Star Wars 8 shit talk

to be clear i have never called for these films to be humorless and self-serious; i just want the jokes to be better, to not appear compulsively thus flattening out the difference between heavy and fun scenes, and to seem like they come naturally out of the characters and their situation (including their universe).

otm

no one is saying Star Wars shouldn't have jokes

but i do think it was a fair assessment to say that han's comedy in the originals is in the lackadaisical murray/SNL pocket, and maybe we are stuck with the comedy we deserve in 2017. it's just a bummer to me cause i thought the holding-for-hux thing felt like something iron man would come up with, not something a space pilot would come up with. insofar as it had never occurred to me that prank calls and getting stuck on hold were things that happened in a spacefaring galaxy of laser swords and shaggy muppets. not a matter of star wars being sacred, but of jokes needing to feel like things that would actually come out of these characters' mouths. it'd be like if ben-hur suddenly launched into a variant on "who's on first?" - the gag is partly that this is a kind of gag that's out of place in this world, and i find that to be a pretty cheap way to get a laugh.

also, not saying these should or could be "timeless" but i feel like this current style dates the movie instantly and in a bad way. again some of the jokes here are good but some feel like they're scratching the same nervous itch of the studio notes. "i worry this scene might bum the audience out because it's about dreadful revelations and a character struggling with their destiny. can you add some comedy here? just have the actors improv some stuff and edit to the best bits, works every time!"

fred, yes: honestly the greatest thing abt a *lot* of pop TV and film is watching it with a 10-yr-old, their enthusiasms and cynicism have a very different rhythm, they see different stuff, they can (and will) argue, they are only still in the process of building intellectual or other defences against their less wanted emotions, they are much more honest abt their boredom than grown-ups, and you see everything you yourself discovered over decades of a life flattened out into a lump that can't be untangled (which can be frustrating, and -- sometimes -- startling and good for you)

t;,dr: children, they are (mostly) good not bad

xpost Fully agree with this. There should be humor in these films but not of the "genie in Aladdin doing Arsenio Hall" variety. It just dates them instantly.

Sorry - awful example but best I could come up with as I get off the subway

the complaint about the humor is not that it's there -- levity is fine, particularly in a 2.5 hour movie -- but that it feels forced. the bit with poe and hux is just so transparent an *attempt at humor*, it seems clear the writers wrote that scene with "let's have him say something funny" in mind rather than just letting it come naturally.

I laughed at the iron joke but it was far and away the most out of place or jarring joke in the film.

the ironing was delicious

If pressed I'd have to agree.

I've got no problem with the movie dating. It's light entertainment, not the portentous chronology of a metaphorically dense and richly symbolic alternate universe. The latter approach made the prequels into the ponderous expository videogame cutscenes they were. This movie breathes, and grabs you by the arm and says hey let's go do some Star Wars shit! And plays loose enough with the canon that I genuinely didn't know what was going to happen when Kylo invited Rey to join him. That's enough to make it the best in at least 30 years for me. Not analytically "the best for the following reasons" but just the most actual fun I have had watching since the original three.

I kinda wish R2 had been with Luke at the end. Might have broken me, but it would have been more compelling. I feel like these last few movies have forgotten that the two droids were the secret protagonists of the OT.

these were never the droids i was looking for

luke’s lack of droids disturbed kim

This wasn't great

Took an awful long time to do nothing

Didn't feel much like SW

TFA and RO were far better, former because although unoriginal gave us good new characters (mainly wasted in this) and latter because it did something different.

Didn't feel much like SW

^^^good not bad

No that's bad I specifically set out a context mark

Rebels has done a much better job with its droid characters than the new movies, that’s for sure

This was a mess, if often a nicely visualised one. Dialogue was woeful, even for a SW film. Laura Dern wasted and pointless. Snoke dead without being explained as to why he was so important and powerful and able to completely restablish and improve the Empire in all but name. Phasma another Darth Maul, supposedly badass but pissed away. Luke not really being there and in danger an annoying fakeout, not improved by having him then immediately die anyway.

Rian Johnson is ludicrously overrated.

