ST What do you think of TLJ 6 years later?

And I think this might've been partially in response to TLJ, even before the film was released. TLJ gives Kylo Ren an "out", but he ultimately doubles down on being a villain. Rey literally and metaphorically closes a door on him following this.

I think the idea of "some people refuse to be redeemed" really didn't sit well with LFL. It's not really a happy, feel-good theme.

Sure. There were a lot of things. I was pretty involved in the Star Wars fandom back then, so I remember a lot of the loudest criticisms of TLJ basically by heart, and what TROS did to "address" them:

• Some fans were very upset that Rey was a nobody who didn't have a special bloodline. Come TROS, Rey is suddenly a Palpatine. This is one of the movie's clearest retcons. I don't think it's a coincidence that this had been a popular fan theory. Lucasfilm and JJ Abrams were clearly aware of the discussions that had been happening in the fandom.
• Some fans hated Rose as a character. Rose gets shunted aside and has a bit role in TROS, with Finn even being given a new companion character in Jannah. This can be partly ascribed to Abrams wanting to focus on the characters he had a hand in writing, as well as the already large nature of the cast. But considering the huge volume of bile (which really is the right word to use, unfortunately) directed at both Rose as a character and Kelly Marie Tran, it's hard to shake the perception that this might've been a response to that hate. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
  
• In TLJ, Luke's reluctance to train Rey is because he has become disillusioned with himself and through this, the Jedi religion as a whole. Luke's characterization in general was one of the most hated aspects of TLJ among its opponents (though Luke's disillusionment actually originated in TFA; TLJ just explored the concept in more depth). This is given a partial retcon in TROS. Luke states that one of the reasons he was reluctant to train Rey is because of her bloodline. It is a partial retcon, because it doesn't change Luke's motivations for going into exile, but it feels like a clear attempt, IMO, to "soften the blow" of one of TLJ's most divisive story beats.
• Finn and Poe's characterization does seem like a partial response to TLJ, to me at least. Just an unsuccessful one. A lot of Finn and Poe fans specifically got mad because they screwed up pretty terribly in the movie (though basically every character did, tying into the film's theme of failure). Finn and Poe fans were also angry that their plots being ultimately mostly irrelevant to the overall plot progression of the film (though they were thematically very important). In TROS, Finn and Poe are more competent (which, to be fair, is a natural progression of TLJ), and the main trio go on the big adventure together, keeping their plots tied together. Again, though, I think this was unsuccessful, because Finn in particular winds up with not a lot to do. Poe at least gets some agency and an arc, but TROS's writing isn't strong enough to give Finn his own role while he's tied at the hip to two other characters.
• There's some smaller dialogue that is clearly in response to criticism of TLJ. For example, a lot of fans became hyper-focused (haha) on the scene of Holdo ramming the Supremacy at hyperspeed, with some even saying it ruined the franchise (not exaggerating, those exact words were used). So there's a line in TROS handwaving it for people who were obviously incapable of doing that in their own heads. This isn't the only example, but it's the one that most clearly sticks out to me.

Obviously, not every problem with TROS is the result of it retconning TLJ, but there are enough cases where it does so for there to be a clear pattern to me. It's also worth noting that different fans had mutually conflicting criticisms of TLJ, so it's inevitable some TLJ opponents would feel like TROS didn't try to address any problems with TLJ.

 

And it's not one even RJ's perspective aligns with, because, if I remember correctly, he said that Kylo could still be.

 

Well, frankly, the minute he killed Han, Kylo shouldn't have been redeemed but his biggest fan Kennedy and the noisy Reylos were on about redeeming Kylo. So we got it, for good or ill. Frankly, I'm glad he's dead, not a Force ghost and I think it's freakin' hilarious every time I see certain Reylos complain on social media with their "save Ben Solo" hashtags. Now that it's their ox that's gored and dead, it's wrong. Yeah, tough.

I well remember a week of "Reylo is hot" articles, along with the weeks of "Luke is perfectly in character, you olds just don't want to admit that he was always a failure" and "TLJ is the most progressive SW film ever and if you don't like it, you are bad and wrong" and "George always meant for the ST to happen this way" - after two years of "we threw out his treatments." Did I miss anything....oh, wait, I did! "TLJ would never live up to your headcanon," "your Snoke theory is wrong," and the ever popular "you shouldn't have spent two years going on about Rey's parentage!" Y'know, after LFL spent two years hyping it up.

I am so tired of "TROS was awful because you rotten fans complained so JJ had to make it that way!" when, if you've ever seen another JJ movie, you know that is a load of dingoes' kidneys. He didn't have to cast his pal Keri Russell in the movie to stop Finn/Poe. Or drag Finn through nonsense again. Or add space horses or Palpatine or put Lando in his costume from Solo and have his life ruined too. Or that endless space knife to ROTJ sequence. He made his usual JJ movie. Saying that it's the fault of fans who complained about TLJ so that we got TROS is yet another attempt to blame the fans because a set of critics thought TLJ was the best thing since sliced bread and many fans did not. I have not seen any studio go to the lengths that LFL did to browbeat fans into thinking their way.

