believed as relevant to the movies then Rey actually has gained her knowledge of how to use abilities from absorbing Force downloads from Ren then Snoke.

So over and again the story and inferences in the movies are that Rey is driven by things she does not understand and reacts to things in ways that is as much a mystery to her as to us.

 

I find it bizarre to read that Rey had no choice. She comes several times to a distinct moral crossroads, at which her choice means absolutely everything as far as what happens next. She's given a choice of 60 portions or keeping BB-8 safe. She initially refuses her call to destiny and ends up meeting her adversary. Later she chooses to reject training from said adversary, despite her desperate need for a teacher. She chooses to spare her enemy's life even though she has XYZ reasons to put him down. That's all just from the beginning of her journey. I think saying she never had a choice in anything is very, very wrong.

 

What choice does Anakin or Luke have in their first film?

They don't.

In AOTC, Anakin chooses to give into hate.
In ESB, Luke refuses Vader's offer.
In TLJ, Rey refuses Kylo's offer.

How is Yoda confused? Luke's failure to answer Rey and Leia's call risks the next Jedi being lost to the dark side.

The mistake you're making - apart from the glaring double standards - is that you're working from where things end up rather than where they are at when that Yoda scene takes place.

When Rey leaves, she has not made her choice - she doesn't make it until after the Throne Room battle.
It's the equivalent of "Told you, did I, now matters are worse/ that boy was our last hope."

And Rey is leaving and placing her hopes in a vision of the future and Kylo Ren, because Luke is refusing to answer both her call and the call of the light. Luke refusing to get over his past failures is what ultimately drives Rey off in search of other answers.

Rey is more reactive than Luke, and she lacks the simple clear goal he has.But that does not mean she's not making choices.