Not even hating on TLJ but this image pretending that “Heroes can have flaws” is some novel concept in the franchise and is the reason why it’s disliked is so stupid.
As if Han Solo isn’t the most flawed hero already in the OT, or how Luke had constant flaws like his father that he had to learn to overcome, or how the ENTIRE prequel series is about how the galaxy’s greatest heroes had such massive flaws it lead to the rise of the empire and the fall of their greatest student etc etc.
It also completely misunderstood what people were complaining about. Like you said the theme of heroes having flaws is present in damn near every single character throughout the series. People were upset that the flaws in some characters, especially Luke’s, was straight up character regression. Having Luke somehow fumble the new Jedi order is one thing, having him do that because he runs into the same conundrum he had seen and overcome before just to succumb to those problems is another.
Having it so he doesn't mourn the death of his beast friend, doesn't come to the aid of his family in need, he doesn't care that his family is in trouble and needs his help, and that he...he gives up on him. It's the exact opposite of everything we know about Luke Skywalker.
It’s a cop-out excuse. “You just wanted Luke to be an impossibly perfect hero in shining armor, and that’s the only reason you don’t like TLJ.” It’s dismissing all attempt at discussion over the movie, by putting up a strawman argument. They’re disinterested in hearing how you would rather have seen Luke portrayed, so they tell you what you think instead, because it’s easier to argue against that point than anything you really want to say.
Nah, TFA was better than that dumpster fire. Sure TFA was a complete rehash of ANH, but at least it created rather than destroyed. Rian Johnson's hatred for JJ ruined any good that might have came out of the sequels.
Well maybe if mods took a stance and banned this kind of bigotry where someone's opening lines are literally insulting anyone who dares criticise the movie as if they have nothing but hate and no real reason to hate it.
This is literal bigotry, textbook almost. Yet it is allowed because...?
Finns story on the gambling planet is a useless pointless b plot. It didn't contribute to the story at all. They needed a code breaker so they went to some planet where they didn't find the code breaker but decided somebody else was good enough but he just betrayed them. Just dumb.
Have rose be the code breaker and have finn and her have their story be espionage on snoke's ship where they can have a cat and mouse game with Phasma; Finns main nemesis (that he barely interacts with).
Point 2
Holdo is unlikable and unnecessary. Her entire role would have been cooler if it was just admiral Ackbar. People respect Ackbar. Seeing a story go deeper into his character and seeing him mentor Po would have been more interesting.
Then at the end it's Ackbar who sacrifices himself for everyone. He could be heading towards snoke's ship; The first order realizes their ship has been sabotaged by Rose, The brilliant and capable codebreaker, they can't maneuver. Ackbar smiles "it's a trap" and then detonates the ship's fusion reactor to cause a massive explosion that doesn't break the world by having hyperspace do dumb shit.
Yes I'm saying the movies needed more shameless fan service. Fight me. There would have been audible cheers in movie theaters across America and if you think that's a bad thing you're dumb.
What we got instead was a new character nobody knew anything about, that wasn't likeable, that nobody cared about, making a sacrifice that evoked no emotion. They had emotional capital with Akbar and they spent it on and unceremonious moment of shock at his death instead of the greatest moment of the series.
Point 3
I'm going to rewrite the flashback with Ben's origin.
Instead of having Luke stand over Ben because he had visions of Ben becoming evil and he's going to contemplate killing an innocent child that's his nephew....
Instead have Ben stand over Luke about to kill him because snoke convinced him. Luke wakes up and they have a badass lightsaber fight because THESE MOVIES DID EVERYHING IN THEIR POWER TO AVOID LIGHTSABER FIGHTS, ITS THE DUMBEST SHIT EVER.
Luke wins and NOW he stands over Ben about to make a killing blow. But then he appeals to Ben to reject the dark side and "we can help you." Ben runs off.
Then Ben comes back and kills all Luke's other padawans. Now Luke can be a bitter old man because he believed in the good in people like he's supposed to, but it bit him in the ass.
This takes Luke to the place he needs to be in these movies but shows that he still was the character we last saw him as until an event made him rethink his world view. You can make him a sad bitter old man, but write a story that earns it.
Point 3
NOT ENOUGH LIGHTSABER FIGHTING. They had a chance for a future where lightsaber users had been repopulated and they could have more lightsaber duels. They chose to have them all be dead.
WHERE ARE THE KNIGHTS OF REN? Weren't they supposed to be Ben's disciples that use lightsabers? I feel like if they wanted to include their gambling planet where warlords spend their money then maybe they could have done something where the resistance tries to run to that planet thinking it'll be a safe house for them but they get sold out and then they have to escape the knights of Ren.
The entire movie is a slow motion chasing through space. Put the main contingency somewhere grounded where they can interact directly with the enemy force.
You had this cool elite troop of lightsaber users and just completely forgot about them in the second movie. Dumb.
Othee complaints with the sequels
Start Rey on Hosnian prime instead of a desert planet. She can meet Han gambling in a sleezy bar while running from first order mooks. That's how she gets on the millennium falcon.
Now When that system is destroyed at the end, it's Reys home and not an abstract planet we never saw.
And we got to see Star wars slums which is a different side of Star wars that hasn't been in any movie. That's the right way to separate from the older movies. Expand instead of just be different for no reason.
Have Rey lose decisively to Ben in the first movie. She can lose a limb. Then Leia has to rescue her and has a face off with her son, Ben, where she speaks to him but then has to force push him away, grab Rey and leave.
They made all the conflict with Ben be him and Rey, but he's Leia's son. She doesn't interact with him at all. That's an interesting relationship to explore but they do nothing with it.
The original trilogy was asymmetrical warfare of a rebel group against a big power. The prequel trilogy was symmetrical warfare between two powerful groups. This one should have shown the main characters trying to run an empire/republic and dealing with an insurgency of extremists where they have to grapple with power and responsibility. We have a movie with a rag tag group fighting the powers. Why reset the world and rehash that? Show us something new
Maybe when you show us the slums on hosnian prime you can show recruiting for the extremist resistance that's upset that the new Republic isn't providing the economic security of the empire. Foreshadow the conflict and show how regular people are being impacted.
Conclusion
I am a big star wars fan and I have still never seen rise of Skywalker. It's clear to me that these movies have no respect for the 30 years I spent consuming star wars media. The last jedi felt like it was actually contemptuous toward the hardcore fans.
Why would I watch movies by people who think I'm a loser nerd for wanting movies to respect my nostalgia?
They had no plan for these movies and it showed. Brian Johnson had no respect for Starwars and it showed.
They were going to put no effort in they should have just done the fucking thrawn trilogy
Each of these movies made less money than the last at the same time that marvel was building to climax and making more every movie.
Now the Starwars franchise is floundering and it's cultural relavance has never been lower. I'm not the only person who held my wallet for the third movie.
They are ok movies, but they are terrible Starwars movies.
Final word
For as much maligned as the prequels are, the first one did make the most, but the 3rd one made more than the second.
Clone wars is not a very good movie. Even if you could say Last Jedi is a "better movie" than clone wars in a vacuum, clearly clone wars at least left off in a place that made audiences care about the conclusion.
Clone Wars is a bad movie, but a great Star wars movie. I'll still go back and watch that movie because it's Star wars. The Last Jedi is not good Star wars.
The Last Jedi was so bad it left them with no direction for the 3rd. Thats what it's job was. Make us want to watch the next movie. It failed
Trying to think of one last way to put this
The prequel trilogy had technically poorly made movies (acting, script dialogue), but it's good storytelling. It's good world building.
The sequel trilogy had technically well made movies. but it's bad storytelling. It's bad world building
Just want to say I would love to watch the movies with your recommended changes and I think you are spot on.
I won’t hash out all the details already covered above, but the TLJ also felt the most ridiculously Disney with Snoke’s guards looking like power rangers (but points for not being easily defeated at least), and the nail in the coffin with the random stable boy causally using the force to grab a broomstick like he is Mary Poppins’ long lost son.
The Last Jedi also started pretty much right after the first which was a terrible idea as it allowed for no off screen character growth or interesting plot development. Could've skipped grumpy Luke and started the movie with them already weeks into training with Luke reminiscing or keeping something hidden from Ray.
It was clear that having one director hand the series to another was a bad idea. A number of set up plot elements were completely ignored.
Imo Rian Johnson watched Mad Max Fury Road (released May 2015 to The Last Jedis December 2017) and wanted something similar leading to a very boring space chase which the first movie already kinda had when it came to the protagonists running around all the time with little downtime.
The Disney sequels are all rehashes of the originals if you think about it, but pale imitations. Just a massive waste of creativity because Disney these days loves remakes pretty much.
I'm thinking of something like Luke having a vision, but instead of Ben becoming evil it's Snoke trying to consume Ben with darkness and he sees the familiar face (aka the guy who somehow returned) from Snoke. He pulled out his lightsaber as a protection reflex, but Ben read it the wrong way, all thanks to the careful manipulation from Snoke. This would not only fix Luke's character regression, but also show a bigger theme the movie taps in but never fully explored --- that force is more than combat, making Luke's force projection more powerful. This would also explain Luke's self exile more as a move to search for ancient Jedi techniques, a well intentioned move that inadvertently constrained his mindset until Yoda burned down the texts and reminded him that learning from mistakes is through practice.
I remember getting out of TFA thinking "they really need to do a lot of flashbacks to when Ben was a student, showing him as a good person and how he fell to make me care and understand him, and at all want him to be potentially redeemed." So I was flabbergasted when they didn't do that, I felt that was pretty crucial to show. Instead we got "murder hut in the night" in the night scene, which doesn't count and actively hurt the story.
I've always argued, that the b-plot should have been replaced wholesale with "there is a mole on the ship and Po and Finn must find them". Po and Finn had the best chemistry in the whole damned sequel series, it is criminal that they separated them. And there being a mole on the ship would explain why Holdo (or I agree should be Ackbar) won't tell anyone the plan.
Yes. The thing that made Holdo so unlikable and unsympathetic is that she had no reason to not tell everyone the plan (not misogyny as many like to suggest)
To me the last Jedi has always been a movie which had potential to be a perfectly good Star Wars movie with relatively minor (story wise) changes. As opposed to Rise of Skywalker which is just irredeemable.
I can mostly agree with this. It's like they just said good enough to every idea as soon as they had it so they could make the movie and get it out to audiences as quickly as possible without putting any real thought into what they were doing.
