Hey guys! I highly recommend checking out Lessons From The Screenplay's video for more on the writing of The Last Jedi: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GYN2Lp9oHMk.html
I completely agree with you on this video, Sage. I remember an earlier video of yours where you went into the difference in story and plot and I feel that distinction is important to the Last Jedi as well. A lot of the complaints about the "pointlessness" of Finn's subplot, I feel, are coming from a very plot-focused perspective, and from that perspective alone I could agree. But Finn's subplot isn't plot-driven, its story-driven. From a plot-perspective it's pointless, Finn and Rose's mission ended up not meaning anything in regards to the final battle, and it seemed like a waste of time. But from a story perspective, as you said, Finn changes as a person, he evolves. And that evolution of his character was important to the last battle, with him being ready to sacrifice himself for the Resistance. The trip wasn't pointless to him.
The problem with screenwriting lessons or categories about 7 or any even-or-odd number list of questions of wants and needs is that it tries to present a hierarchy or model for criticism when there is no objective model, never has been, never will be. Every film is different, has unique problems and challenges, and the stuff that works as criticism for Man of Steel does not apply to The Last Jedi. None of the characters however they chart the grid you place them on, are actually complex or made interesting in the film. I personally liked The Last Jedi and there are scenes and bits I liked in there, but I found it to be flawed and incoherent, and it collapsed as soon as I fixed on the following problems and issues: 1) The movie does not explain why Rey would want to turn Kylo, and risk everything to do so. Kylo tortured her, massacred billions as an accomplice to the destruction of he Hosnian system, maimed her best friend Finn and put him in a coma, and killed Han Solo. Vader did similarly to Luke, but Luke didn't consider turning him until after the reveal, and even then he did it in ROTJ because Vader could sense him and he felt that he had to go to him to spare Han and Leia and give the rebels position away. There is none of that in The Last Jedi. The reveal about Luke Abraham-and-Isaac-ing Kylo is about him and not about Rey. And even then that doesn't make any sense as to why Rey would want to believe that she should try and save Kylo and risk the entire cause and position for doing so. The only justification is off-screen shipping between Kylo and Rey. 2) The movie does not do any world-building for The Galactic Republic for us to care about the ideology of the rebellion to an extent that we buy into Finn's story arc, or Poe Dameron's story-arc. If you are going to try and address those issues you need to lay some groundwork which the movie did not do. Now admittedly the world-building of Star Wars has never been strong but neither of the movies before tried to milk any mileage out of that. In the case of Last Jedi, Poe Dameron/Holdo's story makes no sense to anyone with knowledge of military hierarchy. Holdo is a terrible commander and her actions make no sense but the movie wants her to be right and Poe to be wrong, and this is just incompetence. Likewise, Poe Dameron commits Mutiny and in real life he would have been liable for immediate court-martial and given it's war, immediate summary execution and not patted on the back by Leia and Holdo (cf, Washington and Valley Forge). The big reveal in The Last Jedi and its political message i.e. some parts of the galaxy sell weapons to both sides does not make any sense until we get some sense of the political and social background of the system after ROTJ and how The First Order came back into existence and became such a threat. The Force Awakens should admittedly have done that, but The Last Jedi is pretending and acting as if it did. And ultimately it amounts to a kind of lazy false equivalency i.e. because some people sell weapons to both, both sides are somehow to blame. In real history there were corporations which made weapons for both the Allies and the Nazis and that certainly didn't equate both of them. Anyone with any real knowledge would find these laughable solutions to made-up drama. 3) The movie's big reveal about the backstory of Luke-Kylo fails to achieve two things that would make it dramatically satisfactory to both characters and Rey's story. It needs to convince us that Kylo was worse than Vader. The Luke who believed that there was good in Vader needs to convince us that he did not find similar good in his nephew, and that there needs to be some justification on some level for what led Luke to take that step. Likewise, we need to believe that Kylo Ren had a real chance to be Ben Solo and good, that he wasn't entirely evil until Luke pushed him over for Rey to take the step she did. The movie doesn't justify any of that. We don't get any sense of who Ben Solo was before Snoke got to him, and since Snoke is treated as a joke (which okay I get because he's a terrible character) , that basically makes Kylo's fall into the dark side a big joke. If Snoke is a moron, then that means Kylo Ren was never truly turned to the dark side, he really was evil all along, and that Luke was right to try and kill him and that Rey was a bigger moron than she already comes across. 4) Rey is not a complex character, she is basically a device and extension of Luke and Kylo's story. She doesn't get to witness or be part of the final confrontation, and the final scene makes her as important as that broom kid. The Force Awakens did some smoke and mirrors around her and set up tantalizing ideas, now if The Last Jedi is saying that was all crap, that would only work if what we got instead was a more complex character. Instead she is now less complex than before. In the original films, Luke was not complex in A New Hope, but he became more complex in each film that followed, mostly because it built on the previous work rather than try and yank out what the previous films did.
Just Write I think after Kylo went on dark side I agree Luke would changed BUT NOT BEFORE THAT he went to kill child of his sister and best friend becuse he felt so but he tryied to save Vader when YODA AND OBI WAN let Anakin die and Luke went to save him what he thougth was the most evil person in galaxy but goes to kill his nephew while he sleeps becuse little dark side after that it is okay that he changed but not before that
Aru Gula rubbish, it was the most difficult thing she could have heard - telling her she’s a palpatine would just serve her a place in the story on a silver platter, instead of earning it.
@@RekizFilms The plot twist that she has no bloodline making her special is a good one and one that I personally enjoyed watching this movie. But her character as a whole makes that pretty muddled and keeps me from really liking her. So she craves the validation that she's special and ultimately learns to not need that to be a hero, fine, but what is the alternative presented? If she's not powerful because of her bloodline, WHY is she so powerful in the force? She has no experience with it prior to the events of these movies and she hardly has any training up until TROS. She doesn't earn her place in the story she's just told she doesn't have one yet here she is anyways. I liked that subversion leaving the theater for TLJ and I just accepted the shift in TROS but I'd have LOVED the nobody twist had everything leading up to it shown her actually earning her strength and her place in the story prior to her realizing that she had it.
