star wars 9 spoilers and postmortem shit talk

xxp he has had enough of Reylos and I for one am here for it

directing the ire of the toxic portion of the fandom at them just because you said something dumb on Instagram is nagl

allowing that i was against the emperor's presence in the movie from the opening seconds, i also think he looked and sounded terrible... mcdiarmid gave the guy a really memorable evil-wizard energy in Jedi and a shakespeare-adjacent insidiousness in Sith, but here he feels generically evil... like his lair, his plan, his speech and his performance could all have been in the climax of some generic star wars ripoff movie, RPG, or would-be franchise-starter. there's just no gas in that tank.

and then his plan makes no sense and changes repeatedly (as others have observed), and almost as an afterthought he has this unbelievable deus ex machina of an unprecedentedly huge armada conjured up out of nowhere and staffed by... who again? and all this is the filmmakers' main idea for both the movie's plot spine and its claims to being a "conclusion to the nine-film epic saga"! like, okay, if you don't like TLJ you can steer in a different direction but hitting a complete reset button on the plot and still getting *this* level of jotted-down late-night brainstorm session notes is pathetic imo. these movies cost hundreds of millions of dollars - they can't take an extra week or two at the beginning to hammer out the story some more?

Boyega clowning on semi-toxic doofi in his replies is more sweet than vicious imo

Idk, if I were John Boyega and I’d been subject to vicious racist abuse because Reylos lost their shit over the idea Finn would get together with Rey, I don’t think I’d give too many fucks at this stage. Wasn’t this why Daisy deleted her Instagram?

Just seen this. I'm not the world's hugest SW fan but I do have considerable emotional investment in the series - ANH is legit one of my favourite films, TFA despite the lame plot retread gave me *all* the feels, loved where TLJ took the story, R1 is my #1 comfort movie right now - basically all of them (prequels excepted) have at least some worthwhile emotional or dramatic or visual moments - even the trailers are usually enough to put a little lump in my throat. I even enjoyed Solo. And this? For 99% of this I felt N O T H I N G. And the 1% did not redeem it in any way. Maybe it's me - or maybe it was confused overlong hackneyed artless uninspired fanservice, and I'm a fan who doesn't feel in need of servicing.

iow the review in the 7th post otm.

One more thing... as usual with films these days I missed a few key lines, what did Rey say to Ren after the sea battle? "I wanted to take your hand... in the sand" is what I heard!

"Ben's hand"

"Remember (Walking in Ben's Hand)"

Lol

ledge otm

re: the Boyega thing upthread, a few people pointed out that the @crogmen user who started the firestorm (by posting that "as a black woman im fucking ashamed that someone like you represented us in star wars") was using another Twitter user's picture as her own, linking back to the other person's profile pics as proof. @crogmen deleted their account later. some were accusing her of Dolezaling on Twitter to troll people. the evidence doesn't really prove that she was a white person pretending to be Black, only that she stole someone else's picture and used it for her profile pic. but then again, based on Google browser data, all she posted on Twitter prior to that was whiny shit about how Ben Solo was treated badly in the new film.

I stopped reading when I realized I was being pathetic for caring about twitbeef.

I didn't pay much attention to it but that whole thing felt like the nightmare end-point of online performative wokeness: a whole bunch of sad people arguing over who gets to be the most sexist/racist/homophobic depending on which Star Wars ship they supported.

Agree with 100% with Jenny Nicholsons review of this.. in fact it was quite cathartic to have it all spelt out for 65 mins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GErIPKjwuDg

I make a lot of poor decisions on a daily basis, but I can't say that a 65-minute fixed-shot video of someone talking about Star Wars to camera is going to be one of them - does no-one write rambling Medium articles anymore?

I have a very dull task to do at work today, so I've gone in. I agree with her. But yeah, could be shorter...

JJ Abrams is not a good director or characters or plot. All he can do is visuals and vague superficial 'feel'.

He's good at TV pilots. He shoulda stuck to those.

He seems like someone who's constitutionally incapable of ever pushing past 'good'.

He should start things and let other, competent people, finish them.