Incredible analysis and suggestions. I wanted you to know that you are not alone. I've been a massive starwars fan since before I can even remember. To this day I haven't seen the rise of skywalker and never will.
this is discussed ad nauseam already so i will give you the cliff notes: disney scrapped the entire expanded universe, which had some really great lore (and some stinkers, sure), but they had no idea what the fuck to do with the story and it shows in this trilogy, but most of all in the second movie. in Ryan Johnson's quest to subvert the story he disrespected foundational elements of established characters (it wasn't just "flaws", that's disingenuous), and he threw out what the first movie built, making an incoherent mess.
They literally blew up the First Order base. And it was established that Luke ran away and went into hiding, something we know Luke wouldn’t do. Rey was also shown to be a strong force user even though she has no training. Additionally, the Knights of Ren never showed up in the first movie, despite their being promotional images with them.
If anything, all the problems with this trilogy started with JJ Abram’s movie. It’s just that Rian got all the blame early on.
I blame Disney for creating a trilogy and doing absolutely nothing to ensure it had a cohesive story in any way, shape or form. They let three different directors tell independent stories, expecting it to somehow fit together, and then they fire the last film’s directors shortly before the release date and had JJ swoop back in to fix it, still under the crunch of the theatrical release date.
Like, with all the money invested in it, you'd hope they'd have the basic story worked out ahead of time. You let each director put their own spin on things, and whatnot; but the end goal should be worked out. Instead, they just made it up as they went.
The issues started with JJ, I agree, his movie is a mess, a bad rehash of A New Hope to milk nostalgia, without any cohesion in the plot.
But I think most of the issues could be fixed or patched. TLJ failed to do so, it tried to be it's own thing and did not build practically anything for the finalle, it make it even harder even.
For example, the issue with Rey's powers and absent Luke, in the original script of JJ, ep 7 was supposed to end with Luke having floating boulders around, showing strong connection with the force, but RJ did not like that and they change it.
You could argue that with that finally, the one JJ intended, maybe the explanation of Rey's abilities were that Luke was interfering from a distance. He could be ashamed, or whatever, but still left a weak link to try to help and use a strong force sensitive individual, like Rey, to try to help. Or whatever other thing that could build something up instead of make a reset every movie.
It was NOT JOHNSON'S JOB to retcon TFA into being the movie you wanted it to be. That would be immensely disrespectful to JJ Abrams. He took what he was given, and came up with plausible solutions to those conundrums that let him give as many characters as possible interesting character arcs to explore.
TLJ failed to do so, it tried to be it's own thing and did not build practically anything for the finalle, it make it even harder even.
There a lot of pedantic criticisms I see levied against Last Jedi, but this is, by and far, the worst argument I have somehow continuously heard since it's release.
It built nothing to set up the finale?? Seriously?? Rey and Kylo - who kills Snoke and becomes the leader of the First Order - have a literal force connection. Leia, 3P0, R2 and Chewie are the only remaining legacy characters, leaving the leads of this new trilogy time to shine. Both sides are at their lowest point, but each side is now more determined than ever and dug into their goals. Finn has found something to fight for instead of running away from the fight. Poe has become a more mature leader instead of a fighter, learning that saving lives is more important than throwing them away to achieve a goal. Rey has finally chosen her path, free of the past.
This movie, more than any other Star Wars movie, felt like it could have gone in so many directions. It set up so many ways for a finale to coast easily into even an average ending. I was genuinely expecting the war machine to be the final fight, meaning the casino would be at least paid off by taking down the ones profiting from perpetual war.
Snoke, Luke, and Captain Phasma are dead. The Resistance is effectively destroyed. Rey's parents aren't actually important. Finding Luke was pointless. Kylo's obsession with Vader is dropped.
That's a lot of stuff to throw out, regardless of the quality of it. And as far as i remember Rian really didn't add anything productive or significant to the universe. His movie genuinely feels more like a standalone or conclusion to the story rather than the 2nd movie in this IP's thrid trilogy.
Don’t forget the entire casino run that one of the main characters spent 45 minutes of screen time doing that accomplished nothing except introducing a character who says “both sides are bad” that we never see again
Snoke dying = Kylo Ren now being the supreme leader of the First Order.
Luke dying = he went out in the most Jedi way possible and tales of what he did reached other parts of the galaxy (as seen in the scene right before credits where the kid is retelling what happened). This installs hope in the resistance after nobody responded to their distress call on Crait.
Phasma dying = she was a side villain to begin with and her main connection to the heroes was Finn. Finn finally getting that weight off his shoulders allows his character to go anywhere from there.
Rey’s parents not being important is fine. It reinforces the idea that anybody can be force sensitive instead of running with JJ Abrams’ idea of it being hereditary.
Finding Luke wasn’t pointless. It gave us more insight into Kylo Ren’s origin and set up the confrontation between them in the end beautifully.
Kylo’s obsessed with Vader was used to motivate him early in the movie. Do you want him moping around for nearly 3 hours praying to a shrine of him or something?
TBF, if anything Phasma should have stayed dead and not come back in TLJ at all.
Also, nothing in TFA suggests Rey had important parents (or even that the family she was seeking were her parents), TLJ making it seem like she cared whether or not they were important bothered me much more than making them no ones.
Snoke was used as a stepping stone for Kylo to become the new big bad, which is far more interesting than Palpatine+Vader yet again. He's now almost certainly irredeemable, but can be stopped, just like almost all the real life neo-Nazis who are obvious parallels to the character.
Luke is one with the Force after a literally masterful use of it to save the Resistance, teach people what a Jedi can be, and have one last 'in-person' meeting with his sister, who would otherwise have died. He very specifically taunts Kylo with an affirmation that Luke will still be around to teach/convert/mock his former student as the Ep9 director chooses. (Also it wasn't "pointless" to find him, since he saved the Resistance, Rey got some crucial teaching and those old Jedi books, and he tweaked Kylo's nose so hard the little punk's going to crash out even harder as Supreme Leader.)
We never saw Phasma's body, so she could totally have come back one last time, but even if she didn't, cool, that just means Finn can rise above a petty squabble with his old boss to become a better leader for his generation.
The Resistance being almost destroyed is one of the ways TLJ stands apart from ESB, which I thought was a good thing? We don't want it to be a simple retread, right? If they have a fully functional fleet at the end of the second movie of the trilogy, that's just what happened before. "Nobody's brave enough to come help and Poe's disrespect for the chain of command had consequences" are interesting challenges to overcome, not story-enders. Ep9 could easily have begun four years later, with a revitalised Resistance inspiring people to subvert the incompetent First Order as Kylo continues to bleed support from all but his most homicidal fans.
Rey's parents being unimportant is also good, because Star Wars being the Skywalker Dynasty is fucking boring and small. It was already a stretch to make Anakin the centerpiece of the entire prequel trilogy, saying that nobody is ever allowed to get away from that family makes the galaxy tiny and dull instead of full of mysteries and intrigue like it was when Luke first entered that cantina in Mos Eisley. People with shitty and/or no parents can be important too.
Kylo has grown as a character, which is good. I shouldn't have to explain why "angry, gullible moron with a fetish for his Nazi grandad's old SS uniform" is kind of a tough villain to maintain interest in for a whole trilogy.
And of course you don't think Johnson added anything, you've dismissed the entire movie. Rey's revitalised, levelled up, and learned a lot (including that it would probably be a fool's errand to try to save Kylo, but a good director could have turned that around in a more interesting way). Poe's learned that being a hotheaded hotshot isn't good enough to win a war by himself, the value of every life under his command, and that the Resistance needs to actually start winning hearts and minds instead of just coasting on the support of everyone who already wants to fight. Finn's learned to be more than just a deserter with the hots for Rey, and has become a true rebel with a healthy distrust for the elites they'll need to deal with to get the materiel for a renewed Resistance. Hux is just the right kind of stick-in-the-mud to try to subvert and usurp Kylo as a mundane villain, and Kylo's terrible at trying to command the First Order but has the power to try. Johnson added a new hero, at least one new villain, a better understanding of the Jedi than any prequel or TFA before it, and also porgs.
And it was established that Luke ran away and went into hiding, something we know Luke wouldn’t do.
Han Solo (and therefore TFA) establishes the possibility that Luke went to find the first Jedi temple to learn, something that someone shaken by the failings in his own teachings may very well do.
Instead, turns out Luke decided to just cut himself off from the Force entirely and wait to die. Why he decided he needed to put the effort in to do this at the first Jedi temple and not any other random backwater planet is never established.
And setting up mysteries is much easier than giving them satisfying pay offs. Episode IX tried to retroactively give the mystery boxes satisfying answers, and imo, it made the trilogy much worse. Snoke worked better when he was an obstacle to be overcome by Kylo. Rey's arc wasn't about finding her parents; it was having her own identity and self-worth.
What did it throw out from the first movie? This gets said a lot online but I don't really see much of anything that gets thrown out, or even subverted. The only example that holds some water is killing Snoke, but that also follows pretty cleanly if you take Adam Driver at his word that JJ told him the plan was to have Kylo become more and more evil in each movie and do a reverse Vader. If that's the arc you want to tell, then having Kylo become the leader of the First Order in the second movie makes a ton of sense.
Nothing else the movie does seems even remotely like it throws away anything from TFA. Or disrespects foundational elements of established characters for that matter, at least nothing that wasn't set up in TFA (Luke's self exile)
edit: would love if anyone downvoting could provide a single example. Just one.
Okay, first off Luke didn’t decide or try to murder Ben, you just still don’t understand this scene, which after 10 years can only be willful ignorance.
But Luke’s exile and the fall of his temple is all set up in TFA not TLJ, my point is TLJ does nothing to subvert what was set up in TFA
He drew his saber and rose his hand before he hesitated. He almost did it, which he shouldn’t have gotten that far in the first place. He sent himself into exile. We don’t know what his motivation for that was yet. He could either be doing something productive like meditating in the force nexus to figure out what went wrong that night (snoke/palps), or being a coward and giving up.
Johnson ‘subverted expectations’ by taking the latter option, and twisted the knife that the valiant knight wizard we knew didn’t just give up, he’s not even considering the call to action. That’s kinda his whole character in the OT. He even cut himself off from his mentors and his father.