@Aru Gula TLJ was a piss poor example of a penultimate film. I mean good lord can you imagine what Rian Johnsson would have done to Harry Potter and the half blood prince? Or The Two Towers? Thank god this is over now.
There’s also taxing a hundred thousand worlds to get rich. What does the empire need arms dealers for? They clearly have cutting edge R&D to make stuff like the Death Star. The whole thing is a forced message that misses the mark.
Watching all these video essays about TLJ (which I admittedly loved from day 1) just makes me even more sad about how the main characters, especially Rey, were treated in TROS.
Uhm, are we reading different comment sections? Most comments here, even disagreeing ones, voice their opinion quite respectfully, especially compared to the normal flow of things on YT. (Yes, there are always idiots.)
i fear that the fan overreaction and it was overreacting to the films quality will make disney clamp their corporate crip harder on the creative aspect of the next films resulting in more bland and safe sequels
DarthSiones It's tough to not always phrase opinions as fact by mistake. I think It's only going too far when you intentionally say "it's a fact" or "you're wrong" or "objective."
I disagree about the film's overall quality and cohesion but I very much appreciate your efforts to explain positive qualities. That's much harder than pointing out flaws, and not enough people do it. Also, mega-respect for being fucking nuanced about it, and being able to admit that the film has positive and negative qualities, unlike most fans who have a compulsion to be all-or-nothing on every film.
To me, this is the best movie of the franchise right next to Empire Strikes Back. Not only is it an inversion of Empire, it one ups Empire by being both a critique of the genre zombie it became, but also did so with Disney's money and is for all intents and purposes, a multimillion dollar art film. You don't see that with franchises ever, save maybe for Chris Nolan's Dark Knight, which did a lot of the same, commenting on the subject matter it embodied. That said, even if you don't buy into the metanarratives, it's a fucking good movie on it's own. I think Star Wars fans ruined it for themselves by expecting things to happen and they ruined their chances to enjoy it. Me, on the other hand, I'm not so into it that I expected much, especially after the Deja Vu that was Force Awakens. This movie made me think, 'Holy shit, someone can make a good Star Wars movie after all these bad ones? YES!" And then...Rise of Skywalker came out and I'm fucking done with this shit.
Jeremy Landry I disagree because I found the comedy awful, parts of the film utterly eye-roll worthy (hi there Leia Poppins and miss “Saving what we love”) I found the character motivations stupid and contradictory (Huldo was so stupid to keep stuff from Poe, she basically fucked everything up but the movie treats her like she’s vindicated) and honestly it changes pre-established rules in the franchise. Oh yeah, and Luke was dumb imo and nothing you can say will make me feel like he wasn’t a completely different character in this movie
It is ultimately an ill considered film, save your subversion for the spinoffs and reboots. Don't play GRRM with the penultimate starwars film, that's just irresponsible.
@@heavysystemsinc. I'm sorry dude but thats total bs. It does not parody its own genre, any parody you read from it is because its so bad you assumed it must be commentary. I agree with a lot of the broad strokes of this video, but it fails to touch on any of the details required to carry through the broader concepts that were missing in the move. For example, The begining of this video talks about Poe and his needs and wants, and in essence what its saying is true, however the plot isn't cohesive enough for any of his actions or choices to address the issues discussed. Its in no way explained how "winning the war" and "being a good leader" are mutually exclusive, how destroying the dreadnought will actually help win the war if it costs his whole fleet or how retreating at the end is in fact being a good leader. I get what it was trying to do but we are literally constantly being asked to just go with it, just ignore that blowing up the dreadnought wont really help anyone, just ignore that Holdos plan made no sense whether Poe knew about it or not, just ignore the 30 minute long casino sequence where they rescue some horses. The movie had a good premise that was executed in the single worst possible way it could have been
Jay Sway This video isn't The Last Jedi, though, and he even states that he's not arguing that it was a great film, even though he liked it. Blindly disliking this video just because you didn't like the movie being discussed is childish and naive.
Turnt SNACO what are you talking about? Who said anything about “blindly disliking” this video? I disliked this video because I don’t agree with what he states in his video.
Lol! I saw your Hobbit series, where you picked apart the smallest plot holes and occasional lazy writing. Yet here you are defending gaping holes, contrived themes, and the systematic deconstruction of a VERY well established universe. You sir are a shill.
I can understand your argument that it is a story competently told from a thematic standpoint, but I would argue with your last point that it wasn't just fan service or self indulgent. One of the huge things that ruined the movie for me was just how often the story would pull you into to its seriousness only to give you a harsh slap back to reality with a wink-down-the-camera 4th wall breaking bit of needless slapstick that ruined the tension. Our introduction to Luke is ruined for a cheap laugh, the porgs ruin several moments for cheap laughs, Chewie is used for cheap laughs, the caretakers are used for cheap laughs, Leia pulls herself back into an exploded ship mostly for fan service... what bothered me most about TLJ was how little the story seemed to care about itself and respect itself, and how often it broke the mood for the sake of the audience alone rather than the characters. That's something that TFA suffered from as well, but TLJ took it up to 11.
Agree 100%. Rian Johnson destroyed tension and drama in crucial scenes in order to get a cheap laugh with one-liners or physical gags. The Throne Room scene is a perfect example; Rey's life is threatened by Snoke, the audience should be tense and fearful for her safety, yet Johnson chooses to break that tension and drama to have Rey be hit in the back of the head with a lightsaber, all for a cheap laugh. He's asking the audience to simultaneously laugh at Rey being smacked in the head but also fearful for her safety. Tonally, it's a mess. As a filmmaker, you can't ask an audience to take a story, scene, or situation seriously if you don't yourself. It's bathos run amok.
