It was lack of common direction through the trilogy. JJ set up his signature mystery boxes in the first movie, only for Rian to ignore those and leave nothing to work with for the next one.
I believe the reason why Palpatine somehow returned was because Rian killed off Snoke, and they really needed some big baddie Kylo and Rey could team up against so Kylo could have his redemption arc.
Bringing back Palatine was always the plan. If you rewatch 7, it’s painfully obvious that was the plan. Rian Johnson did the right thing by saying “Fuck that, I’m going to make something not shit”, and then making the only noteworthy movie of the trilogy. Did he make mistakes? Yes, the gambling planet was a mistake, but The Last Jedi was the only movie with interesting stories in it at the end of the day. JJ Abrams would have made a worse movie, and a way worse trilogy if he got full creative control.
only for Rian to ignore those and leave nothing to work with for the next one.
JJ choosing to ignore the second movie doesn’t mean “nothing was left”. Baring the bizarre casino, TLJ was the most interesting SW story since RotS. Episode IX could’ve been an amazing finale coming out of that, but JJ did what JJ always does and absolutely failed to deliver.
*Also, I feel it’s important to point out the “Mystery Box” was and is bullshit, lazy writing. Yes, it’s important to leave things in a story for the audience to wonder about and anticipate. That’s not a valid excuse to throw esoteric shit at the wall and call it a day. The audience doesn’t need to know where the plot is going, but the fucking writer should. JJ left Rian with hollow shell of “intrigue” with nothing substantial, got pissy when Rian did what he wanted with that, then shit out a boring finale trying to reverse everything back.
The Last Jedi wasn’t interesting. It was one piece of wasted potential after another.
We got what looked like the start of what could’ve been the best buddy friendship in The Force Awakens, only for The Last Jedi to completely ignore that potential.
It turned Finn into a coward, then forced a character he had no chemistry with onto him.
The casino arc was this attempt at rolling in some sort of… Message…? As if we don’t already know about neutral profiteers like The Banking Clan. And then it still only pays minor lip service to this message.
Captain Phasma was completely useless. Snoke was completely useless. Luke Skywalker could’ve been an interesting direction, but nothing was done with him and then he died after one cool moment.
It had scenes and direction that made absolutely no logical sense, even internally. Such as slow as shit bombers getting completely wasted when only one was actually needed. A complete lack in competent leadership causing a mutiny, which would’ve been interesting if it was meant that way, but it’s not. Deus Ex Rose dooming her comrades.
Really? What happened in TLJ that wasn’t already done in Star Wars? It felt like they just threw ESB and RoTJ into a blender and threw it onto the screen. Except they removed the point of all the plotines they copied from the other movies.
I know there’s a narrative about TLJ being interesting, but the biggest criticism from people that aren’t terminally online is that it was boring. And yeah, it was just a bunch of stuff we saw before with the point of the plotlines removed.
I’ll just reiterate my other reply since you did the same - your inability to see the potential of TLJ on it’s own merits says more about you than the movie.
Nothing new was set up for the grand finale. No new conflicts or threats to look forward to.
Compare with Empire Strikes Back. A bigger villain has been revealed. Han has been captured. Darth Vader is revealed to be Luke’s father. Romance between Han and Leia. Lots of exciting new threads for the final movie.
TLJ had nothing of that. When I went out of the theater I had no excitement at all for the next movie.
The resistance is on the backfoot, desperate for an answer.
Kylo is coming into his power as the big bad and the First Order is adjusting to the sudden power vacuum.
Rey is finally realizing her capability and is left to decide if she’ll follow the Jedi way or blaze her own path, still haunted by her unknown past.
Other force sensitives are awakening across the galaxy.
Leia is revealed as a force user (which obviously couldn’t be addressed after the death of Carrie Fisher, but that wasn’t a known change at the time of shooting).
Even a subpar writer could’ve done plenty with half of that, but JJ and Disney got scared and shit out the blandest finale possible.
Compare with Empire Strikes Back.
No. Stop comparing the new to the old, especially at such a minuscule, beat-for-beat level. Not only does that kill any possible innovation, it’s a nostalgia trap and exactly why VII and IX were so fucking boring. Nothing will replicate the feelings had watching beloved movies for the first time, and expecting anything to match that is just an excuse to be dismissive of it.
After Force Awakens I had the following questions:
Why did Luke leave a map to his hiding spot?
Who is Snoke?
