#and Disney picked that up rather than just leaving the skywalkers and Jedi character development alone after the ot films endings

[gch1995]

I actually read a lot of really great Star Wars canon-divergent AUs and missing scene fanfics in which Anakin and Obi-Wan make amends with each other. I imagine they would have had to off screen for Anakin to be able to be on seemingly good terms by the end of ROTJ. I think it’s a pretty fitting theme in the line of the narrative for them to make up.

My problem is that George Lucas was too afraid to fully commit to portraying the Jedi Order as a well-meaning, but still seriously flawed organization that needed to really change for the better in a number of ways. If you ignore the sequels and other Disney Jedi/Sith content, then it’s easy to believe that Luke actually learned from his predecessors mistakes, and rebuilt a healthier and more balanced Jedi Order. If you just read the old EU, watch the OT films, and watch the prequels, then it’s easy to believe that the Jedi actually got to become the heroes they were often too afraid to be the first time around in the prequels when Luke’s father was growing up in it. That’s the logical direction Luke’s character seemed to be going in at the end of ROTJ from his background and character development.

Even then, though, there’s still the fact that Obi-Wan and Yoda never really get framed as wrong for deliberately deceiving, endangering, and manipulating Luke in order to use him as a weapon to kill his father “for the greater good” of the galaxy. I understand they believed they had pure intentions, but so did Anakin when he abused his power over Luke to try to lure him to the dark side to kill Palpatine and gain freedom to “rule the galaxy together” to “make it a better place.” I get that he was much scarier than Obi-Wan and Yoda in regards to his treatment of Luke and his friends in the OT films, but Anakin was still framed as wrong for using shitty and selfish methods that he knew were wrong in an attempt to secure freedom and power “for the greater good,” too. Luke didn’t grant him forgiveness until he could realize that he was being too cowardly and selfish to do the right things in the right ways for his son and admit he was wrong.

Obi-Wan and Yoda never really go through this sort of character development arc for growth in the OT films for their abuse of power over Luke. They never apologize, express remorse, or admit they were wrong to Luke. They never feel the need to make amends to him for mistreating him for their own ends.

George Lucas even verbally denied/retconned his own canon narrative on screen with a bullshit explanation to bend over backwards to try to absolve Yoda and Obi-Wan of their mistreatment of Luke in the OT films because he was so afraid of fully committing to making the old Jedi Order deeply flawed characters who needed to improve a lot.

Then, because Disney couldn’t keep their greedy and lazy hands off the franchise, they continued George Lucas’s exceedingly indecisive and lenient attitude in regards to the Jedi Order in the canon narrative that we saw shades of throughout the OT and PT films. Thus, the growth that Luke logically should have led the new Jedi Order with got undone.

In other words, I don’t mind fanfic stories of Anakin and Obi-Wan eventually making amends. Amends have to be made on both sides, though, not just Anakin’s and not just Obi-Wan’s. A full exploration of what went wrong on both their sides needs to be present, both characters need to be willing to fully admit they were wrong, eventually understand why they were wrong, and eventually grow from it in a positive way. Otherwise, a fanfic of them making amends doesn’t work for me.

I think what really irritates me is when people create a what if of au HC or fics to when Anakin is alive and Skywalker family lives happily but people make it so that Anakin spends most of his time with Pamde and the kids and almost no time with Obi as if he is still would resent Obi for what he did during the fall of the Jedi if people really portray Anakin like this then they really don't know him at all

[fulokis]

Thoughts on Wandavision

Spoilers duh.

I started this out as a boredom watch as in eh why not. I was not really invested until Evan Peters showed up. Evan Peters aka the guy who played quicksilver in the X-men fox universe. With DoFP being my favorite partially because of quicksilver. So naturally I became way more invested in the show, not only that but I became hyper-fixated on X-men as a result.

So marvel brings in this actor and all the fans of the X-men are like yeah duh that makes sense, especially considering Wanda is heavily involved with MoM, the movie about the freakin multiverse. So fans of X-men and doctor strange (of which I am both) become exited for the possibilities that this opens up. Excitement builds and as a result people end up watching more content on Disney+ whether it be the movies shows ect.