I wouldn't consider the intro to Luke to be ruined for a cheap laugh. I admit, when I saw the film the first time I didn't like it because it caught me off guard. But the more I think about it, it's a great way to introduce his character. Him tossing the lightsaber encompasses everything we need to know about where that character is at that point in his life. How he has given up on the jedi way and is refusing the call to action from Rey. Everything we need to know about that character is presented to us without him uttering a single line of dialogue. Show don't tell is what film is all about.
Blitzwing543 we already knew what we needed to know about Luke when we learned that he'd gone into exile after losing his nephew and jedi academy. We also heard him say "it's time for the jedi to end" of the trailer, so him throwing the lightsaber doesn't tell us anything we didn't already know. It was a cheap gag which ruined what had started as a poignant, emotional moment in TFA. Not only did it fail to live up to two years of anticipation, but it absolutely ruined it.
But we didn't know and more importantly Rey didn't know that Luke had chosen to forgo the way of the jedi and chosen to exile himself on the island because he felt like the jedi were doing more harm than good. That was not established in TFA. Also why are you disappointed that Luke turned out a certain way, when his character was 'supposedly' set up to be that way in episode 7?
Agreed. It was impression that the above video gave a little too much credit to the film. Perhaps a bit too used to looking at the film from the dissection table as it were. Furthermore, it is my opinion that in terms of subversion, it was a failure; ultimately it worked very hard to backtrack and undo all of the potentially groundbreaking changes it was setting up. To me, that is the film's greatest disappointment.
The moment Luke becomes a Jedi, in Return of the Jedi, is where he stands over his father, and throws his lightsaber away. Fake fans love to forget that. Being a Jedi isn't about being a space samurai, it's about rising above that.
@@nopatiencejoe6376 The Last Jedi makes it explicit that Luke rejected the Jedi and failed as a hero when he isolated himself. He is redeemed when he sacrificed himself to buy the Resistance an escape. The movie is chiding Luke for running away after he failed Ben, a decision JJ Abrams made cannon in TFA.
7 Basic Questions of Narrative Drama in 3 Parts Part 1 - Wants vs Needs (<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="96">1:36</a>) 1. What does this character want? 2. What does this character need? 3. How do those wants and needs conflict within the character? Part 2 - Conflict (<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="390">6:30</a>) 4. How do the characters' wants and needs conflict with the outside world? 5. How do they conflict with other characters? Part 3 - Change (<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="563">9:23</a>) 6. How does the character change through the those conflicts? / How does that resolution affect them? 7. What impact does that change have on everyone else?
Kylo doesn't get the recognition he deserves for how interesting his character is. Also, glad to see I wasn't one of the only people to like this movie.
@Christian Tompkins There's still one more movie left. We didn't know anything about Vader's motivations or his reasons for turning halfway through the original trilogy.
I liked the movie. Didn't love it. But now, having seen TROS, my respect for this movie skyrocketed after seeing the garbage that JJ put on to display.
+Tristan McCann: I honestly have confidence that he won't. He loved The Last Jedi (he even said in an interview he loved the script so much he was jealous he wasn't directing the film) and considering that he openly admitted he never had an answer for Rey's parentage, I don't think it's something he'd want to retcon. Plus, it just opens up a big can of worms and asks more questions than answers, which is what I think a lot of people aren't realizing when they keep thinking she should've been a Kenobi or something.
That was... a mature review with extremely compeling and very well-structured arguments. Even though I disliked the movie you made me look at it with a different perspective. Congrats!
Random Pessimist Yeah I agree, I disagree with a fair bit of the video, but I'm not either going to dislike it or stop watching Just Write. I'd like to break one stereotype; I've been perfectly civil with all who like the film and have been both mobbed and abused for disliking the film. It's hardly heresy to love or hate the film. I also hate the narrative that apparently you aren't a true fan if you like/dislike the film from either side.
Ege Ersü intellectually I don't agree with no platforming so I'm not really sure what your point is? I'm always happy to listen to the other side of an argument. I'm saddened by the hate JW is getting for voicing his opinion.
There are 2 deleted scenes that would change how I feel about the TLJ. Luke mourning Han is really important, and should have been on screen. There is another scene which fans deemed “the third lesson” which Luke lies to Rey that the caretakers were being plundered by some invaders (they weren’t). Luke was teaching her balance. Although I have grown to like Luke in TLJ more those two scenes being included would have made me leave with a better taste in my mouth
@Shonksu Correct. We needed them. Thank you for calling attention to the distinction, as referenced in the video, rather than just parroting "TLJ BAD EVERYTHING ABOUT IT BAD," which serves no purpose toward discussion and just makes people look stupid.
A lot of critics think that going against the “expected” is immediately worthy of respect. It isn’t, not when done wrongly. The Finn-Rose casino sideplot is pace destroying, useless, both narratively and thematically, and lacking any sense of urgency. This is pretty well acknowledged, even by critics who liked the film. The film’s writing saps much of the narrative tension of the chase, especially when Holdo unnecessarily treats Poe like a spy. Even if Holdo doesn’t trust him, there’s no way her plan to get everyone into escape pods as they pass by a planet is something that Poe NEVER finds out about. If Poe is impulsive, then why make him think there’s nothing to lose? That doesn’t make sense. Luke’s character was twisted just a tad too far into a wretched man who doesn’t care, preserving nothing of the incorruptible warrior he was when we last saw him. Luke needed to be a man struggling, not a man defeated. Rey, again, is overpowered and overskilled to a disgusting degree. How is she that good? She just is. An untrained girl gets no saber training and basic Force training from Luke, and suddenly she is killing Red Guards? No. And to counter Rian Johnson’s “they can come from nothing” angle, Ben Solo is the grandson of the greatest Force-user ever. There needs to be a power difference. That was why Vader vs Luke in ROTJ was the culmination of a character arc that dropped down with their fight in ESB. Rey doesn’t go through that same moral or physical arc on a large enough level to narratively or thematically earn what she has in TLJ. The Rey-Kylo dynamic in TLJ was genuinely interesting and one of Rian Johnson’s good ideas. However, Johnson’s writing of Snoke, and Luke, both characters who did little when they should’ve had more, cripples the story, because the big villain and the big hero don’t do anything. Rose-Finn is awkwardly forced, the animals are freed while their friends run out of fuel in space, and Holdo kamikazes her ship, with Rian Johnson failing to do anything else with the entirety of space and fleets to play with. No one coming to answer Leia’s call was an excellent twist. The Last Jedi failed to fully realise any character arcs, forgoing believable development for murky themes of universal justice and identity, neither of which are capably realised, in a badly-paced film, whose storylines are awkwardly pushed by good intentions and little else, in a film decent in a vacuum, but trash when in the context of the Star Wars universe.
