star wars 9 grim resignation thread

it didn't really cost them much either other than a short 5 minute delay while he attempted a coup

― fuck the NRA (Neanderthal)

rewatched this section of the film today, not really true, his idiot plan meant that her non-idiot plan got given away to the first order, resulting in the deaths of about half of the fleet. poe's dumbshit plan basically got luke skywalker killed. that's what makes his character arc so satisfying to me - he lives in a world where everybody wants to be han solo and shoot first, and his arc allows him to be something other than a dipshit han solo imitation. i guess on rewatch i am starting to see why all the dipshit han solo wannabes hate it. yeah, this trilogy, and particularly this movie, focuses on new, young characters with abilities and motivations of their own - if your idea of a sequel trilogy which consists of the old cast getting together and reminiscing about old times i guess it's not going to be the movie you wanted. personally, speaking as a lifelong fuckup, the film's message that you can be a complete fuckup and still be a hero is just the movie i wanted to see.

idk how much I'd put that squarely on Poe, I mean, the initiative for getting on the First Order ship to turn off the light speed tracker came entirely from Finn and Rose. Poe just greenlit it and contributed the idea to call Maz. and while it is largely his burden as he was a Captain and enabled it to go forward, I'm not entirely sure he wouldn't have preferred that plan to Holdo's plan if he had heard both of them side by side.

It was a bit easier for him to accept the Crait escape when he was already in an escape pod headed there, and after he'd audibly heard Rose and Finn fail over the intercom, than it probably would have been had he heard both plans in real time when they were temporarily safe from First Order attack ships.

can't remember: does it ever explain why the rebel fleet all sticks together to be destroyed, rather than fleeing in all different directions?

No directions in space

imo the funniest part is when Poe finally learns more about the plan and he then immediately radios over to his friends ON A FIRST ORDER SHIP on an open channel and tells them what is up

like, jesus, no wonder no one wants to tell this guy anything

I take that back, they were heading to a first order ship, stranger in tow, where they could be captured

while i have some passing familiarity with military concepts like "chain of command" i'm not overall interested in shit like order of battle and i didn't go in to star wars looking to see a good war movie

this is why i don't believe in the notion of a "workmanlike" blockbuster - i think people have many different notions of what makes for a "good movie" and a successful blockbuster film needs to satisfy most or all of them

i think the backlash against tlj shows the impossibility of this. the things the backlashers expect to see out of a "star wars" film go beyond presumption - they run completely contrary to the requirements of a successful blockbuster film. this isn't limited to the right wing - the demands that the "doctor strange" film include a tibetan character and actor in a film that needed to make money from the chinese market were to some extent along the same lines - but this demand, while impractical, was not _unreasonable_. tlj backlashers are both - and the tlj backlash is by far more hateful and virulent than critics of "doctor strange".

a lot of these fans are still operating on the level of insinuation and suggestion, so let's bring it out into the open a little bit. there are a lot of fans who are mad about the consistently respectful and non-sexualized treatment of female characters in the film. they wanted to see daisy ridley in a harem girl outfit and chains and instead they got sexy shirtless hunk adam driver. i'm sorry, i know it looks like i'm strawmanning here because it's so ridiculous, but i'm not, this is what a significant subset of these fans actually want, and they're furious that they're not getting it. it goes beyond the level of "actually, a parsec is a measurement of distance" to an insult they cannot possibly accept the existence and legitimacy of.

yeah, i absolutely do believe the fight over star wars is symptomatic of the breakdown of a belief in the "common good", the breakdown of our common ability to recognize each other as, for lack of a better word, human, similar to the complete breakdown and subsequent realignment of every american institution along political lines in the 1850s.

...what?

I think you will find that if you turn off your Blackberry and cast your eyes into the broader world beyond, the TLJ backlash magically disappears. Like, I'm only aware that anyone even cares about the movie one way or the other because of ILX threads.

But yes, it's possible to find insane people with insane nitpicks regarding anything under the sun if you dig deeply enough into the fetid loam of the intranetz.

i absolutely do believe the fight over star wars is symptomatic of the breakdown of a belief in the "common good"

this is absurd.

it's a hugely popular movie series and people always complained about it. people gave them so much shit for ROTJ, Ewoks, Death Star 2, etc. ditto with prequels. the series began as a take on b-movies, which were always known for being these silly movies you pick apart. nobody cares if you question to logic of a Roger Corman movie.

it has been a hugely popular movie series all over the world for decades. hundreds of millions of people will not agree on something 100%. they never had and they never will.

add in the current media infrastructure that profits from highlighting deplorables and turning every single facet of life into a culture war.

i wish i could concur with y'all's positioning of the internet as a fundamentally imaginary space with no relevance to the wider world

btw adam your last sentence comes across as being fairly redolent of lugenpresse, i recommend you check yourself

It's not imaginary or irrelevant but it is largely ignorable and avoidable if you're inclined in that direction. Like, it certainly has a tangible impact on people's beliefs and behaviors but your proximity to the fringes might determine your perception of how extensive that impact really is.