You could argue the tease that Rey was some sort of legacy character? But even then, that being proven wrong by the villain, it could have been easy to go back on, which they did anyway, even though doubling down on it would have been a better character choice imo
I take that back. They retconned where the scar was on Kylo's face, and brought back Phasma to actually do something before being killed off again. She's a squandered character, sure, but at least TLJ did literally anything with her besides just exist.
Rian Johnson gave a Luke that was not very different from what Lucas himself intended 💀 “disrespected foundational elements of established characters” 🧐 sure.
I remember the sequel lover saying that they were gonna age well, just as the Prequels did. But the sequels lack so many things and are such a mess to get to that.....
I personally dislike the sequels, and TLJ, a lot, because they are the worst written of them all. Each trilogy seems to have more resources, but they dedicate none to the writing area.
For example, in TLJ you got a 2D chase in SPACE, that is set as a "no escape" scenario where the heroes cannot flee. This leads to a subquest in which the heroes are tasked with finding a way to escape, and to start it, the first step is to get on a ship and......ESCAPE, without addressing it in the movie in any moment.
The movie also makes it pretty hard to make up your own script to find an explanation on why they cannot really escape because is the first film to feature timestamps for hyperspace jumps, and they seem to be pretty dam fast, so coming and going is a possibility. You even have ships, like the Falcon (a high profile ship easy to track according to ep 7) coming and going.
That “Sequel Lover” is kinda stupid from the outset, Phantom Menace had day one critics but it was overwhelmingly positive. I’d say its approval went down with age and didn’t normalize for years.
Yea I think poe trying the bombing run on his own and failing and fin and the other girl going to the gambling planet to to try and fix things themselves and getting captured kind of paint a "were stronger when were unified and pulling together and problems can't be fixed with individual bursts of grand gestures" theme? but I only saw the movies once so Idk
Yea they got the dreadnaught but they lost forces they couldn't really afford to lose which is why they had the shot of Leia looking at the ships lost and why Leia then stripped poes rank.
Sure the resistance landed a punch on the empire but if they broke their hand to do it was it worth it?
I think the goal of the resistance at this point of the movie was just to run and survive and not engage in any fights
How? She beat Kylo in their very first fight when she had no training at all. She was an excellent pilot, fighter, and force user right out the gate with very little growth available
Some of Rey's flaws are that she is impatient, naive, and struggles with insecurity related to abandonment.
Being good a flying a space ship and fighting are actually integral to her survival in a sketchy space port. I think that Rey has more notable flaws than Luke had in the original triology.
Good point, and again especially relative to Luke and Anakin who were piloting savants.
EDIT: I do think it is funny that when I posted this I received a ton of defensive posts about the Originals and Prequels... I can't help but imaging them having the same face as in the OP's image.
Wait she was the worst person we have seen that has ever piloted the falcon. She crashes the falcon 5 times when we see her fly it and she flew it before. In no way was she an accelent pilot. Her big manuver she makes in it is listening to the force and shutting off the engine.
All force users are force users right out the gate. Luke and Anankin were even more skilled then her right out the gate.
what no she didn't. The first fight she gets her ass kicked. How do you think she got captured? Stop getting your star wars knowledge from bad faith youtubers.
Yep, and that bowcaster was explicitly shown earlier in the movie to pack enough power into its bolts to send stormtroopers flying when they got hit. I’d say it’s pretty reasonable to assume that at least added a bit of a handicap for Kylo in that fight
The biggest thing I disliked about this movie was Leia drifting in space like Star Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy. When this movie came out, I despised it. After a couple rewatches, it’s really is my favorite of the sequels and I really enjoyed that it tried to tell its own story.
On one hand the counter culture against Disney, women-lead projects, and nostalgia was in full swing.
Didn't help that pretty much everyone assumed that was your stance if you pointed out any sequel flaws. People were just as toxic as the ones they thought they were accusing.
This is why the viewpoint that its only 1 side causing hateful discussion is ridiculous. It doesn't matter if other people don't like the movie you did. You are purposefully oversimplifying the discussion with a strawman. This meme is so childish.
I think the problem was the untold turn around. It's sort of the same problem with Daenerys' change in GOT.
Luke was introduced to us in a chapter called a New Hope. Luke was hope personified. He hoped he could be good enough, strong enough. He hoped he could redeem his father. He hoped he could stop the emperor. He was the embodiment of hope and optimism for a better life and a better future.
Last we saw of him he was on top and the man we all hoped he would become. Then we hear he has disappeared. We worry he has been captured by some unknown assailant or think he is doing something important to help the galaxy. Instead, he has severe depression and is sitting on his ass on some backwater planet drinking blue milk that we aren't entirely certain he is getting with consent.
He was then the embodiment of nihilism and pessimism. What fucking happened? We really don't know. We don't really get the story. We just see a different man than the one we last saw.
I get people being upset that Luke self exiled. What I don't fully get is why people were shocked by it though. TFA establishes Luke had a Jedi order that fell because of Kylo, then he self exiled himself. There seems to be a contingent of fans who thought he was off like DBZ powerleveling or something silly and entirely un-Star Wars-y but outside of that I don't get what people expected given what TFA set up.
To list a number of reasons to hate this movie that aren’t even connected to its attachments to the rest of the franchise:
Rose Tico
Admiral Holdo
“Dead Heroes”
Only one thing in the Galaxy gets you this rich (said in a movie where the plot revolves around fuel)
Holdo Maneuver
Luke dying because he got tired
Leia “Mary Poppins” Organa
Broom Boy using the Force to telekinetically move a broom
“Now it was worth it” to free animals but not slaves, and to free them 100 yards away from the city
“This is how we win, Finn”
Rose Ticos sister kicking an entire ship to make that button fall
Finn and Benecio Del toro knocking people out with shoes
Benecio Del toros character
Benecio Del Toro saying the rebels are just as bad
Benecio Del toro just happening to be in the jail cell with main characters and having the exact skill set they need.
The bombers at the beginning being painfully slow and stupidly designed
Snoke being stupid
Chewbacca being nothing more than an uber driver
Leia was terrible in every scene
Luke hating on the Jedi
His nephew being stronger than the strongest Jedi ever randomly and destroying the entire Jedi order single handedly because he has an unexplained relationship with snoke
Rey and Kylo romance made no sense
No mention of Han
No lando
Your momma jokes
The Verizon can you hear me now jokes
General Hux being the least serious character ever
Captain phasma being the least serious character ever
The at st running scene being controlled by BB8
Wanna talk about retreading old movies, he made a worse version of the Hoth battle
Finn and Rey rarely being near each other despite having immense chemistry
Lightsaber choreography was atrocious (disappearing knife of course)
Weird dark side cave that does nothing
Implying that the Rebellion didn’t build or steal their own weapons
Somehow they get Leia back inside, from the vacuum of space
Not keeping Poe, one of the most respected leaders of the Resistance, informed on the plan
The plan itself was stupid, the Empire has sensors that magically don’t work long range or something?
Ships running out of fuel takes up most of the runtime
Horse races
Hyperspace tracking breaks Star Wars
“Luke not showing up is the most Jedi move ever” shut the hell up, they’re not pacifists
In 30 years Luke couldn’t train any Jedi good enough to survive
Lightsaber toss
Luke wearing full Jedi regalia and then taking them off in the next ten seconds, legitimately a spite move by RJ
The whole “Only one thing in the galaxy gets you this rich” thing, doesn’t even make any sense in the context of the story. In order for war to be profitable, it has to be backed by large military-industrial complexes.
The “Resistance” is a renegade faction of zealots who split from the New Republic. They don’t have the financial backing of a massive government, they probably just rely on donations from rich idealists like the Rebellion did. And the First Order, where do they even get their money? They were exiled to the unknown regions or something, right? Do they even have an economy? I don’t see how they could, they’re just a military body without any subjects. Even if they do have the ability to finance a war, don’t they produce their own war materiel anyways?
So I don’t really see how a war between these two broke factions could be profitable for many people.
Not to mention the whole side plot is just an incredibly surface-level r/im14andthisisdeep basic ahh “war is bad” grass is green take.
“One thing in the Galaxy gets you this rich” in the same Galaxy where Dooku used his planet’s wealth of Sacanium to fund both sides of an intergalactic war.
Not much of a counterpoint. Someone asks why, they answered why. You responded with a sarcastic version of - why did you answer the question the person asked?
Basically a litany of YT grifter bullet points for hating on this movie, to which all or most of have been disproven in some way or another? Yeah, that tracks.
May be a hot take but I enjoyed the sequel movies the least out of any SW content I've seen. It ranks lower for me than even the Acolyte which says something.
Because its shit. And the reasons it shit have been stated so many times, you could start reading them now during a long trip and still not be done by the time you get to a galaxy far, far away.
It was a movie where basically nothing happened and it felt like it didn’t know where it wanted to go.
It was a movie about two massive spaceships chasing each other at 5 MPH that for some reason can’t destroy each other. I’ve seen cars drive faster in school zones.
Then the solution is on Canto Bight. Wait, no it’s not. Nothing happens there. It’s a pointless side quest.
New characters that don’t add anything? Check.
Out of character moments from beloved legacy characters? Check.
Little-to-no character progression for the new characters? Check.
I honestly believe it’s worse than Rise of Skywalker.
Because it grabbed all of the setups from ep 7, took a fat shit on them and subverted expectations in the worst ways imaginable, completely ruining any hope for a coherent trilogy.
I cant believe the same guy who directed ep 8 also wrote and directed Knives out
As someone who ADORES the Knives Out movies and Poker Face, Rian Johnson owes the Star Wars franchise a restraining order. Credit where credit is due, the Last Jedi is a gorgeous looking film and the idea of anyone can be a Jedi should be the standard for most fictional power systems going forward. That being said TLJ is not reinventing the wheel with its plot IT IS BEATING A DEAD HORSE IN HELL. Now, off the top of my head I can't quite name all the times I've seen the trope of the young optimistic hero and the master who's become world weary but I recognize it enough to roll my eyes when I saw this film. You know whats subverting expectations? A goddamn demon man with a double lightsaber! Hell, even Luke turning to the dark side would have been an interesting parallel to TESB and could use some ideas in the original Episode 6 script! And being predictable is not bad as long as it's interesting! Some one coulda guessed "oh maybe Kylo turns good and Rey turns evil" but that coulda been fun considering the OT was a rise story and PT was a fall story. FFS I predicted Sora as the last Smash Character and that was cool AF! And I'm not one of those "Anti Woke" MFS no I want radical progress and peace for everyone sentient who's not a hateful asshole believe you me but I'm sick of being associated with them by Sequel Glazers WHO APPARENTLY WANT A DEATH STAR IN EVERY GODDAMN MOVIE!!! FUCK!!!!
this is the man that was prepared to let his father kill him just to prove a point, just to prove that he's not hateful, or vengeful, he's not the kind of guy to try to kill someone for what they MIGHT do.
then he gets ONE vision and becomes instantly as flawed as anakin skywalker.
and it's probably the most rushed and shitty version of "causing the bad future to come true" i've ever seen
anakin MIGHT have done what luke did, luke would not have tried to slime HIS OWN NEPHEW.
his flaws were his naivety, not being a psychopath.
also, the movie is just not good on it's own either.