And then they go and say nope it’s not. And even if they do retcon it it’s still a really crappy thing to have done. And what do I mean, this is part of marvel trying to surprise fans through subverting expectations. And yes sometimes it’s nice, but other times you end up with a mess that leaves more questions than answers.

Take Endgame and Infinity war. Now I knew that Thanos was going to win in infinity war. It was a matter of how he would win. But part of my issue with infinity war is that it felt like it barely spent time exploring how the different characters would interact with each other because there were too many and it would have blocked the narrative from moving forward. Endgame had a similar issue but on top of that they were so focused on keeping everything locked up that it didn’t exactly feel like a cohesive movie. And as a result the character interactions and relationships fell quite short. Not only that but some of them made no sense, but taking a look at endgames flaws has happened enough.

So taking a look at wandavision I’m not upset that my therory is incorrect. I’m upset that one they literally did this to subvert expectations because they hate when their shows are predictable, and two people are rubbing it in our faces that we were wrong and we shouldn’t be upset because it was a theory. And what’s more is that they had an example of fans being correct and it was still surprising.

My mouth still dropped at the reveal that it was Agatha. I still was surprised even though I knew it was coming. I know a lot of people were. And I can say it was because of the fact that we got it right that we knew where it was going and it was executed in a way that still made it feel like a big reveal. So why then are they trying to surprise the fans with well it was Ralph duh haha got you.

Because for some reason marvel hates when people can predict something. Which makes me wonder why they went with the infinity war storyline and are seemingly going with the Skrull storyline if they don’t want fans to predict what’s happening? Why are they going with well known storylines from the comics if they don’t want anyone to guess what is happening? Especially if the fans know the storylines and end up becoming disappointed if you don’t include this one specific moment.

And this is an issue because it sets up fans to know how something will play out, then turning around to subvert expectations ending up with something that doesn’t quite make sense with the narrative they had set up and teased and the characters. It doesn’t work to take pre established stories and adapt them to the screen while trying to subvert expectations. You need to pick one or the other, you simply can not do both.

There’s a reason that people are so finicky when adaptations of books are brought to the screen. It’s because they enjoy those stories and they want to see it as close up on the screen as possible. They want to see how they imagine it. And yes it’s tricky because people imagine it many different ways, but with comics honestly you have a story board right there. And yes you will need to change certain things especially to fit in the budget and physics of real life. Not to mention erase some of the problematic social injustices found in the earlier comics.

And yes wandavision isn’t based on one comic story line. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have to be predictable. Take a look at some other examples that I can think of that either were predictable and good or subverted expectations in a positive way that didn’t confuse people.

Mandalorian: Luke Skywalker being brought in was a surprise. We knew that a Jedi might come, in fact it seemed quite likely that a Jedi would come to train Grogu. But the thing was we didn’t know who, we didn’t know if it would be Luke or another Jedi. Potentially it could have been one we hadn’t met, but we knew that one was coming and that still didn’t stop us from being surprised. And if it wasn’t Luke people wouldn’t have been mad because they left it ambiguous who the Jedi was until he was onscreen (unlike deliberately casting an actor that is known for a role then saying nope not him).

Mandalorian: This one is short but it’s a way to do both predictability and subverting expectations. The first episode of the second season was legitimately the plot from the 2003 game Knights of the Old Republic or Kotor for short. Fans of the game knew exactly how it would turn out, or at least how they would attempt to kill the dragon. They did do that, but unlike expected it didn’t work. So they tried a different tactic that paid off. As a kotor fan I expected this, I also expected the pearl at the end of the episode, but that didn’t stop me from enjoying it, and honestly I rather enjoyed it and it was fun. And I think most kotor fans would agree.

A series of Unfortunate Events: The Netflix show not the movie. In the books Olaf’s bench people get killed off, in the show they made it so that these people survive. I didn’t expect that, and it was good. The writers were still able to make something that fans of the book knew exactly what was going to happen and the general way that things were going to happen. But they adjusted things so that there were some surprises to viewers who read the books. And none of the changes were done specifically to subvert expectations they were done to enhance the story in certain ways. And they do even if they weren’t completely expected. And it still allows me to enjoy the show.

Kotor: yes I’m talking about the game and yes I’m still obsessed with it despite it being so old but also spoilers for it follow so skip if you don’t wish to know.

