ST ST Criticism Discussion Thread

None of your answers to those other issues stack up at all, but let's keep on track. Whether it took out a fleet or not, if a capital ship rams another large ship at light speed it's going to do a lot of damage. It's a tactic that could've been suggested at any time since ANH. Anyway, moving fwd from now it can & I expect will be explained away quite easily. Probably using some bullet-proof technobabble. Like it was always previously expected to not work bcs of blah blah technical reasons. Now following the Holdo incident FO boffins have invented a "hyperspace field scrambler" incorporated into the shields of their ships. So if an enemy ship attempts this again their hyperspace field will be messed up & they'll veer away into an unknown random trajectory & probably disintegrate. These types of technology based issues are the easiest for writers to wave away. It won't be a problem at all.

 

I'd appreciate a point by point breakdown on why not as an argument.

I didn't even bother to bring up the obvious difference between soldier droids on a planet in gravity as opposed to space droids in non-gravity space at high speeds never mind that they are flying ships in a battle etc etc.

Which isn't the specific point made in TLJ. It takes out a fleet of ships completely and the one ship that survived ( a mega Super Star Destroyer no less) is a write-off.

It never needed to be one in the first place as it could have been entirely avoided or done in a way that actually makes sense in context but is shown to be a last ditch tactic that simply isn't worth the effort to use otherwise. Instead it was shown to be something easily adapted to general battle strategy which if followed to logical conclusion means that you'd need to Star Trek and explanation as to why it doesn't work then go into how you will overcome that and so on and so on.

 

Basically it was another case of Rian wanting a "cool moment" and just not concerning himself with how it fits logically into the rest of the saga. Because there's ZERO logical reason why no one has apparently tried this tactic before. It's ridiculously simple, super-effective, and the cost to gain ratio is so laughable skewed in the latter's favor that it's a no-brainer.

As for Luke, I was never onboard with the "broken Luke" idea. It seemed very lame, cliché, unimaginative, and a regression for everything that we'd seen before.

Sadly, it turned out to be all of those things, and so had most of the ST for that matter. It's an utter failure of imagination and creativity and story progression.

 

You’re ignoring the items of value that are on the island entirely here and why Luke is truly there. It’s the last of the Jedi Order and it’s history. That’s what’s bigger than him. That’s what he’s created a purgatory around like a guardian of the world’s last Quran somehow wanting to rid the world of it after religious extremism has consistently come from his family as part of this religion. He’s pissed off with the religion because he’s also pissed off at himself but he can’t bring himself to end this Order because deep down he knows it’s wrong. And because he couldn’t do it... Rey scavenged them and Yoda was able to demonstrate to Luke that those books and the religion itself weren’t the biggest issue he had. It’s that this cycle had repeated and the role he feels for it occurring. The actions of some in the religion don’t speak for the religion entirely and try as all teachers and masters might to get students on the right path... at a certain point they all feel they’ve grown beyond their masters and do things differently. Sometimes that different is bad. Sometimes that different is good (What Luke did in the OT) but this time Luke’s thinking outside the box is not good and he realizes it along with the best path forward for the Jedi: Teach more of the failures of the past than they have instead of living in denial or hiding the past or trying to burn it.

Given the trauma and grief setups that JJ saddled the entire OT3 with, including Luke, and the state of the world today with religious extremism leading to judgement of entire religions, and some of the the other psychological abstractions on guilt, shame, repressed coping, avoidance, the risks of shutting out help during crisis by stubbornly believing that the idea you’ve settled on is the only way forward... atonement and the idea that it’s never too late to change course... it’s about as interesting a one-movie arc as there’s ever been in any Star Wars movie. One that accepts the challenge to maximize the dramatic weight of a broken Luke that J.J. set up by pitting him against his biggest adversary yet: himself and his big heart which lead to big shame and regret that the Dark Side came back to him after he’d hoped he was in control of what helped take down his father for so many years. With serious flirtations of nihilism fighting against faith and family and hope and the latter winning the day in the end... it’s not what Star Wars wanted but perhaps what it needed to truly add new layers to not only Anakin and Luke as father and son but as a true look at darkness of a different kind that more people can relate to and the realization that change is always possible.

 

I can appreciate this perspective. For me, I have always been fascinated by his dark side daze in ROTJ and have always wondered “What if he had killed his father there? How different would his life have gone? Did the Dark Side forever dominate his destiny now that he felt it? How would Luke handle a situation where h felt like Vader or that he’d come close to that again? What if he let people down and felt like the villain? How would the heroic parts of him beat himself up?

My biggest worry of the ST going back to the OT3 was simple, candy coated fan service of them all at their best the whole time winning out over some truly interesting “what ifs” for them at older ages.

I realize that my what ifs will be different than others and I suspect a big part of those who are enjoying aspects of this and those who aren’t has something to do with those differences.

