Huh? It would have surprised you if they did the thing you were expecting?
Rate the Star Wars Movies
Huh? It would have surprised you if they did the thing you were expecting?
Imaculata
Hero
It would have surprised me if they had done what I were hoping they would do at that moment. Instead they kind of flirt with a cool premise, and abandon it. Subverting audience expectations isn't always a good thing, if the turn sucks.
But... that’s the exact opposite of a surprise.
Eltab
Lord of the Hidden Layer
I read the plot (and metaplot as revealed to date) of this trilogy as more like "Yanking the audience's chains" than "subverting audience expectations". It's like Disney is going out of their way to mess up the story and storyline.
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
So, informally, just about everyone I know that dislikes this movie has been a fan of the pre-Disney EU. I wasn't, and I like TLJ. I wonder how widespread this is, given that the movie was pretty well received outside of a smallish and loud core of die-hard SW fandom.
Imaculata
Hero
Not entirely. It was a surprise going into the movie. But once the movie started heading slightly in that direction, I was genuinely excited at what they might do. Instead, as stated above, they were just yanking our chains a bit.
And that's exactly my problem with all this. It is very easy to "yank the audience's chains", and to have people mistake that for being an unexpected twist. But it takes effort to actually write a satisfying plot. It felt like the movie went out of its way to constantly yank those chains, and then have no satisfying resolution to it.
I consider myself a pretty big Starwars fan. I loved the original trilogy, hated the prequels, loved TFA, and hated Rogue One (a movie which everyone else seems to love, God knows why). I'm not anti-Disney, not even remotely. I judge a product on its own merits. If it's good it's good, and if it's bad then it's bad, regardless of whether Disney or Lucas made it. I don't care who made it, I care about the final product.
There are parts of TLJ that I enjoyed, and I tried really hard to enjoy it. But unlike TFA, it didn't take me along for a ride. There were a lot of elements that just didn't work. Some hokey acting at the start, some misplaced humor that felt not in line with the tone of the rest of a scene, and some twists that weren't really twists, but the afore mentioned 'yanking of chains'. Occasionally I was into it. The opening bombing scene was pretty good, and I loved the big fight with Rey and Kylo Ren versus Snoke's guards. I could even get onboard with some of the interesting stuff they did in regards to Rey's visions, the way she connected with Kylo Ren. I thought that was really well done. It wasn't until the revelation in regards to Rey's parents, that I felt really disappointed. There was so much they could have done with that, and they just really dropped the ball. The odd thing is, that it felt like the director thought he was really smart with that 'twist'. It's not. It's dumb and disappointing.
I think there are a lot of things they could have done. First of all, I have no issue with a fanbase getting a plotpoint right. George RR Martin (writer of Game of Thrones) has often said that even if fans guess his twists correctly, he still wouldn't want to change it, because if he did all the hints leading up to that twist would no longer make sense. Besides, it is impossible for fans not to guess correctly if you give the entire planet years to think about it. Fans will go through every possibility. And I am in agreement with Mr Martin here, just stick to your guns and stay the course.
That said, could they have come up with something that (most) people didn't expect? I think so. Bare in mind, I am no script writer, but just off the top of my head: The twist could have been that she had no parents at all.
Oh, I hated that scene.
But it doesn't work for me, because we have barely gottten to know Snoke. Who Snoke is, and what his powers are, are some of the plot hooks set up by TFA. You cannot then leave those hooks hanging and kill him off before answering those questions.
I feel his transition into being the big bad isn't earned at this point.
I don't think it would. If both characters turned away form their respective sides, and both became rogue Jedi, that would be something that we haven't seen in the movies before. We may grow to like Kylo Ren as a character more, by having him team up with Rey. Or we could have Kylo Ren team up with the rebels to try and save Rey from the dark side. There's some interesting shifting of sides that could be done here, which hooks well into the unknown origins of Rey's strong force powers. I think having Rey's powers being something bad, is also a great way to dispel her Marie-Sue-ness
I really wish we would have seen the Knights of Ren in this movie. Another plot hook they left hanging. Hux isn't very interesting as a villain to me though.
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Zardnaar
Legend
The plotline from the movies is basically a 25 year old EU plotline of the week.
1. Surviving imperial faction.
2. A new Sith/Darksider
3. A new super weapon (usually bigger/better)
4. A Super Star Destroyer (often bigger and better).
And we had more interesting female characters as well- Mara Jade being the big one and she saved Luke's life. In 1991. And she didn't come across as a Mary Sue. And the plotlines were better as well, at least in the good ones. So in addition to not being very original (TFA being a rehash), the core plotline is not that different than the old Dark Empire comics.
In defence of the new they have nothing as bad as Children of the Jedi or The Crystal Star, those abominations make AotC look good. They haven't hit the peaks of the old Star Wars but overall its better. They messed a few things up (Aftermath series, originality, TLJ). The prequels were also partly redeemed by decent novels- AotC novel was decent, RoTS was good.
I've heard that the Lost Stars books are very good along with the new Thrawn ones.
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Jester David
Hero
I think the chain yanking has a LOT to do with people not liking The Last Jedi. It spent a lot of its runtime zigging when everyone expected it to zag. We've been conditioned to expect certain things in these kind of movies over the last, well.... fifty years? Sixty? And this movie flipped the table each time.
