Remove ads

Star Wars General Discussion Thread

Reader mode
bluntblade said:
Well, I didn't have scope for Finn to pitch everyone. It's a little complicated.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Wait, why would Finn be doing all the pitching? The idea is that you teach others who teach others who teach others, and get exponential/sinusoidal growth. One person cannot ever do enough alone for any but the smallest of problems, they need to get other people to help them. That's why the opening crawl of Episode II describes the "limited number of Jedi Knights" as "overwhelmed" -- they're being expected to handle more and more with the same or less support.

(I haven't read your fic yet, the answer might be explained in the fic)
 
It's specific to the situation in the story. The Stormtroopers in question are a small group who've deserted and vanished, and the Resistance goes to find and recruit them with our heroes leading the operation.
 
Last edited:
Idea:

I know this wasn't Lucas's intent, but what if Obi-Wan's "betrayed and murdered your father" bit was intended as a lesson about how a Jedi mustn't seek revenge, in line with Luke's vision in the cave on Dagobah?

Yoda in Rebels said:
"Ah. Jedi way is revenge? Teach you this, your Master did?"
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Thoughts?
 
Tbh it would suffer from being unsupported by Luke's behaviour and the framing of his mission to Cloud City.
 
bluntblade said:
Tbh it would suffer from being unsupported by Luke's behaviour and the framing of his mission to Cloud City.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It would be, though.

Yoda said:
Yes! Yes! To Obi Wan, you listen. The cave. Remember your failure with the cave?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Ghost Obi-Wan said:
Luke! Don't give in to hate. That leads to the Dark Side.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's obviously not given as much focus as Luke's attachment-driven recklessness, but they do mention that sort of thing in the context of Luke going to face Vader.
 
Yep. I think it would have also muddied the themes of that film, which are lovely and clear.

Every now and again it occurs to me that in a parallel universe, I'm waiting for the day that Rian Johnson's Episode IX drops - he'd said he'd make the film if Disney put production back a year, as I understand. I wonder what I'd have done with my lockdown instead of writing my own sequel.

RadiantPhoenix said:
(I haven't read your fic yet, the answer might be explained in the fic)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
To belatedly answer, yeah - it's very much situational with the story.
 
Last edited:
I think I've found the most confusing TLJ take so far: it's attempts to be original make it unoriginal: "Subversion is one of the cheapest "twists" you can do, and inherently makes it an unoriginal direction to continually try and "subvert expectations"."

I've... I've got nothing. How do you get to that place?
 
Last edited:
bluntblade said:
I think I've found the most confusing TLJ take so far: it's attempts to be original make it unoriginal: "Subversion is one of the cheapest "twists" you can do, and inherently makes it an unoriginal direction to continually try and "subvert expectations"."

I've... I've got nothing. How do you get to that place?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

pretty sure it's meant as if that's the only trick you have it gets tired. Pretty much all the questions set up in TFA are dispensed with, Snoke just dies, Rey's parents are drunks, Luke isn't searching for anything.

even within the film the admiral who obstructs our heros really had a plan, the scoundrel with a heart of gold, is really just a scoundrel.
 
kjyl said:
pretty sure it's meant as if that's the only trick you have it gets tired. Pretty much all the questions set up in TFA are dispensed with, Snoke just dies, Rey's parents are drunks, Luke isn't searching for anything.

even within the film the admiral who obstructs our heros really had a plan, the scoundrel with a heart of gold, is really just a scoundrel.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Ah. In which case I feel like that's a very reductive analysis - especially when by Abrams' own admission, the answers in the boxes don't matter. Johnson made them matter - even with Snoke (and no one in TFA even asks who Snoke is if I remember) not being revealed to be anything, his being dispatched opens the way for Kylo to go places that a "lead" villain hasn't before, and that's specifically in furtherance of an arc for Kylo. In Johnson's view, the alternative was to just kind of have him in a holding pattern, waiting for a seemingly inevitable redemption arc.

I do find it perverse that Johnson is the one who's accused of doing stuff without any purpose, when everything in his film flows from the characters and ties into the themes he's exploring, when Abrams actually says things like "we just went there because it felt right".
 
Last edited:
bluntblade said:
Ah. In which case I feel like that's a very reductive analysis - especially when by Abrams' own admission, the answers in the boxes don't matter. Johnson made them matter - even with Snoke (and no one in TFA even asks who Snoke is if I remember) not being revealed to be anything, his being dispatched opens the way for Kylo to go places that a "lead" villain hasn't before, and that's specifically in furtherance of an arc for Kylo. In Johnson's view, the alternative was to just kind of have him in a holding pattern, waiting for a seemingly inevitable redemption arc.

I do find it perverse that Johnson is the one who's accused of doing stuff without any purpose, when everything in his film flows from the characters and ties into the themes he's exploring, when Abrams actually says things like "we just went there because it felt right".
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

It's not really an analysis? I was just trying to explain the POV behind subversions of everything being as creatively meh as everything happening as expected.
 
kjyl said:
It's not really an analysis? I was just trying to explain the POV behind subversions of everything being as creatively meh as everything happening as expected.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Sorry, my mistake. But the notion of that being how people are going to interpret that film just irks me deeply. I feel like the way Game of Thrones ended has also contributed to this notion that there's never any purpose to subverting expectations and it's inherently hollow.
 
bluntblade said:
Sorry, my mistake. But the notion of that being how people are going to interpret that film just irks me deeply. I feel like the way Game of Thrones ended has also contributed to this notion that there's never any purpose to subverting expectations and it's inherently hollow.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

In the case of TLJ I could argue for a lot of them as valuable save the Holdo plot, which was a pointless one. Mind you a lot of these subversions ended up being double subverted back to your typical Star Wars plot, which I deeply disliked.
 