@Shonksu I guess she wrote this article detailing the online harassment as an exercise. You can read it or not www.nytimes.com/2018/08/21/movies/kelly-marie-tran.html
All the fandom menace people hate ROS too, TLJ was the end of their support for the sequels. If Disney thought they could win them back with such a hackjob of a movie they were sorely mistaken.
@Shonksu The toxic media was obviously fake! It isn't like the Star Wars community has a habit of doing that in the past..... (except when they harassed Ahmed Best to the point of almost suicide, or when they forced Jake Lloyd to take a super early retirement from acting because he was so ridiculed for his role and his acting, or when they got Hayden Christianson to quit acting due to harassment, or when they tell people who like the ST that they're soy boys, shills, cunts, stupid, whiteknights, etc., or that they say to anyone who criticizes Star Wars Theory's “Vader" fan film (regardless of whether or not it's constructive) that they're payed shills.)
Well, this video is like looking for corn in shit. Sure it's there, but it's still a big pile of shit. I agree that the film hits all the points you laid out but it does so by sacrificing narrative and character development. Rian Johnson makes the mistake of writing the characters as if they were looking in to the fictional universe rather than occupying that universe. Let's start with Poe, the lesson he learns doesn't follow logically from the experiences he has in the film. Look at events from his POV: He decides it's worth the risk and sacrifice of the bombers to take out the dreadnought Leia disagrees. Two scenes latter, the FO drops in. Had he not taken out the dreadnought they would have been all killed right there. Poe is proven right. Holdo plan is basically "run away", Poe thinks they should turn and fight. The entire rebel fleet is destroyed and most of the rebels are killed until Holdo decides to turn and fight. From Poe's POV, he's proven right again. So in the climatic battle, there's no were to run and they can't hide in the base. It has to be a last stand. Every experience he's had should tell him to fight...so he retreats in to the base? Keep in mind that from Poe's POV there is no back way out of the base, but he goes anyway because RJ knows that a magic girl is going to make a back door. So Poe doesn't have a character arc, more like a character 180...for no reason. OK, Fin: his arc isn't an arc. He want's to get the tracker off the ship to save Rey, but fails (hey Fin, you could have just smashed it. Oh well, Rian Johnson forgot about it after this scene anyway) Then Fin volunteers for a mission to save the rebel fleet. Keep in mind that from Fin's in universe POV he doesn't know he has a character shield, their's a strong possibility that this is a suicide mission. So he's all in at this point, only to be all in again at the end. Rey has no arc at all, she's barely a character, she's exactly the same at the end of the film as at the beginning (and, no, getting unexplained super powers doesn't count). If she wasn't on the poster, you couldn't tell that she's supposed to be the hero of this film. Does she want to join the rebellion and defeat the First Order? Meh, she doesn't seem to care one way or the other. Does she want to be a Jedi? not really. Well, what does she want? To meet her parents (to bad their dead) and, latter, to "save" Kylo, but only after she sees him with his shirt off. Oh, and Luke Skywalker thinks the Jedi should end because...um, because...Wait, why does he think the Jedi should end?
Heard that it was a decision by Disney. Abrams cut was originally around 3 hours long. He originally wanted to split the last movie into two. And then Disney made changes he didn't even know about. I think JJ Abrams is more competent than... well *that*.
@@JacktheRah That is just a rumor though and has no real reliable source. Maybe it is because I am not a huge fan of his work already, but the newest movie had all the issues I had with JJ movies amplified to 11. I think it definitely was his idea
@@JacktheRah Even if that's true there are still major problems with the movie that clearly have JJ's personal touch to them. Mostly the fan service he adds that are winks and nods to the audience, but make no sense within the story. Like Chewie getting a medal from Leia. The fans have joked about that for years but when given much thought, it's really stupid that Leia would do that. Or Rey taking the name Skywalker instead of Organa, the audience is much more attached to Skywalker, but Leia was a beloved and trust mentor for Rey much longer. Compare that to JJ's star trek where the big twist is that Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan. Cool for the fans, does not matter to any of the characters within the scene.
"The last Jedi should be applauded for resisting the temptation to endulge its audience with fanservice, callbacks and references. For telling a real story that questions the themes and ideas of the previous films instead just pandering to us." - someone call feige and tell him this is why endgame isn't Logan.
I think both narrative routes you mentioned have a great deal of artistic merit Sian (i.e. the 'Play within the genre/safe/Endgame Route' and the 'Deconstruct the genre/avant-garde/Logan Route'). The vast majority of moviegoers, however, don't seem to enjoy both routes being done in the same storyline, which falls squarely on RJ's shoulders with TLJ. When you're brought in to do a sequel to someone else's story, you have to know that you can't do whatever you want with the pieces on the board, particularly when you're not closing out that story. While Rotten Tomatoes is far from perfect, the inverted bell curve of this sequel trilogy seems to be an indicator of that from a general population standpoint.
