star wars 9 spoilers and postmortem shit talk

this scrambled egg of a movie

― ole uncle tiktok (darraghmac), Tuesday, March 24, 2020 5:29 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

lmao goddamn

I got 94 minutes and 42 seconds into this shitshow and I don't think I'll bother with the rest till tomorrow jfc you guys

it’s more of a blend of strengths. you can have a scriptwriter who is kind of shit but

it's not a matter of whether Kasdan is great (I haven't seen anything he's done in 29 years, and that one was boring) so much as if you're bemused as to why the characters are different between movie A and movie C when the director / one credited co-writer are the same, looking at what other elements are different might give a hint.

one credited co-writer

(both movies have additional credits for people whose scripts weren't used. skimming a couple of interviews, looks like Abrams' contribution to The Force Awakens writing was mainly recording long conversations with Kasdan about the plot on his iPhone, whereas he might have done more sitting-and-writing with Tessio on this thread's movie.)

ok I will probably finish this today at some point but I can't imagine any of my remaining complaints will be at all interesting so here's what I typed into a google doc as I watched

____

TRASH DIALOGUE this is by far my biggest complaint overall, bastard offspring of Sorkin (relentless walking-and-talking) and Whedon (z-grade “clever” chirping/snark). fucking shameful work all around

I know everyone said this already but it’s amazing how much stuff we’re just supposed to accept that was not foreshadowed at all. the Emperor is behind it all and announced it on Fortnite! Luke had a secret quest to find Exegol that he….never mentioned! special counter-Sith C3PO programming! trash

Acky Acky more like hacky hacky

so many cuet aliens crammed into so many frames you’d think Lucas sat in on post-production

Richard E Grant’s fabulousness is welcome but wasted. even his stride rules

major Joe Biden vibes from this Billy Dee Williams performance. “maybe take 22 is usable? fuck it”

THEY FLY NOW! they released this clip early to let us know what movie to expect, in retrospect, a great thankless service

even the generally reliable Daisy Ridley falls back on squintyface non-acting from time to time here

oh yeah chewie’s definitely dead, big moment. oh yeah ren just watches her leave from a few feet away cool fine

another fundamental problem is just that there’s never the slightest sign that Rey has any sort of interest in / is at all tempted by the DARK SIDE, just Ren. at the end of the day she’s just a goody-goody who shoots lightning sometimes

would way prefer this was a whole movie of Oscar Isaac, Handsome Adventurer tbh. face and hair, wonderful.

man, Keri Russell would have made a fuckin great Sith lord or something. oh well

“if this movie fails it was all for nothing!” oh well

it’s good that we had a character say “sad” aloud during the only genuinely sad scene so far so we know that it’s sad

“the Endor system...where the last war Ended??” the hint was in the name all along, lads

“does she do that to US?” ok that was almost funny

even for latter-day Star Wars the action beats are all so...dead, perfunctory, tension-free

“I never lied to you. your parents were no one.” don’t think that would hold up in court FRIENDO

low-key the biggest plot hole in this movie is that the dark side of the force can raise star destroyers from garbage but can’t sniff out a fuckin spy

one inarguable thing: holy crow they did Kelly Marie Tran dirty

lol at Driver’s wet fish face in this duel

I can appreciate that Carrie Fisher’s death put them in a bind but……….man there has to have been a more artful way to handle it

lmaoooooooooo @ “every ship in the fleet has planet-killing weapons” jfc this is some pure machine learning shit

I know this is shorter than the last one but it feels twice as long

“it was fear that kept me here.” BITCJ THEY JUST SAID YOU WERE LOOKING FOR EXEGOL HOW AFRAID WERE U

-----

end transmission

otm

Aw man, I was going to rag on Simon for assuring us that Benicio Del Toro's character would be back for either a redemption or a death, but I can't even imagine watching this cup of cold sick now, this is solid work.

Lido Hey
Written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and J.J. Abrams; Produced and Performed by Shag F. Kava

simon but you are lazy and to kind

this movie needs a serious and organised dispassionate technical writeup of 300 pages on why it was a sickening waste of time, money, effort, talent and most of all enthusiasm for everyone involved including anyone who went to see it with even a spark of joy in their hearts

low-key the biggest plot hole in this movie is that the dark side of the force can raise star destroyers from garbage but can’t sniff out a fuckin spy

the inability to maintain even a pretence at consistency in the powers and abilities of either force users or empire throughout turns every facet - suspence, adventure, thrills, danger, emotion- into the deadened equivalent of an avengers battle scene.

no shots hurt, no impact matters, no danger can be treated as real in the moment because itll be overturned in a minute

VAR wars

another fundamental problem is just that there’s never the slightest sign that Rey has any sort of interest in / is at all tempted by the DARK SIDE, just Ren. at the end of the day she’s just a goody-goody who shoots lightning sometimes

x 10000000

its a weakness in the originals

its actually best done with anakin (ill still rep for attack of the clones ahead of many better loved efforts in this series)

its absolute toddler special stuff here

it couldn't be less compelling short of here just saying "no" at the start, while looking at her fingernails in a bored fashion.

yet theres an hour of it.

fuckin trash

lol this made a billion dollars

But less than the others! It's a disaster! Reboot!

r3búT

R3-b00t

R2ReeBoot.

Artie Bucci

Atta Boyee.

Marvel-ass triangle cube trash

― brechtian social distancing (Simon H.),

best line in "I Am the Walrus."

