also it’s funny to me that the idea that you don’t need to explain every plot thread from a story is typically taken up by the same people and explained in the same exasperated tone as like, labour praxis
I think of it as an extension of/homage to the original film’s appropriation of dogfight movie language for Space Planes? OK, this time we’re doing the Big Bomb Run.
Like when people try to make sense out of the timing of all the disparate threads in the middle. Empire doesn’t make make chronological sense either? (Yes I know Rudie, the 
)
Maybe Empire should make chronological sense.
Probably we just accept any stupid thing if it happens to work for us and go on about the stupid things that happen to not work for us. Hello. Hi. It is me. Your internet’s shrug.
2 Likes
the Luke - Yoda conversations are so good
especially considering that the Jedi occupy this weird space between appropriated eastern mysticism and elites who would rather be right than victorious, no one else who worked on this franchise even really tried to plainly address those contradictions and why we might be drawn to them anyway
1 Like
It actually makes perfect sense I
Has this whole thread been a waste
in my headcanon snoke’s backstory is just that, manichean star wars nature literally abhors a vacuum, and zero sith in the universe after the end of Return of the Jedi is too few sith, so that gnarled fragment of evil just knitted itself into existence
it does make sense! It’s just that previously you’d had to mostly fall back to wishful thinking around subtext
Episode X: Attack of the Fifty-Foot Storm Trooper
Waking from a bad cryosleep nightmare after the Battle of the Salt Planet at the end of Last Jedi, Rey finds herself marooned on a prison planet made of wood
14 Likes
That’s actually pretty close to the gospel according to Freddy Prinze Jr
3 Likes
I also love that, taking this into account, the way they decided to kill Luke was to have him meditate super hard
everything in this movie ruled
5 Likes
Well. Being a wrap it up lap it up hyperspeed series of zags, executed so safe and soundly, I’m inclined to give it a light grimace…brows raised sturgeon face, nodding w/entertained respect - thassa whole lotta bombast. With flying colours!
I feel a lot of the abysmal response here and coursing online but really didn’t find it like, squirm in my seat unbearable. Sure TLJ had more conviction for years to come. This was just a calculated resignation, on grounds of unbridled want from TFA’s kickoff.
TLJ has a lot of goodness. But it also has some dumbness. Such as the uh…endless space chase which seems like the empire could have just blasted them at any time. And also how a pod was able to just leave that chase because they had to…go get a hacker?! Oh but only the best hacker. And how will they ever find him? And then they just…do. All that shit was real dumb.
And Finn was kind of just there, except for the parts where he becomes relevant to Rose.
And Captain Phasma was completely wasted.
there is handwavey dialogue to explain this (also the whole premise as Main Conceit For A Stars War owns)
this owns Phasma exists to look shiny and be dunked on (also she’s essential to expressing The Development of Finn’s Character which happens… in the movie…)
3 Likes
They go for justin theroux but they can’t get to him so they end up with benecio del toro
Both things conceptually are fine I guess. But how they actually went about showing this stuff, didn’t feel good to me.
I like the whole casino plot runaround, it’s fun and star wars-y and for it to not work out doesn’t feel like wasted time
as for all the contrivances with the chase and the somewhat more questionable than usual physics, I do get a sense from TLJ that Johnson approached it like “look, I’m a writer, I’m going to create interesting situations to develop these characters, I’m asking you to suspend disbelief to get there” and in doing so he somewhat took for granted the baseline for how much star wars normally follows its own logic – yes, it’s about space wizards and you can technically put whatever you want in there, but I think he was a little bored by the idea of having to really sell it, and I think part of the backlash was in response to that. I can totally see it.
however, I really love what he did with the story and the characters and all the action sequences on their own are really good, so I’m not too sensitive to how he gets there; it’s a good tradeoff in my opinion. but I think a lot of people fail to see it as a deliberate tradeoff in the first place.
1 Like
One minor thing that I think Ep. 9 did really well is with how it handled General Hux.
like, i enjoyed the petty infighting between hux and kylo in the previous two films (especially at the end of TLJ), and this time around i wanted hux to do something to help the heroes just to spite kylo. that happened, and then just a couple minutes later the little worm got offed in the most appropriately weenie way possible.
i dunno i just think it’s funny how the only character that they had consistent vision for across all three films was Space’s Weeniest Neo-Nazi
live like a weenie, die like a weenie
5 Likes
I’ve come around a bit on the casino bit, itself. I’m still not in love with it. But I do see how its important to the Finn and Rose characters. And also how its used as a connect to show there are other naturally strong force users out there, slipping through the cracks.
Yeah, sure. Its just a bummer that he or someone didn’t realize how stiffly contrived it is and come up with something which feels a little more organic. I don’t even mind and kind of like Holdo’s spaceship spirit bomb sacrifice as an end to that segment.
I also had zero problem with the bombing run in the beginning. I think the gravity-like physicality is important for the desperation and emotion he was trying to convey. Its also short, and there isn’t anything happening to pull you out of it. Whereas the ship chase is drawn out, literally has something pull away from it like hitting the pause button, forcing me to realize “hey, this framing is real dumb”. And on top of that, the hacker bit which we pulled away for, is real dumb. Even though it ends up with some decent character and double cross.
I like that stuff too!
Yeah to me it just feels kind of obvious and scripts get drafts all the time. Like “ok, love where you go here. But, lets tweak how we show the getting there. So it doesn’t feel so stilted”.
1 Like
yeah one of the things that TFA actually did well once you get past the initial ridiculousness of New Death Star Villains is the characterization of the order as rump state cosplayers who are nevertheless a very present danger
(that was a response to RT)
2 Likes
yeah, it does seem almost stubborn in a way, but as we’ve seen, there doesn’t seem to have been a great deal of oversight on any single director’s vision or much collaboration on this new trilogy that could’ve done something about that… and TLJ was also criticized for many worse reasons, so I can see where the stubbornness comes from.
The bombs are on rails and the craft has simulated gravity. The bombs have momentum before they leave the force field. It’s fine.
A space chase is a whole lot less ridiculous than endless contrivances to blow up entire planets.
I think Rian Johnson is the first one to try to make sense of the rules of Star Wars at all - why do you need small craft, why do shields seem to only work some of the time, etc. Showing the stolen ship belongs to Space Raytheon vs we used the clone tool to stamp literally thousands of capital ships on this planet with no natural resources
9 Likes