@@jasontucker1760 I do agree with you. In the end, the most infuriating thing in the whole sequel trilogy is a lack of an artistic coherence. Both routes - fanservice and deconstruction - are great separated but doesn't work well together. I feel that 2 alternatives would have worked better than what we got in the end. - A timeline where JJ directed the 3 movies and gave to the fans pleasing references/easter eggs. Safer on a lot of aspects but appreciated by a majority. - A timeline where RJ directed episode 7 (and subsequently episode 8 and 9) thus bringing new ideas to the table while playing with the existing narrative codes of the Star wars universe. Perhaps, RJ would have received less backlash if we knew from the beginning that he wanted to change the codes even in a theoretical RJ episode 7. I heard that his planned trilogy was canned so we might never see if he was competent or not. One movie isn't enough to encapsulate his whole narrative skills. TLJ is reaaaaallly slow and some scenes choices are questionnable (Luke's mourning; Phasma alternative defeat) but there are good ideas in there (morally grey). So thanks you Disney for your impatience and greediness !
Sian Birkner Endgame and Logan are doing two different things. Endgame honors it’s past it doesn’t pander or just do a callback. A call back is iron man saying “remember the first movie”. The time travel helps to conclude certain character arcs such as Tony.
It’s not just that Holdo didn’t tell Po, it’s that she didn’t tell ANYONE her plan besides a small team of high ranking officers. She let the entirety of the rebel fleet believe that the plan was just to just fly until they were out of fuel, then die. Thats not good leadership, thats the absolute worst kind of leadership.
The problem with that entire part of the story is that it builds up as if there is a reason why they are not saying anything. When I was first watching my mind automatically went to them believing that there was a spy on board and that was why they were not telling people. Something like that made sense to me, it gave a reason why everybody wasn't told. Unfortunately when the payoff came there was no reason whatsoever. Holdo walked into a perfectly justified mutiny because of her reasonless refusal to tell people the plan.
@@Macca-95 There was a reason. To all of the crew besides Rose and Finn, hyperspace tracking is impossible. So the logical thing to think is that you have a mole on your ships.
@@Macca-95 Bad writing would be using exposition for every tiny detail, but I guess thinking your audience has a brain and can suss out the obvious is a bad thing in Star Wars?
I don't really agree with your conclusion. The movie don't pander to audience expectation but does the exact opposite wich isn't better, it tries to subvert expectations at all cost. First by cancelling all that was built into SW7. I didn't liked SW7 but at the end of 8 the only thing that I could think was "What a dick move to your coworker Johnson". There is no basis for a sequel left and that wouldn't be a problem if this movie wasn't mean to be the second out of three and middle part of a story. At the end of 7 I was like "Meh but let's see where it's going" while at the end of the 8 it was "This one was cooler but there isn't anywhere to go now". It isn't that bad as a stand alone movie but fails remakably as a piece of a trilogy, more so as the 8th film of a franchise. Aside from that yes you can guess all the characters themes and motivations but it's nearly too cristal clear, like a checklist. Many dialogues don't sound pronounced by people but by scenarists. Holdo may be the worst offender, all the speeches about hope don't come from an admiral trying to reassure it's troops but from a scenarist trying to explain the plot of the movie, it feels fake and forced. On a final note there's the general incompetence induced apathy from everyone. Everyone is stupid. I can't take the first order seriously when it's led by wannabe Hitler who get outwitted by a guy telling yo mama jokes. The main thing that maintain any form of tension is everyone having one more bad idea turn by turn so there can be a plot. So as cool as it looks (and it's stunning) it tend to dull us and we just wait for the next idiocy to solve the resistance's problem or create them a new one.
@Akira Toriyama Let's go : -Luke throwing the lightlsaber (the whole tension gone for a joke), I didn't like this ending but doing luke's refusal that way is petty. He should have a little more respect or at least interrogations about how it came back to him. -Finn character devellopment is thrown out of the window and he undergoes the same journey he took in tfa -Rey's parents plot is also backheanded without any consequences on the character, she go "meh ok" and is back to normal seconds later. -Snoke was indeed supposed to be the antagonist, and not enough was built for him to feel important, killing him ins't the problem, the problem is doing it in a lame way without explaining anything . Remove Snoke from the trilogy and you have the same story, He took a bad character and made it a useless one. -Hux go from wannabe hitler to a crybaby that get distracted by jokes on his mother. Sorry but the whole movie exude a "Fuck you JJ, good luck doing a third movie now that nothing is left from what you built, it was trash anyway." mood. He also wipe his ass with the continuity of the license. Now Jedis need no training nor controll, they just need a motivation poster and a lightsaber and can go do awesome stuff three days after having discovered that the force is a real thing. The FTL strike is a whole other can of worm and may be a good thing if reused later but for now it's just a weird oddity.
@@TyphoonJig I'm not the guy you were talking to but some of those things are kind of the point. 1) Luke throwing the lightsaber away is shocking and it should be. His disrespect for it is his disrespect for the jedi order and what they stand for. Luke, at the start of the movie, is broken and hopeless and his journey is about learning that he was wrong. That the jedi made many mistakes but that's not a reason to let everything burn away. That's what his talk to Yoda was about, that's why he comes back to face the First Order and that's why the original manuscripts of the jedi order are saved in the end. Because Luke was wrong in throwing the lightsaber away and the jedi do, indeed, deserve to be brought back. 2) The video addresses the point about Finn but I'm not necessarily gonna defend it on that. I can see why people don't like the way he develops here. 3) Rey's reaction is not without consequence. It's one of the things that pulls her toward Kylo. And, honestly, I liked that she wasn't from some special bloodline. Star Wars has always suffered from having only a certain group of people being important to the story of the galaxy when the whole idea of the Force used to be that anyone could feel it, that it's the Force that ties everyone together. Rey didn't need to be born a special person, it should be the fact that she decides to act and learn that made her special and making her related to some grand master of the force gives a bad message of 'either you're born important or you're never gonna be a great jedi'. 4) I do like that Snoke dies and Kylo assumes the leadership but I also feel the scene is too on the nose and badly executed. I think that it's a good way to handle things in concept but it could've been done way better. 5) Hux was badly used in TLJ and ROS, won't argue that. As for everyone being able to do impressive things with the Force without training, that was set up by J. J. Abrams in TFA when she manages to use the mind trick even without any training.