 

Preach, sister!

 

If you have bitter memories about the discussion surrounding TLJ, I’m sure you know the feeling is absolutely mutual.

A torrent of hate was directed at the actors and filmmakers for the crime of making a film people didn’t like. Racism and misogyny that poured out of sectors of the fandom towards certain characters and their actors. I was frustrated by how other critical sectors of the fandom carried water for the racists and misogynists by claiming it “wasn’t really a big part of the backlash”, or that the whole thing was a smear to discredit legitimate criticism. There were tons of criticisms that were either bad faith (outright disregarding what the movie actually showed) or disproportionate (blowing small problems up into franchise-ruining disasters), and these critiques were often louder and more widespread than the legitimate, constructive ones.

So you’re not alone. People who liked TLJ also have very negative memories of the discussion surrounding the film. I’m not going to argue here about who is more aggrieved (partly because I find it silly that people on both sides took discussion of the movie so personally). But I am going to oppose a one sided narrative that the critics of TLJ were unilaterally mistreated.

I’m not saying that all of TROS’s objective problems, much less all the problems one might subjectively have with the movie, are the result of retconning TLJ, or trying to appease people who hated it. I’m saying a lot of my problems with TROS stem from that.

I’m also not “blaming fans”. Don’t take my criticisms as a personal attack. I’m blaming LFL and JJ Abrams for their creative decisions, which I think were bad. I’m also acknowledging that those decisions weren’t made in a vacuum, it’s very obvious they were keyed in to the discussions going on in the fandom and were influenced by them.

 

@anakinfansince1983 I am not going to debate the apologia you're offering for each of the toxic negative reactions I mentioned, because that wasn't the point of my post and I'm not interested in digging up all the examples of bile to show that yes, it really was that bad.

All I will say is that a person's views are shaped by their experiences, and I don't think you had the same experience I did witnessing how toxic TLJ-critical fans could be (and in fact, many of them still are). Maybe the discussion circles you were in really were more civil. But I remember a lot of really nasty stuff being said on these forums, too. In my experience, the toxicity of the discussion around the film was not proportionate. There was some on both sides, but it was much, much worse on the side of people criticizing the film. Again, maybe you had a different experience, or maybe we're remembering it differently.

Either way, I don't think it's going to be a productive thing to discuss. Arguing over who's more aggrieved by the discussion around a sci-fi movie is silly.

This is overly reductionist. Analogy: Let's say I'm having a friend look over my essay for my comparative politics class. They give ten criticisms. In the final draft I address eight of them. It would be very silly to claim I didn't respond to their criticisms, just because I didn't take every single one of them to heart. Very few things are done in totality like that. No writer or artist is going to agree with every bit of criticism they receive.

This is even more true because, as I stated, critics of TLJ were not united in there criticism, and some of them even contradicted each other. I know you really hate Reylo (I'm not a fan of the ship either). You've made that clear in many different posts over the years. It seems like TLJ lending some credence to this ship was a big issue with the film for you. But that wasn't a huge issue for every person who disliked TLJ.

 

I do think a lot of online critics of TLJ in places other than this forum (eg, YouTube and Reddit, where there are plenty of examples of people spewing forth quite vile screeds against the film) went way too far into personal attacks on Rian Johnson and new cast members like Kelly Marie Tran. And this was quite frankly sometimes motivated by racism and misogyny.

I also think TLJ is a horrible, awful, stupid, overly self-satisfied, incoherent mess of a film that doesn't understand the personality of Luke Skywalker, makes all the new characters into complete morons, is afraid of letting Oscar Isaac and John Boyega's characters be likeable, and has a bizarre insistence on making Rey fall for the leader of a group of space fascists, whom it insists is Just Misunderstood Really despite all that murdering he does.

A lot of the criticism was mean-spirited, full of ad hominem attacks, and done in bad faith - but by no means all. And it's not like the film doesn't deserve to be criticized as a film. I think there's plenty to criticize there, while still maintaining standards of personal decency.

It seems to me that Lucasfilm opted for the worst of both worlds: they were contemptuous of everybody who didn't like TLJ, lumping them all together with the worst of the lot - and yet they also were fine with TROS trying to appease those "ugly fans" by doing things like sidelining Kelly Marie Tran.

 

Both having bitter memories doesn't make the critical consensus attitude pro TLJ or against others more justified, against those who may have had real criticisms of it.

 

When did “lucasfilm” lump all the critics of TLJ in with the worst. Lucasfilm never told anyone they were wrong for not liking TLJ

it was the worst of the critics who claimed this due to persecution complex

 

Johnson made a movie that burned the OT ideals to the ground. And then mocked the people who did not like his awful, depressing take on SW.

