ST The Reception of The Last Jedi vs The Empire Strikes Back

Except that it is, because, ya'know, many people love it, just because you don't like it doesn't make it a bad movie.

 

I don’t always agree with film critics, but I agree with them about TLJ.

 

Not to be rude, but you mom was wrong. Lots of hard core fans complained about ESB. Some of the evidence of that is in the beginning of this thread. Starlog was not a magazine casuals.

And, of course, this very website shows that TLJ is not "hated by hardcore fans." More people love this move that absolutely hate it, even here. It would be accurate to say that the reaction was mixed among among hardcore fans, but hated is completely inaccurate.

 

Tastes change. I will be interested in seeing how TLJ ages compared to the other films of this trilogy.

I'm 38 years old. I grew up with the OT. As a kid, I rarely watched Empire. I found it too boring. There weren't as many grand space battles. Luke wasn't doing many heroic things, and it ended on a downer. For a child under 10, that's not something you can easily get into. If you asked me as a 7 year old, I would have ranked the saga...

1. Return of the Jedi (big space battle, cool creatures, cute Ewoks, the best lightsaber fight, and a happy ending)
2. A New Hope (Cool Death Star, big space battle, Obi Wan still alive)
3. Empire Strikes Back (Neat snow battle but the rest was boring. Yoda was fun)

I probably didn't watch the OT from the time I was 10 until I was 17. When I revisited it as a teenager, I immediately got Empire. In fact, I was surprised I liked it so much, but also that I was extremely disappointed with ROTJ. All of the things I never noticed as a kid now bugged me. The Ewoks, the rehash plot, shoehorning Leia in as Lukes sister. I felt that Lucas got lazy with ROTJ and gave us a retread. I still thought the scenes with Jabba along with Luke and the Emperor were some of whthe best the series had to offer, but the rest just felt phoned in and I was shocked to feel that way. Sure, I saw the flaws in all of the films that I hadn't seen with childs eyes, including Empire, but Jedi's were the most glaring.

The point being, I think TLJ will probably age better than some of the other entries. I never left a theater being disappointed in a Star Wars movie, including the prequels. But, some entries get better with age like A New Hope and Empire, while Others I've found do not age as well like Jedi, or AOTC. This will especially be true with kids who are getting this trilogy as their first taste of Star Wars. Like my generation, they will revisit this film as teenagers or adults and see it with a fresh perspective. I wouldn't be surprised if they point to this movie as one of the favorites of their childhood when they re-watch these later.

I'll also say that the entire trilogy could be made better, or worse, by the decisions that are ultimately made in IX. I think there has been a rush to judgement on TLJ. This trilogy is still somewhat of a blank canvas, just like the OT was after Empire. The things people are upset about now, could very easily be given fantastic conclusions that will make people sit back and say, "oh, I get what they were doing now."

 

I find it laughable when people try and compare ESB with TLJ, the ESB had a cliff hanger ending with numerous sub plots that left people anticipating the next movie.

Was Han okay and will be they be able to rescue him? Was Vader really Luke's father? Will Luke be strong enough to defeat Vader? Who is this mysterious Emperor?

The Last Jedi has none of that at all, all we have to look forward to is Rey VS Kylo 2 which we have already seen that Rey is equally as strong or potentially stronger than Kylo.

Rather than give us an ending like ESB, RJ instead has left nothing at all for us to look forward to in episode 9 and has left JJ in the unenviable position of now having to create something from scratch for 9 just to get people interested in seeing it.

