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Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

Quantumsheep said:
He was parodying you there. Specifically, the rank absurdity of claiming character drama doesn't belong in Star Wars because it rustles your jimmies or something while also wanting it to be taken seriously as a work of fiction.
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Vader mind screwing Luke in ESB and RotJ involved epic beat downs and a hopeless situation engineered by the villain(s). On the flip side, Palpatine's very subtle manipulations of Anakin in the Prequels highlighted Palpatine's patience and Anakin's and the Jedi's weaknesses. Kylo preying upon Rey shows how amateurish he is and how worthless she is as a character and a person.

Vader and Palpatine spent real effort wearing down their opponents and hit them at their weakest moment. This establishes them as good credible villains while the audience is supposed to empathize with the heros' struggles. Kylo doesn't really have to do anything other than point out the obvious to this girl he'd only known a few days.

But since Rey starts at zero, having no relationships or loyalties to anyone or anything, there is no struggle. She just goes where the plot demands. So when she makes any decisions, it's like a coin toss with no stakes, other than the pleasure of the audience.
 
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Southshore said:
On the flip side, Palpatine's very subtle manipulations of Anakin in the Prequels
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I never imagined I'd get to see someone unironically try and hold up "Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis The Wise?" as a go-to example of subtle and nuanced storytelling, and yet here we are. 2018 continues to impress.
Southshore said:
But since Rey starts at zero, having no relationships or loyalties to anyone or anything, there is no struggle.
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Ok, so this is kind of awkward, because it seems you haven't actually watched either of the movies she's in? Where she explicitly does have those things, to her parents, the Rebellion, her ideals, her friends, etc.? I mean, I know you think you've seen them. I'm sure you sat in the theater and kept your eyes on the screen the whole time. Maybe even multiple times. But you weren't really paying attention for any of those viewings. At all.

Like, I'm sorry, I know the threadbanner says to 'properly engage with those holding a controversial or disagreeable position,' but there's no arguing with this. It isn't a difference of opinion, he's just flat-out ignoring the text as it suits him. Straight-up 'this is why you don't debate creationists' levels of willful blindness. There's nothing to be gained by trying to rationalize him out of it, you may as well try and persuade a brick wall to fall down.

Edit: Though for those in the cheap seats, I guess I may as well point out how he's suddenly gone from 'character drama doesn't belong in Star Wars' to 'but they did it wrong tho.'
 
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Grim Goblin said:
I cannot really agree about undercutting the ot accomplishments. It is more that it is a realistic outcome of people becoming complacment and thinking that if evil was once defeated it won't return. Lord if the Rings is something similiat.
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These are not mutually exclusive.

Sure, the New Republic repeating the mistakes of the past and allowing some neo-Imperials to build up their strength is...vaguely plausible. But what we have seen in the universe set up by TFA is also narratively unsatisfying as all heck. Han is back at square one, looking around with his old flatmate for the pickup truck they drove around when they were younger. Leia's efforts to burn down the Empire are back to square one - now she's marginalized from the New Republic and once again part of a ragtag militia. And Luke's new Jedi order is ashes. This was all established as of TFA - it is the scenario that TLJ was stuck with.

And, for what is allegedly - allegedly - Space North Korea to create the unholy supersized love child of the Death Star and the Galaxy Gun (a feat that even the original Empire was not clearly shown as capable of) and obliterate the New Republic...for them to face no opposition beyond Leia's private militia...for them to effective put the old Galactic Empire back in charge...

It raises the question: what, narratively speaking, was the point of destroying the Empire? Was it even destroyed at all?


(This also ties into why I think as much as I do of TLJ - it's as close to an officially endorsed fix-fic as we can get.

And Luke stepping out from the shadow of the Crait base, though a field of fire, into the bright light of the salt plains to confront his past mistakes (established in TFA) is a fantastic visual metaphor for overcoming depression. The Last Jedi's central theme seems to be confronting, learning from, and overcoming failure - and it works.)
 