Luke Skywalker, a character who is defined by his optimism and hope.
The same Luke who sensed the conflict and saw the good in his evil father, the same father that was okay with the destruction of a planet.
The studio wanted us the audience to believe that this character is the same person who decided that because he sensed that his nephew would be tempted by the dark side, was considering offing his nephew for a moment.
It destroys canon because Ryan wanted to do his own movie regardless of the films around it. And then Rise of Skywalker failed as a result of symptom from it.
It wasted potential of characters
The issue is Rian Johnson treated this movie as a blank canvas sandbox to do whatever he wanted with.
But this is STAR WARS. This isn’t just a big brand, it’s a piece of American film history. You cannot just use Icons of American history as a fuckin sandbox for your own shit, at the very least not in the mainline films.
Because it was the start of the tug of war between creatives with different visions and styles that made sure the trilogy would never have a consistent theme. Everyone who praises it for breaking away from the 'boring' themes of TFA is a person who is praising it for turning the trilogy into 3 separate stories that happen to take place in the same universe rather then being 3 parts of a single story.
However, this isn't Rian Johnson's fault. Its the fault of whatever idiot at Disney first came up with the idea to voluntarily and intentionally set a course that involved giving each movie in the trilogy to a different creative who had complete free rein and control over their own movie with no obligation to try and imitate the kind of themes established by the movie/movies that came before it in the trilogy. I think they were trying to imitate the OT trilogy having different directors for each movie while forgetting that Lucas was still there the whole time providing an overriding vision and style that the other crew members had to adjust and adhere to when doing their work.
Posting about a movie you enjoyed eight years after it came out is normal. Rage posting about a movie you didn’t like eight years after it came out is deranged. That’s what the haters don’t seem to get on here. They go to a sub about the sequels to make sure no one can ever post about liking The Last Jedi. They having been doing this for nearly a decade. Deranged!
Its and old debate. For me: Fin is just comdeic relief, his charakter was erased beyond screaming Rey. Holdo acting like a plant and demanding unquestioned obidience and it turns out...she was not a spy, after how she was acting!? Weird space bomber, when the much cheaper and much better y wing existed? Its not that I hate big bomber but y are they onehit and explode all nearby friends on hit? Then the whole cantobait thing. Ts too much to go into now but it was written so god awful. On crait, Fin could have had a food charakter ende dying for the resistance, but Rose a' "save what u love" comes in. Exposing the whole resistance to the bigvass death Ray. Defying her own Statement cuz Fin was bout off himself to save everyone. I dont mind Luke being old and bitter but atremting to murder Ben after refusing to ever kill Vader is just BS. Heroes need weakness to be interesting. But the weakness shoudnt be a axharaktwr assasination. One more thing, the Holdo Hyperspsce Ram... simply lore and logic breaking. It's just 1000 little and big writing desicions that amke the whole not work for me
Because Bob Iger demanded a movie every 2 years and Rian had nowhere near enough time to write the script.
Compare the dialogue in TLJ to any of the Knives Out movies and it's night and day how much better his dialogue is when he has time to write multiple drafts.
Ngl, upon opening release, when he faced down all those AT-AT's and was unscathed, I wanted that to be real. After waiting 20+ years to see Luke again, I really did want to see God tier Luke. The projection feat was still nice, but after seeing luke and statr wars as a 5 year old and having to wait to see him again when I was about 30 and getting this, it was a bit disappointing in the moment
Not really a great movie. If anything, it was trying something different, and it can be respected for at least that much, even if it fell flat or straight up went against the mythos of its own franchise. 9 is indeed the worst tho
I still like to say that 7 went safe and opened all doors possible, 8 shut them all down, and 9 tried to go through the wall.
In my opinion, they did. Of the sequel trilogy, TLJ is my favorite. I don’t particularly love any of those three, but where TFA was a rehash of ANH, TLJ took the main story beats of ESB and subverted them. I fully expected it to be a retelling of ESB just like the previous one, but it changed it up.
There are a few fair criticisms. Most of the crap that the haters come out with is either misinformation about the film, things they treat as errors that the film goes out of its way to correct, things that make sense in the context of prior films if someone cares to use media literacy or comprehension while they watch something instead of half-ignoring it while playing on the phone, or are things that they didn’t like [subjective flaws] rather than major issues of the movie itself [objective faults].
The funniest part of this to me is that Rose's line sounds moronic there, but it actually perfectly encapsulates the character arc... of a character that isn't present in that scene.
"Not fighting what we hate... but saving what we love" is exactly the lesson that Poe is supposed to be learning. Disobeying Leia's orders, ruining Holdo's plan, leading the pointless speeder attack - all of Poes failures in the movie were instances where he rejected any course of action other than "attack the enemy", even when it cost lives for no advantage. The lesson he was supposed to learn from Luke's sacrifice is that it doesn't matter if you kill the bad guy so long as you save the good guys.
However, the writing is so bad that most defenders of the movie think he was right to order those suicide attacks and that Holdo is the real villain of the story.
we saw the sequels as adults hoping to gain the same hype the OT and prequels had in our childhoods but as we grow older it's harder for us to get excited about things and we set that very high expectation that's impossible to meet. star wars didn't change, we changed.
You know what really went wrong? Force Awakens wasn't a complete film and ended on a cliffhanger moment that required the second one to start immediately after the first. Every trilogy that has succeeded has a first film that could stand on its own. TFA can't, and it is the main problem with the trilogy. Rise of Skywalker spent half the movie shitting on TLJ instead of having the conviction to finish the trilogy that was 2/3rds done. People hated Empire when ti came out, ROTJ fulfilled all of its promises.
And subverting expectations is a phrase that came out around the same time because of the Game of Thrones clowns, and everybody uses it like Peter Griffin uses "shallow and pedantic." Johnson never said it, people that do have mediocre media literacy skills.
Listen, I despise the chuds with an agenda but im not going to pretend this was a good movie and the reasons people give have been grounded into the dirty. Lets just move on.
Brb lemme replace that meme with “fans” hating on other fans for not liking a movie they like and ask “why are critics so hated?” Totally not rage bait
Also all Ryan can do is subvert expectations, so when fans start expecting the logical conclusion of previous events, he "subverts" them anyways so he can pretend he's smarter than the fanbase, which results in a bad movie.
Explain to me the narrative importance of the whole Rose and Finn Kanto Bite to First Order ship Infiltration arc. What did they do? How did they contribute to the overall plot? That was a complete waste of time and took up at least a 3rd of the movies run time.
Thanks for confirming that you flaired this correctly!
Not even hating on TLJ but this image pretending that “Heroes can have flaws” is some novel concept in the franchise and is the reason why it’s disliked is so stupid.
As if Han Solo isn’t the most flawed hero already in the OT, or how Luke had constant flaws like his father that he had to learn to overcome, or how the ENTIRE prequel series is about how the galaxy’s greatest heroes had such massive flaws it lead to the rise of the empire and the fall of their greatest student etc etc.
It also completely misunderstood what people were complaining about. Like you said the theme of heroes having flaws is present in damn near every single character throughout the series. People were upset that the flaws in some characters, especially Luke’s, was straight up character regression. Having Luke somehow fumble the new Jedi order is one thing, having him do that because he runs into the same conundrum he had seen and overcome before just to succumb to those problems is another.
Wasn't the main complaint that Rey wasn't flawed at all?
Should’ve specified, everything up to the sequels is what I meant.
Aha, okey. Thanks for clarifying
Yea as you can probably tell I’m not gonna use the sequels as an example of good character writing 😂
😅😅😅
Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy is still my head cannon.
Kyle Katarn would've absolutely WRECKED Kylo Ren. No contest.
Hey, that’s not a bad head cannon at all
crazy how if you pick the darkside ending to that game luke and kyle katarn dont give up being jedis :D
Having it so he doesn't mourn the death of his beast friend, doesn't come to the aid of his family in need, he doesn't care that his family is in trouble and needs his help, and that he...he gives up on him. It's the exact opposite of everything we know about Luke Skywalker.
Luke - there is darkness in my father - I can save him!!
Also Luke - there is darkness in Han and Leia’s kid - better kill him in his sleep!
It’s a cop-out excuse. “You just wanted Luke to be an impossibly perfect hero in shining armor, and that’s the only reason you don’t like TLJ.” It’s dismissing all attempt at discussion over the movie, by putting up a strawman argument. They’re disinterested in hearing how you would rather have seen Luke portrayed, so they tell you what you think instead, because it’s easier to argue against that point than anything you really want to say.
Can we not, with this? How many times has this debate stirred up the exact same talking points, over and over again?
It's coming up on a decade lmao
Jesus Christ 😭
WW2 was shorter than the fandom war this caused 😭
Edit: this thread proves my point YOU GUYS JUST CANT HELP YOURSELVES
this fandom war is longer than the actual clone wars
Didn't the clone wars only last like 3-4 years or so?
3
Closer to 4: Starts in 22BBY making that year 1 21 BBY is Year 2 20 BBY is Year 3 And ends late into 19 BBY, Year 4
Think it’s slightly over 3 and a half years total
Can we all agree that it was shit and tanked the main movie franchise forever and just move on?
It was the best movie of the sequel trilogy
Nah, TFA was better than that dumpster fire. Sure TFA was a complete rehash of ANH, but at least it created rather than destroyed. Rian Johnson's hatred for JJ ruined any good that might have came out of the sequels.
“Sure it was a total copy and paste, but at least it created new things.”
Well, which is it?
Also, what did it create, other than a Luke that wasn’t helping when The Empire 2.0 took over and destroyed the New Republic?
