The Problem Of Disney Star Wars

[Jester David]

I love how Zard continually attacks TLJ for making Rey a "Mary Sue" and Phasma a "chump" when Rey was even more perfect in Force Awakens and Phasma was even more of a chump.

 

[billd91]

The Last Jedi.
If this was a stand alone movie it probably wouldn't be that bad. Its a sequel though. The main problem was I think after TFA generally positive reception along with Rogue One expectations were probably high. The reason I like RoTS over this is I thought it had better story telling and emotional moments (Vader and the Younglings). The overall plot of this movie was silly (a chase scene) that made little sense (that is what faster TIEs are for), and with the Casino planet sub plot that was totally pointless. Additionally they killed of Luke and Snoke probably 2 movies early and Rey is still a Mary Sue but the actress is good. With the Mary Sue thing in the originals Leia gets captured, she is a badass though, and she later gets wounded. In this movie they have her fly through space. In the originals Luke loses his hand and requires training while Han get dumped in carbonite and is blinded but her we have super Rey. In the grand scheme of things this is still probably minor. THey basically throw out a lot of left over plot points from TFA and the villains are all basically chumps. In TESB the rebels get their asses handed to them and Vader is unleashed and is a bigger bad ass than in Episode IV and its before episode VI. In TLJ Phasma is a chump, Hux is a chump, and Kylo Ren is made to look stupid by Luke who then dies. All the villains basically suck at being villains, Poe looks like an idiot, Finnn has the worst sub plot, they don't follow up on things like Rey picking up the lightsaber, they throw away her parentage mystery. And Snoke is also a chump. Sure Fett died like a chump as well but that was in Episode VI he at least got to be a badass in one movie. And we have super Leia and Mary Sue Rey who is supposed to be powerful I suppose along with Leia but is ultimately boring with a heap of characters heroes and villains you ultimately don't care about because they are boring chumps.

And now for the politically incorrect part. Apparently the majority of Star Wars fanbase is white males and going by a fan reactions only we may not be looking that good. Stupid trolls online are going to be stupid trolls. Sure some of the are misogynistic trolls and Kathleeen Kennedy did not help with a shot of here and some females wearing shirts with "The Force is Female" on them. In the old EU and the new the force is the force, no gender required but this feed back to how Rey has been written- at least the actor is doing a better job than the prequel Padme/Anakin ones.. She is not the 1st female Jedi/force user but male or female you need a compelling characters. Padme and Anakin from the original are not overly popular and its not because of their gender. Its because the characters/actors/the writing (take you pick) basically suck. If you read/play the games the old EU you might be familiar with Darth Treya, Zannah and the Dark Lady of the Sith Lumiya. On the light side of the force you have Bastila Shan, Jaina Solo, and Mara Jade who along side Thrawn was probably one of the most popular EU characters (and she married Luke). These female characters were interesting because of the way they were written, none of them were Mary Sues, none of them were damsels in distress (Mara saves Luke- in 1991). Even Admiral Daala initially was interesting (a female genius Admiral) but she became a joke because of the way she was written (she was a chump, Thrawn was not). Han and Leia had 3 kids in the old EU, the males died and Jaina became the Sword of the Jedi and after Luke was probably the most powerful Jedi in the universe. Even then she had to train with Boba Fett, she was not a Mary Sue and her brother Jacen was written more like Anakin from the prequels and he was the one who inherited the Skywalker whine. Jaina needed training, Jacen needed training, Luke, Leia, Mara all needed training (see the recurring theme here). Luke had plot immunity but even he had his ups and downs. Anakin into Vader jumps the gun and gets chopped up even though he was "more powerful" than Obi Wan. Ultimately the popular Star Wars characters (OT 3+ Lando, Mara, Thrawn, Vader etc) are interesting characters. Leave the comic relief to the Droids its what they are there for.