Who are Rey’s parents? Why is she so good with the force?
Who are the Knights of Ren? Will they make an appearance in the next movie?
It doesn’t take much imagination how to make an exciting follow up with these open threads. TLJ decided that none of these threads matters and went in a completely different direction.
The resistance was not on their back foot, they were fucking dead. It was 30 some people and the Falcon by the end of TLJ.
Kylo makes a terrible villain for the big bad. He already lost to Rey in the first movie even if weakened. He failed to turn Rey with his big join me speech in TLJ, and he gets embarrassed by ghost Luke. There’s nothing scary about someone who’s been throwing temper tantrums for basically two entire movies. Secondly, there was now way he wasn’t going to end up being good, Disney wasn’t going to greenlight a conclusion with him being evil.
Rey made peace with her past and admitted it didn’t matter, there’s nothing to explore there without the retcon Rise did. She also had multiple defining moments of choosing the light, basing a movie on yet another time is stupid.
Other force sensitive people is a meaningless thing to base the conclusion of a trilogy on. Elmer Sleazebaggano son of Elan appearing and being the big good or bad out of nowhere is just as bad as Palpatine. You could do something with an established character becoming force sensitive, but they butchered that anyway.
Leia even if Fisher hadn’t passed couldn’t be the main plot. Sure she could be a source of help or counsel for Rey, but that’s about it. If Leia became the hero of the resistance like she was for the rebellion by using the force and welding a lightsaber it just begs the question why she didn’t bother at any point in the last 20 years before everyone was dead. It also doesn’t work with Disney’s need to sunset the established character is and bring out the new heroes of the galaxy.
It’s not about comparing the feelings of empire or the beat for beat replay. It’s about comparing the narrative and where it was at that point in the story. Empire left room for growth, there were new questions to answer, TLJ didn’t.
The rebels were scattered after Hoth, but most the ships were able to escape. This lets the following movie have the option of gathering on or off screen. TLJ left almost none alive, the next movie needs to invent new people.
The main characters were thoroughly beaten by the bad guy. This provides something for them to overcome in the next movie. TLJ ended with Rey succeeding, the first order is now 0-2 at being the big bad guy.
Luke had to process his father being Vader, Han needed rescue, and Leia wanted to rescue him. Rey, Poe, and Finn were all happily on the Falcon.
you had the seeds of romance in both. The problem with Reylo was Ren couldn’t be the big bad and the love interest or the movie just ends with him telling the first order to stop once he acknowledged his love. You also had Rose and Finn, but that was one sided as he was obsessed with Rey the whole movie.
It’s not about comparing the feelings of empire or the beat for beat replay. It’s about comparing the narrative and where it was at that point in the story.
Contradicting your own claim in the next sentence. A+. Thanks for proving my point.
And deliberately holding up the worst interpretation of how those plot lines could be developed isn’t meaningful. Might as well slap together a Chad-Soyjak meme and say you won.
The shot of the kid with the broom left me so hopeful for all the new things I thought were coming. All the retreading that Episode 9 did left me disappointed.
The resistance is on the backfoot, desperate for an answer.
This was done better in ESB.
Kylo is coming into his power as the big bad and the First Order is adjusting to the sudden power vacuum.
Who cares? We have no idea who Snoke was. Because of this there’s nothing to indicate Kylo Ren is doing anything different than Snoke would’ve done. There’s zero perceptible change because they didn’t bother to spend any time defining the First Order or Snoke.
Other force sensitives are awakening across the galaxy.
I always assume there’s other force users across the galaxy all of the time. I think you’re taking the things you see in a Star Wars movie to be 100% of the events that happen in that Galaxy. For those of us that take it as some of the more interesting stories coming from this massive galaxy of who knows how many people (trillions? quintiliions?) that scene is meaningless. Like, yeah that’s always happening, all of the time. I generally assume that there are many Jedi out there. The movie is calling itself “The Last Jedi” to present the galaxy as something narrow (which is stupid because Leia would be a Jedi FFS, just another thing they would need to fix later) just so you will think it’s interesting to broaden something presented to as being something narrow. It was never narrow, it was only TLJ that attempted to present Star Wars as something narrow. it was always broad, nothing new happened when they suggested it was broader than only TLJ presented it to be earlier in the movie.
Stop comparing the new to the old, especially at such a minuscule, beat-for-beat level.