Abrams is competent. What he's lacking is inspiration, daring, a whiff of madness, an intern who knows how to disable the lens flare tool in After Effects, etc.

didnt suzy post some shit once about jj abrams running some kind of brideshead revisited fantasy camp out of his sarah lawrence dorm room

starts 65 minute youtube video
gets 20 seconds in
"ultimately, i just kinda want to talk about all the dumb stuff that they got wrong"
turns off youtube video

65 minute youtube video about new star wars movie = ted k was right

Any YT critique that doesn't at least match the runtime of the film being critiqued is strictly bush league.

those red letter media ones about the prequels that did just that were a really good watch! except the serial killer joke & the fact they turned out to be skeevy libertarian white dudes.

been trying to remember some things about this film i watched barely 24 hours ago - structure, story arcs, dramatic moments, visuals. surprisingly little comes to mind.

i fucking hate those videos and rlm

maybe add an 'at the time' into my post, i wouldn't go near them now for sure.

i have a q: luke used the force to pretend to be on another planet and the effort killed him. rey and kylo use the force to actually BE on different planets - and it’s nbd? i’m not complaining just curious. i expect there isn’t really an explanation.

the force got a horniness assist

Luke, against doctor's orders, had been neglecting his midichlorian injections for a while.

hitherto untapped potential of a dark/light force dyad obv, does this have to be spelled out, jeez. plus luke=old.

maybe add an 'at the time' into my post, i wouldn't go near them now for sure.

― Paperbag raita (ledge), Friday, January 3, 2020 11:02 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh ofc, just expressing my rage. feel like it was a v short path from those prequels videos to shit like cinema sins

yeah they were ahead of their time in the worst way possible

(tbc I am also in ledge's boat)

Because every day is a good day to clown yourself, I listened to the YouTube as I cycled home. Bits of it definitely made me more defensive of the film, but I did like the rewrite where Rey's fragmentary but painful memories of her parents leaving are because she tried to stop them with her latent force powers and killed them herself.

I liked it well enough. Some minor flaws and plot holes that have all been pretty well covered here, but it was fun! I really don't get the massive hate though, it was still miles better than the prequels.

Knowing that SW fandom in general right now is a toxic mess that I never expected to be distancing myself from, but some of the criticisms are so weird. I'm still not quite sure I understand what Abrams "undid" about TLJ (which I also really liked, fwiw), he just shifted it back in his preferred direction. It's not like he brought back Luke and Snoke or erased that movie.

I also find in interesting to compare the complaints about this flick's narrative leaps against the prequels. One of the completely valid knocks against them was how they ruined the mystery and how not everything needed to be explained or tied together. But now I keep seeing folks on Twitter complain that ROS didn't explain things enough and didn't hand-hold the audience through plot points. It's supposed to be a kinda dumb space opera, it's fine. I don't need the hows and whys about how Palpy staffed each of the Star Destroyers, I just think it looked badass for him to unleash this giant armada.

it was kinda fucked up that oscar isaac sank every one of those star destroyers--there's like 50,000 sentient creatures staffing each one of those. gotta be a massive war crime

probably fascists tho, war is messy

Apropos of almost nothing but this seems like the best current thread to note that I saw a picture of a young Jack Kirby yesterday and immediately thought of a certain intergalactic general who absolutely needs to be cast in the event of a biopic.

Adam Sandler as Stan Lee

Martin Starr as Steve Ditko

> not quite sure I understand what Abrams "undid"

My understanding, is that despite the damage RJ did to past installments with Luke's character and the Holdo maneuver, at least he tried to divert it from being a saga about a dysfunctional family. JJA, by making Rey a Palpatine, and only force users particularly meaningful in the fate of the galaxy, engaged in a dispiriting genetic essentialism. One's born a hero, villain, or irrelevant. All you popcorn eaters are roadkill to the ubermenchen.

Mind, I haven't seen one of these in full since 1983. Rogue One seems intriguing.

Rogue One is great. The best of the recent films.

Also The Mandalorian!

It’s v telling that it’s The Mandalorian that’s had me spend hours fiddling with Lego and not any of the films.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B637oH1nRnC/?igshid=1f1lljli6xyre

xpost - thanks, I was genuinely curious and that's the most succinct description I've seen yet of that line of thinking.

I agree entirely with Sanpoku’s unpacking btw - TLJ was egalitarian, socialist even, with the force. Anyone could be a Jedi and save the galaxy. It also set up lots of potentially interesting avenues for further exploration. And JJ ignored them all and made it about hereditary power again. Plus dumb ass infinite fleet of star destroyers. The best Star Wars films don’t have a massed threat, like a Death Star or a massed fleet - they have the heroes being pursued. ESB and TLJ.