Time to burn this "Mary Sue" horse crap down right now. Rey is no more Mary Sue than Luke ("I destroyed the Death Star in my first outing in a sophisticated, high-performance fighter/bomber") was a Gary Stu in A New Hope and a heck of a lot less than Anakin was in Phantom Menace. This is all just bound up in the "a chick is the Force-using star of the new trilogy instead of a guy" backlash that damns her for the stuff her male analogs in previous trilogies got away with.

 

[Jester David]

I also wonder how many times the detractors of The Last Jedi have seen the movie, and if their opinion is based on a single theatre showing...

 

[Mallus]

Oh, so it IS time to argue about The Last Jedi, again. Goody?

I refused to take the bait the other night, but that's probably because I was drinking tea. Maybe I'll crack open the cask strength bourbon I bought for the holidays tonight!

 

[Mallus]

But for now, a list of things wrong with the Disney Star Wars movies:

1. The Force Awakes - very derivative of the original Star Wars.
2. The Last Jedi - Canto Bight sequence needs punching up or trimming.

Done!

 

[delericho]

I also wonder how many times the detractors of The Last Jedi have seen the movie, and if their opinion is based on a single theatre showing...

Three times. Each time it has gone down in my estimation. (The same is true of TFA, incidentally, though that's dropping from a higher base.)

 

[Jester David]

I’m always surprised by how widespread some of The Last Jedi talking points are despite most being silly.

How did Rey know how to fly the Falcon?
Same correspondence course Luke took to learn how to fly an X-Wing I imagine.

How could she beat Ren without training?
We saw her kick two guys’ asses on Jakku. Which was more training that farmboy Luke got, who spent an hour training with Ben and a long weekend with Yoda lifting rocks. Also, Ren took a boltcaster shot to the side, and we know those have enough force to knock a stormtrooper flying.

Why did it drop Rey’s parentage storyline?
My response is “what storyline?” Her parents aren’t even mentioned in TFA. All we know is she was abandoned and the people who did were not coming back. The “Rey’s parents” question is pure fan speculation that exists solely because The Empire Strikes Back had a parentage twist.
Why does the new film have to mimic the surprising twist of a different trilogy? Isn’t that the laziest possible thing they could have done?

Why did they drop the Snoke storyline?
Because he was a lame Emperor ripoff. We knew two things about Snoke: his title and proper name. Which was MORE details than the Emperor received in the original trilogy. The villain we care about is Ren. Snoke was redundant to the plot, and time spent fleshing him out would be better served with ANY of the other characters.

Canto Bight was a pointless.
Hey, you know what else was pointless? The whole Kanjiklub bit, and the following Rathtar chase.
And Starkiller base. Finn would have gone after Rey anyway, the Resistance wouldn’t want a Ren finding Skywalker, and Han wanted to talk to Ben. That whole bit could have just been on Ren’s Star Destroyer and was superfluous.

The new trilogy is suuuuuper feminist.
But is it? Is it *really*?? Rey is the new hero, but are there significantly more female roles? Do the new movies even pass the Bechdel test? (They do, but only barely. Rey has one brief scene with Maz Kanata in TFA and Leia briefly talks about the Resistance to Holdo AFTER discussing Poe.)
Is flopping the gender of the primary protagonist *really* all it takes to be distractingly feminist?

 

[Zardnaar]

Time to burn this "Mary Sue" horse crap down right now. Rey is no more Mary Sue than Luke ("I destroyed the Death Star in my first outing in a sophisticated, high-performance fighter/bomber") was a Gary Stu in A New Hope and a heck of a lot less than Anakin was in Phantom Menace. This is all just bound up in the "a chick is the Force-using star of the new trilogy instead of a guy" backlash that damns her for the stuff her male analogs in previous trilogies got away with.