Kotor follows the story of a human being, they discover slowly that they were once feared across the galaxy known as the Sith Lord Darth Revan. Now can you figure out the twist through context clues absolutely. But it was not only revolutionary for the time but also knowing it still doesn’t take away the surprise feeling for a lot of players (I’m still surprised pikachu face no matter how many times I play or rewatch the cut scene).

There are many more examples but these are the ones off the top of my head.

I’m not angry at the fact that they were trying to make it surprising. I’m angry at the fact that marvel knowingly did this, and there’s no resolution at all. It’s a throwaway scene for a throwaway character played by a known actor who is known for his role as quicksilver. If it was someone else and they did this it would not be as upsetting. But the fact that marvel did this and knew exactly who they were casting to just mislead the fans is inexcusable. And maybe this isn’t the end of the storyline, but right now it is. 12 hours after the finale it absolutely seems like the end of the storyline. And that’s why people are upset because it was such a clear this is what is happening, then they develop it into just this dude. They led on it was quicksilver and we don’t even get to see the rest of the conversation that Monica has with him. We get no resolution whatsoever. And that’s what hurts the most, if they had explained hey Agatha did this and managed to somehow do X Y or Z to have this random person have powers and these memories. Now it would be cheep and people would still be upset but not as much with the incomplete explanation and the throwing it in there because they had to.

If they really wanted to subvert expectations they one shouldn’t have brought Evan Peters in to play a quicksilver (I hate saying this because I was so exited). Two shouldn’t have gone with anything to do with Agatha or even Mephisto. And a lot of people would probably wonder who they could have gone with and Tbh I don’t remember who I saw said it but Mojo would make sense. Or hell they could have brought in Evan Peters and an alternate version of Wanda who is causing this to happen and stir the pot. Either way the way they executed it was extremely poorly done and that’s why people are upset.

So please consider that for people this would have made a huge statement for. X-men fans are drawn to the X-men for many reasons. And I would say that some of those reasons are that they belong to a minority group and feel represented in the X-men. Me I’m LGBT+ and despite having grown up in a very progressive area, there are people I interact with where I don’t feel like I can be myself or even feel comfortable coming out to. And that’s why I personally am attached to the X-men. And I’ve seen other people say similar things.

For people the X-men and mutants aren’t just characters. They’re characters that marginalized groups can relate to. They’re characters that they can see themselves in. This goes much more deep than my fan theory wasn’t correct. It’s a combination of crappy writing and Marvel attempting to be surprising and the fact that they had the perfect opportunity to introduce a cast of characters that represent struggles of marginalized communities and recognize that yes the world isn’t just filled with hero’s that are cis straight abled men and women. And even if it was people from another universe it still was a step in the right direction.

So please if you’re fine with this and took the time to read this don’t make fun of the people who are quite upset with the developments of the episode. A lot of us are upset for a deeper reason and seeing people go “haha you’re wrong you idiots.” Makes this feel that much more upsetting.

[mithrilwren]

So, hmmm... I saw The Rise of Skywalker last night and... I have notes.

Nothing I say here is going to be super original, probably, but hey, I’m going to talk it out anyway. 

I walked out of that movie saying, again and again, that that script needed about 6 more rounds of polish. It is frankly baffling to me that a Hollywood movie, with so much money and so much time and so much investment thrown into it, could make it to filming on a script that disjointed. So many times, an avenue was proposed as the ‘only’ solution to the current problem, only for that to be unceremoniously dropped and for another avenue forward to miraculously appear. We never got any explanation for what Finn was going to tell Rey before they fell into the sand pit, despite it being built up multiple times as something significant. I’ve seen speculation that it was that he meant to tell her that he was Force-sensitive, but that particular plot thread was treated with so little fanfare by the rest of the script that I barely realized its implication until after the movie was done. Because of COURSE the fact that Finn is Force-sensitive is important - it means Rey isn’t the last Jedi! That’s huge! But the film makes no effort to re-contextualize the audience on that fact, because Finn and Rey never discuss it. They don’t even speak after the final battle. (I would love to see Folding Ideas do an editing breakdown of this movie, akin to the one he did for Suicide Squad, because it deserves a comprehensive, hour-long run-down of everything that went wrong on both a scene-by-scene and structural level.)