Every single bit of alleged comic relief was greeted in my screening with the dead silence it deserved, except the bit with the iron. Also, felt like a film with several subplots but no real proper plot.

it has two main plot threads which conclude, but in a very ESB manner

the first, that Luke Skywalker must return to do something with the jedi and be the figurehead the resistance needs, and he fulfills the latter

the second, that the resistance must escape the first order following their victory at the end of the last movie, which they do at great loss

the cloudiest is Rey’s search for meaning, and it’s interplay with Kylo Ren’s turning point which remains open

why is it so important to have Snoke's entire backstory? the OG trilogy gave about ten minutes of screen time to the Emperor, two of which were a woman's face with chimpanzee eyes and Clive Revill's voice; all despite his being name-dropped a zillion times in the first two

I personally was glad Luke wasn't there, if his sacrifice had been a repeat of the Obi-Wan "strike me down and I'll be more powerful" scene, I would have been annoyed (and had anxiety about it happening when I first saw it). much happier w/ him dying due to body just crapping out after an intense mega-Force session.

i'm not interested in snoke's life history but it's kind of funny that they don't even try to sketch out one. you know like some line where he's like "while you squandered the access to jedi lore that skywalker foolishly gave you, i had to build myself up from nothing through the sheer power of the dark side!!!!" or something.

yeah that's still more than the emperor got, but in that case, we hadn't seen any backstory before that so a couple of lines of dialogue vaguely establishing that there used to be a republic and it's gone now and darth vader helped some guy called the emperor hunt down and destroy the jedi knights is basically all you need. and he shows up and his deal is he's an evil wizard who likes being evil and your imagination can sorta fill in the gaps - must be some evil force guy that took over the galaxy and turned vader to evil or something, cool. also it was a brilliantly hammy performance by mcdiarmid, relishing every spitty syllable of hatred, so that gave you enough for your imagination to find it interesting to even fool around with this.

anyway here we're coming in with a clear sense that the bad guys were all beaten at the end of 'jedi.' but i guess they weren't. and there was another evil wizard hiding in a barn somewhere. the fans wanting it to be bib fortuna or whoever were insane and clearly derive satisfaction from the wrong kinds of things in movies, but it IS a little weird to just drop in this new mega bad guy with no clear sense at all of who he is and what he wants. also he had a stupid name. the terrible name probably contributed to the dumb fan theories since it makes it seem more like an alias for someone else. if he'd been onscreen and not CGI in TFA nobody would have really gotten into speculating over his backstory i think - people would have gone "i guess we have to accept this arbitrary new emperor type guy the same way we have to accept that this new empire-from-scratch already has a death planet - it's a reboot ugh so it goes."

I think Snoke getting short shrift kinda proved he wasn't fit to lick the Emperor's shoes. yeah, he had impressive power, but lacked the discipline that allowed the Emperor to last as long as he did (I mean hell the dude had the patience to let a decade-long plan unfold without leaking his true intentions to anybody but the one guy he wanted to leak it to). Snoke was impatient and wanted results quicker and figured he could get there easily by bullying his apprentice and assuming it would just roll off his back, hence why he got bested by him so easily (well, that and force premonitions seem to always be misinterpreted by the person interpreting them).

Timothy Zahn made quite a living writing about Empire-sympathizers picking up the mantle afterwards. I guess there always has to be war cos nobody is interested in "Star Peacetime"

that a supreme evil force dude is super comfortable lounging around in that bathrobe is all the backstory you need.
come to think of it all the force users are wearing some kind of bathrobe...

Snoke was probably some old racist grandpa that used some kind of Force-steroids to get really buff with the Dark Side real quick

Snoke was an old racist grandpa who got force crazy off dong pills

he also nearly ruined the first order by plowing most of their savings into gold reserves

SNOKE = RON PAUL

Doc, i love u man but if they put half as much backstory in this as you want it’d be called The Phantom Menace

DO NOT WISH FOR THESE THINGS
YOU DO NOT WANT TO SIT THROUGH THEM
YOU ONLY THINK YOU DO

imo long-plotting emperor having a longer lifespan despite seeming less powerful in the force compared to blaze of glory Snoke is a good life lesson for despots

Snoke also seemed to do less cackling and more chuckling, also had a sweet gold robe. dude fucking loved this shut, Emperor was too austere and just wanted power

(insert horrible picture of Gaddafi wearing a gold outfit at a concert he paid a few million for)

Nice analysis of why it was better not to have a Snake back story:

https://qntm.org/mystery

best things that no one has mentioned yet:
- benicio del toro’s Tyler Durden impression
- force anus
- rebellion run by a bunch of old lesbians

When Rey is sitting holding the two halves of the lightsaber, I like that you can see the crystal inside.