 

I was ten when TESB came out--I was very unsettled by it. I found, like many of my friends, that the unhappy ending was tough to take. I vividly recall laying in my bed, the Han in carbonite scene playing over and over in my head. It was most certainly not immediately well-liked by my peers. When I went to a birthday party in 1981 (a Star Wars double-feature), the party decamped before Luke reached Dagobah. That choice seems unfathomable today. My parents found the film gloomy at the time. I recall The Globe and Mail (our newspaper) reporting that parents were deeply upset by the film's dark themes and violence (the Tauntaun-gutting figured prominently in the article). I actually remember critics, and many of my friends, panning (the horror!) Empire as boring and narratively stunted (the film doesn't end, it just stops). Today, those criticisms seem fatuous, if not outright sacrilegious. Like most fans, I now place Empire at the top of the heap--but in 1980, people voted with their feet: despite a three-year gap, and enormous pent-up desire for a sequel, Empire made a fraction of the box office A New Hope made. Now, I loved The Last Jedi--but would the ten-year-old me have felt the same? Perhaps not. I agree with superstardestroyer-1, TLJ will likely age very well, particularly among those perhaps not entirely please by the film at the moment. TLJ takes risks for a franchise blockbuster--perhaps not as many as Empire did nearly 40 years ago, but it's pretty visionary.

 

I think that some people who are the most upset by TLJ, need to at least admit that they are looking at it through their fathers eyes. We are all older and more jaded than when we experienced the OT (or for some the PT). We are less capable of experiencing that sense of wonder and joy that come with these films. The flaws are much more apparent. Anyone who is honest with themselves can easily point to a dozen narrative and logical flaws in every film, from the OT, to the PT, to the ST, but we are naturally more forgiving towards things that shaped us in our formative years.

It's human nature. This is why there is suddenly a surge of millennials defending the PT and don't understand why the older generation doesn't appreciate them the way they do. In 15 years, we'll have people coming of age talking about how the ST is the pinnacle of Star Wars storytelling and how they can't understand how some malign their treasured childhood memories so much.

I can honestly say that while my parents enjoyed watching Star Wars with me, they've never quite understood my fascination with it and how it's endured into adulthood. Why I'll see a new movie 5 times in the theater. Why I'll read Star Wars books. Why I'll collect statues and toys. They thought Star Wars was "fun" and "neat". But, they were just too old to truly get it the way my generation did. Sadly, it happens to all of us and you're seeing the backlash of people who don't want to admit that their youth and sense of wonder has faded away.

 

I tend to not agree about judging TLJ better in time, many people tried to argue the exact same thing about the prequels back when they were released, but if anything the hatred for them has grown stronger.

I think the level of dislike for TLJ seems to mirror the prequels, TFA got some hate, but nothing at all close to what TLJ is getting from fans.

Yes some fans like it, but there was also many fans who were trying to argue that the TPM and AOTC were the best thing since sliced bread when they were released as well.

TLJ is not TPM or AOTC bad, but on the flip side it not even close to TFA, RO or the original trilogy.

 

Honestly I tend to think that part of the issue is similar to the prequels, the expectation of new SW ment that TPM got rather more of a free pass than AOTC. With TFA if anything I think the same was even more true as it wasn't just the first SW in years but also following the PT's "mixed" reaction. Personally I think that film was given rather a lot of leeway relative to its quality and TLJ is catching some of the backlash whilst having similar issues. The same kind of thing happened with ABrams Trek films to me to. Into Darkness wasn't really that different to the first one but caught more of a backlash.

I do tend to think the overall opinion of the sequels(thus far anyway) will go down significantly with time as the hype dies off and people aren't so need to defend them. Not sure they'll drop to the level of the prequels but I don't think they'll be regarded as close to the originals or indeed as good as Rogue One last year.

My feeling is that the ST timeline might well just die out after the third film and Starwars long term will end up as a mix of OT era anthology films and the potential new setting Johnson is working on.

 

I tend to think that TFA escaped criticism because it built a universe that had people wanting to know more. Fans spent the last two years pondering how many of the story arcs were going to play out going forward.

Aside from how Luke was portrayed, I also think the main cause of the backlash for TLJ is because many of the story arcs that people were looking forward from TFA were either dismissed or given a very lackluster conclusion and it really left us with nothing really to look forward to or to ponder between now and episode 9.

All there really is going forward is Kylo VS Rey which we have already seen in TFA, RJ pretty much gutted everything from the TFA and left very little to carry forward into Episode 9.