I saw a number of reviews that likened the script to fanfiction, which is... one of my least favourite forms of cheap criticism, because it nearly always betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of what fanfiction is, and what its specific flaws tend to be. Instead, the term is used as a synonym for ‘bad writing’, which is frustrating to say the least. Fanfiction, on the whole, tends to be highly character and relationship-centric. That can come with its own pitfalls, but it’s baffling to apply that label to this movie, which spends so much time jumping between action sequences and macguffins that we almost never have time to linger with any characters in a meaningful way, or to develop the relationships between them beyond single, unsupported lines about how much they mean to each other. The exception to that is, possibly, the relationship between Rey and Kylo - and I don’t mean relationship in terms of the highly-controversial ship (that’s another whole conversation that I have no interest in diving into) but just in terms of two characters having multiple interactions with each other that change them as people in some way. Even that relationship felt rushed, but it was more than most of the other characters got.

My main gripe about the ‘Rey Palpatine’ twist is not so much that I think it’s bad, inherently. There are interesting things they could have done with that idea, even it’s not the direction I personally would have chosen! My main issue - and again, this is not a hot take, this is just common sense - is that this was so clearly not something they were building up to in the other two films, and so it comes completely out of left field. I have to wonder what someone who’s only seen this new trilogy thought of this plot thread, because the movie doesn’t exactly take a lot of time to explain who Palpatine actually is? There’s a large degree of assumed knowledge from the audience, because in lieu build-up in the previous two movies, you need the lore of the previous movies to even begin to contextualize what’s happening. What does the moment where Rey uses lightning to destroy the shuttle mean to someone who never saw Luke being blasted to the teeth with the same? Where is the creeping horror that the original trilogy managed to build around this shadowy figure, pulling the strings in the background? Who is this dude, anyway?

I’m probably in the minority who (on paper, if not in actual viewing pleasure) liked The Last Jedi quite a bit. I think that its writing was the strongest of the three. It had the most interesting things to say, and while I might have enjoyed watching The Force Awakens more, I was more interested in thinking about The Last Jedi. The biggest problem with the Palpatine twist is, of course, that it throws out every salient point TLJ was trying to make, which just feels... petty? TLJ exists, it is part of the anthology, and to pretend that most of it never happened and blatantly contradict both its reveals and themes, even if you (yes, you, JJ Abrams) didn’t like them, deprives the story of any chance of a coherent or satisfying arc. And that frustrates me, not just as a viewer, but as a writer. Because if there’s one thing that the writers involved in this movie should have learned from fanfiction, is that it is possible can spin gold from what you’re given, even if its imperfect, and elevate what existed before through your own creativity. But there was no effort made to reframe the unpolished elements of TFA and TLJ into a coherent three-part story. Instead, they went the route of ignoring what they didn’t like, and cherry-picking in what they did. Totally fine if this was a standalone episode, but it’s not. It’s part of a trilogy, and by throwing out the second act, you’ve gutted the entire heart of the story. *shakes my head*

There were definitely parts of this movie that I enjoyed. Every time the main trio was on screen together, it was a joy. All three of them were giving their all, and it showed. I liked both of the new characters introduced! The other former Stormtrooper, whose name I can’t recall, was vivacious and bright and I lit up whenever she was on screen, and I desperately wished the movie had taken the time for Finn and her to discuss their shared pasts more, because there some much interesting there. As much as I’m aware that it was likely a cynical tactic on the part of Disney to no-homo Poe, I didn’t hate his interactions with his old flame(?) at all, mostly because the relationship was ambiguous enough between them that it was just playful and fun, rather than wholly contrived. I actually found the shared visions between Rey and Kylo some of the most engaging scenes in the film - just visually and as a concept, the whole idea of trading physical objects between the two spaces? Pretty cool! 

But overall, I came out of this movie feeling like the best thing I got were a lot of details that I’m excited to see people incorporate into trio fic, and not much else. This is a movie that begs you not to think too deeply, lest it all fall apart at the seams, and just enjoy the spectacle of it all. And for me, who tends to get distracted during flashy action sequences and choppy edits, that didn’t leave me with much to chew on, or reasons to see it again. 

(PS. Rose, they did you so dirty, and I’m so, so sorry.)