When I was a kid watching Star Wars I imagined how horrible it would be to have never known my dad and then have to fight and maybe kill him and now as an older man I imagine how horrible it would be to have these abilities to see what Ben Solo may become as Kylo Ren after a life devoted to bettering my family line and undoing the events of my father, or being the parent of someone who wants to destroy so much of what I hold dear because both of those situations would be absolutely bizzare.

But these aspects of the ST are subjective and life experience and different tastes in entertainment provide wildly different mileage for each viewer.

 

Obi-Wan blamed himself with good reason; if anything, Luke was less guilty in regards to Ben than Obi-Wan had been in Mustafar in regards to Anakin.

Luke "played a role" in Ben's fall: "the briefest moment of pure instinct" he talks about in TLJ. He's ashamed of it and tries to conceal it from Rey.

Thats not dirtying up Luke. Its making him fallible in precisely the same way he had been in the OT. He almost kills his father in ROTJ when he mentions his sister.

In the flashback, he even controlled himself, just as he had done in ROTJ. But this time, it was too late. That "too late", and the 'killing' of Luke and the destruction of the temple was Ben/Kylo's fault, and not Luke's.

And that's not trying to make Ben/Kylo look good either.

 

I have no interest in revisiting the ROTJ scene because the whole point was that he moved passed it, he learned from it, and he was going to do better than those who came before him. That part of him was closed, his verbal smack down of Sheev right afterwards was the final exclamation point on that. And that's why it worked. It's why I keep saying that some people want to justify ST Luke by pointing to specific moments in the OT. But they either forget or ignore that those were part of a character arc where he over same them, that was the whole point. Having him make the same mistakes again is just boring and regressive to his character.

Really the whole thing is cynical and depressing purely for the sake of being cynical and depressing. Like it's impossible for older people to have actually progressed or be optimistic. And they lacked the creativity to actually progress the narrative forward, so they just rewound the clock back 30 years and went wit the "bitter cynical old failures" cliché, which we've seen a billion times before.

Personally I'm really tired of the argument that it's somehow more "realistic" or 'bold" to make older characters mean, cynical, bitter failures who need the youngins to come in and "inspire them." It's nonsense and it bores me to tears. Plus yet again it turns Luke into nothing more than an even more pathetic version of OT Obi Wan and Yoda.

 

I disagree. While I think Obi Wan made mistakes with Anakin, I think Luke was visibly far more guilty with Kylo. What he did went beyond a mistake. I can`t stand Kylo Ren but I can completely understand his hatred of Luke. Given the givens, that is the one feeling he has that strikes me as justified.

Anakin created a self-fulfilling prophecy that ultimately killed his own wife. Luke created a self-fulfilling prophecy that ended up giving his nephew the necessary push to the darkside. Now Anakin making that mistake is a bit more understandable and sympathetic, for Luke, I really can`t make (m)any excuses.

It`s deeply ironic in a movie where Yoda spouts stuff like "it`s the burden of all masters to see their students grow beyond them", talking to a former student who has gained absolutely no wisdom and who he needs to smack down like an unruly, stupid child and one who apparently didn`t grow beyond him but, as you said, grew into a more pathetic, lesser version of him.

And Rey has grown beyond anyone before they even had a chance to become "master". She is the mistress of download OP already.

That was one of the stupidest, non-sensical lines in the movie for me - and there were many. I cringed throughout the entire Yoda scene, it was so bad.

Also, by bringing Luke so low that for a good portion of viewers the character is just completely ruined now, it undercut the supposed message of "it`s never too late". Obviously, both with a fictional character and in real life, if you screw up badly enough, sorry, yes, it can absolutely be too late. Especially if what the character/person does to "atone" comes across as "meh".

So if the message was supposed to be that you can always come back from your screw-ups, RJ definitely made the wrong movie for me because Luke didn`t "come back" in my eyes. His ending was a textbook case of too little, too late.

I find the movie just as depressing as apparently others would have if the Crait sequence hadn`t been in it for Luke.

 

Also Rian apparently forgot that Yoda's "weird hermit" act was just that, an act. He put it on to test Luke and when the time came, his much more serious and determined personality came out.

 

I always took it as a part of who he’d become in solitude and old age but still a test nevertheless. The test was more him drawing things out more and not telling him he was Yoda but some of the humor felt real to me. I mean, was he really a method actor looking for ingredients and hitting R2 with a stick? Also, little moments of TESB warmth foreshadowing came through even in the prequel with lines like, “Truly wonderful the mind of a child is.” And even when Yoda did become more serious after and let him know it was him he still was a little sarcastic with lines like ,”When 900 years old you reach, look so good... you will not.” Plus, he is mischievously testing him there again by initially presenting that the books are gone while knowing that they aren’t.

It was really only the laugh anyway in TLJ that wasn’t serious from him. The rest was fairly serious.