I also don't think TPM got a free pass, most people I knew hated the movie from the first time they saw it. I certainly did.

People were so desperate to believe that TPM being terrible was an aberration that they initially tried to fool themselves into believing that AOTC was much better than TPM when it was first released.

 

This is, I believe, the original Washington Post review of The Empire Strikes Back, by Gary Arnold. He just intuitively "got" the whole thing from the moment he saw it. Well worth the read.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/review97/empirestrikesbackarnold.htm

 

Exactly, the movies aren't comparable at all.

It just wishful thinking by some fans who liked TLJ and hope that it will be seen in the same light as ESB in the future.

 

One thing you have to keep in mind when reading TESB reviews of the time ..... The average critic used to be opposed to sequels on principle in a way that they no longer are. They saw it as corporate profiteering, unoriginal stories, and they almost always gave sequels bad reviews.

 

I was six when ESB came out, and while I don't remember the general audience reaction, it was my least favorite in the trilogy until I was much older (20 or so).

Most of us who were children at the time of the OT are unlikely to have a good sense of what the general reaction to each film was -- from personal experience. Kids that age just don't really care or pay attention to that sort of thing.

 

TPM's reputation really though dropped off in the couple of years afterwards to the point people were hoping for more from AOTC, I wouldn't say it was nearly as negative on release.

Personally I tend to think people would have let the lack of followups from TFA slide if they'd otherwise loved the film, the same way they'd have let the Luke twist slide if it had been handled more sympathetically.

I mean I don't think second guessing peoples opinions should stand in for actually making reasoned arguments but seeing as this thread is about reactions I do think a lot of the defence of TFA and TLJ being so spirited is not just due to love of SW but rather because they are viewed as the "anti prequels", to be critical of these films would mean people walking away from arguments they've been making for years.

 

It's all very interesting to me. Again, I see people looking at the OT (and in some cases the PT) with rose colored glasses. George Lucas was maligned for the better part of 20 years for the choices he made with the Special Editions as well as the prequels. The criticism of his choices goes back even further if you consider the long term criticism of Return of the Jedi. Yet, now that some are unhappy with the direction the sequels have taken, there is an effort to recast his later legacy as that of a genius auteur again rather than the out of touch filmmaker he was portrayed as by many from 1999 onwards.

Many of the complaints about the sequel trilogy have specific corresponding matches in the OT and PT, but those are currently being ignored.

1. TFA was just a rehash of ANH with another super weapon: This is fair, but we already have precedent for plot points being rehashed with the 2nd Death Star in ROTJ.

2. TLJ was effectively a character assassination piece on Luke Skywalker: One could say the same thing about what was done to Obi-Wan in TESB and ROTJ. Obi-Wan flat out lied to Luke. This was the first setup that the "Jedi way" wasn't always necessarily right. HIs "A certain point of view" rationalization for his actions was created by Lucas to wipe away what he set up in ANH, but it certainly did not do the character of Obi-Wan any services.

3. They are making things up as they go along without a set in stone cohesive story arc: As were the OT and PT. Darth Vader originally wasn't going to be Lukes father. Leia wasn't going to be Lukes sister. We weren't going to even see the Emperor or Luke's sister in the first trilogy. Lucas got burned out on making movies, combined with his failing marriage, compromised many of the ideas he had. They didn't even know if Harrison Ford would return in ROTJ and I would have guaranteed that Leia wouldn't have been made Luke's sister had Ford bowed out to preserve some type of romantic arc.