[c2ley]

u/benjamin7887 Wrote

With a heavy heart, I have to say, this was a bad movie I’ve been a huge Star Wars fan since I was seven years old. This series looms so large in my life, and unfortunately this gives it a lot of power to hurt me. The Phantom Menace was traumatizing to me at 11 years old in the theater opening night, and years of increasingly horrible digital additions to the original movies has made Star Wars an albatross of constant dissatisfaction hanging over me. But when The Force Awakens came out it redeemed everything, it wiped away all the distress from prequel trilogies and special editions and gave my childhood a beautiful nostalgic gift. Next year when Rogue One came out I was further impressed. Rogue One took the universe into uncharted territory and showed us that there was no limit to where the Star Wars series could go from here on out. My hopes were so high for The Last Jedi. This one was most important because my childhood hero, Luke Skywalker, was going to be an active character. Now after seeing it, I feel like I was just being built up over two years for an even harder fall. I couldn’t believe that critical reviews had been so positive. I thought I was missing something, I was worried that I’d be alone in my disappointment, which is worse because it would mean that everyone else was getting something I wasn’t. It was such a relief to look at audience ratings on rotten tomatoes and metacritic and here on reddit and see that others saw what I saw. So many people have similar criticisms to mine, and the defenders of it seem more to be in denial than to have actually liked it. I understand that too, at 11 years old I was in denial over Phantom Menace at first. When you’re so sure something is gonna be great it’s hard to process it’s failure right away. So I’m not someone who participates in online comments and stuff, it’s too hateful and the arguments never persuade anybody one way or the other, they just get people more entrenched in the opinions they already had, and more resentful of the other side. I’ve never posted on reddit before, I just like reading threads sometimes, but since this is Star Wars, and I have so much frustration over this franchise that has built up over twenty years, I need somewhere to get it out this time. I need to shout into the void about this. I don’t care if people hate on me, or if no one cares what I have to say, I just need to let it all out somewhere. So the first sign that something was wrong was when Poe was fucking with Hux, pretending he was on hold. It was kind of funny, the whole theater laughed, I laughed a bit too, but still something seemed wrong to me. That kind of humor would fit perfectly in the upcoming Han Solo movie, but in a main series movie it was out of character right off the bat. It was Disney thinking that their formula for the Marvel movies could be applied to anything. They don’t realize that different series’ have different tones. I think this mentality also speaks to why the critical reviews for this movie have been so good. Critics don’t actually understand or appreciate the fandom for these movies, just like with the formulaic Marvel movies. Marvel movies get great reviews from critics but at the end of the year when critics make their Years-Best lists, how many Marvel movies actually make those lists? Basically none. Movie critics don’t understand these franchises but they don’t want to be completely out of touch with the masses, so they’ll give a superhero movie a fair grade as long as it fits a certain formula. They’re doing the same with The Last Jedi. They are not fans, they review Star Wars movies and Superhero movies the same way they review children’s movies. They look down on them and only give them good reviews if they’re formulaic enough. The space fight was over the top. One thing I loved about The Force Awakens was that they used practical effects so much, the worst parts of the movie were when heavy digital effects were used. That method was largely abandoned in this movie, the opening fight was just a bunch of digital pixels moving around, just like in the prequel trilogy. Then came the moment I had been waiting for for two years, hell, more than two years, 23 years I’ve been waiting to see the further story of Luke Skywalker. The ending of The Force Awakens was such a glorious moment. I can’t put into words how exciting it was to see the icon of my childhood again, and Mr. Abrams knew exactly how to build up that anticipation to the perfect payoff. Of course I’ve seen Mark Hamill plenty of places over the years, I’m a big fan of his voice work as well, but seeing him in character as Luke Skywalker again is a totally different story. Nothing compares to that. Well, the follow-up to that huge wondrous moment when Rey holds his lightsaber out to him is that he dismissively tosses it over his shoulder and storms off.... and my heart sunk. It’s like all the glory from that final moment of the last movie was in that lightsaber and he tossed it away like it was nothing. I liked what I had seen in the trailers of Luke saying the Jedi must die, but that’s a sad thing, Luke should be sad about it, instead he’s a jerk about it. It’s out of character for him. He should understand all the hope that the rebellion have put into finding him and be sympathetic at least. This is out of character for Luke. This is not my Luke Skywalker. Of course