Oscar Isaac, Handsome Adventurer tbh. face and hair, wonderful.

can't be emphasized enough

Thank you Simon.

just wanted to add that the shot of the 100s of star destroyers with the lightning and dark clouds looks like it was rendered with clip art

but tbf they only had three hundred million dollars to work with

the documentary clips about the movie make it clear that they spent a lot more time and money on puppets and animatronics -- which are excellent! -- than on the battle junk or the plot

ok I'm done

I demand a tell-all about how *this* happened

Kathleen Kennedy bonked her head on a girder

The best thing about this movie is that it led me to the palate cleanser of better (or 'better' if you prefer) SW product of the past that I'd previously passed over, eg. Clone Wars.

well as noted, the debacle is mainly in terms of story and script - they maintained high production value and quality control to make it all feel "Star Warsy" etc. etc. seems pretty clear that, absent an actual planned story for the three movies (!!!!) they were counting on positive healthy handoffs between films. abrams isn't really good at finishing things story-wise, and in this case made a bad sequel both to johnson's film and to his own initial reboot film.

meanwhile, the films were made too quickly on each other's heels, so they made a lot of bad snap decisions based on overhyped early "fan" reaction to The Last Jedi. for example cutting Johnson loose entirely, and trusting that it would be a good look to ditch most of the exciting new stuff he did in that film. so nobody at the producer level was riding abrams to make sure this felt like a satisfying sequel, or saying things like "we can't just bring in the emperor as a villain, that's stupid, and anyway the last film ended by firmly establishing kylo ren as the new villain --- what can we spin that into?" etc. etc.

It just seems insane to me to decide at the start "we're going to go make a 3-movie trilogy where each movie is by a different director and not have planned out a story ahead of time."

It's like "DC Challenge: The Movie"

dr c has it nailed i think

also the acting is really bad, and i sympathise given the dialogue and the lack of any discernible character but at the same time, the acting is reaaaalllly bad

the scene where finn meets the other runaway storm trooper, if that was fifth year drama youd bust in halfway through with a "whats wrong with you? start that again"

xpost in theory it could be way better than having things too tightly-constructed and just be filling in some master outline --- it's good to be able to pause and see what popped in the first film, where the energy is, which character dynamics are clicking. i think they just blew it on the pausing. even johnson i think kinda missed the boat a little by not really developing one of the strongest threads from TFA, the finn/rey relationship, though i liked everything else he did with those characters.

i think TFA is hugely overpraised tbh

rogue one otoh is a legitimately excellent action movie

even johnson i think kinda missed the boat a little by not really developing one of the strongest threads from TFA, the finn/rey relationship

agree with this, tho i know where johnson was coming from, echoing the separate-missions-until-they-converge-at-the-climax structure of empire strikes back.

uh of the two towers

TFA has some serious issues (mainly everything to do with the bad guys and their Death Planet), but it's got momentum and energy and really really charismatic characters (IMHO). i've grumbled enough about rogue one on the appropriate threads - it doesn't work for me at all as an action movie or as a heist/mission/war/whatever movie. still arguably the best-looking one of these, apart from some of the TLJ sequences.

xp not all the plots converge in the two towers!

I was about to say.

TFA definitely had more going for it visually than this did. plus it actually breathed on occasion

I get the entire giant room full of shadowy figures concept, but with one of the major complaints with digital projection at theaters being bad reproduction of darker scenes, why the fuck did they choose to do *that*

I wonder how many theaters had people complaining about the projection quality only for the staff to have to explain, no, it's really supposed to be nondescript and dark

It just seems insane to me to decide at the start "we're going to go make a 3-movie trilogy where each movie is by a different director and not have planned out a story ahead of time."

It's like "DC Challenge: The Movie"

I appreciate this reference but it is also like "Star Wars," the original trilogy

jrrsplaining itt smdh

Eh, only technically, there is a very big difference in that George Lucas was working on all three of them, whereas there really was supposed to be a new guiding artistic vision on each of the three new ones. Or, 'vision'...

each movie was by a different director, and Lucas didn't have a story planned out ahead of time.

xp i hate richard e grant

― ole uncle tiktok (darraghmac), Tuesday, 24 March 2020 22:01 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

^^^the correct position, get a grip ppl he's bad not good

no

he's great when he's good but he kinda sucked in this, mainly because the character as written is terrible

Lucas planned the first story, and he stayed on to plan out the rest of them. It's not like Richard Marquand could go in and say 'actually, I've always wanted Obi-wan to be Luke's father!'

good things with terrible ham REG being entertaining in them: Withnail & I, How To Get Ahead In Advertising, The Player, karaoke, Cold Lazarus, Franz Kafka's It's A Wonderful Life, Spice World, Doctor Who: The Curse Of Fatal Death (1999), Gosford Park, Can You Ever Forgive Me, his first book, the 2008 Sydney production of My Fair Lady

bad things with REG elevating them via energetic hammery: Hudson Hawk, Pret-A-Porter

good & bad things that he kinda sucks in: Henry & June, Jack & Sarah, Frasier, Doctor Who: The Time Of The Doctor (2013)

Karaoke, not karaoke, though I bet he would be fun at it

Lucas planned the first story, and he stayed on to plan out the rest of them.

JJ Abrams planned the first story, and the Lucasfilm Story Group stayed on to supervise the rest of them. Striking denials are making the analogy become more powerful!

spice world is good i agree (tho he is annoying in it), can't really agree abt any of the rest of that list (some of which i haven't seen tbf and never will: gosford park? just no)

english ppl always suck in us sitcoms, it's the law