 

Agreed. JJ Abrams seems to be a competent, but not especially creative, director. I was disappointed when he was selected to direct Episode 7 and disappointed again when he was picked to direct Episode 9. I blame him, in part, for the poor character development in the ST.

 

I’m not really a JJ fan and don’t expect much, but I do expect better than RJ out of him. He’s not a miracle worker. He can’t save the ST. He might be able to make IX watchable for me though. I’m holding out hope anyway. I don’t love his Treks but I don’t hate them either. I wouldn’t be sad if he never touched another Trek film. I liked TFA better than his take on Trek. I feel like he “gets” SW to my tastes better than he does ST.

 

I thought Yoda was... OK. The Force ghost version just looked weird, but the puppet looked all right. And I admit, I did see some of old Luke when he was trying to save the ancient text and got blown away.

I did think Yoda seemed too much of a jovial Buddha though. I didn't appreciate that they had him setting the Jedi text on fire, and the whole lecture of "Nah, the old Jedi stuff was boring, let it burn. Oh and since you failed Ben Solo, let's not have the same happen to Rey."

 

There will no need for formal instruction. Just mind meld with someone and walk off with all the abilities you need. This is what creating a ridiculous video game character (Rey) forced them into : they had to resort to explanations like " downloading " force abilities. The ST really is the Stupid Trilogy.

 

I still don't care at all about IX. Not interested in spoilers, seeing images or set materials... browsing the IX spoiler forum...
Sucks losing love and good will for the franchise.

 

Agreed. It seems as though there is an implication that in order to be "good," you must like the ST. I am sick of this and resent it.

 

I mean, the franchise is more than the ST. It's only two out of ten films.

 

You know that Yoda only did that because he knew that Rey had already scavenged the books from out of the the tree, right? That it was a way to help Luke realize the religion wasn’t the issue Luke thought it was and that it was time to get out of the purgatory he’d made for himself. That’s why he says “That library did not contain anything that the girl, Rey, does not have already.”

You can see the books she took on the Falcon later.



Only writing this again in case you didn’t notice that aspect because some didn’t on first watch (which was some fan’s only watch) and your comment made me think maybe you’d missed that as well potentially.

 

^I got that. But the burning of it all still comes off as pointless overkill to me.

 

No worries. Just wanted to make sure.

 

I'm still confused as to why any of the new characters do what they do and what exactly their goals are. I'm no closer to knowing what Finn is supposed to be than I was at the end of TFA. I have no idea why Rey is fighting in this war or why she supposedly wants to become a Jedi. As a matter of fact, if Luke hadn't outright stated "I will not be the last Jedi" while she was shown on screen, I wouldn't even know she wanted to be one. It looked to me like her role in TLJ was simply to play mediator between Luke and Kylo. Speaking of Kylo, what exactly is his end goal? Just like with Finn, I'm not any closer to figuring that out than I was at the end of TFA. I suppose I'm to believe he's the big bad in this trilogy but all I'm seeing is a bunch of conflicting emotions and scenes that feel like a retread of the ones in TFA. Just like with Finn who found resolve to fight the First Order in TFA only to once again find resolve to fight them in TLJ, Kylo finds resolve to stay on the dark-side in TFA to once again find resolve to stay on the dark-side in TLJ. What? Where's the growth?

 

The issue I see is that so far they’ve given Rey & Finn both the same motivation for sticking with things as Han had. Which is to say that both got swept up in this cause and decided they liked these people they were fighting with and wanted to keep helping simply because they wanted to. Finn’s closer in that his larger motivation initially seems to be the heart of a female but Han never clearly laid out why he decided to stay. He just felt it was right.

The problem is that with the main protagonists we are more accustomed to something more overtly driving them than just something like that. With Luke we first had the revenge of his father and later the desire to connect with his father. With Anakin it was the pressure of being the chosen one and the role of being a Jedi. With Rey she is more actively being recruited by the Dark Side through 2 films but seems to mostly be a Jedi fan girl who took the books and wanted to train with Luke because those old myths she heard growing up were inspiring to her.

Kylo Ren’s motivation seems to be the legacy of his birthright and the corrupted concept that the Skywalkers were destined to rule the galaxy and that it’s his responsibility to finish what his grandfather was working toward before he became corrupted and weakened by the Light. So, in Kylo Ren’s mind it’s a little like Luke’s “I want to be a Jedi like my father before me,” only it’s more of a “I want to rule the galaxy like my grandfather before me should have.”

I have issues with the proposal scene of Kylo Ren to Rey. I wish he would have laid out more of what power could bring and her and him and that in doing so we could have had more specifics of what drives him beyond the goal to pick up his grandfather’s legacy. It was a missed opportunity.

As for the gradual progression of the arcs... I’ve shared my take before in other places so won’t again in detail in a thread like this but the short version is that, to me anyway, there is gradual progression for both Finn & Rey past their issues and toward increased heroism but it’s reduced due to the compressed time span of VII & VIII being one chaotic week.