The Last Jedi - Forum Opinion

[TordelBack]

Kanady is great - he might only have one line. A prime example of bringing someone (and a script) to life by having them speak in something other than basil.

Add the A-Wing leader Tallie (sp?) to that list - she gets a fair chunk of comm-chatter basil to spoon out, but equally the camera gives her sufficient time for us to pick her out, and she has strong non-verbals that make her as memorable a pilot character as Porkins or Gold Leader, so that (like them) when she gets blown up in the hangar it feels bloody awful.  Compare this with the Naboo pilots in TPM, where there's Ric Olie (who is on screen for about a quarter of the film, but in all of his dialogue fails to do or say anything that makes him interesting as a character, despite Ralph Brown being a more than capable actor), then 'the female one' and 'the black one'... and I neither know nor care about ANY of them as much as I do about Tallie (and I'm a fan of that movie).  It's good strong filmmaking, in my opinion.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

This film is still insulting and tonally wrong. Jumping the shark princess remains laughably bad. Snoke's death - without any character building at all - is off. The whole thing feels like a badly thought out exercise in half-baked ideas.

[TordelBack]

To you it feels insulting, Dr X.  To me, it's a breath of fresh air in a formerly locked room.  Your 'half-baked ideas' are either (depending on the idea you mean!) my 'refusal to be constrained by what is expected', or a well-developed theme. 

Snoke as a character has (I believe) more lines that the Emperor did in the OT, refers to his motivations, events in the past and plans for the future, and other characters say more about him than they did in the OT: he also takes a far more active role in the plot, instead of merely setting events in motion.  His death only seems premature because you expected to learn more about him, as we eventually did about Palpatine.  Any maybe we still will, post-mortem, as we did (in a sense) about Palpatine.  Or maybe we won't, and you can fill in the blanks yourself, as we once did about the Emperor. 

[TordelBack]

Oooh nurse, up the dosage, I'm off on one...  The best thing about Snoke's fate is that it addresses what is often pointed out as a flaw in OT: that Vader himself, as the more interesting and iconic character, should have been the big baddie, not some beaten dog who eventually turns on his cruel master (not that that didn't work for me personally, but I take the point).  By initially setting up the Snoke/Ren relationship as essentially the same, and then summarily dispensing with Snoke relatively early on, it allows the most interesting character to make a journey and become the main villain with still a movie-and-a-third to strut his stuff.  It's clever, and don't try to tell me it wasn't a genuine surprise.

[Tiplodocus]

And it's two for one surprises in that scene as shortly after we get to hear about Rey's parents. Genuinely got me and was 1000 times better than internet scuttlebutt.

[Tiplodocus]

Me and Tordels should probably get a room and "Last Jedi and chill".

[Colin YNWA]

Snoke as a character has (I believe) more lines that the Emperor did in the OT, refers to his motivations, events in the past and plans for the future, and other characters say more about him than they did in the OT: he also takes a far more active role in the plot, instead of merely setting events in motion.  His death only seems premature because you expected to learn more about him, as we eventually did about Palpatine.  Any maybe we still will, post-mortem, as we did (in a sense) about Palpatine.  Or maybe we won't, and you can fill in the blanks yourself, as we once did about the Emperor.

But do we really need to learn any more about him? He's served his purpose wonderfully. Much like the reveal for Rey's parents what did people expect. If he was just another big bad he becomes Emperor lite. Instead he gets shrouded in mystery, built in folks minds and then the rug is pulled and its shown his purpose is two fold.

1. in the moment to create that wonderful story dynamic - has Kylo gone good on us?
2. When its revealed that Kylo ain't gone good all of a sudden we have a great viable villian whose offed the assumed villian to advance his own ascent.

I can't think of a better use of him as a character and I'm really happy with what they did as other options don't serve Kylo as well. If he sticks around Kylo as Tordelback points out is just Vadar lite, to Snoke's Emperor lite.

Also is it not great to have him built up in folks minds just to be literally chopped down. When did it become a bad thing that a piece of fiction defied our expectations and assumptions?

[JOE SOAP]

In hindsight, The Last Jedi makes The Force Awakens' act of flinging all the old cards on the table set-up far more palatable and compelling. The First Order was sold to us as a carbon-copy of the Empire, so while The Last Jedi may have pulled the switcheroo on that nostalgia bomb, I fear without cutting that Gordian Knot they would've gone through the motions for the rest of the trilogy. What Rian Johnson rightly picked-up on was its inversions and ran with the idea.

I have my doubts about a lot of the recent rumours that JJ Abrams had a Sequel plan, other than maybe the barest sketch (Abrams does not have a reputation for satisfying reveals/closures), but every rumoured part of that plan I've heard naysayers agree should've happened, has more or less been closer to what everyone is all ready familiar with. Much closer, at least, than The Last Jedi's riffs on the same tropes.

Even Prequel elements that easily could've been expected to be discarded or forgotten feel like they're implemented more thoughtfully. As derided an idea as it is, Lucas's introduction of his rhyming scheme as a thread in the trilogies has been made to work – whether they're all intentional or not – like the call-back to Leia's SOS hologram message to Luke in A New Hope being echoed or responded to 30 years later in his self-projection to help Leia and the Resistance on Krayt. For me The Last Jedi was the proper response to The Force Awakens and could've gone further.

[Professor Bear]

Snoke's death changes the nature of the First Order, surely?  He spent years building a functional military with a clear command structure, but now it's... what?  Feudalism?  Meritocracy?  Oh wait I don't care.

