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

The Matrix trilogy does that right in my opinion (yes I know it's a tiny-minority opinion), the second movie subverting the idea of the One and then the third reconstructing it.

 

Something I find quite touching in the ST is

Spoiler

R2 and Threepio were both there at the birth of Luke and Leia, then Threepio has his last encounter with Luke in TLJ, and R2 watches over Leia in her final moments in TROS.

They were there at the beginning and the end of the twins lives. Sad but very fitting.

 

Just rewatched TLJ last night for the first time and I quite enjoyed it. At the cinema I hated it, but was too lazy to write a review, like I am now for TROS. I understand why it may be the best received of the trilogy - it feels way less mindless-action-movie-y than the other two, the lines are intelligently written and it really challenges the characters like Johnson wanted to. Really curious now what he would have done with Episode IX.

My original expectation was, possibly, that the initial space battle would be something like 20 minutes a la ROTS, then someone would say "another happy landing" and then we would jump into some office meeting with a provisional New Republic government (that now takes the First Order and thus the Resistance seriously) convened on some Core World discussing the state of the galaxy (preferably on a hologram like in the Outer Rim Sieges meeting that Anakin missed). However, one could say that the battle/chase occupied the whole movie length (like in TESB). I kept expecting this sort of thing throughout the movie - e.g. when Rey said that the FO would take the major systems within weeks I thought there will be flashes of planetary leaders signing treaties; when they called for allies from Crait, I thought the New Separatist Union would show up. After watching it in the cinema, I told my then-girlfriend that nothing happened in the movie; she answered that on the contrary, too much happened.

When you know already what the movie is going to cover you can focus more on what it is trying to do and not on your idealized version of it (for example, I hadn't originally noticed the Falcon dice before the scene with Luke and Leia). This helped me when watching TROS because I had read all the leaks thoroughly. However, with Rogue One, which is now my favorite SW movie, I went it completely blind. I could be less easily disappointed there because it was not a numbered movie and thus not matter that much if it were bad.

 

Not sure if this is old news or not but TLJ is now available to view on Disney+ in glorious 4K.

 

Better hope your internet connection is up to it.

 

I have the internet speed and the 4K display - the blocker right now is my player (my venerable Xbox One only speaks 1080p). I understand there are various sticks and dongles available that can overcome this hurtle - just have to research which is best for my TV and scrape the extra money together.

 

The TV isn't smart?

I have a 4K Samsung and the Disney+ for it streams great 4K.

IG: @jedisufism

 

I'm fine for the TV tech but no way is the local infrastructure up to streaming 4k!

 

Not smart enough - it's technically a "smart TV" but it only natively supports a handful of streaming apps and Disney+ is not among them. That's what I get for taking the budget road! I'm pretty sure an Amazon Fire 4K or something similar will deliver the goods, and its not that expensive - just have to get around to purchasing one.

 

They could do that, but they couldn't have Chewbacca and Leia hug after Han's death?

 

interesting notion, the ST climaxes with the Luke/Kylo confrontation in TLJ. TROS is basically an epilogue to the entire saga.

 

Also droid-wise, I'm sure it's been widely noted and I just haven't seen it, but -- isn't Threepio's last line the same as his, and in fact anyone's, first line in ANH? Kinda jumped out at me on the second viewing.

 

Stupid question: where did the "subverting expectations" phrase originate as referring to TLJ? I know it has been a meme for some time now, but who was the first to say it? Rian Johnson? Mr. Plinkett? Somebody else?

 

Don’t know about where it originated but I definitely remember the phrase getting used multiple times in the newspaper review I read the day of the movie.

 

I think that's it, actually. The phrase originated with film critics. Certainly no one on the filmmaking team used that term.

 

Damn, the "repeat it enough and it becomes true" thing worked even on me, then. Honestly, I don't think the film subverted many expectations (I fully expected what happened with Snoke and thought that both that and Luke's portrayal were thoroughly set up in TFA) and I didn't believe by any stretch that "subversion" was one of Rian's main goals... I just assumed he must have said it at least once, casually, about some random thing (and probably regretted it!) and it was taken out of context to be his whole mission... because it was cited SO much as an actual quote.