Southshore said:
I find that hard to believe. Seems like you and yours want to remove everything epic out of Star Wars.
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...

I don't understand what you want.

Said moment of character drama is, like, one of the most over-the-top epic moments in the entire series. On one end you have a dramatic betrayal, an incredibly violent lightsaber duel, a near execution, on the end you have a battle of wills between the two characters and a massive, striking special effects money shot. The entire set of scenes is a rollercoaster of dramatic space opera goodness. It's not like the movie turned Star Wars into an indie millennial dramedy. It's trying very, very fucking hard to be the sort of thing people keep saying that they want Star Wars to be.

And complaining about Rey's lack of grounding in the story is, like, the hottest of garbage. The reason why Rey lacks grounding is because the preceding movie plopped her into the movie like a naked baby in the woods and then proceeded to underwrite the shit out of her. Leaving TLJ to try to work with the nothing TFA gave it, trying to continue the story for a character who didn't even really have a beginning. Frankly, I think they pulled it off, and the did it with the 360 noscope move of leaning into her lack of grounding as a character itself as her character.
 
I had hopes that the NR armed forces would be driven to murderous rage after the destruction of Hosnian system and not foll like a bunch of cheap suits.
 
Mechasaurian said:
Sure, the New Republic repeating the mistakes of the past and allowing some neo-Imperials to build up their strength is...vaguely plausible. But what we have seen in the universe set up by TFA is also narratively unsatisfying as all heck. Han is back at square one, looking around with his old flatmate for the pickup truck they drove around when they were younger. Leia's efforts to burn down the Empire are back to square one - now she's marginalized from the New Republic and once again part of a ragtag militia. And Luke's new Jedi order is ashes. This was all established as of TFA - it is the scenario that TLJ was stuck with.
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As I've said, it does work to underline the point that it would be that quick and that easy to get back to square one because people grew complacent and thought it will never happen. It serves to underline how fragile the new peace really was.

Mechasaurian said:
And, for what is allegedly - allegedly - Space North Korea to create the unholy supersized love child of the Death Star and the Galaxy Gun (a feat that even the original Empire was not clearly shown as capable of) and obliterate the New Republic...for them to face no opposition beyond Leia's private militia...for them to effective put the old Galactic Empire back in charge...
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It's an equivalent of a terrorist attack and even Empire loved their "bigger, uglier Death Stars" in the EU so why not here as well?

Mechasaurian said:
It raises the question: what, narratively speaking, was the point of destroying the Empire? Was it even destroyed at all?
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Considering the hops around which old EU went to undo that I don't think much people agree there was a reason to destroy it.
 
Claudette Savagely said:
The main problem I have with the above is that while the general objective of making fascists look as ridiculous as they actually are is laudable, the execution in the ST is woefully lacking.

Actual fascists and fascist regimes are absurd and cartoonish and stupid and dangerous to large numbers of human beings because the one area they have some competence in is killing job lots of people, and regrettably managing to do so frequently when some of those people are fighting back.

A lot of the time, the First Order can't even manage that last bit.

In TLJ, the First Order wasted most of one woman's private army of, what, 800 people in three capital ships, but at a hilariously poor rate of return in lives and heavy metal. I don't know what the crew compliment of a Resurgence class Star Destroyer is but losing 7 of them, quite possibly with all hands, to one lady and one capital ship probably isn't a great trade indicative of military acumen.

They are less able and even more bufoonish than the Empire in the only area where fascist regimes can do anything with any sort of consistency i.e. murder, and as such I end up wondering how clown shoes literally everyone who fought them had to be to lose.

If a movie villain makes you wonder repeatedly at the stupidity of your heroes because said villain's painful inability to do anything right most of the time doesn't stop them nigh-totally crushing said heroes, you probably need to go back to the drawing board unless you're aiming for black comedy.



