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Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

Started by TordelBack, 23 January, 2017, 04:29:12 PM

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TordelBack

#630
Quote from: sheridan on 30 December, 2017, 02:05:16 AM
I was particularly pleased that Rey [spoiler]isn't the offspring of royalty / force masters, as seems to be the case in so much fiction[/spoiler].

It was the only sane resolution to a poorly thought-out setup,  but I was still unreasonably pleased by the implications.  Somebody on twitter referred it to as de-Potterising the GFFA,  and it's an image that has stuck with me. Anything that opens up SW is good, but pushing back against the inherited-superpowers theme that developed from RotJ  is even better.[spoiler]  In ANH Ben offers to teach Han the ways of the Force, implying that a Jedi Dad,  never mind a virgin birth in your ancestry, wasn't actually a requirement. [/spoiler]Good to see hints of that again.

JOE SOAP

Quote from: TordelBack on 30 December, 2017, 02:54:31 AM
[spoiler]  In ANH Ben offers to teach Han the ways of the Force, implying that a Jedi Dad,  never mind a virgin birth in your ancestry, wasn't actually a requirement. [/spoiler]Good to see hints of that again.

Lucas's concept of the Force was much more appealing and universal back then.

REVENGE OF THE JEDI STORY CONFERENCE TRANSCRIPT, JULY 13 to JULY 17, 1981

Kasdan: The Force was available to anyone who could hook into it?

Lucas: Yes, everybody can do it.

Kasdan: Not just the Jedi?

Lucas: It's just the Jedi who take the time to do it.

Marquand: They use it as a technique.

Lucas: Like yoga. If you want to take the time to do it, you can do it; but the ones that really want to do it are the ones who are into that kind of thing. Also like karate. Also another misconception is that Yoda teaches Jedi, but he is like a guru; he doesn't go out and fight anybody.

Kasdan: A Jedi Master is a Jedi isn't he?

Lucas: Well, he is a teacher, not a real Jedi. Understand that?

Kasdan: I understand what you're saying, but I can't believe it; I am in shock.

Lucas: It's true, absolutely true, not that it makes any difference to the story.

Kasdan: You mean he wouldn't be any good in a fight?

Lucas: Not with Darth Vader he wouldn't.

Kasdan: I accept it, but I don't like it.


Steven Denton

#632
Quote from: TordelBack on 30 December, 2017, 01:36:46 AM
Quote from: Jim_Campbell on 30 December, 2017, 12:13:07 AM
Quote from: TordelBack on 29 December, 2017, 11:50:00 PM
Why we're suddenly keen to apply real world or even  SF physics to SW at all is completely beyond me anyway.

I'm not! It's that the thing doesn't make sense within its own terms — if the rebel ships were faster, they should have been outpacing the Imperial ships. I've long said that I don't go looking for plot holes, and long bemoaned the fact that SF fans, in particular, have a tendency to spot holes where none exist, but this really didn't seem to hold together.

A fair comment, but I still think there are equal internal inconsistencies in how space travel works in most of the other films that folk (not necessarily Jim) seem happy enough to accept.

My personal beef about the chase is the imposed timescale, which has Rey's experiences on Ahch-To compressed into about a day and two nights, and Finn's mission to Canto Bight to a matter of hours. That's actually worse than the official two-day timescale of Revenge of the Sith, and equally unnecessary.

But I'm happy to overlook these flaws because I thought it was a fantastically rich and enjoyable movie.

When people lose suspension of disbelief everything they would otherwise forgive becomes obvious and vexing. It's never a defence that inconsistency's are forgiven in other films, but the plot or physics or logic problems individually May not be the root problem.

It's also worth noting that it's easy to skip over a convenient short hand (like space fighters working like planes) but a lot harder to skip over a major plot motivators

Also with mentioning people still go on about the Exhaust port. 

Magnetica

Wasn't the exhaust port part of the deliberate flaw put in by Galen Erso?

sheridan

Quote from: Magnetica on 30 December, 2017, 11:45:07 AM
Wasn't the exhaust port part of the deliberate flaw put in by Galen Erso?
Yup.

TordelBack

#635
I get Steven's point,  but I still suspect that losing suspension of disbelief comes BEFORE you start finding the relative motion of bodies in space a problem.  My contention is that people pick up on these things because they already dislike the film: it's an effect,  rather than a cause.  Otherwise ghastly nonsense like the time reversal in Superman the Movie would spoil the film for basically everyone,  when in fact most people just laugh and carry on enjoying the film.  Hence things like the different reactions to the bombing sequences in TESB and TLJ.

The plot is that the FO can't catch the (as stated) smaller and faster rebel fleet at sublight speeds, which really requires no more suspension of disbelief than the Death Star's inability to move to a decent firing position at Yavin; just as Paige and Leia's non-decompressing ship interiors require no more than the Death Star hangar bay,  or indeed everyone strolling about in the atmosphere of a gas giant.  We should be able to pick holes - and offer fan rationalisations - without it spoiling a fantasy film for us.

But I appreciate I'm putting words in people's mouths here, and worse reading their minds.  My genuine frustration comes not from the largely sane criticism here, from from the broader internet dogpile, which I believe has nothing whatsoever to do with inconsistent physics. This film is far closer to what I have wanted from SW since RotJ that it bothers me that reaction may push Disney in another direction entirely, in the same way Lucas took the prequels into a dull and boring cul-de-sac of misery because everyone hated Jar Jar.

We should be talking about why everyone bangs on about God in the film instead.  There's a nitpick I can get behind.