Why wouldn’t we? First of all TLJ is just ESB and RoTJ thrown into a blender with the point of all of the plot lines they re-hashed removed. Benicio Del Tor is Lando. Kylo Ren kills the old evil guy like Darth Vader did. They have to blow up a super laser. There’s AT ATs walking across a white plain. Ah, but it’s different because TLJ’s version of Lando doesn’t learn anything? It’s different because Kylo Ren doesn’t change? It’s different because they fail to blow up the super laser? It’s different because the AT ATs are walking on salt instead of snow? Sorry, but it’s the same kinda shit just without any point to it. Which makes it boring to anyone familiar with the movies it’s clumsily copy and pasting from.
RoS is way more interesting than TLJ. There’s at least a point to it, at least it wasn’t just blindly copy and pasting things from better movies without even understanding them.
i much prefer where rian johnson was going, even though the main plot was meh. he left so many open plot threads that tied into the old eu that they could have used, but then jj went back to his first idea.
I thought it would have been cool if rey fell to the dark side and that this pushed kylo ren back into the light.
Like, he was clearly struggling to even UTILIZE the dark side. He was begging for guidance from the totem of Anakin’s mask, and Anakin wasn’t even fallen anymore.
Rey, meanwhile, seemed to demonstrate clear dark side aptitude and compatibility. While kylo had to STRIVE to act out and push himself for emotional volatility and it turned out kind of pathetic, Rey just easily slipped right into emotional impulsivity.
If Kylo watched Rey descend, attain what he thought he’d wanted, only to discover that it’s horrifying and painful, and that he doesn’t like what it does to her… That could have not only scared him straight, but also driven him to try to save her.
There were relatively few people left in the galaxy who were still even receptive to the force after decades of Anakin slaughtering every force sensitive individual the empire could find AND THEN Luke’s little failed attempt at reviving the Jedi order turned into a honey trap that lured the ones that remained into one place where they were all murdered right under his nose
Rey and Kylo were two of the only few people in the galaxy left who were force sensitive and ALL THAT POWER was trying to flow through them. Kylo struggled to overcome his inner good, what with the training he HAD received having been focused on the light side and therefore interfering with the dark’s influence. Rey on the other hand was just raw unfiltered potential, a big ole unregulated CRACK in the dam–as perfect a tool for the dark side to possess and manipulate as there could have ever been.
Kylo had family who loved him and were still alive, he had a home, he had a future, and not only did he have to struggle to throw that all away, his parents KEPT trying to reach out to him, right up to the moment just before killing his father lamenting that he WAS indeed struggling. Killing Han didn’t even measurably empower him in any way for fucks sake–he went on to LOSE a saber battle against a literal nobody!
Rey meanwhile had had EVERYTHING TAKEN FROM HER. she was isolated, lost, questioning, unguided, no prospects, and nothing to lose. Even Luke saw how she didn’t resist the dark side at all.
It still feels like how these films turned out was just a bad dream and part of me is still waiting to wake up and find out things were going to head in a more meaningful direction. Instead, everything that COULD have happened inverted completely.
At the end of TLJ, on top of all the other pointless house shit that happened in that movie, REY AND KYLO SHOULD HAVE DISAPPEARED TOGETHER because it would have opened up possibilities that would have been very satisfying
HUX seizing the power vacuum of the first order instead of literally the opposite, which was becoming even more of a sniveling nitwit liability
Finn, Poe, and the other members of the resistance crew would be in a position to actually be fucking USEFUL instead of mere comic relief–i especially despite how TLJ did them all dirty. Kelly Marie Tran’s character Rose Tico could have been a fantastic everymanperson POV where she grows in competency, agency, initiative, and leadership…
Instead of palpatine we could have had something actually interesting as a bigger bad behind the scenes.
Now I know this is controversial but … While most people only joke about the concept of a Darth Jar Jar, i think it could have been a worthwhile twist. Without that stupid childish vocal affect and dopey weaponized pretend-incompetence, he could have been legitimately sinister. Imagine the way the temperature drops in a room when a cynical sociopathic manipulator discards their charade and shows their true colors.
… oh well. It’s just going to suck forever now. Just gotta accept it, live with it.
the main thing was that while jj leaned heavily on the ot, johnson took things from the prequels. say what you want about them but at least they continued the story rather than rehashing it. of the top of my head, the most interesting thing they weave into the narrative is the possibility that the jedi and sith balance thing was based on a complete misunderstanding of the force. this ties back to not only the eu but also episodes 1-3, and opens up the gray jedi and force-witch paths again, not to mention that it basically retcons midichlorians. they also tried getting rid of the prophecy crap, which didn’t make sense to begin with.
