Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi

quiet_riot said:
You're right, Star Wars is great. Go Disney.
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Your argument is essentially

In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is a magic xylophone, or something? Ha ha, boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
 
I should say first that I used to be an uber fan - read the books and the comics, played the games and adored the original films. Loved Rogue One but thought Force Awakens was a bit cack. Prequels were mostly bad and they dulled my enthusiasm for Star Wars but I think even The Phantom Menace was better than The Last Jedi. In fact, it was so bad that it made me like the Force Awakens after re-watching it!

I'm no point going over all that was bad with it because it's been done to death now, but I will say to all those people deriding the film's critics by saying "It's just a film" or "It's fantasy, it doesn't need to make sense" that I think you're missing their point. Even fantasy has to have rules, consistency and to make sense - it's the staple of any good writing and story telling. By all means decide what those rules are and make some up, but once you have done that you have to stick to them. The plot holes and nonsense that people have criticised aren't part-and-parcel of the fantasy genre; they are symptoms of crap writers. Taking Star Wars out of it, so to speak (i.e. removing expectations and emotional attachments), leaves you with just bland film that resembles the worst of the Marvel franchise.

On the plus side, Kylo Ren is certainly one of the best characters in the whole franchise - interesting and well-written (probably the only well-written character in the sequels). You can believe how and why he turned to the dark side and why he does the things he does (unlike the contrived way Anakin's story-arch was handled); in fact, I'd say he is what Anakin should've been. It helps that the actor is very good, too, but then a plant pot would probably steal scenes from Daisy Ridley.
 
Damocles said:
Your argument is essentially

In episode 2F09, when Itchy plays Scratchy's skeleton like a xylophone, he strikes the same rib in succession, yet he produces two clearly different tones. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is a magic xylophone, or something? Ha ha, boy, I really hope somebody got fired for that blunder.
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Likewise, the issue I mentioned isn't a tiny episode of the Clone Wars is it? Stop being pedantic to try and make a point. The hyperspace thing is one of the main plot lines of one of the major Star Wars movies, which subsequently causes issues with essentially any SW Film before it that has a major space battle. Granted, it isn't a major issue, but it is one nonetheless.
 
che_don_john said:
I'm no point going over all that was bad with it because it's been done to death now, but I will say to all those people deriding the film's critics by saying "It's just a film" or "It's fantasy, it doesn't need to make sense" that I think you're missing their point. Even fantasy has to have rules, consistency and to make sense - it's the staple of any good writing and story telling. By all means decide what those rules are and make some up, but once you have done that you have to stick to them. The plot holes and nonsense that people have criticised aren't part-and-parcel of the fantasy genre; they are symptoms of crap writers.
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Alex-MCFC said:
So basically, your retort for what many in the community have raised is "nobody cares." Wanting to love The Last Jedi isn't a reason to blindly dismiss any criticism.
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Alex-MCFC said:
Likewise, the issue I mentioned isn't a tiny episode of the Clone Wars is it? Stop being pedantic to try and make a point. The hyperspace thing is one of the main plot lines of one of the major Star Wars movies, which subsequently causes issues with essentially any SW Film before it that has a major space battle. Granted, it isn't a major issue, but it is one nonetheless.
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No you've both missed the point.

The idea that the film is badly written because it ignored some ridiculously obscure fact regarding spaceship engine design and hyperspace works is exactly the problem with Star Wars. If you are willing to go with canon to that degree then it's pointless making any more films as there will always be some reference material or logic that contradicts it.

Star Wars is a mess. Ruined by overly pedantic fanboys and the authors that have selfishly gone about serving them, to create a huge interconnected web of half-established, pre-established and not established. It's deified characters, decisions and logic as possessing ultimate truth when nobody actually said that. It's Greedo shot first thing all over again.

Here's the truth - the narrative and how it serves the thematic elements of the film come before all of the obscure canon and that's the exact way it should be.

Let me expose you to a little secret that you may not know; hyperspace is bollocks. If you look at Star Trek you know exactly how warp engines work. They use a matter-antimatter reaction to create a bubble of warped space which shrinks space and allows them to travel faster than light. In Star Wars, you press a button and literally that's it. Because it doesn't matter in Star Wars how hyperspace works. Because how it works is never ever the point. It doesn't need a technical diagram because it's a plot device to get characters from point A to point B.

Star Wars is cowboys in space, a fantasy drama with science fiction elements to it. Arguing over some mad mad tiny plot point regarding why a certain type of ship was capable of doing something to one ship but not capable of doing it to a totally different ship 30 years earlier because those ships are supposed to be equivalent or something is just a spectacularly large missing of the point and a useless conversation. The correct answer is the first one that I gave. The filmmakers didn't think about it or much more likely, did and thought that they don't care because it doesn't matter at all to the larger Universe. It's not the answer you want but it IS the answer.

Them ignoring the fanboy minutia ISN'T bad writing, it's them understanding that to 99% of people who watched the film they didn't notice or didn't care because they see that the film is about bigger things than that.
 
Damocles said:
Them ignoring the fanboy minutia ISN'T bad writing, it's them understanding that to 99% of people who watched the film they didn't notice or didn't care because they see that the film is about bigger things than that.
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I can't speak for others, but I certainly didn't allude to or was bound by any kind of fanboy minutia or subjective expectations; I deliberately didn't refer to anything specific because others have already done that very comprehensively.

Let me be more clear about where I think the sequels have employed bad writing and creativity independent of any kind of fantasy lore or fanboy expectations.

- Stormtrooper indoctrinated and trained from a very young age suddenly has a pang of conscience on his first mission, develops a sense of humour and clumsiness and quickly joins the resistance. Do you really think that character arc couldn't have been better-written?
- Dyed-in-the-wool First Order stalwart Captain Phasma agrees to turn down shields at gunpoint without so much as a struggle or fight. This is a woman whom we had earlier seen massacre a village in the name of the First Order; surely she'd rather die or be tortured than just go "yeah, sure, I'll turn off those shields because three of you guys told me to". Again, if the writers really needed to get to a point in the story where the shields were deactivated, is that the best they could come up with?
- Luke Skywalker sees a glimmer of good in Darth Vader and would rather die trying to bring it out of him (over the course of two movies!) than give up and join the Emporer. Years later an older and wiser Luke suspects a bit of darkness in his nephew and considers murdering him in his sleep, because the writers needed a way to explain why he became a hermit and why Ben Solo became Kylo Ren. Do you think that's good writing? Mark Hammill certainly didn't think so.
- Finn and Rose attempt to help the Resistance escape destruction (because it ran out of fuel...). They end up at some interstellar Monte Carlo where they fail to contact the person they were sent there to contact, only to be conveniently aided by a smart con man who appears out of thin air (deus ex machina) and screws them over just as we all knew he would. That entire subplot feels like an RPG side mission where nothing makes sense and has no impact on the actual story. It was long, dull and unnecessary. As George Orwell always said, if something could potentially be easily cut then it shouldn't be in there in the first place.

Four examples of bad writing that have nothing to do with fanboyism. They don't even have anything to do with Star Wars - you could replace 'Stormtrooper' with Franco soldier in the Spanish Civil War, Captain Phasma with Radovan Karadžić and so on, and you'd still have badly written subplots and character arcs. The context - Star Wars - is irrelevant and thus so is fanboyism.

Rogue One's plots and character developments made sense - using the same source materials and the same 'universe'...and with the same 'fanboys'.
 
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