Yeah, im done talking about this fucking movie. It will be 10 years old in less then 2 years. Let's move on already.
God damn, people moved on from Sonic 06 faster than this.
Its a karma-farming
botclanka reposting this for easy upvotesWow, I just checked the profile and the bio is literally "Professional Karma farming bot" lol
People are still making video essays about The Phantom Menace, so the discourse will probably never end tbh
Fr. This shits as old as tt2 vs ow trend.
On an unrelated note, my ball kinda ache now and idk why. Google hasn't been helpful as always.
What is tt2?
I assume tf2 vs ow (overwatch)
Oh ok. TF2. Only have 900 hours a noob (I wish I was kidding
900?
I have 3000 and I still suck
Team Tortress 2
Team fortress 2, the original overwatch
Go check for epididymitis brother
I'm tired, boss
Well maybe if mods took a stance and banned this kind of bigotry where someone's opening lines are literally insulting anyone who dares criticise the movie as if they have nothing but hate and no real reason to hate it.
This is literal bigotry, textbook almost. Yet it is allowed because...?
Free farming for karma points
Are you saying we should let the debate die? Perhaps block it if we have to?
Point 1
Rose was a useless pointless character.
Phasma is a useless pointless character.
Finns story on the gambling planet is a useless pointless b plot. It didn't contribute to the story at all. They needed a code breaker so they went to some planet where they didn't find the code breaker but decided somebody else was good enough but he just betrayed them. Just dumb.
Have rose be the code breaker and have finn and her have their story be espionage on snoke's ship where they can have a cat and mouse game with Phasma; Finns main nemesis (that he barely interacts with).
Point 2
Holdo is unlikable and unnecessary. Her entire role would have been cooler if it was just admiral Ackbar. People respect Ackbar. Seeing a story go deeper into his character and seeing him mentor Po would have been more interesting.
Then at the end it's Ackbar who sacrifices himself for everyone. He could be heading towards snoke's ship; The first order realizes their ship has been sabotaged by Rose, The brilliant and capable codebreaker, they can't maneuver. Ackbar smiles "it's a trap" and then detonates the ship's fusion reactor to cause a massive explosion that doesn't break the world by having hyperspace do dumb shit.
Yes I'm saying the movies needed more shameless fan service. Fight me. There would have been audible cheers in movie theaters across America and if you think that's a bad thing you're dumb.
What we got instead was a new character nobody knew anything about, that wasn't likeable, that nobody cared about, making a sacrifice that evoked no emotion. They had emotional capital with Akbar and they spent it on and unceremonious moment of shock at his death instead of the greatest moment of the series.
Point 3
I'm going to rewrite the flashback with Ben's origin.
Instead of having Luke stand over Ben because he had visions of Ben becoming evil and he's going to contemplate killing an innocent child that's his nephew....
Instead have Ben stand over Luke about to kill him because snoke convinced him. Luke wakes up and they have a badass lightsaber fight because THESE MOVIES DID EVERYHING IN THEIR POWER TO AVOID LIGHTSABER FIGHTS, ITS THE DUMBEST SHIT EVER.
Luke wins and NOW he stands over Ben about to make a killing blow. But then he appeals to Ben to reject the dark side and "we can help you." Ben runs off.
Then Ben comes back and kills all Luke's other padawans. Now Luke can be a bitter old man because he believed in the good in people like he's supposed to, but it bit him in the ass.
This takes Luke to the place he needs to be in these movies but shows that he still was the character we last saw him as until an event made him rethink his world view. You can make him a sad bitter old man, but write a story that earns it.
Point 3
NOT ENOUGH LIGHTSABER FIGHTING. They had a chance for a future where lightsaber users had been repopulated and they could have more lightsaber duels. They chose to have them all be dead.
WHERE ARE THE KNIGHTS OF REN? Weren't they supposed to be Ben's disciples that use lightsabers? I feel like if they wanted to include their gambling planet where warlords spend their money then maybe they could have done something where the resistance tries to run to that planet thinking it'll be a safe house for them but they get sold out and then they have to escape the knights of Ren.
The entire movie is a slow motion chasing through space. Put the main contingency somewhere grounded where they can interact directly with the enemy force.
You had this cool elite troop of lightsaber users and just completely forgot about them in the second movie. Dumb.
Othee complaints with the sequels
Now When that system is destroyed at the end, it's Reys home and not an abstract planet we never saw.
And we got to see Star wars slums which is a different side of Star wars that hasn't been in any movie. That's the right way to separate from the older movies. Expand instead of just be different for no reason.
They made all the conflict with Ben be him and Rey, but he's Leia's son. She doesn't interact with him at all. That's an interesting relationship to explore but they do nothing with it.
Maybe when you show us the slums on hosnian prime you can show recruiting for the extremist resistance that's upset that the new Republic isn't providing the economic security of the empire. Foreshadow the conflict and show how regular people are being impacted.
Conclusion
I am a big star wars fan and I have still never seen rise of Skywalker. It's clear to me that these movies have no respect for the 30 years I spent consuming star wars media. The last jedi felt like it was actually contemptuous toward the hardcore fans.
Why would I watch movies by people who think I'm a loser nerd for wanting movies to respect my nostalgia?
They had no plan for these movies and it showed. Brian Johnson had no respect for Starwars and it showed.
They were going to put no effort in they should have just done the fucking thrawn trilogy
Each of these movies made less money than the last at the same time that marvel was building to climax and making more every movie.
Now the Starwars franchise is floundering and it's cultural relavance has never been lower. I'm not the only person who held my wallet for the third movie.
They are ok movies, but they are terrible Starwars movies.
Final word
For as much maligned as the prequels are, the first one did make the most, but the 3rd one made more than the second.
Clone wars is not a very good movie. Even if you could say Last Jedi is a "better movie" than clone wars in a vacuum, clearly clone wars at least left off in a place that made audiences care about the conclusion.
Clone Wars is a bad movie, but a great Star wars movie. I'll still go back and watch that movie because it's Star wars. The Last Jedi is not good Star wars.
The Last Jedi was so bad it left them with no direction for the 3rd. Thats what it's job was. Make us want to watch the next movie. It failed
Trying to think of one last way to put this
The prequel trilogy had technically poorly made movies (acting, script dialogue), but it's good storytelling. It's good world building.
The sequel trilogy had technically well made movies. but it's bad storytelling. It's bad world building
"Somehow, Palpatine has returned"
I rest my case
Just want to say I would love to watch the movies with your recommended changes and I think you are spot on.
I won’t hash out all the details already covered above, but the TLJ also felt the most ridiculously Disney with Snoke’s guards looking like power rangers (but points for not being easily defeated at least), and the nail in the coffin with the random stable boy causally using the force to grab a broomstick like he is Mary Poppins’ long lost son.
The Last Jedi also started pretty much right after the first which was a terrible idea as it allowed for no off screen character growth or interesting plot development. Could've skipped grumpy Luke and started the movie with them already weeks into training with Luke reminiscing or keeping something hidden from Ray.
It was clear that having one director hand the series to another was a bad idea. A number of set up plot elements were completely ignored.
Imo Rian Johnson watched Mad Max Fury Road (released May 2015 to The Last Jedis December 2017) and wanted something similar leading to a very boring space chase which the first movie already kinda had when it came to the protagonists running around all the time with little downtime.
The Disney sequels are all rehashes of the originals if you think about it, but pale imitations. Just a massive waste of creativity because Disney these days loves remakes pretty much.
It’s the only movie in the entire mainline series that doesn’t start with a time-skip.
I agree except for Mad Max Fury Road.
That movie is a masterpiece 🤌
I'm thinking of something like Luke having a vision, but instead of Ben becoming evil it's Snoke trying to consume Ben with darkness and he sees the familiar face (aka the guy who somehow returned) from Snoke. He pulled out his lightsaber as a protection reflex, but Ben read it the wrong way, all thanks to the careful manipulation from Snoke. This would not only fix Luke's character regression, but also show a bigger theme the movie taps in but never fully explored --- that force is more than combat, making Luke's force projection more powerful. This would also explain Luke's self exile more as a move to search for ancient Jedi techniques, a well intentioned move that inadvertently constrained his mindset until Yoda burned down the texts and reminded him that learning from mistakes is through practice.
I remember getting out of TFA thinking "they really need to do a lot of flashbacks to when Ben was a student, showing him as a good person and how he fell to make me care and understand him, and at all want him to be potentially redeemed." So I was flabbergasted when they didn't do that, I felt that was pretty crucial to show. Instead we got "murder hut in the night" in the night scene, which doesn't count and actively hurt the story.
I've always argued, that the b-plot should have been replaced wholesale with "there is a mole on the ship and Po and Finn must find them". Po and Finn had the best chemistry in the whole damned sequel series, it is criminal that they separated them. And there being a mole on the ship would explain why Holdo (or I agree should be Ackbar) won't tell anyone the plan.
Yes. The thing that made Holdo so unlikable and unsympathetic is that she had no reason to not tell everyone the plan (not misogyny as many like to suggest)
A mole on the ship would have been a good fix.
To me the last Jedi has always been a movie which had potential to be a perfectly good Star Wars movie with relatively minor (story wise) changes. As opposed to Rise of Skywalker which is just irredeemable.
I can mostly agree with this. It's like they just said good enough to every idea as soon as they had it so they could make the movie and get it out to audiences as quickly as possible without putting any real thought into what they were doing.
It's just sloppy
Incredible analysis and suggestions. I wanted you to know that you are not alone. I've been a massive starwars fan since before I can even remember. To this day I haven't seen the rise of skywalker and never will.
Ep8 is not only the worst Star Wars movie ever made but it's in the conversation for worst big budget movie ever made.
Beause it sucks ass?
this is discussed ad nauseam already so i will give you the cliff notes: disney scrapped the entire expanded universe, which had some really great lore (and some stinkers, sure), but they had no idea what the fuck to do with the story and it shows in this trilogy, but most of all in the second movie. in Ryan Johnson's quest to subvert the story he disrespected foundational elements of established characters (it wasn't just "flaws", that's disingenuous), and he threw out what the first movie built, making an incoherent mess.
He didn’t throw out what the first movie built.
They literally blew up the First Order base. And it was established that Luke ran away and went into hiding, something we know Luke wouldn’t do. Rey was also shown to be a strong force user even though she has no training. Additionally, the Knights of Ren never showed up in the first movie, despite their being promotional images with them.