Perhaps Holdo was meant to be a thematic maturity for Poe, but the execution was horrendous. Even if she doesn't trust Poe as a leader, there is no reason to hide the plan from him, which any parent/leader would know could push a rash person act anyways and often in detriment to the larger goal (which is exactly what happened). Add on top of that that her plan was stupid in the first place and failed miserably and you get a character that was useless, infuriating, and a perfect metaphor for the current state of Lucasfilm/Disney.
Just a little thing to strengthen your argument. Holdo didn't just hide the plan from Poe, she hid that there was a plan at all. If she had told him that they were going to continue following Leia's plan and that it was need to know, instead of trying to 'put Poe in his place' , he probably would have accepted it.
Yes, and if we are benevolent and assume Holdo was trying to teach Poe a lesson, she also failed at that by getting almost the entire Rebel fleet killed with no way of defending themselves. If Poe learned anything, it was from Leia.
>These are stories for 12 year old boys >Here’s a video essay explaining how the story is competent when evaluated by grad school Lit students. Pick one, Lucasfilm.
So,...being a hotshot impulsive character is bad for Poe but good for Rose. Poe was given a tongue lashing for endangering lives, meanwhile Rose set a stampede of animals throughout a town. Trying to save your friend over the "greater good" is bad for Finn but good for Rose. Self sacrifice is good for Vice Admiral Holdo but Finn needs someone to intervene & teach him a lesson. This movie has a message to put certain characters in their place. I'm just saying.
I respect Rian Johnson for his ballsiness, if nothing else. He tried to make a Rian Johnson film within the Star Wars framework, but it’s ultimately his downfall here. He was clearly driven by personal ego and not a sense of serving something greater than himself. As a result, we ended up with a movie that’s ambitious but ultimately misguided. Contrary to how it is being spun, it’s not a misunderstood masterpiece- it’s just aggressively mediocre. It fixates so much on subversion and being unpredictable that it robs itself of any real narrative weight. It’s a film built on incessant fake-outs, nihilism, moral ambiguity, heavy-handed sociopolitical ideologies and iconoclasm- which leaves it feeling utterly joyless. Contrast this with classic Star Wars, which is about escapist romanticism and time-tested “Hero’s Journey” archetypes. The themes of Star Wars don’t need to be modernized for the series to endure. It already has endured and will continue to endure. The originals will, anyway. The sequel trilogy will be but a pop culture footnote in 20 years.
"“Hero’s Journey” archetypes. The themes of Star Wars don’t need to be modernized for the series to endure." Really? Do we want this over and over again for the next decades? Even though Johnsons plan didn't completely work out for me I still applaud his ambitions. Yeah of course we can watch those linear from zero to hero stories forever and get some joy out of them. But I'm also interested in what happens when people start messing around with those stable and predictable concepts. Sure most of the times they will fuck it up horribly but some happy accidents are what might lead to something new and iconic someday. Yeah those old movies were awesome but SW is no fucking sanctuary and art should always be open to change and innovation. Let us not be so closed-minded on what a thing should and should't be. Didn't fully work out this time for the film guys- it's fine just try again.
CloudyMindMusic “The Hero’s Journey” is a very loose framework for a story. It is possible to innovate while hitting the important beats. It’s made for some of the best books and films of all time, so yes, we do want that (in some form) over and over again for decades. Again, “time-tested.” It works. It resonates. I wouldn’t have minded them getting experimental af with the spin-off/anthology films, but it was imperative that they get the mainline sequels right. They didn’t, and now the fanbase is fiercely divided and most of the goodwill and enthusiasm about the future of the series has been squandered.
" “The Hero’s Journey” is a very loose framework for a story" Well it's not that loose. When you move a little away from western "time-tested" storytelling you will see that there are a lot more storytelling concepts in this world that can resonate with peoples dreams and wishes in completely different and interesting ways. Sticking to one framework still seems like a huge limitation to me. Even if you can be innovative within that. And about this: “but it was imperative that they get the mainline sequels right." These are movies. It's a fucking luxury for everyone of us to be able to watch these incredibly expensive pieces of art. So many talented people put their heart and soul in every detail over countless of days. None of the consumers is in the position to have these kind of expectations and maybe we all should be a little more humble. Even our money shouldn't give us that right to decide how the things have to be. This channel here took his time to think deeper in order to get something out of his experience. This is how you appreciate pieces of art. By talking, by differentiating, by staying constructive and positive. The majority of the people has like two or three words of evaluation ("it was ok"; "it sucked") and doesn't give a shit about all the ideas and all the efford that are necessary for a movie to happen. This fiercely divided fanbase seems to give way to little freedom and space for the writers to be truly creative, to mess around, to fuck up, to get to something new. Every piece of art is an experiment and should never have a mission of "getting something right". If we pay in the theaters just for something that we already expect to see (even if that is about a loose framework or emotional beats that need to be hit) we limit ourselves for no reason. I'm sorry for the long text but your sentence represents one of the major flaws in todays cultural development and I'm really struggling with that.
This movie still accomplished many things that many star wars movies failed to do so (Rise of Skywalker), even if you didn't like the movie. I'm glad that after two years after its released I find the best of the Sequel trilogy, even though I didn't like it at its released. Opinions can change and that's ok. Thank you to this video and your channel for making me learn more about movies! Awesome job!
@OWLofATHENS Thank you, we must have faith in the franchise's future as so in the fandom (even if it's hard these days)! I totally agree with you about all these fake fans that prefer to spill hateful comments or bad joke in social medias instead of debating politely and analyzing the movie from another perspective. Some people are just immature and that's really sad, but we still got hope, like this video and fans like ourselves. But what have you thought about the Rise of Skywalker that made you change you opinion?
