ST The Director and The Jedi - The TLJ Documentary Discussion Thread

The problem is trying to do something that is different but exactly the same at the same time. It's a total clash of tone and story.

 

Well, Lord Smurf, I disagree about the world building.

Now, Lucas is a masterful world builder. ANH had Tatooine, the Death Star, and Yavin 4. TESB had Hoth, Dagobah, and Cloud City. In TPM we got Naboo, Tatooine, and the incredible images of Coruscant. By ROTS we have a record number of incredible worlds. JJ when he was filming ST, which is before he kicked off the ST, said Lucas with the PT had set a new standard for world building.

Yet, one poster here complained TFA felt too much like Earth. And I believe another poster here said JJ changed what the Art Group had come up with under GL. I loved TFA and loved its worlds, but I can see the point that was made. I think Rogue One did some excellent world building and it looks like Solo may as well. The champ is TCW, of course, but it had 1 movie and over a 100 episodes in an all-digital format.

Now, TLJ’s first world, D’Qar, comes directly from TFA. Ach-To could fit into Tolkien, it has a mystical feeling from fantasy novels and films. Then we have Cantonica, which I really loved. I love the sky, the sea, and the city in the opening shots. It also has a PT-feel to it. Crait is so beautiful with its salt and red soil and red underground.

There may not be a lot of new worlds in TLJ as much of the film takes place on 2 ships, but the quality of imagination is great.

While I hope IX will have more beautiful new worlds, I hope we see 2 old ones: Tatooine and Mustafar. Definitely Tatooine should be in it. This may be the last Saga film and this saga began on Tatooine. It is likely this’ll at least be the last Skywalker Saga film, thus we need Tatooine.

 

Currently enjoying the feature so far. Always mind boggling what goes into making a film, even if it's a film that is so emotionally divided. At least they put the necessary effort into it and made decisions that "they" thought were best. There is plenty to enjoy, I love behind the scenes. I agree there should be more on the original script and what changes took place. I'm currently reading The Last Jedi art book and will dig for this knowledge.

 

So after doing some more reading and rewatching this documentary, it's clear GLs vision was to have a hermit Luke disinterested in his old Jedi beliefs. I think it hits the audience as a shock, but still feels like Luke has been through something and is looking for meditation on the first Jedi temple for answers. I would say most fans would understand this given the betrayal that took place.
However having Luke turn on Kylo instead of just confronting him or having a scene catching him train with Snoke, it leaves a bad taste in our mouths. And after Luke refuses to properly train Rey (as we know she needs training to warrant what Disney has in store with her powers) then Luke refuses to join her and Chewy after his friend Han had been killed, Leia is in a coma and his nephew is on a dark side rampage, then that leaves us fans even more stunned and confused where I believe by the third act or so having R2D2 show the hologram and Rey being so encouraging, we should have had a scene with Luke lifting his X-Wing out of the ocean and follow the Falcon to face the First Order. The feedback to the film would have been immensely different.
That being said, Rian Johnson was handed this situation and as much as I didn't agree with some of these scenes (overly used comic lines, the whole Canto Bight scene) he really did try to put each character in a dark situation which needed growth for them to complete.