If anything, all the problems with this trilogy started with JJ Abram’s movie. It’s just that Rian got all the blame early on.
I blame Disney for creating a trilogy and doing absolutely nothing to ensure it had a cohesive story in any way, shape or form. They let three different directors tell independent stories, expecting it to somehow fit together, and then they fire the last film’s directors shortly before the release date and had JJ swoop back in to fix it, still under the crunch of the theatrical release date.
Like, with all the money invested in it, you'd hope they'd have the basic story worked out ahead of time. You let each director put their own spin on things, and whatnot; but the end goal should be worked out. Instead, they just made it up as they went.
The issues started with JJ, I agree, his movie is a mess, a bad rehash of A New Hope to milk nostalgia, without any cohesion in the plot.
But I think most of the issues could be fixed or patched. TLJ failed to do so, it tried to be it's own thing and did not build practically anything for the finalle, it make it even harder even.
For example, the issue with Rey's powers and absent Luke, in the original script of JJ, ep 7 was supposed to end with Luke having floating boulders around, showing strong connection with the force, but RJ did not like that and they change it.
You could argue that with that finally, the one JJ intended, maybe the explanation of Rey's abilities were that Luke was interfering from a distance. He could be ashamed, or whatever, but still left a weak link to try to help and use a strong force sensitive individual, like Rey, to try to help. Or whatever other thing that could build something up instead of make a reset every movie.
It was NOT JOHNSON'S JOB to retcon TFA into being the movie you wanted it to be. That would be immensely disrespectful to JJ Abrams. He took what he was given, and came up with plausible solutions to those conundrums that let him give as many characters as possible interesting character arcs to explore.
There a lot of pedantic criticisms I see levied against Last Jedi, but this is, by and far, the worst argument I have somehow continuously heard since it's release.
It built nothing to set up the finale?? Seriously?? Rey and Kylo - who kills Snoke and becomes the leader of the First Order - have a literal force connection. Leia, 3P0, R2 and Chewie are the only remaining legacy characters, leaving the leads of this new trilogy time to shine. Both sides are at their lowest point, but each side is now more determined than ever and dug into their goals. Finn has found something to fight for instead of running away from the fight. Poe has become a more mature leader instead of a fighter, learning that saving lives is more important than throwing them away to achieve a goal. Rey has finally chosen her path, free of the past.
This movie, more than any other Star Wars movie, felt like it could have gone in so many directions. It set up so many ways for a finale to coast easily into even an average ending. I was genuinely expecting the war machine to be the final fight, meaning the casino would be at least paid off by taking down the ones profiting from perpetual war.
Snoke, Luke, and Captain Phasma are dead. The Resistance is effectively destroyed. Rey's parents aren't actually important. Finding Luke was pointless. Kylo's obsession with Vader is dropped.
That's a lot of stuff to throw out, regardless of the quality of it. And as far as i remember Rian really didn't add anything productive or significant to the universe. His movie genuinely feels more like a standalone or conclusion to the story rather than the 2nd movie in this IP's thrid trilogy.
Don’t forget the entire casino run that one of the main characters spent 45 minutes of screen time doing that accomplished nothing except introducing a character who says “both sides are bad” that we never see again
Lmao that casino part… absolute hot garbage.
Gotta have Rose take Finn on an extended field trip so she can explain to the literal child soldier that war is bad.
Snoke dying = Kylo Ren now being the supreme leader of the First Order.
Luke dying = he went out in the most Jedi way possible and tales of what he did reached other parts of the galaxy (as seen in the scene right before credits where the kid is retelling what happened). This installs hope in the resistance after nobody responded to their distress call on Crait.
Phasma dying = she was a side villain to begin with and her main connection to the heroes was Finn. Finn finally getting that weight off his shoulders allows his character to go anywhere from there.
Rey’s parents not being important is fine. It reinforces the idea that anybody can be force sensitive instead of running with JJ Abrams’ idea of it being hereditary.
Finding Luke wasn’t pointless. It gave us more insight into Kylo Ren’s origin and set up the confrontation between them in the end beautifully.
Kylo’s obsessed with Vader was used to motivate him early in the movie. Do you want him moping around for nearly 3 hours praying to a shrine of him or something?
TBF, if anything Phasma should have stayed dead and not come back in TLJ at all.
Also, nothing in TFA suggests Rey had important parents (or even that the family she was seeking were her parents), TLJ making it seem like she cared whether or not they were important bothered me much more than making them no ones.
Snoke was used as a stepping stone for Kylo to become the new big bad, which is far more interesting than Palpatine+Vader yet again. He's now almost certainly irredeemable, but can be stopped, just like almost all the real life neo-Nazis who are obvious parallels to the character.
Luke is one with the Force after a literally masterful use of it to save the Resistance, teach people what a Jedi can be, and have one last 'in-person' meeting with his sister, who would otherwise have died. He very specifically taunts Kylo with an affirmation that Luke will still be around to teach/convert/mock his former student as the Ep9 director chooses. (Also it wasn't "pointless" to find him, since he saved the Resistance, Rey got some crucial teaching and those old Jedi books, and he tweaked Kylo's nose so hard the little punk's going to crash out even harder as Supreme Leader.)
We never saw Phasma's body, so she could totally have come back one last time, but even if she didn't, cool, that just means Finn can rise above a petty squabble with his old boss to become a better leader for his generation.
The Resistance being almost destroyed is one of the ways TLJ stands apart from ESB, which I thought was a good thing? We don't want it to be a simple retread, right? If they have a fully functional fleet at the end of the second movie of the trilogy, that's just what happened before. "Nobody's brave enough to come help and Poe's disrespect for the chain of command had consequences" are interesting challenges to overcome, not story-enders. Ep9 could easily have begun four years later, with a revitalised Resistance inspiring people to subvert the incompetent First Order as Kylo continues to bleed support from all but his most homicidal fans.
Rey's parents being unimportant is also good, because Star Wars being the Skywalker Dynasty is fucking boring and small. It was already a stretch to make Anakin the centerpiece of the entire prequel trilogy, saying that nobody is ever allowed to get away from that family makes the galaxy tiny and dull instead of full of mysteries and intrigue like it was when Luke first entered that cantina in Mos Eisley. People with shitty and/or no parents can be important too.
Kylo has grown as a character, which is good. I shouldn't have to explain why "angry, gullible moron with a fetish for his Nazi grandad's old SS uniform" is kind of a tough villain to maintain interest in for a whole trilogy.
And of course you don't think Johnson added anything, you've dismissed the entire movie. Rey's revitalised, levelled up, and learned a lot (including that it would probably be a fool's errand to try to save Kylo, but a good director could have turned that around in a more interesting way). Poe's learned that being a hotheaded hotshot isn't good enough to win a war by himself, the value of every life under his command, and that the Resistance needs to actually start winning hearts and minds instead of just coasting on the support of everyone who already wants to fight. Finn's learned to be more than just a deserter with the hots for Rey, and has become a true rebel with a healthy distrust for the elites they'll need to deal with to get the materiel for a renewed Resistance. Hux is just the right kind of stick-in-the-mud to try to subvert and usurp Kylo as a mundane villain, and Kylo's terrible at trying to command the First Order but has the power to try. Johnson added a new hero, at least one new villain, a better understanding of the Jedi than any prequel or TFA before it, and also porgs.
Han Solo (and therefore TFA) establishes the possibility that Luke went to find the first Jedi temple to learn, something that someone shaken by the failings in his own teachings may very well do.
Instead, turns out Luke decided to just cut himself off from the Force entirely and wait to die. Why he decided he needed to put the effort in to do this at the first Jedi temple and not any other random backwater planet is never established.
And setting up mysteries is much easier than giving them satisfying pay offs. Episode IX tried to retroactively give the mystery boxes satisfying answers, and imo, it made the trilogy much worse. Snoke worked better when he was an obstacle to be overcome by Kylo. Rey's arc wasn't about finding her parents; it was having her own identity and self-worth.
This is a great shortened explanation.
What did it throw out from the first movie? This gets said a lot online but I don't really see much of anything that gets thrown out, or even subverted. The only example that holds some water is killing Snoke, but that also follows pretty cleanly if you take Adam Driver at his word that JJ told him the plan was to have Kylo become more and more evil in each movie and do a reverse Vader. If that's the arc you want to tell, then having Kylo become the leader of the First Order in the second movie makes a ton of sense.
Nothing else the movie does seems even remotely like it throws away anything from TFA. Or disrespects foundational elements of established characters for that matter, at least nothing that wasn't set up in TFA (Luke's self exile)
edit: would love if anyone downvoting could provide a single example. Just one.
Luke Skywalker, looked at the scariest sonofabitch in the galaxy and said "There's still good in him, I can save him".
Then a few years later he saw his nephew have a bad dark side dream and decided that lightsaber murder was the only way to deal with it.
Make that make sense, 'cause neither Rian nor JJ did.
Okay, first off Luke didn’t decide or try to murder Ben, you just still don’t understand this scene, which after 10 years can only be willful ignorance.
But Luke’s exile and the fall of his temple is all set up in TFA not TLJ, my point is TLJ does nothing to subvert what was set up in TFA
He drew his saber and rose his hand before he hesitated. He almost did it, which he shouldn’t have gotten that far in the first place. He sent himself into exile. We don’t know what his motivation for that was yet. He could either be doing something productive like meditating in the force nexus to figure out what went wrong that night (snoke/palps), or being a coward and giving up.
Johnson ‘subverted expectations’ by taking the latter option, and twisted the knife that the valiant knight wizard we knew didn’t just give up, he’s not even considering the call to action. That’s kinda his whole character in the OT. He even cut himself off from his mentors and his father.
It didn't throw anything out
You could argue the tease that Rey was some sort of legacy character? But even then, that being proven wrong by the villain, it could have been easy to go back on, which they did anyway, even though doubling down on it would have been a better character choice imo
I take that back. They retconned where the scar was on Kylo's face, and brought back Phasma to actually do something before being killed off again. She's a squandered character, sure, but at least TLJ did literally anything with her besides just exist.
Rian Johnson gave a Luke that was not very different from what Lucas himself intended 💀 “disrespected foundational elements of established characters” 🧐 sure.
Don’t tell them the truth, they’ll get madder
I remember the sequel lover saying that they were gonna age well, just as the Prequels did. But the sequels lack so many things and are such a mess to get to that.....