No. It's just a bad movie. I highly respect this channel's content but people are so apologetic when desperately searching for some gems in the rubble. Just compare it to other films. It's not a good film.
@@AndyKunkel The Bad: character motivation and reaction, character interaction, dialogue, plot, sub-plots, pacing, editing, set-ups and pay-offs, internal continuity, seriality, lore, visual ripp-offs. Bad. After thought: That this review is able to point out very fine details in the script (rightly so) doesn't mean those were well implemented. On the contrary - what this channel reveals about the structure drives tears to my eyes when I see the bland and ham-fisted result. (Good was: looks and actors.)
@@j.m.w.5064 The one issue I have with TLJ is the pacing and the poorly executed canto bight sequence. But the Rey and Kylo plotline was nearly perfect. Finn and Rose could have been better. Ill give you that.
That part of the entire storyline is one of the parts that just scream "this happens because the script says so, don't ask any thoughtful questions". It's the precursor to "Somehow, Palpatine returned..." "But how wo..." "Shut up ! Consume product !".
@@nicholsonfile Partly, I also suspect the Studio insisted none of the core new cast die but narratively the pay off for Finn's arc in the movie is him becoming self-sacrificing for the rebels. But also, a the major theme of the movie is "live to fight another day" - whether this is the rebel cause in general or on the personal level for Poe, Finn and Rey.
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="653">10:53</a> - <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="667">11:07</a> that is exactly what the critics are telling about the problem with Rise of Skywalker
The force awekens set up so many questions and the last Jedi said fuck all those questions so the rise of Skywalker had some backtracking to do and it made the last Jedi COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT. Don’t even need to watch that movie anymore lol
NyJoanzy none of the Batman movies actually follow each other. The last Jedi just dismisses smoke and reys parents and answers ZERO questions, only the rise of skywalker answers questions that’s why the 2nd film is irrelevant
I actually think you had it the wrong way around. Luke offered Rey what she thought she wanted - a saviour, a father figure, external validation and a sense of belonging. It was Kylo that actually gave her what she needed - the truth and the realisation that family and such doesn't make us who we are, and that she needs to let go of certain things.
Luke offered her what she didn't want. That's why she leaves without him. Kylo gives her what she always feared. It's not necesseraly true what Kylo told her, but it's still what she feared mostly.
Does Force sensitivity and wielding a lightsaber make a person a “Jedi.” I thought that was more of an ideology? Rey doesn’t grow, or face consequences for her actions other than breaking the Bespin lightsaber. The parents revelation is an info dump at best
I agree with you. Rey's arc, and journey of self-discovery through the force is a major mismanagement within the sequel trilogy. The directors are ignoring lore which makes sense within the universe just so they have a strong and relatable primary protagonist.
Rey’s character arc feels paper thin and much like a checklist rather than a natural progression. She’s also still hyper competent amongst all the films.
Rewatching it, I get your point but, instead of discussing with a huge essay I would just like to point out (with a shorter essay lol) that your comparisson with rogue one is misguided at best and dishonest at worst. Rogue One brings a lot of interesting themes and drama for the War between rebels and the Empire (and without sacrificing it's tone, a thing that TLJ suffers from given the constant humor). The Vader scene, even though it was a fan service nonetheless, is well place and makes sense within the narrative. After all how come he would let the rebels escape with the plans without lifting a finger? The scene not only shows how far Vader can come in order to protect the Empire but also the anonymous heroism from the nameless soldiers that sacrificed themselves for the rebellion in the same scene. It goes beyond than just 'pandering the audience'.
Very well put. I absolutely loved that rogue one scene and rgue one in general because of the emphasis it put on individual sacrifice and heroism in the face of insurmountable odds.
It amazes me how much two people can watch the same thing and get two completely different responses from it. I agree about the Vader scene. It provides a dramatic aesthetic not seen in Star Wars: horror. It also builds upon Vader's mythos which is, in many ways, important to further establishing why great Jedi like Obi-Wan and Yoda viewed him irredeemable, and how much the character of Anakin had been transformed. Is it fan-servicey? Yes. But that service still provides a point. A quick similar scene in TLJ that I say is fan-service and cringe is when Finn says, "Rebel scum." It's a callback to a character line that, for the fans, became synonymous with the Empire's perspective on rebel fighters. But it also serves a purpose to signal th end of this part of Finn's journey into being a rebel. TLJ had great themes. But it sacrificed so much from a flawed TFA to get there. I, too, love Rey's lineage being nothing. But it sacrifices the more explicit intentions found in TFA. When you look at the trilogy as one complete narrative, even though I place the blame on TFA for starting over with boring and tired themes, plot beats, characters and iconography--and agree with Rian's overall message to move beyond them--TLJ is the film that broke the sequel trilogy. Had this been a standalone film, I would enjoy it so much more.
The characters are badly written though. Like completely unmemorable. Hardly remember any of their names or what their service to the story was. And I'm talking about rogue one
Ok, let's get this out of the way right from the beginning. The issue with Poe's arc and the reason everyone hates it is because at the end of the day Poe was 100% right in targeting and destroying that dreadnought. Without it the First Order had no way of targeting the fleet effectively when they followed it through hyperspace. I'll give you that he had no way of knowing that it was the proper course of action when he did it but as soon as it became glaringly obvious to everyone but the characters that his actions had saved the fleet he should have been exonerated. Instead they double down on a punishment that is not only irresponsible considering the size of the rebellion is now 3 ships and their respective crews and high command isn't exactly in a position to sideline respected and successful commanders like Poe but is invalidated as soon as the Big Bad shows up and it becomes clear that if they had escaped to hyperspace like Leia wanted they would all have had a lifespan shortened to the power up sequence for those super laser cannons. Punishing success because it went against your wishes is something the worst and most incompetent leaders do, not successful ones. He made the right call and is punished for it because he was the only one with the guts to make the right call when it mattered. The moral of his second arc seems for all the world to be that he should just trust the chain of command and have faith in what looks for all the world like a commander who is doing nothing and refuses to not only explain what the plan is but refuses to explain why they won't explain the plan. The moral "Don't trust yourself, trust in authority figures no matter what" is something the BAD GUYS would say last time I checked.