If, for instance, I read a lot of far-right twitter reactions to TLJ, I might fail to realize that 999 out of 1000 people are completely unaware that far-right twitter reactions to TLJ even exist.

i spent most of 2016 ignoring maga chuds

it's true that i am a lifelong fringe-dwelling geek and that these things are probably more relevant to me than they are to anybody who isn't a fringe-dwelling geek

the normal people I know who don't read speculation about star wars movies on the internet got, at most, a viewing of the actual movie followed up by maybe seeing a couple "Fans angry about movie characters" headlines they browsed past but didn't read

this would include a few coworkers who have younger kids that are sitting around streaming the movie on netflix a bunch this week

https://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars-episode-ix-cast-announced

Luke da Ghost

Finding a truly satisfying conclusion to the Skywalker saga without her eluded us. We were never going to recast, or use a CG character. With the support and blessing from her daughter, Billie, we have found a way to honor Carrie’s legacy and role as Leia in Episode IX by using unseen footage we shot together in Episode VII.

Meh.

‘princess leia’s going to spend a surprising amount of time talking to her dog, asking her assistant to grab her a muffin from the craft services table, and telling dirty stories about harrison ford in episode 9’

Killing her in the opening crawl would've been totally fine but noooo we get Season 3 Tony Soprano's Mom

JJ Abrams has never made up anything in his life I'm pretty sure

yeah that was my first thought too :( xp

always a good idea to tortuously rewrite a script around the available words you have on the cutting room floor from a dead cast member than to find a more elegant solution

A hack is rarely elegant.

I demand the other films get redubbed with Grant and McGann immediately.

pic.twitter.com/5Q304AohTV

— MichaelCoffee (@MichaelTCoffee) July 27, 2018

idk it's kinda impressive of JJ to basically say "what my bosses did to peter cushing in rogue one was sick and wrong"

They said that immediately after her death, though - it's a line they've kept to since.

Rogue One would not have been the same without Tarkin. Now I would have been fine if they simply hired another actor but that's not the way these people think.

They should just reuse her footage from Catastrophe and have her being inexplicably vile to everyone.

Richard E Grant as Great Miff Turkin

Great Tuff Merkin

Grand Withnailkin

lol REG is the 2nd male Girls alumnus in the cast

can they get one of the 4 female leads to do Daphne Zuniga's 'i broke a nail' Spaceballs thing?

I would 💯 see a Star War if it were Carrie Fisher outtakes from Catastrophe with BB-8 cgi'd in

^^^

tarkin-mendelsohn stuff was mildly interesting in rogue one but not crucial and could have been done with some new character, grand moff icky for example. the cgi was distracting and the fact that they did it was creepy, bleah.

I’m starting to recognize the folly of having more than one thread for a franchise that spans more than ten movies and at least as many small screen spin-offs.

I understand what you're saying, but at the same time I think this is probably the best place to relitigate Ewoks: The Battle for Endor. I mean...Wilford Brimley? Really?

He’s still available to reprise his role

How has no one mentioned that we get Lando

I thought that had been revealed several weeks ago. I knew about it, anyway. I hope I wasn't expected to spread the word. That would be really embarrassing.

Throw in some scenes from Soapdish too, and I'm there

Maybe a couple scenes in bed with Bruno Kirby

I feel like this really needs to just be an R-rated Chewbacca-centric revenge flick where he just goes John Wick on the First Order, all the Knights of Ren and any other poor schmuck in between him and Kylo. I want him to go HAM offscreen like Terence Stamp in The Limey, and then roar threateningly at the one guy he intentionally lets live as a warning to the others.

was going to say "would also watch" until I remembered this is still co-written & directed by JJ Abrams

they made a murderous wookiee bounty hunter character in the comics and he’s everything you’d hope for as far as murderous wookiee fan service goes

I don’t want some rando Wookiee, I want Chewbacca to finally tear out some limb-from-limb justice for all the friends he’s watched die over 60-odd years of this far, far away galactic bullshit

it's kinda sad that yoda, while stopping in as a force ghost in last jedi, didn't make time to go visit chewbacca too. "ahhhhh my old friend, i have never forgotten our time together" etc.

I forgot RotS pretty quickly, so I'm sure Yoda did too

we actually never know if he stops in on Chewbacca tbf, because we never spend enough time with Chewbacca in these freakin' movies