I personally dislike the sequels, and TLJ, a lot, because they are the worst written of them all. Each trilogy seems to have more resources, but they dedicate none to the writing area.
For example, in TLJ you got a 2D chase in SPACE, that is set as a "no escape" scenario where the heroes cannot flee. This leads to a subquest in which the heroes are tasked with finding a way to escape, and to start it, the first step is to get on a ship and......ESCAPE, without addressing it in the movie in any moment.
The movie also makes it pretty hard to make up your own script to find an explanation on why they cannot really escape because is the first film to feature timestamps for hyperspace jumps, and they seem to be pretty dam fast, so coming and going is a possibility. You even have ships, like the Falcon (a high profile ship easy to track according to ep 7) coming and going.
That “Sequel Lover” is kinda stupid from the outset, Phantom Menace had day one critics but it was overwhelmingly positive. I’d say its approval went down with age and didn’t normalize for years.
Because they gave the old heroes new flaws galore and tried to give the new guys none
"heroes can have flaws as long as they aren't currently profitable with kids aged 6-12."
lol that is an amazing way to put it
what? the new heroes were flawed that's kind of a major part.
Yea I think poe trying the bombing run on his own and failing and fin and the other girl going to the gambling planet to to try and fix things themselves and getting captured kind of paint a "were stronger when were unified and pulling together and problems can't be fixed with individual bursts of grand gestures" theme? but I only saw the movies once so Idk
Didn't he take out the dreadnaught though? Wouldn't really call that failing.
Yea they got the dreadnaught but they lost forces they couldn't really afford to lose which is why they had the shot of Leia looking at the ships lost and why Leia then stripped poes rank.
Sure the resistance landed a punch on the empire but if they broke their hand to do it was it worth it?
I think the goal of the resistance at this point of the movie was just to run and survive and not engage in any fights
Rey was flawed?
Absolutely she was flawed
How? She beat Kylo in their very first fight when she had no training at all. She was an excellent pilot, fighter, and force user right out the gate with very little growth available
Some of Rey's flaws are that she is impatient, naive, and struggles with insecurity related to abandonment.
Being good a flying a space ship and fighting are actually integral to her survival in a sketchy space port. I think that Rey has more notable flaws than Luke had in the original triology.
even then she wasn't a good plilot she crashes the falcon like 5 or 6 times in TFA
Good point, and again especially relative to Luke and Anakin who were piloting savants.
EDIT: I do think it is funny that when I posted this I received a ton of defensive posts about the Originals and Prequels... I can't help but imaging them having the same face as in the OP's image.
Wait she was the worst person we have seen that has ever piloted the falcon. She crashes the falcon 5 times when we see her fly it and she flew it before. In no way was she an accelent pilot. Her big manuver she makes in it is listening to the force and shutting off the engine.
All force users are force users right out the gate. Luke and Anankin were even more skilled then her right out the gate.
what no she didn't. The first fight she gets her ass kicked. How do you think she got captured? Stop getting your star wars knowledge from bad faith youtubers.
A Kylo that has just been blasted in the abdomen by a bowcaster
Yep, and that bowcaster was explicitly shown earlier in the movie to pack enough power into its bolts to send stormtroopers flying when they got hit. I’d say it’s pretty reasonable to assume that at least added a bit of a handicap for Kylo in that fight
They don’t give the old heroes new flaws. The flaw you see in the Sequels are still present in the OT.
Google it.
The biggest thing I disliked about this movie was Leia drifting in space like Star Lord from Guardians of the Galaxy. When this movie came out, I despised it. After a couple rewatches, it’s really is my favorite of the sequels and I really enjoyed that it tried to tell its own story.
I think Rise of Skywalker painted this movie in a better light for me. Like it was much more preferable than whatever was happening there.
Yeah, you can quibble with the execution, but they at lest tried for something new and interesting.
On one hand the counter culture against Disney, women-lead projects, and nostalgia was in full swing.
On the other hand, the movie just wasn't good.
Didn't help that pretty much everyone assumed that was your stance if you pointed out any sequel flaws. People were just as toxic as the ones they thought they were accusing.
It's still insane to me the best Star Wars trilogy of all time also came out during the Sequels era with Andor.
When you establish storylines, you should execute them. "YES AND..." writing. You don't just veer off and do some random shit.
Do people still say the sequels are anything more than trash?
This is why the viewpoint that its only 1 side causing hateful discussion is ridiculous. It doesn't matter if other people don't like the movie you did. You are purposefully oversimplifying the discussion with a strawman. This meme is so childish.
I think a lot of people were upset about how Luke's story played out, which I can understand, though I don't hate it.
I'm sure there a various criticisms ranging from "Valid" to "Oh my god, get a life!"
However since Mark has said he's finished playing the character holding onto the hate strikes me as pointless.
In 20 years or so, once the generation that grew up watching the sequels are adults there will be a shift, just like what happened with the prequels.
Nobody hates Star Wars as much as Star Wars fans.
I think the problem was the untold turn around. It's sort of the same problem with Daenerys' change in GOT.
Luke was introduced to us in a chapter called a New Hope. Luke was hope personified. He hoped he could be good enough, strong enough. He hoped he could redeem his father. He hoped he could stop the emperor. He was the embodiment of hope and optimism for a better life and a better future.
Last we saw of him he was on top and the man we all hoped he would become. Then we hear he has disappeared. We worry he has been captured by some unknown assailant or think he is doing something important to help the galaxy. Instead, he has severe depression and is sitting on his ass on some backwater planet drinking blue milk that we aren't entirely certain he is getting with consent.
He was then the embodiment of nihilism and pessimism. What fucking happened? We really don't know. We don't really get the story. We just see a different man than the one we last saw.
I get people being upset that Luke self exiled. What I don't fully get is why people were shocked by it though. TFA establishes Luke had a Jedi order that fell because of Kylo, then he self exiled himself. There seems to be a contingent of fans who thought he was off like DBZ powerleveling or something silly and entirely un-Star Wars-y but outside of that I don't get what people expected given what TFA set up.
To list a number of reasons to hate this movie that aren’t even connected to its attachments to the rest of the franchise:
The whole “Only one thing in the galaxy gets you this rich” thing, doesn’t even make any sense in the context of the story. In order for war to be profitable, it has to be backed by large military-industrial complexes.
The “Resistance” is a renegade faction of zealots who split from the New Republic. They don’t have the financial backing of a massive government, they probably just rely on donations from rich idealists like the Rebellion did. And the First Order, where do they even get their money? They were exiled to the unknown regions or something, right? Do they even have an economy? I don’t see how they could, they’re just a military body without any subjects. Even if they do have the ability to finance a war, don’t they produce their own war materiel anyways?
So I don’t really see how a war between these two broke factions could be profitable for many people.
Not to mention the whole side plot is just an incredibly surface-level r/im14andthisisdeep basic ahh “war is bad” grass is green take.
“One thing in the Galaxy gets you this rich” in the same Galaxy where Dooku used his planet’s wealth of Sacanium to fund both sides of an intergalactic war.
We get it, war is bad.
Plus, what, did the First Order buy Starkiller Base?!
[deleted]
i bet he touches more grass than you
Not much of a counterpoint. Someone asks why, they answered why. You responded with a sarcastic version of - why did you answer the question the person asked?
Why are you in the thread then?
Except for a couple of points here and there I agree with this list for the most part. Well done you
Basically a litany of YT grifter bullet points for hating on this movie, to which all or most of have been disproven in some way or another? Yeah, that tracks.
Yawning Try harder, child.
exactly everyone assumes the movie is hated just because of luke when no, the entire movie is bad
For all its flaws, I still liked the movie. More Star Wars is good.
May be a hot take but I enjoyed the sequel movies the least out of any SW content I've seen. It ranks lower for me than even the Acolyte which says something.
I slid on an iced up road on my commute to work in a terrible snow storm that was hotter than this take.
It'd be cool if there were actual memes on r/SequelMemes instead of the endless cope like this crap
Because its shit. And the reasons it shit have been stated so many times, you could start reading them now during a long trip and still not be done by the time you get to a galaxy far, far away.
It was a movie where basically nothing happened and it felt like it didn’t know where it wanted to go.
It was a movie about two massive spaceships chasing each other at 5 MPH that for some reason can’t destroy each other. I’ve seen cars drive faster in school zones.
Then the solution is on Canto Bight. Wait, no it’s not. Nothing happens there. It’s a pointless side quest.
New characters that don’t add anything? Check.
Out of character moments from beloved legacy characters? Check.
Little-to-no character progression for the new characters? Check.
I honestly believe it’s worse than Rise of Skywalker.
cuz in the words of a great nerd it's "asssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss"
Because it grabbed all of the setups from ep 7, took a fat shit on them and subverted expectations in the worst ways imaginable, completely ruining any hope for a coherent trilogy.
I cant believe the same guy who directed ep 8 also wrote and directed Knives out
The character assassination
I cried of sadness for how they butchered my favourite franchise.
Because they had lasers. Arc. In. Space.
Also spaceships skidding to a stop when they were out of fuel.
Also the casino side quest of who cares.
Also, the girl stopping someone from sacrificing themselves to save many more.
Just... Omg just awful.
Ur a bit late, just watch this; The Last Jedi: A Complete Cinematic Failure
https://youtu.be/5ECwhB21Pnk?si=dV7d-K-vPdEcTTkrThe
Look Disney dropped the ball. Let’s just enjoy the ashes of this dumpster fire and move on.
“Heroes can have flaws”
Creates main hero with zero flaws lmao.
As someone who ADORES the Knives Out movies and Poker Face, Rian Johnson owes the Star Wars franchise a restraining order. Credit where credit is due, the Last Jedi is a gorgeous looking film and the idea of anyone can be a Jedi should be the standard for most fictional power systems going forward. That being said TLJ is not reinventing the wheel with its plot IT IS BEATING A DEAD HORSE IN HELL. Now, off the top of my head I can't quite name all the times I've seen the trope of the young optimistic hero and the master who's become world weary but I recognize it enough to roll my eyes when I saw this film. You know whats subverting expectations? A goddamn demon man with a double lightsaber! Hell, even Luke turning to the dark side would have been an interesting parallel to TESB and could use some ideas in the original Episode 6 script! And being predictable is not bad as long as it's interesting! Some one coulda guessed "oh maybe Kylo turns good and Rey turns evil" but that coulda been fun considering the OT was a rise story and PT was a fall story. FFS I predicted Sora as the last Smash Character and that was cool AF! And I'm not one of those "Anti Woke" MFS no I want radical progress and peace for everyone sentient who's not a hateful asshole believe you me but I'm sick of being associated with them by Sequel Glazers WHO APPARENTLY WANT A DEATH STAR IN EVERY GODDAMN MOVIE!!! FUCK!!!!