Luke got some training, Rey didn't. Kinda like how the USA used truck components in the Sherman tank, if you could drive a Truck you could drive a Sherman almost. He even mentions the T-16 in the movie so you don't need a massive amount of explanation or logic. The OT heroes also got messed up, that is the difference Luke had his hand chopped off, Leia was wounded and captured, Han got chucked in carbonite and blinded. She never used a lightsaber before, picked one up and defeated Kylo Ren a trained dark jedi. And yet in the prequels we see Jedi trained from very young age, Vader was old and later he murders the younglings.

Han had a hard life but was presented as a pilot from the get go and Leia presumably had royal self defence training and llater oin in the EU she also needed training and was weaker than say Luke, Mara and her children as she devoted less time to it due to being a full time politician. Her daughter Jaina was trained right from the get go and later in life trained with Boba Fett for dirty fighting.

That is the difference.

 

[Zardnaar]

I love how Zard continually attacks TLJ for making Rey a "Mary Sue" and Phasma a "chump" when Rey was even more perfect in Force Awakens and Phasma was even more of a chump.

Luke trained her at least and I did comment on how Phasma was a chump, along with Hux, Snoke etc.

 

[Zardnaar]

I’m always surprised by how widespread some of The Last Jedi talking points are despite most being silly.

How did Rey know how to fly the Falcon?
Same correspondence course Luke took to learn how to fly an X-Wing I imagine.

How could she beat Ren without training?
We saw her kick two guys’ asses on Jakku. Which was more training that farmboy Luke got, who spent an hour training with Ben and a long weekend with Yoda lifting rocks. Also, Ren took a boltcaster shot to the side, and we know those have enough force to knock a stormtrooper flying.

Why did it drop Rey’s parentage storyline?
My response is “what storyline?” Her parents aren’t even mentioned in TFA. All we know is she was abandoned and the people who did were not coming back. The “Rey’s parents” question is pure fan speculation that exists solely because The Empire Strikes Back had a parentage twist.
Why does the new film have to mimic the surprising twist of a different trilogy? Isn’t that the laziest possible thing they could have done?

Why did they drop the Snoke storyline?
Because he was a lame Emperor ripoff. We knew two things about Snoke: his title and proper name. Which was MORE details than the Emperor received in the original trilogy. The villain we care about is Ren. Snoke was redundant to the plot, and time spent fleshing him out would be better served with ANY of the other characters.

Canto Bight was a pointless.
Hey, you know what else was pointless? The whole Kanjiklub bit, and the following Rathtar chase.
And Starkiller base. Finn would have gone after Rey anyway, the Resistance wouldn’t want a Ren finding Skywalker, and Han wanted to talk to Ben. That whole bit could have just been on Ren’s Star Destroyer and was superfluous.

The new trilogy is suuuuuper feminist.
But is it? Is it *really*?? Rey is the new hero, but are there significantly more female roles? Do the new movies even pass the Bechdel test? (They do, but only barely. Rey has one brief scene with Maz Kanata in TFA and Leia briefly talks about the Resistance to Holdo AFTER discussing Poe.)
Is flopping the gender of the primary protagonist *really* all it takes to be distractingly feminist?

Some of those were quite important plot lines from TFA though.

Rey being female has very little to do with it, plenty of female Jedi in the older EU and Jaina for example was a lot more interesting than her brother (he had the Skywalker whine), Mara was probably the 2nd most popular EU characters (after Thrawn).

TLJ was not an out right awful movie (we have AotC for that), but t should have been better IMHO both because Disney made 2 good Star Wars movies but as I said expectations were high. Its hard to relate to the characters though- the villains are chumps, 2/3 are not very interesting, Rey is powerful (to powerful) and kind of boring because of it and saddled with a recycled back ground (desert orphan like Luke). Hell Jedi survivor from a ocean planet subverts ye olde star wars tropes would have worked.

I eman they cold have just had her be a survivor of Kylos Jedi massacre or someone from the new Jedi spirited her away. Lucasfilm kinda knows they messed up they have sidelined Kathleen Kennedy and brought back JJ Abrams, the original plan was 3 different directors but no overall plotline or guidelines to have those 3 directors have the same goal in mind.