I take TB's point about how Snoke's death disappoints because only a fool would get invested in a pretend space war film for children that openly hates straight white men, but I don't get that about Vader being less than the villain of the piece because there's someone above him - what about the Sheriff of Nottingham or Milady DeWinter - or any enemy Nazi that isn't Hitler himself?  Vader represented the Emperor's agency, much as Ren did Snoke's, and that's why they always presented as more of a threat to the protagonists.
On a more holistic note, Star Wars inspired countless knock-offs where the Darth Vader analogue was the big baddie behind the evil space empire, and Star Wars doing the same might have seemed a little underwhelming in the long run.  Maybe Lucas changed course a little with each new SW movie - we already know Leia being Luke's sister was something Lucas pulled out of his ass, for example - and the Emperor was deliberately played up as a threat rather than just later killed offscreen like the Senate was?

It may not soften for ye hard bastards, but you may have missed the massive (apparent) shift in opinion on the Prequels (and The Clone Wars).  Almost 20 unbroken years of 'that money-grabbing neckbeard hack Lucas raped my childhood' has seemingly transformed to 'if only a true visionary filmmaker like Lucas was still in charge, and not that money-grabbing hagbitch hack Kennedy'.

I have a sneaking suspicion that some of the latter respect for the PT comes from a mix of Disney astroturfing for their new franchise, and people who hate the Sequels going along with it because it's another stick to beat the new films with.

[TordelBack]

Also is it not great to have him built up in folks minds just to be literally chopped down. When did it become a bad thing that a piece of fiction defied our expectations and assumptions?

This is it in a nutshell for me, and an argument that can be applied to A Great Many Things in TLJ.  Did we not ALL expect that Snoke would hang about hamming it up until the closing reel of Episode IX, in the interim revealed as cleverly related to some existing character or other?  Wasn't the only real question we had WHEN Kylo would go all soppy(-ier) on us?  Didn't Johnson give us a rare treat in this 21st Century of going WHAT THE ACTUAL DROKK?!? in a cinema? 

[Professor Bear]

Except that kind of shock death isn't that unusual.  Buffy did it back in its first season with the kiddie vampire chosen one thingy.

[JOE SOAP]

Didn't Johnson give us a rare treat in this 21st Century of going WHAT THE ACTUAL DROKK?!? in a cinema? 

Except that kind of shock death isn't that unusual.  Buffy did it back in its first season with the kiddie vampire chosen one thingy.

It may not have been unusual in the 20th Century.

[TordelBack]

Except that kind of shock death isn't that unusual.  Buffy did it back in its first season with the kiddie vampire chosen one thingy.

Granted.  But that was good too, wasn't it?  I'm not suggesting the twist was unprecedented in the history of fantasy drama, but I am suggesting it was completely unexpected in the context of the established pattern of SW movies - and yet at the same time entirely in keeping with the second-movie rug-pull exercise we were expecting.  Hence, clever.

I don't get that about Vader being less than the villain of the piece because there's someone above him - what about the Sheriff of Nottingham or Milady DeWinter - or any enemy Nazi that isn't Hitler himself?  Vader represented the Emperor's agency, much as Ren did Snoke's, and that's why they always presented as more of a threat to the protagonists.

On a more holistic note, Star Wars inspired countless knock-offs where the Darth Vader analogue was the big baddie behind the evil space empire, and Star Wars doing the same might have seemed a little underwhelming in the long run. 

Both good points, which I happen to agree with - but it is something I've seen RotJ (and to a lesser extent Empire) criticised for on a number of occasions: you create the ultimate super-baddie and then make him, to coin a phrase, "a rabid cur in a place of power".  Reducing Vader to the level of the Sheriff, or any other feudal ladder-climber, could be seen as diminishing such an iconic villain. Notably the (omniscient) historical intro to the Star Wars novelisation (which of course predates the completion of the movie itself) absolves Palpatine of any evil agency, instead he's just a figurehead manipulated by corrupt underlings, but equally the very first chapter casts Vader as just one (admittedly the most sinister one) of the Dark Lords of the Sith. By the time the film actually gets made, the Emperor seems to be pulling the strings, and Tarkin is 'holding Vader's leash'.  So Lucas' conception seems to have shifted in one respect, if not the other.

As Tips notes, its relevance to the current trilogy is that it shifts the films' focus away from a poor relation of the original dastardly duo to one (IMHO) genuinely interesting villain.

[Eric Plumrose]

As much as I detest THE LAST JEDI I must concede it's a fitting tribute for Luke. He was crap a Jedi despite a promising start but he came through in the end. Bit like his dad.

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

To you it feels insulting, Dr X.  To me, it's a breath of fresh air in a formerly locked room.  Your 'half-baked ideas' are either (depending on the idea you mean!) my 'refusal to be constrained by what is expected', or a well-developed theme. 

Snoke as a character has (I believe) more lines that the Emperor did in the OT, refers to his motivations, events in the past and plans for the future, and other characters say more about him than they did in the OT: he also takes a far more active role in the plot, instead of merely setting events in motion.  His death only seems premature because you expected to learn more about him, as we eventually did about Palpatine.  Any maybe we still will, post-mortem, as we did (in a sense) about Palpatine.  Or maybe we won't, and you can fill in the blanks yourself, as we once did about the Emperor.

Gotta agree to disagree. I think it's insulting because it's unsatisfying in a narrative sense. There was nothing to show Snope's motivations, nothing to show his agenda. And then he was dead. A lot of weight was put on him and he simply became a thing of smoke. I've no problem with my expectations being usurped, but this feels like it wasn't thought through.

Actually. I find my reaction difficult to articulate. It's more a visceral sense of wrongness, of incompleteness. I feel cheated out of a story.