Because it’s a very bad movie. And a much worse Star Wars movie. It’s been said countless times now.
because it's NOT luke skywalker.
this is the man that was prepared to let his father kill him just to prove a point, just to prove that he's not hateful, or vengeful, he's not the kind of guy to try to kill someone for what they MIGHT do.
then he gets ONE vision and becomes instantly as flawed as anakin skywalker.
and it's probably the most rushed and shitty version of "causing the bad future to come true" i've ever seen
anakin MIGHT have done what luke did, luke would not have tried to slime HIS OWN NEPHEW.
his flaws were his naivety, not being a psychopath.
also, the movie is just not good on it's own either.
Its just trash
Ragebait and Karma farm used to be believable... Yet, it clearly worked for you OP, good job I guess
It’s an honest betrayal of the characters.
For example Luke Skywalker.
Luke Skywalker, a character who is defined by his optimism and hope.
The same Luke who sensed the conflict and saw the good in his evil father, the same father that was okay with the destruction of a planet.
The studio wanted us the audience to believe that this character is the same person who decided that because he sensed that his nephew would be tempted by the dark side, was considering offing his nephew for a moment.
It destroys canon because Ryan wanted to do his own movie regardless of the films around it. And then Rise of Skywalker failed as a result of symptom from it. It wasted potential of characters
The issue is Rian Johnson treated this movie as a blank canvas sandbox to do whatever he wanted with.
But this is STAR WARS. This isn’t just a big brand, it’s a piece of American film history. You cannot just use Icons of American history as a fuckin sandbox for your own shit, at the very least not in the mainline films.
Because it was the start of the tug of war between creatives with different visions and styles that made sure the trilogy would never have a consistent theme. Everyone who praises it for breaking away from the 'boring' themes of TFA is a person who is praising it for turning the trilogy into 3 separate stories that happen to take place in the same universe rather then being 3 parts of a single story.
However, this isn't Rian Johnson's fault. Its the fault of whatever idiot at Disney first came up with the idea to voluntarily and intentionally set a course that involved giving each movie in the trilogy to a different creative who had complete free rein and control over their own movie with no obligation to try and imitate the kind of themes established by the movie/movies that came before it in the trilogy. I think they were trying to imitate the OT trilogy having different directors for each movie while forgetting that Lucas was still there the whole time providing an overriding vision and style that the other crew members had to adjust and adhere to when doing their work.
Characters can have flaws, it just doesn’t make any sense when the flaws contradict the core aspects of the character
Original trilogy;
never give in to anger or despair
good can prevail over evil
trust yourself and give it your all
Prequel trilogy
Keep a free and open mind.
Pride cometh before the fall
Boring exposition and dialogue.
Sequel trilogy;
wouldn't it be cool if....
Remember Chewbacca? Remember C3P0?
Everyone sucks actually.
Posting about a movie you enjoyed eight years after it came out is normal. Rage posting about a movie you didn’t like eight years after it came out is deranged. That’s what the haters don’t seem to get on here. They go to a sub about the sequels to make sure no one can ever post about liking The Last Jedi. They having been doing this for nearly a decade. Deranged!
Right?
Its and old debate. For me: Fin is just comdeic relief, his charakter was erased beyond screaming Rey. Holdo acting like a plant and demanding unquestioned obidience and it turns out...she was not a spy, after how she was acting!? Weird space bomber, when the much cheaper and much better y wing existed? Its not that I hate big bomber but y are they onehit and explode all nearby friends on hit? Then the whole cantobait thing. Ts too much to go into now but it was written so god awful. On crait, Fin could have had a food charakter ende dying for the resistance, but Rose a' "save what u love" comes in. Exposing the whole resistance to the bigvass death Ray. Defying her own Statement cuz Fin was bout off himself to save everyone. I dont mind Luke being old and bitter but atremting to murder Ben after refusing to ever kill Vader is just BS. Heroes need weakness to be interesting. But the weakness shoudnt be a axharaktwr assasination. One more thing, the Holdo Hyperspsce Ram... simply lore and logic breaking. It's just 1000 little and big writing desicions that amke the whole not work for me
Because Bob Iger demanded a movie every 2 years and Rian had nowhere near enough time to write the script.
Compare the dialogue in TLJ to any of the Knives Out movies and it's night and day how much better his dialogue is when he has time to write multiple drafts.
Oh? Because the movie was hot garbage
People have a fanfiction idea of what Luke should be like, and because he doesn't suit the fanfiction they hated it
Yes, this is a part of it, not the whole thing, but a big piece.
Ngl, upon opening release, when he faced down all those AT-AT's and was unscathed, I wanted that to be real. After waiting 20+ years to see Luke again, I really did want to see God tier Luke. The projection feat was still nice, but after seeing luke and statr wars as a 5 year old and having to wait to see him again when I was about 30 and getting this, it was a bit disappointing in the moment
Is the Thrawn trilogy “fan fiction?” Just asking since Thrawn is canon.
The trilogy itself is fanfiction, yes. Thrawn has been made canon based partially on that story, but the trilogy is not canon.
It was a great movie. 9 is the garbage one
THIS. ⬆️
Not really a great movie. If anything, it was trying something different, and it can be respected for at least that much, even if it fell flat or straight up went against the mythos of its own franchise. 9 is indeed the worst tho
I still like to say that 7 went safe and opened all doors possible, 8 shut them all down, and 9 tried to go through the wall.
Nah, it was great. Shame you didn't see it that way
Because media literacy is dead, mostly.
They should’ve made a good movie
They did make a good movie. Media literacy is dead though.
In my opinion, they did. Of the sequel trilogy, TLJ is my favorite. I don’t particularly love any of those three, but where TFA was a rehash of ANH, TLJ took the main story beats of ESB and subverted them. I fully expected it to be a retelling of ESB just like the previous one, but it changed it up.
They did.
It is good cinema, you’re right.
EXACTLY!
The inability of TLJ's fans to know or understand legitimate criticism of the movie is hackneyed at this point.
Same goes for TLJ's detractors. Their inability to know or understand the legitimate positives of TLJ is also hackneyed.
It's been almost a decade. There are entire subreditts and YT channels/videos devoted to both of these positions.
If you have to post a meme to ask why TLJ created a schism in the fanbase, you don't care enough about the answer to look into it yourself.
There are a few fair criticisms. Most of the crap that the haters come out with is either misinformation about the film, things they treat as errors that the film goes out of its way to correct, things that make sense in the context of prior films if someone cares to use media literacy or comprehension while they watch something instead of half-ignoring it while playing on the phone, or are things that they didn’t like [subjective flaws] rather than major issues of the movie itself [objective faults].
Yes, the haters fail to see any positives in the movie, you got that point right.
Glad you read at least one line.
I hate TLJ, but there are some positives. It's very pretty, for example.
I indeed fucking hate that dogshit movie and hope it dies.
What they did (or in this case didn't do) with Finn imo
All OP posts here is “why does everyone hate TLJ” threads and is a Mauler enjoyer, everyone move along
Because Finn was about to heroically sacrifice himself and give his character the slightest bit of significance only to be thwarted.
The funniest part of this to me is that Rose's line sounds moronic there, but it actually perfectly encapsulates the character arc... of a character that isn't present in that scene.
"Not fighting what we hate... but saving what we love" is exactly the lesson that Poe is supposed to be learning. Disobeying Leia's orders, ruining Holdo's plan, leading the pointless speeder attack - all of Poes failures in the movie were instances where he rejected any course of action other than "attack the enemy", even when it cost lives for no advantage. The lesson he was supposed to learn from Luke's sacrifice is that it doesn't matter if you kill the bad guy so long as you save the good guys.
However, the writing is so bad that most defenders of the movie think he was right to order those suicide attacks and that Holdo is the real villain of the story.
we saw the sequels as adults hoping to gain the same hype the OT and prequels had in our childhoods but as we grow older it's harder for us to get excited about things and we set that very high expectation that's impossible to meet. star wars didn't change, we changed.
+
It had lots of stupid things and only a few good things.
Because it is terrible
Because it's shit.
Poor scripting, poor pacing, poor characterisation. People actually expect more than flashing lights and CGI fights
Not s***.
You know what really went wrong? Force Awakens wasn't a complete film and ended on a cliffhanger moment that required the second one to start immediately after the first. Every trilogy that has succeeded has a first film that could stand on its own. TFA can't, and it is the main problem with the trilogy. Rise of Skywalker spent half the movie shitting on TLJ instead of having the conviction to finish the trilogy that was 2/3rds done. People hated Empire when ti came out, ROTJ fulfilled all of its promises.
And subverting expectations is a phrase that came out around the same time because of the Game of Thrones clowns, and everybody uses it like Peter Griffin uses "shallow and pedantic." Johnson never said it, people that do have mediocre media literacy skills.
always liked six , favorite is still three and nine is now third place
Because of how it treated Luke. Blasphemy.
because it turned luke into a grumpy hermit instead of the hero we needed
At this point I hate the movies purely for the fact that this question keeps getting asked every day.
Listen, I despise the chuds with an agenda but im not going to pretend this was a good movie and the reasons people give have been grounded into the dirty. Lets just move on.
Brb lemme replace that meme with “fans” hating on other fans for not liking a movie they like and ask “why are critics so hated?” Totally not rage bait
Better than the other 2
Because the flaws do not match the characters.
Also all Ryan can do is subvert expectations, so when fans start expecting the logical conclusion of previous events, he "subverts" them anyways so he can pretend he's smarter than the fanbase, which results in a bad movie.
Cause it isn't very good.
People just can't wrap their heads around a 70 year old man being a 70 year old man.
Ive seen this post before! Its a classic!
Explain to me the narrative importance of the whole Rose and Finn Kanto Bite to First Order ship Infiltration arc. What did they do? How did they contribute to the overall plot? That was a complete waste of time and took up at least a 3rd of the movies run time.