I missed that part of it, I must’ve been distracted be the movie being almost entirely a clumsy re-hashing of things from ESB and RotJ.
Seems like an extremely boring way to portray a magical force. In good Star Wars movies The Force = Power. Obviously the name tells you that, Star Wars isn’t subtle about things. In our world, power has a tendency to corrupt people. It takes discipline and moral fortitude to avoid being corrupted by power. Same goes for the Force in Star Wars. Removing that eliminates the whole analogy between the Force and political power in our world. It makes it to be just some magical powers some people have and its not big deal. It says power doesn’t corrupt people, it’s just something people have for random reasons and there’s no consequences for people that have that power.
But that’s the nature of TLJ, isn’t it? Rian Johnson was unable to understand the deeper meaning behind anything in Star Wars and thought it was just silly stories about space wizards and went about removing things he didn’t like without any concern about it meaning anything. He was tearing down a whole lot of Chesterton fences, which later had to be rebuilt. And it’s weird, it’s not like anything in Star Wars is difficult to understand the meaning of, they are kinda children’s stories, really. But it seems like he came into it with an arrogance and didn’t bother considering why things are the way they are in Star Wars.
So Rian Johnson thought of Star Wars as just a bunch of random stuff that doesn’t have any meaning to it, so he put a bunch of meaningless stuff onto the screen. This only appeals to those that also see Star Wars as a bunch of meaningless stuff that has no meaning. If you think Star Wars movies are just dumb movies about space wizards than you might like TLJ. But for those asking for more from a Star Wars movie than just a bunch of dumb shit about space wizards, TLJ falls very very far short of the mark. This is why people say TLJ is a movie for people who aren’t Star Wars fans. It only appeals to those that have never thought of what things in Star Wars represent in our world.
I believe the reason why Palpatine somehow returned was because Rian killed off Snoke, and they really needed some big baddie Kylo and Rey could team up against so Kylo could have his redemption arc.
I think there’s no doubt that’s why they had to do that. After TLJ the only thing left is for Rey to fight Kylo Ren (which already happened in TFA) or for Rey and Kylo Ren to kiss (which is lame and stupid). Both of these things happen RoS, and didn’t take up much screen time, so what are you gonna do for the other 90+ minutes of screen time?
Also Palpatine denying death fits with the grieving process theme of the movie, it fits with the relationship to the past theme of the trilogy, but the surface level online “reviews” will never discuss that since they are pushing a narrative that there were no themes in the movie. And for whatever reason people act upset about a sequel trilogy having any kind of theme about relationship to the past.
It was lack of common direction through the trilogy. JJ set up his signature mystery boxes in the first movie, only for Rian to ignore those and leave nothing to work with for the next one.
I believe the reason why Palpatine somehow returned was because Rian killed off Snoke, and they really needed some big baddie Kylo and Rey could team up against so Kylo could have his redemption arc.
Bringing back Palatine was always the plan. If you rewatch 7, it’s painfully obvious that was the plan. Rian Johnson did the right thing by saying “Fuck that, I’m going to make something not shit”, and then making the only noteworthy movie of the trilogy. Did he make mistakes? Yes, the gambling planet was a mistake, but The Last Jedi was the only movie with interesting stories in it at the end of the day. JJ Abrams would have made a worse movie, and a way worse trilogy if he got full creative control.
JJ choosing to ignore the second movie doesn’t mean “nothing was left”. Baring the bizarre casino, TLJ was the most interesting SW story since RotS. Episode IX could’ve been an amazing finale coming out of that, but JJ did what JJ always does and absolutely failed to deliver.
*Also, I feel it’s important to point out the “Mystery Box” was and is bullshit, lazy writing. Yes, it’s important to leave things in a story for the audience to wonder about and anticipate. That’s not a valid excuse to throw esoteric shit at the wall and call it a day. The audience doesn’t need to know where the plot is going, but the fucking writer should. JJ left Rian with hollow shell of “intrigue” with nothing substantial, got pissy when Rian did what he wanted with that, then shit out a boring finale trying to reverse everything back.
The Last Jedi wasn’t interesting. It was one piece of wasted potential after another.