The Holdo plot has a very clear point to me, in that it's meant to see Poe mature to the point of being able to step up and lead the Resistance in Leia's absence, physical or otherwise (with Finn slotting into the hierarchy a step below him). It's setting up the notion that the Resistance will have to adapt and evolve to survive and ultimately strike back against the enemy.

I really think that the way Abrams doesn't run with all the mentions of the downtrodden and such beyond lip service speaks to the way he treats heroism. Essentially, his heroes are the elect, they are conferred with the destiny that they will do great things, and therefore everyone else is really just there to cheer them on. Heck, the thing he has Rose do is just get out of Finn's way and let him be awesome, because Finn was chosen by the Force and she wasn't.

Which I guess also explains why Abrams never shows that much of an interest in the wider Galaxy. The closest we get is Kijimi, which is just a few minutes of seeing the First Order be brutal and doesn't give us anything more than texture. Stormtroopers aren't kicking down the door of anyone we care about, it's just there to evoke an audience response quickly and efficiently before it's dropped. Just like Finn's freakout over his dead comrade and the revelation that Stormtrooper cadets are taken away from their families.
 
Last edited:
bluntblade said:
The Holdo plot has a very clear point, in that it's meant to see Poe mature to the point of being able to step up and lead the Resistance in Leia's absence, physical or otherwise. It's setting up the notion that the Resistance will have to adapt and evolve to survive and ultimately strike back against the enemy.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I take the point, but why does Poe have to be a leader? He's a mid-level officer, one of dozens if not hundreds at that point in the story (and the Resistance's decimation is to a great degree his fault). Whose project is it to promote him? Why?
 
I mean I got the point of the plot, but felt that it was helped along by the most contrived reasons. Holdo could have told Poe, that there was no other option and it was a deception. Not that Poe really had any damn reason to go mutiny. It felt like filler to me.

Zimmerwald1915 said:
I take the point, but why does Poe have to be a leader? He's a mid-level officer, one of dozens if not hundreds at that point in the story (and the Resistance's decimation is to a great degree his fault). Whose project is it to promote him? Why?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Poe is a leader because he is trusted help undertake tasks, and while he is reckless, he does have a boldness that can draw others to him.
 
Zimmerwald1915 said:
I take the point, but why does Poe have to be a leader? He's a mid-level officer, one of dozens if not hundreds at that point in the story (and the Resistance's decimation is to a great degree his fault). Whose project is it to promote him? Why?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Well, he already is a leader, and that sort of increasing responsibility is pretty standard for these kinds of stories and a handy thing to tie to character development. Han, for example, ends up leading the ground assault on Endor together with Leia.

As for whose project, it's clearly Leia's. It's there in the dialogue, and she was the one who assigned him to go to Jakku at the very start of the story. Admittedly him being a leader is something of an accident; Abrams simply merged him with another character when he undid Poe's death in rewrites.
 
Last edited:
I feel like The Last Jedi was a quarter leaning to half of a good movie, I also feel as some scenes needed to be cut and replaced with the deleted scenes like the one where Luke finds out about Han's death.
 
Wateryblue said:
I feel like The Last Jedi was a quarter leaning to half of a good movie, I also feel as some scenes needed to be cut and replaced with the deleted scenes like the one where Luke finds out about Han's death.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I also feel that Holdo came across as way stubborn, I mean were we supposed to like her, she felt like two character archetype's smashed together.
 
Holder's stubborn because her plan is tactically sound in ways Poe's isn't. It's just that our perspective on that shifts.

I'm really hoping I can just get back to the film and enjoy it again. TRoS makes it feel like revisiting it will just be an exercise in frustration.

I'm curious to hear what the leads made of all the story reversions in IX, and the constant rewriting. Because that's gotta have some impact on what you're doing in a given scene, like whether this thing Finn wants to tell Rey was something different yesterday but now it's going to be that he's Force-sensitive.

I actually rewatched Knives Out recently (I love it) and it just adds to the frustration that LF didn't delay the film and have Johnson direct it. Because in Knives Out I can see him levelling up in small ways (compared to Abrams, who I've never noticed growing artistically) and I want to see him applying those gains in composition and such to a big canvass.
 
Last edited:
Wateryblue said:
I feel like The Last Jedi was a quarter leaning to half of a good movie, I also feel as some scenes needed to be cut and replaced with the deleted scenes like the one where Luke finds out about Han's death.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
For all the flak I and many others give The Last Jedi its still more of a cinematic experience than The Rise Of Skywalker!
 
That would be because one is telling a story and the other is telling a plot.

The other thing is that The Last Jedi feels like it's designed to last. It's willing to take its time to build some huge moments (admittedly including divisive things like Snoke's death, the parentage reveal, Finn wrecking Phasma, Yoda burning the tree and Leia's flight). Possibly this is why it's lingered for those who objected in ways that an MCU film they disagreed with did not. TRoS meanwhile feels bizarrely disposable for the final film in the series. Its moments are there to happen fast and be moved on from at speed.

Still weirds me out that they didn't give the Knights of Ren cool weapons. If they're only there to die, make those deaths cool.
 
Last edited:
bluntblade said:
That would be because one is telling a story and the other is telling a plot.

Still weirds me out that they didn't give the Knights of Ren cool weapons. If they're only there to die, make those deaths cool.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I know right that should have been easy and marketable to make the knights of ren stand out and be quirky I mean for example the Ginyu Force from Dragonball/ they were not really needed since their master Frieza was the big bad but they were fun and when you look past the hokeyness were a threat.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top