i hated the arc was no you are right the jedi are good I am just gonna reverse my character because it is act 3 and I need to fade away.
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The Last Jedi, Rian Johnsonās stylized contribution to the Star Wars mythos, returns to the seriesā root influencesāsamurai films, pulp serials, 1940s wartime dramasāto create the most idiosyncratic Star Wars film to date. The humor is wacky and Spaceballs-and-Looney-Tunes-ish, the staging stark and operatic, the sense of mythology expressive and terrific; it brushes away the prequel trilogyās pseudo-rationalization of the Force, the mystical animating power of the Star-Wars-verse, and makes it purely dramatic, even going beyond George Lucasā original transcendental concept. (Star Wars may be set in a galaxy far, far away, but it was born in ā70s San Francisco.) In short, itās bound to piss off some of this 40-year-old, multi-billion-dollar franchiseās more dogmatic fans. Johnsonās scriptāthe busiest in the series, though itās more nuanced than might appear at first glanceāis driven almost exclusively by individual failures and foiled intentions, the Joseph Campbell heroās journey torn into pieces.
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I read it more as oh man I guess i really did fuck up and now I gotta try to do something to stop this kid I what fucked up good before i can claim to be done with this shit that I have spent the last X years telling myself I was done with. It came off less as a ājedi are goodā to me and more as a āif I actually want the Jedi gone, I have to make them be goneā, which in the end, he failed, because Hot Topicās Favorite Dark Sider is gonna be back for the next movie, but Luke could always ghost his way into more work there as well.
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This is absolutely false, I felt like this movie was the most serious attempt to treat the prequels as though they actually happened since Lucas put Hayden Christiansenās blue ghost in Return of the Jedi
In the OT, you have this sense that the only people who are force sensitive are former Jedi, Palpatine, and the Skywalkers. Making it so Rey can basically master advanced Jedi techniques without any proper training, not to mention the fact that random stable hands can also somehow learn how to idly force pull brooms without even being told that the force exists, when Donnie Yen can spend his whole life studying the ways of the force and still not be able to do anything with it except with extreme concentration suggests that there has to be some kind of differentiated distribution of force sensitivity in people, which is a situation more explainable with Midichlorians than not
But also because it contains the only post-episode III reference to Darth Sidious
I also really liked the contrast between the hyper kinetic flailing lightsaber fight in snokeās room vs. how Luke and Kylo were very focused on stance and footwork, which seemed like a good way of recognizing the differences in the two styles of combat between the prequels and the OT
also everything on Canto Bight
because of all this iām kind of irrationally perturbed that they went back to weird dysfunctional lips puppet yoda for his cameo. Like, what about all that stuff about leaving the past behind.
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[spoiler]In one of the EU novels Luke talks about how growing up on the farm look would just know things. Where stuff was etc. and Uncle Ben got super mad at him. I like that charactierization of these space wizards having natural abilities that they maybe donāt understand because the rest of the world doesnt understand.
Or for example Luke never sees Obiwan use telepathy before he dies. He just somehow learns thats a thing he can do when heās hanging in an ice cave. [/spoiler]
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Ok, Iām actually going to go for this, or at least a rough version of this: The sequel movies are going to end up having the exact same kind of probably unintended world-building consequences on the Star Wars universe as the prequel trilogy did, but with the force instead of with the general presence of weird lookin aliens throughout the galaxy.
So, as Iāve said a dozen times before, I really like the way watching the prequels before watching ANH gives you the impression that between III and IV there has been some kind of galaxy wide purge of non-human aliens, and the only place you see the truly weird looking bug dudes or whatever is in shady bars and crime dens. Droids, too, are discriminated against and relegated to subservient roles. This is almost 100% just due to a different approach to SFX and āwe can do more cool shit now than we could then, so letās just put cool shit everywhere,ā but the narrative of the movies actually makes total sense: The separatists were primarily made up of weird looking bug dudes with a droid army, the empire are space nazis who have no qualms about making Being An Alien illegal
So after TLJ, especially on Canto Bight, you kind of have to come to terms with the fact that even though the First Order seems all powerful, some sense of ānormalcyā has returned to the galaxy and random furry alien monopoly men are free to flaunt their wealth in public or whatever. Thatāsā¦ fineā¦
But the next big change that the sequels introduce is this idea that there are dozens of unexplored force powers that we have never seen before. Again, this is probably because someone decided that Space Magic is Cool and we should not limit ourselves to lifting shit and confusing people. But this creates a kind of weird trajectory for how the force is actually used over the course of 8 movies, ultimately suggesting that the purpose of āthe Jedi religionā was to control and restrain the force, and use it primarily to be likeā¦ space sheriffsā¦ and perhaps that unrestrained indulgence in the weirder force powers is probably kind of a bad thing.