apologists are excusing this by saying that he’s changed over the years. Yea, obviously, but that doesn’t make it good. He’s changed for the worse. And it gets worse. We see a snapshot of his day to day activities in his solitude, and it’s weird as hell. Why did we need to see him milking an alien and immediately drinking it? On the plus side, the Porgs that everyone had been freaking out about since one appeared in the trailer are not so bad. When I saw the plush toys appearing everywhere ahead of the release I was worried it would be a pointless cutesy character thrown in to sell merchandise. They weren’t overdone though, they were utilized nicely, it makes sense that we would see some creatures native to the island. They may still just be merchandise bait but that’s not always a bad thing, only when it’s relentlessly shoved in our faces for no logical reason, and I didn’t feel they were. So kudos on being subtle enough with the cutesy critters. Intercut with these scenes of Luke and Rey’s lack of chemistry are scenes of Poe and Leia squandering the chemistry they had from the previous film, and Finn failing to have a spark of chemistry with the girl he will be spending the whole movie with, just some unmemorable new character who leaves barely any impression. And here we have what is maybe the biggest problem with the movie, the editing. The interlaced stories are thrown together at such a slapdash pace that there’s no time to get invested in any of them and by the time they come back around together it’s hard to tell how or why they all got there. Empire Strikes Back had all it’s characters going in different directions for the bulk of the movie as well, but there was plenty of time given for each story to develop. Here they keep cutting away at confusing times, just when we’re getting invested. They cut away from Luke just as he says “What happened to Han?” That was a moment where we could have seen some much needed emotion from Luke, but they cut away and never pick that up again, by the time we get back to the Luke and Rey story they appear to have completely forgotten about it. I want to see Luke’s feelings about his old friend dying, I want to see Rey reminisce about what he meant to her, most of all I want to see Luke and Rey have some sort of connection over this! It was the perfect opportunity and it’s lost forever in favor of cutting away to more pixels battling in space and Fin bonding with a character we don’t care about over the death of another character we don’t care about! What a waste. At least we get a good moment with Luke and R2. There’s nothing bad to say about that. It may have been the best moment in the movie. So let’s give credit where credit is due. That was a lovely little moment. Around this time we also get the rediculous moment that even those who are defending the movie can’t justify. Leia is blown out into the vacuum of space and uses the force to float back to safety. This is just dumb on it’s face. I realize we’re meant to suspend our disbelief with these movies, but there is always a limit to that, don’t pretend that there isn’t. Leia is not a water bear, she’s not gonna survive the vacuum of space. It seemed foolish right away but they push it even farther when she floats back into the ship like Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother. It was an already foolish situation made even more foolish by the execution. She looked silly. This puts Leia out of commission for a while and her role is temporarily usurped by Laura Dern. Laura Dern is an actress I’m typically a fan of, mainly from her work with David Lynch, and of course Jurassic Park, she also recently made a guest appearance on one of my favorite shows, Unbreakable Kimmmy Schmidt, and she was hilarious. She’s usually someone I am happy to see, but here she is an unwanted presence. Why did they decide to take Leia out and give what could have been her greatest moments to someone else? They had already set her and Poe at odds and began a storyline of the two of them vying for control and having opposing ideas on how to escape the danger right behind them. Then rather than see this through, they inexplicably take Leia out of it and bring in a character we don’t know and don’t care about. Why? What could possibly be the reason for this? Apparently it was all to establish this character ahead of time so that she could be sacrificed later, in an undeniably awesome scene. When the escaping resistance is attacked and all hope appears lost, Laura Dern does a kamakaze at light speed into the attacking First Order ship. This scene is executed phenomenally well. The sound cuts out completely as we see the light speed impact from multiple angles, the giant ship is split in half by a perfect slice of fiery light blue and the sound suddenly cuts back in with a huge crack. Amazing. The moment would have been perfect if the character sacrificing themselves wasn’t someone we were glad to see go. They had a perfect alternative, as many have already pointed out. Admiral Ackbar is a character the fans already have an attachment and affection for. For him to deliver this blow would have been a greater conclusion for this beloved character than anyone ever expected. Who would have ever thought that the funny fishhead guy most famous for his hammy screaming of “It’s a trap!” would go out with such a bad ass self-sacrifice? It would have been awesome! How perfect would that have been? How many wasted opportunities can you fit into one movie? Instead this beloved character’s death is nothing more than an afterthought. When we’re told that Leia is the only survivor of the attack on the ship we’re also told ‘by the way, Ackbar died.’ He went out like he was nothing at all. In the buildup to the release of this movie I was keeping invested in a lot of the media surrounding it, reading and watching a lot of interviews with those involved. What I learned about Rian Johnson was just that he was a big fan of the movies since he was a child, obvious enough, you’d clearly expect him to be. Why then, if he’s as big a fan as the rest of us, was he so disrespectful to a popular supporting character? Why did he feel a fan-favorite should be killed off with so little impact while a bland, uninteresting character of his own creation should get the biggest moment of the movie? It’s baffling. Meanwhile, Finn and whatsername are on a mission to do something for some reason, they’re supposed to find some guy but they get some other guy instead. Why? Structurally, from a writing standpoint, why send a main character to find some guy we’ve never heard of and instead have him go with some other guy we’ve never heard of? Are you just deliberately wasting time? What story purpose can the one guy we’ve never heard of serve that the other guy we’ve never heard of cannot? What is the point? Damned if I know. Anyway, the second guy we’ve never heard of is Benicio del Toro, he betrays them because he’s just like all the other amoral people at the casino where they found him while they were trying to find the other guy, so it seems like the other guy probably would have done the same thing, it seems like anyone they got from this pale imitation of A New Hope’s Cantina would have done the same thing. They established that it was full of amoral people so why the hell waste time switching from one unknown guy to the other? It all turns out to be useless anyway because they’re betrayed and their mission fails. The whole purpose of the plot line, story wise, was to set up the relationship between these two characters, a misguided move at best. We began to like Finn in The Force Awakens because he was on a journey that had a purpose and his story brought us to the other characters that we were just meeting, and who we already knew and were dying to see again. This time he was used only to introduce us to one character who serves no purpose at all except to join him on an ultimately purposeless distraction. Back at the Luke and Rey story, we learn the backstory behind the falling out between Luke and Ben Solo that caused him to become Kylo Ren. This was one of the many mysteries set up by The Force Awakens. I’m reminded of Lost, how the early seasons with JJ Abrams at the helm set up so many intriguing questions that had the whole world salivating for answers to. Later, after Abrams left the show, we get our answers and see that they weren’t nearly as exciting as the questions. Well JJ did it again. The questions set up by Abrams were so intriguing, and the answers so underwhelming. Maybe this is Abrams’ fault, he’s developing a pattern of teeing people up for failure. He should use the golden rule of mystery writing which is to start with an exciting conclusion and work backwards, that way you’re ending can’t disappoint. It’s unfair of Abrams to keep asking such huge questions and then leaving it to someone else to give a satisfying answer. You can almost forgive Rian Johnson for that one, but not for what he did with Snoke. If Abrams created Snoke during the writing of the first movie, and he’s directing the third, then Johnson could have just passed the buck to Abrams, left it on him to explain Snokes’ origins. Instead he killed him before we learned anything about him. The mystery of Snoke was not something that could be ignored this way. We saw the galactic empire destroyed and somehow this guy rebuilt it as the First Order with himself as the supreme leader. We saw the only two living Sith Lords die, there was no one left to train him, and somehow he became such a powerful Sith Lord, seemingly even more powerful than Palpatine based on what we saw him do in this movie. Now I guess the only answer we get to how he achieved this status is “somehow.” In Return of the Jedi we don’t need an explanation for Emperor Palpatine because his existence could serve as it’s own exposition, we didn’t need to know his origins because his existence was taken as given from the very beginning. That is not enough for Snoke, we know this universe now, we know the Empire was defeated and the last of the Sith died. Killing him without any explanation where he came from is unforgivable. Even if there is a plan to cover his origins in the third movie, it’s too late now, he already died and his death had almost no impact cause we still have no idea who he is. It’s treated like the mystery of Snoke was never a mystery at all, which is an insult. As for the mystery of Rey’s parentage, I actually kind of liked the revelation that they were nobodies. The connections throughout this series have gotten too over the top over the years. Of course the first familial revelation, between Luke and Vader, was a spectacular classic moment. Then the revelation that Leia was Luke’s sister was already pushing it, by the time we got to young Anakin