 

After seeing Knives Out, I think there are some pretty clear parallels with TLJ in the 'subverting expectations' thing. Both are very aware of genre, and both deliberately throw you off by self-consciously rejecting genre conventions... but then ultimately in the end they return to steer you back there and reaffirm the essential soundness of the conventions. There is a point in TLJ when it seems like the movie does want you to think the Jedi should end, you should let the past die, etc... before it goes on to forcefully and firmly reject those ideas. Just like you briefly think Kylo is going to be unexpectedly redeemed in the second movie, but then he isn't - or that the sacred Jedi texts have been destroyed as a sign of letting the past die, but they haven't.

The best dramatisation of this of course is probably Luke mocking the idea of marching out there with his laser sword to face the entire First Order and then... ending the movie by doing just that.

People can and will read it in different ways, and obviously it works for some people and doesn't for others. But I do think that it's undeniable that RJ has a deep love and appreciation for the conventions of the genre and has thought a lot about them. Again, whether the execution of that is successful or not is an individual thing.

 

TLJ never did it for me, I did not like the movie. I think I’ve softened on it with the release of TROS but it’s still not in my top 5.

I do respect RJ for trying though, even if I didn’t like the end product. With Solo getting hastily rewritten at the last moment to not stand out tonaly and TROS being about as safe and corporate as it could get, I’m kinda worried that it’s divisiveness means Disney isn’t going to let anyone try to make a SW film that goes deeper than enjoyable popcorn flick. Which would be a real shame.

 

And I wouldn't exactly put all the blame on Disney for that.

 

I don't know when the term "subverting expectations" came into vogue, but I know this much - not until the aftermath of TLJ did I ever once hear people consider it to be a negative thing. I remember very well, in the months prior to TLJ's release, TFA being roundly criticized for being too derivative of ANH and people expressing their hope that TLJ would be bold, unpredictable, and, yes, would subvert expectations. Only after TLJ did it become fashionable to insist that subverting expectations is a bad thing (or, alternately, that subverting expectations is good as a general principle but TLJ somehow did it wrong).

 

Was Solo rewritten? L&M were fired for not sticking to the script; I don't recall a script rewrite.

 

Yeah, to be fair to the haters, I've never seen anyone suggest that the subverting of expectations itself was a bad thing, more like how the filmmakers went about doing so was the problem. It's just that the memetic form of that idea is simply saying "subverting expectations" and, like a code, other people understand what that means because they have similar thoughts and personalities.

EDIT: Codifying language is something all humans do, perhaps while not even realizing it. The English language is especially fluid enough to allow words and ideas to germinate and evolve into meaning different things over time, but using certain phrases and words among different groups of people from different backgrounds produce different reactions and results than if you'd use those terms or phrases outside of the appropriate group.

 

Subverting expectations isn't a bad thing, but I think those who didn't enjoy the direction that RJ took TLJ used it with a negative connotation, like how the word "fanboys" can be used as a negative when being an extreme fan of something is not bad.

 

You only ever tend to hear people complaining about story device X if story device X was used in a way that could not work for them at all. If it does work? You rarely hear about it negatively. A case in point - the end of The Usual Suspects or Inception or Sixth Sense, they all pull the rug out from under the viewer but also sell their how and why well enough that it works.

In contrast the now infamous scene of Luke throwing away the saber just doesn't sell me its MO, doesn't sell me why it works, it just expects me to go with it. Similarly, the answer to "who's Rey?", answer "nobody", feels too off-handed, too blatant an indicator that Johnson just wants to get rid of it.

For others, the execution of these two points worked - but it simply couldn't for me.

I don't think the problem is subversion though, it's that sense of off-handedness that eclipses the rest of the film. And I'm using eclipse in the sense of a couple of small aspects obscuring a much larger body because that is the effect for me.

Too often it feels to me like Johnson wants to play Devil's Advocate to the exclusion of all else, with the aim being to 'gotcha' the audience - the whole Dreadnaught sequence is a good illustration of this - but when those tricks are known and not liked - if you liked it, it probably works differently - what's left?

 

All of Johnson's movies have a deep knowledge of whatever genre they're in and he proceeds to twist it, but things still land satisfyingly in their genre box by the end anyway. Last Jedi has Master Skywalker taking on the whole First Order by himself, Knives Out seems that it won't get to the climatic accusing parlor sequence which is what happens in Murder Mysteries and then it totally does. So it's a lot of left turns that by the climax turn right. and there's a lot of weird diversions along the way in all of his movies. Brothers Bloom is probably my least favourite RJ joint cuz it plays it so straight in the genre instead of the curveballs everyone else has. Knives Out had even more comedy digressions than Last Jedi, it's probably his first straight up comedy, hell almost every scene has a gag in it somehow.