We got what looked like the start of what could’ve been the best buddy friendship in The Force Awakens, only for The Last Jedi to completely ignore that potential.
It turned Finn into a coward, then forced a character he had no chemistry with onto him.
The casino arc was this attempt at rolling in some sort of… Message…? As if we don’t already know about neutral profiteers like The Banking Clan. And then it still only pays minor lip service to this message.
Captain Phasma was completely useless. Snoke was completely useless. Luke Skywalker could’ve been an interesting direction, but nothing was done with him and then he died after one cool moment.
It had scenes and direction that made absolutely no logical sense, even internally. Such as slow as shit bombers getting completely wasted when only one was actually needed. A complete lack in competent leadership causing a mutiny, which would’ve been interesting if it was meant that way, but it’s not. Deus Ex Rose dooming her comrades.
Really? What happened in TLJ that wasn’t already done in Star Wars? It felt like they just threw ESB and RoTJ into a blender and threw it onto the screen. Except they removed the point of all the plotines they copied from the other movies.
I know there’s a narrative about TLJ being interesting, but the biggest criticism from people that aren’t terminally online is that it was boring. And yeah, it was just a bunch of stuff we saw before with the point of the plotlines removed.
I’ll just reiterate my other reply since you did the same - your inability to see the potential of TLJ on it’s own merits says more about you than the movie.
What was set up for the last movie?
Nothing new was set up for the grand finale. No new conflicts or threats to look forward to.
Compare with Empire Strikes Back. A bigger villain has been revealed. Han has been captured. Darth Vader is revealed to be Luke’s father. Romance between Han and Leia. Lots of exciting new threads for the final movie.
TLJ had nothing of that. When I went out of the theater I had no excitement at all for the next movie.
Right, “nothing”.
Even a subpar writer could’ve done plenty with half of that, but JJ and Disney got scared and shit out the blandest finale possible.
No. Stop comparing the new to the old, especially at such a minuscule, beat-for-beat level. Not only does that kill any possible innovation, it’s a nostalgia trap and exactly why VII and IX were so fucking boring. Nothing will replicate the feelings had watching beloved movies for the first time, and expecting anything to match that is just an excuse to be dismissive of it.
Why? The sequel trilogy is doing itself all the time. So why shouldn’t we?
Aren’t these also Star Wars movies? Set in the Star Wars universe?
After Force Awakens I had the following questions:
It doesn’t take much imagination how to make an exciting follow up with these open threads. TLJ decided that none of these threads matters and went in a completely different direction.
The only question I had after TLJ was:
Much weaker way to build up for the grand finale.
Answered
Answered
Answered
Yeah, TLJ totally ignored it all 🙄
And I already addressed a handful of the threads left by TLJ, so I won’t repeat myself.
The resistance was not on their back foot, they were fucking dead. It was 30 some people and the Falcon by the end of TLJ.
Kylo makes a terrible villain for the big bad. He already lost to Rey in the first movie even if weakened. He failed to turn Rey with his big join me speech in TLJ, and he gets embarrassed by ghost Luke. There’s nothing scary about someone who’s been throwing temper tantrums for basically two entire movies. Secondly, there was now way he wasn’t going to end up being good, Disney wasn’t going to greenlight a conclusion with him being evil.
Rey made peace with her past and admitted it didn’t matter, there’s nothing to explore there without the retcon Rise did. She also had multiple defining moments of choosing the light, basing a movie on yet another time is stupid.
Other force sensitive people is a meaningless thing to base the conclusion of a trilogy on. Elmer Sleazebaggano son of Elan appearing and being the big good or bad out of nowhere is just as bad as Palpatine. You could do something with an established character becoming force sensitive, but they butchered that anyway.
Leia even if Fisher hadn’t passed couldn’t be the main plot. Sure she could be a source of help or counsel for Rey, but that’s about it. If Leia became the hero of the resistance like she was for the rebellion by using the force and welding a lightsaber it just begs the question why she didn’t bother at any point in the last 20 years before everyone was dead. It also doesn’t work with Disney’s need to sunset the established character is and bring out the new heroes of the galaxy.
It’s not about comparing the feelings of empire or the beat for beat replay. It’s about comparing the narrative and where it was at that point in the story. Empire left room for growth, there were new questions to answer, TLJ didn’t.
Contradicting your own claim in the next sentence. A+. Thanks for proving my point.