Steven Denton

Quote from: TordelBack on 30 December, 2017, 11:58:55 AM
I get Steven's point,  but I still suspect that losing suspension of disbelief comes BEFORE you start finding the relative motion of bodies in space a problem.  My contention is that people pick up on these things because they already dislike the film: it's an effect,  rather than a cause.  Otherwise ghastly nonsense like the time reversal in Superman the Movie would spoil the film for basically everyone,  when in fact most people just laugh and carry on enjoying the film.  Hence things like the different reactions to the bombing sequences in TESB and TLJ.

The plot is that the FO can't catch the (as stated) smaller and faster rebel fleet at sublight speeds, which really requires no more suspension of disbelief than the Death Star's inability to move to a decent firing position at Yavin; just as Paige and Leia's non-decompressing ship interiors require no more than the Death Star hangar bay,  or indeed everyone strolling about in the atmosphere of a gas giant.  We should be able to pick holes - and offer fan rationalisation's - without it spoiling a film for us.

But I appreciate I'm putting words in people's mouths here, and worse reading their minds.  My genuine frustration comes not from the largely sane criticism here, from from the broader internet dogpile, which I believe has nothing whatsoever to do with inconsistent physics.

We should be talking about why everyone bangs on about God in the film instead.  There's a nitpick I can get behind.

If you lose an audience they will pick holes, if you present too many holes you'll lose an audience and they will pick holes. For some people, maybe they are willing to suspend disbelief for hundreds of huge flaws and holes but what may seem like a relatively common plot contrivance could be a red line and suddenly they are done (that's something that happens with me quite a bit) my only real point is that not only do we not know why each person lost their suspension of disbelief but the likelihood is they don't either. Most people don't analyse themselves or their relationship with fiction deeply enough. All we do know is the film lost them and wasn't strong enough to win them back. And by them I mean me.

TordelBack

#637
Quote from: Steven Denton on 30 December, 2017, 12:11:01 PMAll l we do know is the film lost them and wasn't strong enough to win them back. And by them I mean me.

And that's a perfectly sensible position,  if unfortunate. I do understand the problem: RotS  lost me completely with Padme's ludicrous continuity-busting and incomprehensible death scene,  whereupon everything else about the film retrospectively unravelled for me,  right down to Yoda and Obi-Wan referring to Palpatine as the Emperor at the same moment he's declaring his Empire in the Senate. It remains my most disliked SW film,  a feeling that only grows each time I watch it,  but I'm always aware that this all starts with the failure of a single scene at the end of the movie.

I'm currently more invested in the question of why Poe waved Rey goodbye in TFA supposedly before he met her for the first time in TLJ.

Steven Denton

We've all waved to a stranger in a steam train before, it probably just seemed like the polite thing to do.

Professor Bear

Padme died of a broken heart, TB.

Quote from: TordelBack on 30 December, 2017, 11:58:55 AMMy contention is that people pick up on these things because they already dislike the film: it's an effect,  rather than a cause.

While I agree that this is a Thing That Happens, I think with TLJ you have a bit of an outlier in that there are a lot of people who were clearly genuinely psyched for it and the film just lost them.
In years to come, I suspect that we'll see consensus on "Hold the line/Yo Momma" being the series' shark jump moment.

Keeping this nonsense going: why don't the bombers just fly horizontally and point their keels toward their target if they create their own gravity?  Use them as missiles, sort of thing?

TordelBack

Quote from: Steven Denton on 30 December, 2017, 01:37:15 PM
We've all waved to a stranger in a steam train before, it probably just seemed like the polite thing to do.

"You've never heard of the Mallard? She's the engine that made the East Coast Mainline run in 12 furlongs".

TordelBack

#641
Quote from: Professor Bear on 30 December, 2017, 01:39:07 PM
In years to come, I suspect that we'll see consensus on "Hold the line/Yo Momma" being the series' shark jump moment.

Whereas I thought that exchange - and the whole opening sequence - was utterly great,  my favourite space battle since Endor, character-anchored and clearly choreographed. I loved the sustained undermining of the 'coolness' of evil,  both from Poe and from Ade Edmondson's character and the dreadnought Captain. Hux may have the natty uniforms and the megaships, but he and his kind are really just pompous Peter Principle incompetents whose subordinates (and superiors) loathe them.  Gleeson is more than a bit Panto, but I relished every sleight,  however broad.   

GrudgeJohnDeed

Absolutely Steve, with regards to plot holes or inconsistencies, I barrel past minor things like the science behind their bombs, or perhaps anachronistic humour, but if the main plot in an important scene doesn't make sense to me I don't really have a choice in reacting negatively to that. Suddenly I'm not following and the characters actions and motivations are undermined. And you're right, once you're on the wrong side of a film for whatever reason, it's myriad problems can start to congeal for you. Something that was perhaps a minor plot hole before (story related, not bomb science n stuff) now just compounds the criticism. I got most of the way through before I realised it had completely lost me, I realised when I was admiring the pattern on the ceiling of the cinema briefly.

I think Leia should be an ice lolly in space, Finn should be fused to the wreckage of a miniature Death Star cannon and Luke shouldn't have been a crybaby but that's all subjective, I like talking about the plot holes because they are less contentious things to criticise as I think they're legitimate errors in the writing.

Quote from: TordelBack on 30 December, 2017, 11:58:55 AM
Lucas took the prequels into a dull and boring cul-de-sac of misery because everyone hated Jar Jar.

they were in said cul-de-sac from the get go! :D

Steven Denton

Your assessment of the character is fine but, We have already had admeral piett and he wasn't played as Captain Hook on Bournemouth pier so we've already seen this can work way better.

In a film of good to excellent performances Hux stands out a mile as simply awful. In my opinion he's the only bad performance, and he's not just a little off, he's way off.

Steven Denton

I found the on hold bit funny though, even if it was very family guy.