On the 2nd viewing, the two times when i has strong emotional reactions was once during the Canto Bight sequence. The 2nd was later during the slo-mo shots where Rey grabs the lit saber, stands up to look shocked at Kylo, we cut to his reaction and lighting his saber offscreen(but you see the glow and hear the ignition), then we cut to them turning to fight back-to-back and the shutter speeds revs back to normal.

I had such this overriding impulse to yell “oh shit here we go here we go HERE WE GO.”

Would Adam Driver have gotten more credit or accolades for his work in the films had not his previous major credit been that particular TV show?

Also, some of the reviews had people complaining about “I don’t know where they go after this ending,” which isn’t a problem in the least for me, except that I don’t exactly hold a lot of faith for the guy getting the reins of the show again.

Both Gareth Edwards and Rian Johnson did massive amounts of work to expand the cinematic palette of a SW film and I hold little-to-no faith that JJA can successfully follow up on that, but we got two years to wait, so we’ll see.

And I think we’ve talked about this either last year or the one before, but I am quite fine with Star Wars being a Christmas thing. If you’re of a certain age, it always was a Christmas thing(despite the OT being released in May), so this feels proper.

Snoke dead without being explained as to why he was so important and powerful

again, this is good

Both Gareth Edwards and Rian Johnson did massive amounts of work to expand the cinematic palette of a SW film

possibly too much in edwards' case, given how much rogue one got fucked with by disney prior to release

which makes me wonder again exactly how off-brand miller and lord's han solo movie was gonna be

(my main argument with my niece afterwards was that chewie was obviously keeping them to eat later, she said no but she is wrong)

Thank you, Mark S. I have texted my 11yo with this theory, I look forward to the barrage of appalled emojis in response.

(My 12yo really struggles with all the death and destruction in these films - she was curling up behind my arm early on as all the bombers broke up).

Snoke was a pointless waste of time in TFA and didn't really do anything in TLJ either. That they might have fucked up his backstory as well - which they definitely would - does not make it better.

snoke was dead on arrival in TFA, i'm glad he went away

this movie and blade runner 2048 both feature far too much inconsequential talking by baddies in bathrobes

http://www.hermitary.com/literature/moomin/muskrat-05.jpg

Finally saw this! It feels a bit messy, but I liked it more than TFA.

Daisy Ridley is so great throughout and I loved that Rey’s parents are nobodies. Also really liked the little nod to this at the very end (which I’m glad I’d been told to look out for, cos it’s quick).

Skellig Michael looks stunning throughout. I’ll probably never get to see it now with all the SW visitors.

I still shamefully fancy Kylo Ren, even though he continues to be a complete mess.

Poe was AWFUL like he got so many people killed and just demotion? I really liked Rose’s sister in her scene and it made me dislike Poe even more.

Kylo Ren giving an order on Craik and then Hux basically screaming the same order, and Kylo’s sideways look, really amused me. As did Benicio peering at BB-8 and going “what’s your story, roundie?”

I really liked Kelly Marie Tran! I liked the casino part more than a lot of people even though it’s incredibly pointless. I hope they give Finn more to do in IX though.

rebellion run by a bunch of old lesbians

ARE Rey's parents nobodies? We seem to be taking that at face value. Of course it's all moot anyway if each film's individual story can be changed from the preceeeding film according to whoever is directing. JJ could decide, in fact has probably decided over the Xmas weekend, that she's somehow related to Ben Kenobi or some shit.

ugh

Poe was AWFUL like he got so many people killed and just demotion?

The Poe/Holdo stuff is what bugs me the most tbh

We seem to be taking that at face value.

Rey’s face when Kylo Ren is telling her she knows it sold it for me, tbh. That and her being her own parents means it doesn’t mean much if there’s some stupid retcon. The whole point is that she is who she made herself to be, she’s not bound by a legacy or a bloodline.