(and before anyone mentions the Republic getting blown up by a giant anti-planet planet-gun, centralising your Galactic government and armed forces on and around one star system whilst ignoring your sworn mortal enemies so totally that they can make a third anti-planet gunplanet to blow all your stuff up at once by surprise suggests more that you are an idiot, rather than imputing any masterful ability to your foes.)

(TL;DR the Republic and the Resistance look pretty fucking clownshoes at this point because they lost and keep losing to people who are so very much more dweebish than the already hugely dweebish Empire)
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The Fulminatrix had 200 thousand men, the Resurgent class 60 thousand rounded. No idea how many died aboard the Supremacy, but lets be generous and say they lost at least a Resurgent´s worth of men. Not counting the people that a week or two earlier died on the Starkiller base.

In the span of two weeks, the FO lost nearly a million men to destroy an army that was probably not even a thousand men strong. That´s a horrible trade off.
 
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Southshore said:
Characters with discernible goals and motivations would be a nice start.
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Look man is the one-line shitpost about something that you've been defeated on earlier in the thread all you have left? Can you not back anything up anymore? At this point you are probably one more away from getting infracted for disruptive behavior by refusing to engage. You need to try to back this shit up before anyone takes it serious.
 
Grim Goblin said:
As I've said, it does work to underline the point that it would be that quick and that easy to get back to square one because people grew complacent and thought it will never happen. It serves to underline how fragile the new peace really was.

It's an equivalent of a terrorist attack and even Empire loved their "bigger, uglier Death Stars" in the EU so why not here as well?

Considering the hops around which old EU went to undo that I don't think much people agree there was a reason to destroy it.
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Firstly, what you are doing - dicing up a post to rebut it piece by piece - is frowned on within this forum, in light of the negative effect it has on discourse. It can get you infracted.

Secondly, pointing to the EU is not really a defense of the ST. The old EU has been criticized extensively for superweapon-of-the-week plots and for recycling of Imperial upstarts as the villain of the week. The fact that TFA ran headfirst into both of these does not flatter it by comparison.
 
Sabertooth said:
The Fulminatrix had 200 thousand men, the Resurgent class 60 thousand rounded. No idea how many died aboard the Supremacy, but lets be generous and say they lost at least a Resurgent´s worth of men. Not counting the people that a week or two earlier died on the Starkiller base.

In the span of two weeks, the FO lost nearly a million men to destroy an army that was probably not even a thousand men strong. That´s a horrible trade off.
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I can just hear a desperate New Republican psyop specialist desperately trying to spin this deep in some last chance bunker somewhere

".. OK after that Crait thing, how about a poster that says," One Resistance fighter is worth a thousand imperials!"? They can't argue with that one on the HoloNet!"

"dude we're literally being overrun room by room and I just killed another Stormtrooper in front of you please pick up a gun and help me"

Edit: text of unfinished shit post edited out.
 
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Claudette Savagely said:
I can just hear a desperate New Republican psyop specialist desperately trying to spin this deep in some last chance bunker somewhere

".. OK after that Crait thing, how about a poster that says," One Resistance fighter is worth a thousand imperials!"? They can't argue with that one on the HoloNet!"

"dude we're literally being overrun room by room and I just killed another Stormtrooper in front of you please pick up a gun and help me"

Edit: text of unfinished shit post edited out.
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I´d watch a series focused on those two.

Also, one should not that a lot, like really, a lot of officers and leadership cadre died in that time span.
 
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Claudette Savagely said:
Rose is proved wrong by the film itself when her rescue attempt almost kills her and the bloke she has a one sided crush on, and then her grand statement is under cut by the door being blown in directly behind her
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Except the whole point is that she saved Finn from needlessly killing himself. The door would have been blown down regardless. Rose's whole statement was that letting Finn's hate for the First Order override his good sense was going to hurt the cause in the long run.