4. They set up plot mysteries only to give them unsatisfying conclusions, or no conclusion at all: This could be said about the Syfo Dias arc in AOTC. For 3 years, fan theories exploded on these boards about Syfo Dias. Who was he? Was he real? Was it actually just Darth Sidious? What were his motivations to create the clone army? Why was he working with Dooku? We got no payoff on that in ROTS. People complain about the prequels for many reasons, but for me, the biggest sin in those films was pacing. TPM could have been an almost "Episode 0" that was resolved in 45 minutes or even done as a book. It feels detached as part of that trilogy due to the extreme time jump. Episode II wasted most of its run time setting up things like the mystery of the clone army and Syfo Dias without any meaningful payoff on those items in the final movie. In fact, ROTS feels like it's trying to do so much as Lucas wrote himself into a corner on I and II and it's evident that he realized that he only had 2.5 hours to essentially tell a story that wasn't fleshed out appropriately in the prior 2 movies. It took us multiple books, comics, and cartoons to explore the Clone Wars in a meaningful way. The biggest expectation of most fans was that the prequels would spend most of its time in the clone wars, and that was not the case.

5. Too many "cutesy" creatures: See Ewoks, Gungans, pod racers, Dex's Diner, etc. You either can appreciate these things as part of the Star Wars universe, or you can't.

6. The logic behind the military strategy doesn't make sense in TLJ: Why did we have a low speed chase through sub light? Why didn't the First Order scramble ships to bombard the Resistance? Why didn't the Empire scramble TIE's as the rebels were leaving Hoth? You can't look beyond the surface of these things. Things often fall apart in the Star Wars universe when scrutinized too closely. The Jedi couldn't sense Palpatines darkness even though they worked alongside him for decades?

7: Snoke and Phasma are wasted villains: As were Darth Maul and Count Dooku. Again, we needed multiple books, comics, and cartoons to flesh out these characters to give them a meaningful story. Lucas has as much as said his biggest regret was killing off Maul in TPM and that's why he brought him back in Clone Wars. Dooku's role as a fallen Jedi was fascinating. He was underserved in AOTC and I remember expecting him to play a huge role in ROTS before Anakin took his place...and, they killed him off in the first 15 minutes, unceremoniously, I might add. He was simply a placeholder character and a plot device to give the CIS (whose motivations were also vague until explored in the EU) a leader. Going back to the OT, Boba Fett was essentially Phasma. A cool villain with neat armor. Phasma actually has way more to do in the ST than Fett was ever given to do in the OT. One could even argue that Palpatine was a "wasted character". Had Lucas actually followed his original intent, I would have loved to see him as the antagonist of the ST. His background explored along with his motivations. Instead, we only got about 45 minutes of ROTJ with him as essentially a foil to facilitate Anakin's return to the light. We got some background on him in the PT, mainly his rise to power, and his 2 dark side speeches in ROTS, but it wasn't as satisfying as it could have been. They didn't explore the ways of the Sith that much in the PT and Lucas' ability to play with the character was limited knowing his eventual fate in ROTJ.

In the end, there isn't a Star Wars film that isn't deeply flawed when looked at under a microscope. Even the ones 30 somethings grew up with. I've always found the stories as to why they ended up the way the did to be fascinating in and of themselves. There is enough good in any Star Wars film to overcome the nitpicks that uber fans, like ourselves, can come up with. It's important to just let go and enjoy these things for what they are.

 

You are wise, Lord Plagueis.

 

This is very true. Also sci-fi/fantasy is more accepted nowadays by critics. Back then there were some critics that weren't going to give a movie with a green talking muppet that has significant screentime a good review no matter what.

 

I saw TESB as a 10yo in theatre's in 1980 & the reactions were good from the audiences but of course no internet so no trolls ,

I have read articles & TESB was definitely divisive at the time & critics weren't entirely in love with it but with time it became a classic so hopefully in time TLJ will improve overall once the raw emotion has died down.....

 

Just because a movie subverted expectations does not mean it will be considered good in the future. Empire's well received now because of the character drama and emotion in the film and wasn't well received at the time (by fans) because of its dark tone. I haven't seen a single person claim they disliked TLJ because it was dark.

Additionally, a poor reception from fans also doesn't equal "it will be one of the best in a few years' time." Despite my opinions on them, TPM and AOTC had a poor reception from some fans around release. Does that mean those same fans now consider it one of the best?