Suddenly we're out of our comfort zone and unhappy.
(And then people complain about every Marvel movie being the same.)
This assumes they changed it. They didn't.
Abrams had an idea, but didn't share it. No one told Rian Johnson anything and he made no changes. He picked what he thought was the most interesting answer in terms of drama and theme.
So a double Anakin who only had a mom?
But... doesn't that just create more questions? (How? Why?) And it makes her a weird child of destiny/ chosen one.
We know more about him than we knew about the Emperor in the Original Trilogy, as we know his title and his proper name. (Seriously: the name "Palpatine" isn't mentioned once in the OT.)
Scary and ugly and was a powerful Force User and evil; that's pretty much all we needed to know about both.
Who Snoke is isn't really a plot hook. Not really. It's a generic JJ Abrams mystery that is presented vaguely in case needed later.
Honestly, I think this has more to do with George Lucas and the EU and Star War's fans' ability to know everything about everyone including the entire Mos Eisley cantina. We're not use to blanks.
Why? We know more about him than Snoke and he's demonstrated a willingness to kill his parents and butcher innocents. What more do we need?
Why does the origin of her Force powers have to be known? Literally no other Jedi apart from Luke has an origin for their Force powers (as there's no other Jedi bloodlines). We don't know the origin of Palpatine's power. Or Yoda's. Or Mace Windu's, and he was probably the most powerful Jedi we've seen on screen.
Okay, we haven't seen a Grey Jedi before. And that would be interesting. But I don't think this is the place, as it needs to be a big climax to a trilogy. It needs to be good vs evil.
Having Rey fall and be saved by Ren and the Resistance also makes the end of the trilogy focused on redeeming a fallen Jedi, which was basically the plot of Return of the Jedi. Plus, it basically means Rey is a damsel that has to be saved (albeit from herself) and makes her less morally strong than Luke and Leia, since she wasn't able to resist the pull of the Dark Side. (Plus it pretty much negates Rey's status the first real female protagonist in Star Wars by making her the end villain of the Trilogy.)
Lucasfilms might not end up doing an Episode X and instead focus on other films and stories in Star Wars. Episode IX needs to be an "end" of something. And having the "Episodes" saga about the rise and fall of the Skywalker dynasty works. The life and legacy of Anakin Skywalker. Having Episode IX finish with the death of Ren and the end of the Skywalker bloodline wraps up that aspect, with the defeat of the Heir of Anakin.
But that works best of Ren is antagonistic rather than an antihero or protagonist. The end goal of the movie should be about stopping him.
Johnson talked about that and how they didn't really have anything to do in the film. Had he brought them in, it would have just replaced the Praetorian Guard.
Which leaves them to be a big focus in Episode IX.
Which is still weird as we know nothing of the Knights of Ren beyond their name. We don't really have a reason to care about them beyond them being a bunch of lesser Kylo Rens. The most interesting thing about them is really the mystery, and when you fill than in they will inevitably be less cool.
Think about it: they're former students of Luke who turned on the academy with Ren. They're basically the fallen Jedi equivalent of Crabbe and Goyle.
Ovinomancer
No flips for you!
I posit that it's a fandom of the old EU and you respond to that with a restatement of your complaints without mentioning the old EU?
Mercurius
Legend
I didn't read any of the EU books, have never watched the Clone Wars. I am not a "die-hard SW fan," at least no more than any Gen-X semi-geek. I do love the original trilogy, which is part of my cultural mythology. The friend I saw it with is similar, and we both were--to say the least--underwhelmed. I was left with a bad taste, a sense of wwrongness, even, like I had just seen my dead grandmother dug up from the grave, taxidermied, and painted with too much make-up to try to make her look alive.
The reasons I didn't like it are many. But perhaps the underlying reason is that it is the latest in a continued trend that is pulling the films further and further away from the mythic quality and depth of the original films. The original trilogy felt like myth on screen - myth in the sense of Joseph Campbell, as the deep and true stories of our souls. The prequels were a step away from that, as Lucas became overly obsessed with technology, as well as all of the other problems people have talked to death. But in a way the deeper problem with the prequels (beyond bad acting, etc) is they became "Vaderized" - non-organic cyborgs, overly reliant upon technology.
The Disney films are an even larger step away, and by the time we get to TLJ the gap is disconcerting, like the subtle feeling of dis-ease some get when looking at computer generated faces. It is just off, not right, and feels like a mockery of real humanity. Or to put it another way, it feels artificial and inauthentic. A taxidermied dead old lady with lots of make-up.
I think the underlying issue is that where Lucas tapped into mythology and created something fresh, the Disney films aren't going into the "mythic well" for inspiration. They're re-hashing old ideas and mixing them with contemporary cultural memes. This is where the superficiality comes in. The OT felt like the story of our souls writ large in a beautiful, extravagant form. The prequels felt like the cyborg follow-up, more machine than man, and the Disney films feel like a simulated, pale imitation of something that was vibrant, trying to recapture lost light.
But that is my personal sense of it. I should probably see it again, though.
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