So in eps I-III, the force is used primarily as a way to augment lightsaber combat. All of the force-using characters have vague, indistinct premonitions, but none so strong as Anakin, who dreams of Padmeās death, which sends him on his path to the dark side. But so much of Lukeās character arc is devoted to him trying to understand his premonitions. And Yoda, no longer serving on the Jedi council, has basically nothing else to do but sit in his hut and know stuff about the future.
In episode VII there are no force users who have been properly trained by Jedi, and everyone who uses the force does it in really unexpected and exaggerated ways: Kylo stops lasers, Rey has weird visions just from touching important objects and has that weird kind of mind-meld with Kylo, which presumably leads her to attempt a mind trick on her captors moments later
and then thereās a whole bunch of new force powers in VIII tooā¦ no need to get into all of them because itās still freshā¦ but needless to say if any Jedi were able to do what Luke does at the end of that movie, the prequels would be very different.
this kind of makes me think that two things are happening in the post-Jedi Council era: 1) People who had been trained in the force under Jedi rules are more comfortable using previously ignored or shunned aspects of the light side of the force. What they lack in numbers they make up for in potency. 2) When the force āawakensā after Palpatine and Vader are destroyed, there is absolutely nothing to stop new people from using it in an intuitive way, rather than one guided by principles and codes. So basically this implies that the purpose of Jedi training is restraint, not mastery.
help
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Aliens only showing up in shady areas and with rebels was definitely picked up on in the expanded universe materials; Han was said to be an Imperial pilot in training who got mad when he saw Wookiee slavery and broke Chewie and pals out.
I think that was explicit in the original movies too, especially in context of American media in the '70s. Lily-white conformist British empire (British codes as Nazi to American minds fairly easily) vs representational youngs.
someday Iāll watch the new movies
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I liked when Luke said heh nothinā personnel, kid
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man this movie was a great time and I find myself really agreeing with the av club article up there. I liked that rian Johnson went out of his way to make some of the guards look like they were wearing samurai helmets.
fuckin luke skywalker was my favorite part of this movie I think
apparently star wars fans hate this movie
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whatever this could be the movie that makes me a star wars fan again
much like TFA when it came out, im gonna spend some time looking through Wookiepedia to get a better read of everything. this is my new SW tradition of being an intense fan again just throughout the holidays
itās funny (but unsurprising) that traditional star wars fans seem to reject this movieās ideas of maybe just burning it all down and moving on from the things you love (which is also sort of hilarious in its own right considering the now annual trajectory of SW in general)
also for the love of god please donāt make kylo and rey get together romantically. the movie doesnāt actually seem to make this explicit, and i read it more of just these two young and confused people connecting (via Jedi Mind Skype) and bonding through their shared unstableness of power and uncertainess but like please i just donāt wanna see them kiss
i do like the classic samurai story feel of all the Luke stuff but did anyone else get like a huge Harry Potter vibe during this? not even just talking about that little kid with the broom at the end, but in sort of tone and during the casino scene
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I donāt get this take
Lukeās arc is going from ascribing to Jedi dogma to a rejection of both the belief system and the practitioners (including himself) to finding out that, no, religion isnāt necessarily all of these rules and what have you but what you believe
Yoda literally said āman, fuck those old traditions, they aināt what being a Jedi is aboutā and bonked Luke on the head. Itās probably the most obvious and explicit the movie was wrt treating the Force as religion
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iām pretty hungry for more star wars guys
are any of these comics actually any good
iāve been told the newer Clone Wars and Rebels cartoons were good but man that art style is butt
oh the new clone wars series is actually really cool, I watched a huge chunk of it years ago when I lived with my parents
also I guess according to the new comics lando becomes a rebel freedom fighter after the emperors death
initial thoughts:
where the fuck is billy dee williams?
casino planet was really clunky and inorganic (though i liked del toroās stutter)
luke is oro
imperial guard sword-whips are cool (i like crimson empire, okay)
half hour too long
why didnāt laura dern immediately kamikaze that ship when she saw the transports getting destroyed?
so snoke is a palpatine clone right? the eu is still real to me
the humor beats were atrocious
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This was a fun topic of discussion for my group after the movie. The question isnāt just why didnāt she do it earlier , but also if this is a thing you can do, why donāt people do it all the time?
My favorite (and also dumbest) explanation is literally no one ever thought to do it before and Laura Dern is some kinda outside-the-box-thinking genius. A more sensible explanation, if you feel like meeting the movie more than halfway is that according to my super huge star wars nerd friend, the results of coming into contact with a significantly-large mass shadow in hyperspace are super duper random? like, maybe youāll destroy it, maybe youāll travel through time, maybe nothing will happen, etcetera. so it would not really be a very smart move 99% of the time, and Holdo basically got lucky that it actually destroyed the Dreadnought.
Graphics in that scene were so fuckin cool tho.
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