Star Wars: The Franchise

[Mutagen]

Where I have a lot of dissonance with TLJ is that it is hailed as this progressive masterpiece, but in my opinion it was actually shockingly regressive. It went out of its way to sympathize with the white male villain Kylo Ren, even trying to pass off his turn to darkness as Luke's fault. I'm not one of the people who is screaming because Luke wasn't perfect, BUT I found it a very cheap attempt at drumming up sympathy for Kylo Ren. I also have kind of a problem with the fact that Domhnall Gleeson's character was treated as wacky comic relief despite the fact that he was seen ordering genocide in the previous movie. Like, I really don't mean to be the angry nerd who nitpicks tiny inconsistencies from one movie to the next, but that's a HUGE shift. The villains were set up as clear Nazi/neo-Nazi analogues in The Force Awakens and TLJ sort of took that and said "no! They're actually really sympathetic/funny!"

This is before you get into the fact that Finn -- the heroic black male lead of the previous movie -- was reduced to comic relief and an irrelevant side story. Meanwhile Poe -- major Latino supporting character -- was slapped and shot until he learned to sit down, shut up and obey. Even Rose and Holdo, allegedly "feminist" characters, exist in the story mainly to teach male characters a lesson and then get killed or incapacitated. I am all for showing heroic characters with flaws and failures, but frankly I think even the prequels did a more thoughtful job of charting Anakin Skywalker's fall to the dark side (for all their other flaws). If the failures in TLJ had been better thought out and hadn't defaulted to such regressive attitudes I'd give it a lot more credit. But I really think TLJ wasn't as deep or daring as Rian thought it was.

All that being said, the abuse against the actors is insane, and people need to keep it in perspective that this was a movie about space fights.

[Ladybug]

My main plot beef with TLJ was that Poe distrusted his (female) superiors and planned a mutiny against them, and when it unraveled and Leia discovered his scheme, she just gave him a little scolding and a pat on the head. Put his ass in the brig, Leia, he planned a mutiny. He went from one of my favorite characters in TFA to a whiny man-baby.

[dragonflie]

That, and Kelly Marie Tran's characters main plat point/relevance is trruuueee looovveee... Except, no. She just met this guy, she runs around on adventures with him, sure (why exactly- still not sure- that whole side plot was so bad it ruined the movie for me)- but then she risks her own life to save his- all for love! What?! (especially since the character of Finn seems to not really care much for her at all) So progressive :/

This movie was just bad. A lot of people hate it for valid reasons.

It's too bad, because yes, Kelly Marie Tran seemed so so stoked to be in this movie. I am so sad for her harassment. But- it doesn't make me like the movie any more.

[lea1977]

I tried to watch the movie again on Netflix when I realized that a. I just didn't like it and b. I was watching out of habit.

[kostgard]

Episode 9 Teaser Trailer

Title? The Rise of Skywalker. No idea what that means.

I was sort of hoping Rey would be something of a "grey" Jedi who is good, but in touch with all sides of the force. If her outfit in this one is any indication, she's just "light side" only.

Not sure how I feel about it - some things in the teaser look cool. The new droid looks like a megaphone slapped on a wheel. And seriously - he's back? Why? I hope it's actually a minor thing.

[smitten]

I think the trailer is awesome. I'm very excited.

[chiqui]

I finally saw The Last Jedi. It was entertaining if you didn't think too much. (I didn't see VII.) Morally, it's weird. Kind of pre-determined Calvinism. Luke tried to kill Ben Solo because he has too much dark force in him? Maybe I missed something, but how was this dark force manifesting? Ben was killing kittens or something?

I'm on the fence about Adam Driver. He's effective at... something, but for the life of me I can't figure it out. Sometimes he's grotesque. Sometimes he's vulnerable. Often I found it hard to look at him. He didn't seem to belong in the movie, he seemed like he was acting in something way way more highbrow.

Rose Tico kicked ass, and so did General Leia. I liked the Porgs.

I was disappointed at the end where there were just fifty or so rebels left. What can they hope to accomplish?

Also, for the bad guys -- I forgot what they were calling themselves now -- running rack and ruin over the Empire -- life was going on surprisingly normally in most places. The bad guys didn't seem all that bad save for the fact they were in power, had inflated opinions of themselves, and had no sense of humor.

Anyway a fun popcorn movie.

[kostgard]

I saw The Rise of Skywalker, and...it was fine. Non-spoilery review, It felt a little cobbled together and took a little time to get going (I was checking my watch regularly for the first 20-30 minutes before I could get into it). The scenes/dialogue with Leia were very, very clearly cobbled together, but I get that they had to work with what they had.

They basically pretend that The Last Jedi didn’t happen, to the point where Rose gets seriously side-lined. Greg Grunberg got more screen time (and he’s just JJ Abrams’ friend who pops up in all his films). It also results in another story turn that I felt was completely unnecessary. C-3PO was actually used well for comedy purposes, and he didn’t get annoying. The new megaphone droid was cuter than I thought he’d be. Rey is also so pro-droid in this film that I’m half convinced it is in there to counter the droid-hating Mandalorian. Adam Driver gives a very good performance. Probably better than what was needed in a Star Wars film. One character promises to tell another character something, and then never does. The audience gets to figure out that the news is, but it is basically unresolved, which bugged. There are a few surprise cameos in this - some big, some small, all welcome.

And I think it’s weird that there are people in the Star Wars universe who never take off their helmets and no one thinks that’s weird.

[suekel]

I saw it this morning and enjoyed it. I was expecting worse based on how all the hardcore fans are losing their shit over it. It was equally touching and action packed. No complaints here.

[kostgard]

Dec 23, 2019 18:41:12 GMT -4 suekel said:

I saw it this morning and enjoyed it. I was expecting worse based on how all the hardcore fans are losing their shit over it. It was equally touching and action packed. No complaints here.

Despite my issues with it, the movie was fine and I too am completely puzzled by the massive negative response. It certainly has it's faults, I think it played it safe in a lot of ways when it could have done something interesting and as a result they hardly went out with a bang, but...it was fine. I wasn't mad that I paid money to see it.

I mean, honestly, Game of Thrones really showed you how to eff up the ending of popular saga. They completely drove that into the ditch and retroactively ruined the show for me (and while I liked the show, I was not a super-fan and didn't think about it much when it wasn't airing). I don't feel that way at all about this movie. I'm just like, "Yeah, that was fine. I'm not in love, but I'm okay with it."

Unlike GoT, I felt like they tried. Maybe they tried too hard to please too many people and ended up not pleasing most of them. But I didn't feel like JJ Abrams just threw this out there so he could finish his contract up and move on to something else. It felt like the people involved still cared, even if they didn't completely stick the landing. They tried.