Claudette Savagely said:
Finn, the black guy, goes from having a character arc to being bumbling comic relief who makes everything worse, then gets tased and gaoled for parking offences
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He was comic relief in the first movie. In fact this film actually gave him a lot more to do and actually made his time as a Storm Trooper relevant to the plot.

As for Rey desperately trying to get a man to tell her her place in all this and trying to save a handsome man I mean that's not strictly speaking inaccurate, so long as you strip all context, meaning and nuance from the film and focus exclusively on what in the scheme of things are minor details as well as how the arc wraps up. Do that and it's only a slightly reductive read.
 
Sabertooth said:
I´d watch a series focused on those two.

Also, one should not that a lot, like really, a lot of officers and leadership cadre died in that time span.
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Losing 7 line destroyers and a battle wagon edit: with all hands and getting the boss's flag ship cut in half is not a good day by any stretch, but as the FO poses a dire threat to the rest of the galaxy as the film tells us it does, if only by means of widespread uncontested landing and unopposed occupation, then it can probably stand those losses in officers and NCOs over all edit: because it would have to be huge and well equipped to do so at the speed Rey warns it will. Any real military in their place would likely be wincing collectively and conducting five billion post mortems in the aftermath, however.

It's still woefully lopsided but hey gotta give 2LT Postermann something to frantically write about :p
 
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Claudette Savagely said:
Losing 7 line destroyers and a battle wagon is not a good day by any stretch, but as the FO poses a dire threat to the rest of the galaxy as the film tells us it does, if only by means of widespread uncontested landing and unopposed occupation, then it can probably stand those losses in officers and NCOs over all edit: because it would have to be huge and well equipped to do so at the speed Rey warns it will. Any real military in their place would likely be wincing collectively and conducting five billion post mortems in the aftermath, however.

It's still woefully lopsided but hey gotta give 2LT Postermann something to frantically write about :p
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Honestly, I don´t see the FO being threatening at all. I think hey would fold up if they waged in a conventional slugfest with any major power.
 
VolantRedX said:
Except the whole point is that she saved Finn from needlessly killing himself. The door would have been blown down regardless. Rose's whole statement was that letting Finn's hate for the First Order override his good sense was going to hurt the cause in the long run.
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How is: "Deliberately crashing him in the middle of a fucking FO full assault on their last base, with no rational hope of escape" saving his ass from needlessly dying? Yes, he lived. Because Skywalker Ex Machina. If not for Luke showing up to jedi master shit, Finn would have just died when the FO marched up and shot him between the eyes. I can't speak for everybody, but I despise Rose and hope she doesn't come back because she's a hypocritical fucking idiot who's blundering idiocy is the primary millstone around the film's neck. Who's preachy advice was already being followed by Finn because he was repeatedly trying to save what he loved in any way he could think of (and getting foiled or otherwise meddled with by Rose's idiocy), and otherwise just insufferable.
 
Mechasaurian said:
Firstly, what you are doing - dicing up a post to rebut it piece by piece - is frowned on within this forum, in light of the negative effect it has on discourse. It can get you infracted.

Secondly, pointing to the EU is not really a defense of the ST. The old EU has been criticized extensively for superweapon-of-the-week plots and for recycling of Imperial upstarts as the villain of the week. The fact that TFA ran headfirst into both of these does not flatter it by comparison.
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Thanks for the note on the dicing up posts.
As for the EU problems - yeah, but EU was only doing that like ALL THE TIME. TA I get why it did that, the movie tried to capture the nostalgia of old and I feel managed to make it work. It brought people to familiar waters so next movies can go in different directions.
 
Sabertooth said:
I blame Mon Motha being a short sighted idiot who defanged the NR.
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Can't argue with that. She's basically an idealist who ignored that the roots of the problem weren't ripped out, and were still there to grow back in a blind and desperate grab for the imagined prosperity of her youth. It's kind of strange and fascinating how the accidental parallels with our own times were recognized and are now kind of being pushed by the new storywriters.
 
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