 

After TFA-TLJ cliffhangrs and questions hanging pver the 2 year period, I'm glad of the clean slate ready for the next movie. I don't want 2 years of endless debate, wondering, fan theory videos and desperation to know what was happening, I've just had that experience and had everything toppled on its head with most of that stuff not really being important (and I like that in a way, some people don't), so it's refreshing to just know that there will be another movie in a couple of years that I will be excited to see, but I don't need to anxiously anticipate it until then, but can enjoy the current latest-movie and finally watch TFA without feeling like I can't wait to see what happens after as I already know.

 

I saw it when I was 10. It was wildly successful. Yoda was a standout and Han’s frozen in carbonate was a big deal. I remember a friend in 4th grade telling me Han got frozen by Vader and because of the Hoth aspects of the trailer I thought naturally Han was frozen in ice. The “I’m your father” moment got audible gasps. It was largely well received as a very successful sequel. I mean Boba Fett entered the scene and it was all over. Hook, line and sinker.


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A lot of the criticism is coming from people who take a more questionable view of the PT though such as myself. I would turn it around though and say the culture behind tearing down Lucas became so strong that it actually fed into reactions to the ST.

Whilst the Deathstar itself was reused though the mechanics of the plot around it were very different, TFA actually feels like its lifting from both ANH AND ROTJ to me. Plus I would say a lot of the criticism of SKB isn't just lack of originality but that unlike the OT it feels shoehorned into the film, not the obvious focus that the DS was.

A lot of negative comment though has actually referenced this in comparison pointing out that Obi Wan is still shown in a much more sympathetic light than Luke in TLJ. The reveal itself is less extreme of course as Obi Wan didn't consider murdering Anakin in his sleep with the character as as whole being FAR more sympathetic to me. I think we get the clear sense that Obi Wan's failure with Vader has lead to a lot of his current wisdom and indeed that the lie was there as much to protect Luke. Luke in TLJ to me is both lacking in wisdom and such as extreme reveal is delt with in far too blunt a fashion

This has been commented on a lot as well with people such as myself pointing out the differences between ANH and TFA. The former might not have a definite idea of the whole OT story but I think it works far more successfully as an introduction because it focuses on building its characters and setting, TFA on the other hand for me doesn't build up either of these things enough substituting them for mystery boxes that we now know Abrams had no answers to.

The Syfo Dias stuff was a pretty minor plot point of course but yeah I agree that's a big problem with the prequels, they spend far too long avoiding what should have been their main story, most obviously I think Anakin myself is reduced to a minor supporting role as a young child in TPM.

As you say criticism of these things goes back a looooong way although I would say that at least the Ewoks were clearly kept confined in their own plot thread and did serve some purpose in a "nature vs industry" story.

The original films I would say had the big advantage that they deliberately left far more of the specifics off screen which ment that they needed to address this kind of thing less. In ESB for example we don't know that the Empire didn't use Tie's as the Rebels were leaving the system as that happens off screen bar the Falcon which is being chased by them although it would seem to be less effective as the Rebels go to hyperspace as they escape and potentially fleeing in many directions.

When your claiming that Palpatine is a "wasted character" I think you need to really need to consider just how far your pushing your arguments, he's the main villain across an entire film with a very prolonged confronation with the hero which many consider to be the best thing in the entire franchise. Personally I would say that Snoke felt "wasted" more in the sense that Kylo felt underused in TLJ and indeed the big climax with Rey/Snoke felt sidelined by an extra finale that reset it and gave more of a happy ending.

I would say you need to put a far higher "microscope" up to the OT to find faults than they do with the PT and ST. Indeed I find it a bit ironic that people who were negative defences of the PT that looked to attack the OT are now doing exactly the same thing themselves to defend the ST.

 

Sorry, you're barking up the wrong tree.

I didn't saw TESB has a "dark tone" (even though many people believe it does). I said it has a darker tone than ANH. Those aren't the same thing.