 

TLJ is exactly the sort of cynical, amoral, elevating-hopelessness-as-a-virtue film that was so ubiquitous in the 1970s and that the original SW was rebelling against. But at the very end it has an absurdly tacked-on happy ending that feels just as perfunctory and out of place as the scenes where the police finally catch the lawbreakers in the last five minutes of a Hays Code-era gangster film. You can tell who Rian Johnson is rooting for... and it's not the people fighting the baddies.

 

When you make the 'good' side have authoritarian 'leaders', who punish anyone who doesn't conform, who knowingly purchase weapons from the same people as the 'bad' side, and ignore all the evil going on in the galaxy. you have no idea who to even root for anymore.

But that was the point. Everyone is bad except Kylo. His badness is society's fault. Poor, poor Kylo.

 

The interpretation that the film wanted you to “give more weight” to Kylo then anyone else was not what most critics of TLJ were talking about.

I don’t think anything in the film objectively gives the viewer that impression. I never saw any of the “problematic” treatment do the characters that way and neither do most of the audience. I think it’s not cool to say Rian hated Finn without evidence just cause you think his story was lame. Or to say that Rose, who’s intended to be the heart of the movie is just making things worse. The notion that DJ was somehow racist cause he didn’t have name is kinda absurd

In the mainstream discussion, The film was only hated because of what it did to Luke.

 

The resistance did not “punish anyone who didn’t conform”. They punished desertion like any military body.

I have some criticisms, I’m not sure what Rian’s point was with the weapon buying, because if he thinks that’s supposed to lessen our view of the resistance it doesn’t really make sense. Of course they have to buy weapons from somewhere

however I don’t understand where you get the idea that they’re ignoring the evil in the galaxy. The move tells us their the only ones not ignoring it

 

Nonconformity is not allowed in the Resistance. Unless you’re a leader. Then you can wear balletic outfits and luxurious jewelry, flirt with subordinates, etc. Those at the bottom, ie everyone else, are punished, physically, slapped or tasered, or otherwise, when they don’t toe that strict hierarchical line.

This is in the movie. On screen. I wish it wasn’t. But that’s what we got.

 

That’s your wild unfounded interpretation. Nothing in the movie indicates that the lower ranks of the resistance are punished wrongfully for wearing jewellery or flirting or anything.. In fact, Rose has a piece of jewelry and flirts with Finn.

you’re offended by minor things like characters slapping each other and think it means the movie is “condoning abuse”

bad faith reads like yours are typical of the criticism on this forum. You intentionally try to find the worst light to portray Johnson’s creative decisions even when it makes no sense

 

Someone who is a General, a Princess and in overall and awesome leader shouldn't be slapping a subordinate. It's ridiculous and unprofessional and a throw back to bad gender stereotypes. TLJ is filled with nonsense like this yet gets a pass for some reason..

 

The real problem with the Resistance's authoritarianism really stems from the terrible framing of the space chase scenario. Holdo provides such opaque leadership that Poe feels the need to go behind her back and later incite a mutiny do how he perceives her ability, but is then punished for stepping out of line. Finn wants to leave on an escape pod because he wants to go his own way, and because of how incompetent the Resistance is portrayed the scene feels much less like 'coward fleeing from the noble fight' and more 'getting out of this useless deathtrap'. Then he and Rose casually leave the whole chase in a ship and the entire scenario falls apart, revealed for the flimsy shell of drama that it is. Then it gets even worse when Holdo lets her entire fleet go up in smoke. Why not let Finn leave in an escape pod she was going to blow up in her Holdo maneuverer later on? If Rey can go off and do whatever she effing wants with Luke and Kylo, why does Finn get so harshly tased?

Why are Poe and Finn's self-sacrificial missions bad but Holdo and Luke's good? How can a space chase function if participants can escape and then come back? What's the value of Resistance equipment and lives if Holdo can throw them away and not inspire a single bit of morale? If two TIE Fighters can cripple a fleet why bother with the chase at all?

The whole thing is a utter sham of morals and logistics.

 

Nothing? We literally see it on screen. Rose is the one ordered to do the punishing. Before she tasered Finn, unconscious, who's not even a member of the Resistance, who knows what she did to the others before him that morning.

But how convenient that as soon as she decides it's okay to leave, she can leave. She's an authoritarian as well. She supports that kind of system and she benefits from it. Apparently. Rose wears a family medalion that she shared with her sister. That's not luxurious. Or flaunting. But Rose is still wearing piss colored fatigue's while her cherished leaders flaunt their wealth in front of them, all on a desperate life or death escape.

And yes. Leaders using physical punishment in order to get their subordinates to follow them means they're crappy leaders. Leia isn't inspirational. She's a bully. Poe follows because he'll get slapped around, or tasered. RJ shows us that the Resistance is no better than the FO, who's own leaders also use the same form of punishment on their lower crew members.

And thanks once again for making this personal. Always a key quality of those defending the film it seems. They can't just make this about the movie. Nope. Bash the people who are critical of the movie in personal ways.