And deliberately holding up the worst interpretation of how those plot lines could be developed isn’t meaningful. Might as well slap together a Chad-Soyjak meme and say you won.
The shot of the kid with the broom left me so hopeful for all the new things I thought were coming. All the retreading that Episode 9 did left me disappointed.
This was done better in ESB.
Who cares? We have no idea who Snoke was. Because of this there’s nothing to indicate Kylo Ren is doing anything different than Snoke would’ve done. There’s zero perceptible change because they didn’t bother to spend any time defining the First Order or Snoke.
I always assume there’s other force users across the galaxy all of the time. I think you’re taking the things you see in a Star Wars movie to be 100% of the events that happen in that Galaxy. For those of us that take it as some of the more interesting stories coming from this massive galaxy of who knows how many people (trillions? quintiliions?) that scene is meaningless. Like, yeah that’s always happening, all of the time. I generally assume that there are many Jedi out there. The movie is calling itself “The Last Jedi” to present the galaxy as something narrow (which is stupid because Leia would be a Jedi FFS, just another thing they would need to fix later) just so you will think it’s interesting to broaden something presented to as being something narrow. It was never narrow, it was only TLJ that attempted to present Star Wars as something narrow. it was always broad, nothing new happened when they suggested it was broader than only TLJ presented it to be earlier in the movie.
Why wouldn’t we? First of all TLJ is just ESB and RoTJ thrown into a blender with the point of all of the plot lines they re-hashed removed. Benicio Del Tor is Lando. Kylo Ren kills the old evil guy like Darth Vader did. They have to blow up a super laser. There’s AT ATs walking across a white plain. Ah, but it’s different because TLJ’s version of Lando doesn’t learn anything? It’s different because Kylo Ren doesn’t change? It’s different because they fail to blow up the super laser? It’s different because the AT ATs are walking on salt instead of snow? Sorry, but it’s the same kinda shit just without any point to it. Which makes it boring to anyone familiar with the movies it’s clumsily copy and pasting from.
RoS is way more interesting than TLJ. There’s at least a point to it, at least it wasn’t just blindly copy and pasting things from better movies without even understanding them.
Your inability to see the potential of those plot threads doesn’t prove the movie is bad, just your lack of vision.
Ah, my point exemplified. Thanks.
No, it’s pretty definitive proof the movie is bad. The world just has easily amused dummies.
i much prefer where rian johnson was going, even though the main plot was meh. he left so many open plot threads that tied into the old eu that they could have used, but then jj went back to his first idea.
I thought it would have been cool if rey fell to the dark side and that this pushed kylo ren back into the light.
Like, he was clearly struggling to even UTILIZE the dark side. He was begging for guidance from the totem of Anakin’s mask, and Anakin wasn’t even fallen anymore.
Rey, meanwhile, seemed to demonstrate clear dark side aptitude and compatibility. While kylo had to STRIVE to act out and push himself for emotional volatility and it turned out kind of pathetic, Rey just easily slipped right into emotional impulsivity.
If Kylo watched Rey descend, attain what he thought he’d wanted, only to discover that it’s horrifying and painful, and that he doesn’t like what it does to her… That could have not only scared him straight, but also driven him to try to save her.
There were relatively few people left in the galaxy who were still even receptive to the force after decades of Anakin slaughtering every force sensitive individual the empire could find AND THEN Luke’s little failed attempt at reviving the Jedi order turned into a honey trap that lured the ones that remained into one place where they were all murdered right under his nose
Rey and Kylo were two of the only few people in the galaxy left who were force sensitive and ALL THAT POWER was trying to flow through them. Kylo struggled to overcome his inner good, what with the training he HAD received having been focused on the light side and therefore interfering with the dark’s influence. Rey on the other hand was just raw unfiltered potential, a big ole unregulated CRACK in the dam–as perfect a tool for the dark side to possess and manipulate as there could have ever been.
Kylo had family who loved him and were still alive, he had a home, he had a future, and not only did he have to struggle to throw that all away, his parents KEPT trying to reach out to him, right up to the moment just before killing his father lamenting that he WAS indeed struggling. Killing Han didn’t even measurably empower him in any way for fucks sake–he went on to LOSE a saber battle against a literal nobody!
Rey meanwhile had had EVERYTHING TAKEN FROM HER. she was isolated, lost, questioning, unguided, no prospects, and nothing to lose. Even Luke saw how she didn’t resist the dark side at all.