building C-3PO, ugh. Not everything needs to be connected, it just makes the universe seem smaller, and what was initially so exciting about these stories was that the world the characters inhabited seemed so big, like there were infinite stories going on within it outside of our main characters. So I liked that they went the opposite way with the reveal on this one. I also liked the Yoda scene. The reveal was handled well, and Yoda was a puppet again instead of CGI’d, which I appreciate. His famously imitatable speech pattern was also done appropriately, unlike in the prequels where it was so embarrassingly overdone. Best of all, he was funny again. In the prequels, George Lucas apparently felt the need to drain all the humor out of Yoda, he doesn’t get a single laugh in the whole trilogy, but this movie restored Yoda’s comedy, and I love that. Great little moments like that kept giving me glimmers of hope that the movie might get it’s shit together at some point. But those short moments of greatness are fleeting, and do little to improve the overall product. By the time all the characters meet up at the climax I had very little hope anything could improve. After two movies of build-up to the return of Luke Skywalker, we get another nice little reunion, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher’s reunion was short but sweet. The ultimate climax is a build-up to what could have been a great Lightsaber battle, and then a major let down when it’s revealed that Luke is just using an unexplained Jedi power that’s never been seen or even hinted at before in this series. You can explain away a lot by saying “it’s The Force” but at a certain point you’re just using it as a crutch. In this case, it’s definitely a crutch. You think a satisfying conclusion is making up a random new magic power that hasn’t been seeded in any way and having that solve everything? That’s lazy. On the bright side of the conclusion, we get more cute little critters. There are these little foxes made of crystal or ice or something that live in the ice cave the rebellion retreats to, and when they’re looking for a way to escape they follow the ice critters to a hidden exit. It was good, they were appealingly designed and used sparingly but effectively. I honestly think that’s Rian Johnson’s strong point. He handles cutesy creatures very well. After all of this that is the best thing I can say about him. He can’t handle story structure worth a damn, he can’t edit in any logical way, he misses every great opportunity that falls in his lap, and he seems to have no respect for or understanding of the characters he has supposedly been a fan of all his life. He sure does know how to introduce a marketable space critter though. Maybe it seems like I’m being harsh on Rian Johnson, but if this movie had turned out good who could deny him the reward of relishing his success and lapping up the acclaim? People deserve to enjoy their victories, so they should also have to accept their failures as well. Famous people looking down on their critics drive me crazy, they live for the attention and acclaim when they do good work, and dismiss criticism of their bad work. You have to accept both extremes. Rian Johnson has failed us with this movie. The critics have not held him to task for it, so I hope the fans do, I hope people here on Reddit and on twitter and on every comment section of every website that mentions The Last Jedi complain about this movie endlessly so it cannot be ignored. I hope the fans force him to face the music for this. That may seem foolish to some, but nobody begrudges anyone when they say a piece of art inspired them, meant something to them, so we shouldn’t begrudge anyone for being angered by a bad piece of art, especially when it’s part of a series that means so much to so many. When the creator of this franchise came back to it to make the prequels, and they turned out to be a condescending insult to the fans, we held him accountable. For years he stubbornly brushed off the criticism like it didn’t matter but eventually he let someone else take the series. Because of that, we got two great movies, The Force Awakens, and Rogue One. If everyone involved in this movie is held accountable too, then maybe future movies will be as great as the others. Internet comments have to be good for something other than holding celebrities accountable for minor infractions of not being PC enough. How about we hold them accountable for their work instead? I’ve loved this franchise for 23 years. I’ve been tempted to give it up numerous times, but I always come back to it, because the best movies are better than the worst of the worst movies. I want these movies to be good, as so many fans do, but as so many other fans do as well, I will continue to pay good money to see them again and again whether they’re good or not. The studio knows this and if there’s no incentive to make a good product then they will continue to shovel out the same garbage. So Godspeed all you critics and haters and naysayers! More power to all you Negative Nancies! Get out there and complain, make your anger known on every corner of the internet! Let them know that you will not take a bad Star Wars movie lying down! Fight the good fight! May the force be with you always.

SOURCE https://www.reddit.com/r/STAR_WARS_LAST_JEDI/comments/7l5sx6/with_a_heavy_heart_i_have_to_say_this_was_a_bad/