It still feels like how these films turned out was just a bad dream and part of me is still waiting to wake up and find out things were going to head in a more meaningful direction. Instead, everything that COULD have happened inverted completely.
At the end of TLJ, on top of all the other pointless house shit that happened in that movie, REY AND KYLO SHOULD HAVE DISAPPEARED TOGETHER because it would have opened up possibilities that would have been very satisfying
HUX seizing the power vacuum of the first order instead of literally the opposite, which was becoming even more of a sniveling nitwit liability
Finn, Poe, and the other members of the resistance crew would be in a position to actually be fucking USEFUL instead of mere comic relief–i especially despite how TLJ did them all dirty. Kelly Marie Tran’s character Rose Tico could have been a fantastic every
manperson POV where she grows in competency, agency, initiative, and leadership…Instead of palpatine we could have had something actually interesting as a bigger bad behind the scenes.
Now I know this is controversial but … While most people only joke about the concept of a Darth Jar Jar, i think it could have been a worthwhile twist. Without that stupid childish vocal affect and dopey weaponized pretend-incompetence, he could have been legitimately sinister. Imagine the way the temperature drops in a room when a cynical sociopathic manipulator discards their charade and shows their true colors.
… oh well. It’s just going to suck forever now. Just gotta accept it, live with it.
What plot threads? People keep repeating that TLJ opened possibilities but no one can explain what possibilities it actually opened.
You wanted Rey and Kylo Ren to kiss in the next movie? We saw that happen and it sucked. What other possibilities did it open?
the main thing was that while jj leaned heavily on the ot, johnson took things from the prequels. say what you want about them but at least they continued the story rather than rehashing it. of the top of my head, the most interesting thing they weave into the narrative is the possibility that the jedi and sith balance thing was based on a complete misunderstanding of the force. this ties back to not only the eu but also episodes 1-3, and opens up the gray jedi and force-witch paths again, not to mention that it basically retcons midichlorians. they also tried getting rid of the prophecy crap, which didn’t make sense to begin with.
I missed that part of it, I must’ve been distracted be the movie being almost entirely a clumsy re-hashing of things from ESB and RotJ.
Seems like an extremely boring way to portray a magical force. In good Star Wars movies The Force = Power. Obviously the name tells you that, Star Wars isn’t subtle about things. In our world, power has a tendency to corrupt people. It takes discipline and moral fortitude to avoid being corrupted by power. Same goes for the Force in Star Wars. Removing that eliminates the whole analogy between the Force and political power in our world. It makes it to be just some magical powers some people have and its not big deal. It says power doesn’t corrupt people, it’s just something people have for random reasons and there’s no consequences for people that have that power.
But that’s the nature of TLJ, isn’t it? Rian Johnson was unable to understand the deeper meaning behind anything in Star Wars and thought it was just silly stories about space wizards and went about removing things he didn’t like without any concern about it meaning anything. He was tearing down a whole lot of Chesterton fences, which later had to be rebuilt. And it’s weird, it’s not like anything in Star Wars is difficult to understand the meaning of, they are kinda children’s stories, really. But it seems like he came into it with an arrogance and didn’t bother considering why things are the way they are in Star Wars.
So Rian Johnson thought of Star Wars as just a bunch of random stuff that doesn’t have any meaning to it, so he put a bunch of meaningless stuff onto the screen. This only appeals to those that also see Star Wars as a bunch of meaningless stuff that has no meaning. If you think Star Wars movies are just dumb movies about space wizards than you might like TLJ. But for those asking for more from a Star Wars movie than just a bunch of dumb shit about space wizards, TLJ falls very very far short of the mark. This is why people say TLJ is a movie for people who aren’t Star Wars fans. It only appeals to those that have never thought of what things in Star Wars represent in our world.
I think there’s no doubt that’s why they had to do that. After TLJ the only thing left is for Rey to fight Kylo Ren (which already happened in TFA) or for Rey and Kylo Ren to kiss (which is lame and stupid). Both of these things happen RoS, and didn’t take up much screen time, so what are you gonna do for the other 90+ minutes of screen time?
Also Palpatine denying death fits with the grieving process theme of the movie, it fits with the relationship to the past theme of the trilogy, but the surface level online “reviews” will never discuss that since they are pushing a narrative that there were no themes in the movie. And for whatever reason people act upset about a sequel trilogy having any kind of theme about relationship to the past.