"Poe was 100% right in targeting and destroying that dreadnought." No, he wasn't. His proper course of action would been to bring that information to his commanding officer and see if they could hash out a plan together. However, Poe lets his hubris and lack of responsibility get the better of him again.
JurzGarz Huh? His commanding officer is Leia. The person who sent him out there and was in constant contact with him. They already had a plan: run interference until the fleet could escape by attacking the dreadnought. Leia got cold feet at the last second but that's irrelevant here. Poe made the right call in attacking and destroying that ship.
Defenders of TLJ seem to ignore that little fact and never mention that dreadnought would have made that 2 hour space chase into a 2 minute one. They just want to push praise on Holdo and say she was justified in punishing Poe to fit their argument. Which is full of holes as much as the movie is.
JurzGarz, what part of the dreadnought being capable of destroying all those ships in that space chase you don't get?! Let's say, Poe did listen to Leia. What happens next? They jump to light speed and the First Order with that dreadnought follows them and knocks them out one by one. Admit it, the Last Jedi is a mess of a movie.
To me the issue is more that Poe goes from super trusted member of the resistance in TFA. Tasked with finding Luke and keeping the map a secret. To movie two, a "hot headed never to be trusted" person. The last Jedi is a decent movie if it was a one off in a different universe. But it isn't. There are several other movies in this setting giving it certain conventions it should follow. Like the hyperspace as a weapon thing. In a vacuum the move was awesome, the effects and the silence were masterful. But in the greater story it makes the deathstar stupid. Grab a ship, set autopilot, watch the explosion. Empire is dumb for making it, rebels are dumb for throwing fleers to their room fighting it conventionally. It is the same with Luke. The guy who still saw good in Darth fricken Vader. He is killing his nephew because he sensed there might be a bit of darkness? Again in a vacuum as a stand alone character that's just fine. As Luke, well, that isn't my childhood hero and isn't the person from return of the Jedi at all. If you want to crap on my childhood I certainly can't stop you, but don't expect me to cheer either.
I was surprised at how many folks missed the point of Finn's arc. In TFA, he goes from valuing just himself, to valuing someone else also. In TLJ, he goes from putting his life on his line ONLY for those he personally values, to also seeing the big picture.
The problem was coz it wasn't properly executed. Mayeur, everyone can see what his arc is. Don't gaslight people into thinking otherwise. The problem was that, his arc unfolded across Canto Bight and the Infiltration. But those sections were MEANINGLESS. They end up back with the Resistance, only now they've doomed them all. It's also coz, he realises that he cares about the resistance..... After the hacker. And what the hacker said was "There is no pure good or evil sometimes". So for him to value the resistance after THAT, is crazy. He'd actually have more doubts about what to do, coz the resistance is the one that let Canto Bight exist. You completely missed the writing, and are now calling out other people for something they didn't miss. It's kinda horrendous.
But Finn didn't just fight for himself in TFA though. The whole point of him wanting to leave the first order in the first place was that he felt guilty for murdering innocent people. He cared of Rey, he fought against the stormtrooper. I really don't see any similarities between him and that snake dude at the casino.
@@amanpingle1497 there is a lesson in Finn’s journey being meaningless. There is an aspect that not everything works the way you want. You start a business, you change careers, unfortunately it doesn’t always end with happy endings. But more importantly Finn decides to go with the rebels as he was torn between DJ and Rose for their commitments to ideology’s with the resistance and not joining. He sees that both may have lows but he saw what not joining does, it makes you a potential snake, as DJ ratted them out. He saw the first order, he saw not joining and he witnessed the resistance, he saw all 3. The one who had the less morally bad was the resistance, Yes they bought weapons from Canto Bite, but it showed only 1 resistance vehicle, compared to 3 (i believe) first order viechles.
By the way - as soon as Poe does learn about the plan he tells DJ about it - jeopardizing the whole thing and getting people killed - and people wonder why it had to be kept a secret - she didn’t want the word to get out
Yes and the "canon breaking" Holdo Maneuver that would've wrecked the Death Star and ended all conflicts in Star Wars forever.... Didn't even win the space battle it was used in.
I respectfully disagree. While the film does break expectations and challenge thematic elements, frankly I found it preachy, clunky and the story uncompelling. One way I gauge how "into" a film I am is if I check my watch while watching the film in the theater. The more I check it, well, you can guess. I was checking the time A LOT wih TLJ.
bolsachem thanks to unnecessary backlash making Disney want to try and make something everyone can enjoy, Disney should have kept going the “fans” don’t know what they want.
The problem wasn't that it didn't follow the basic mechanics of story. The problem was that it didn't earn those mechanics in the first place. Example: Captain doesn't tell anybody the plan because?... (plot). It didn't earn the whole "Captain doesn't tell anybody" angle, there was no *reason* for it. This whole movie was just one big ass continuity error. Why the hell would Rose stop Finn from sacrificing himself if her whole philosophy was "protect the things we love" blah blah cringey "lesson"? Again, makes no *sense.* There's no *reason* in it. If you determine the quality/success of a film based solely on what rules it follows you're not setting the bar very high. It's how well it follows those rules and more so makes us forget that they're even there. A movie shouldn't compel itself to follow these rules, it should follow them on its own because those are the ingredients of a good film in the first place. This movie followed those rules like a checklist, hence why there are so many holes because they just forcibly made things happen to fill out this film checklist, rather than making a story that follows these points themselves.
Right on! I love Last Jedi and 2 points: 1) that doesn’t mean I think if you don’t like it you are wrong 2) that you don’t like it doesn’t mean I’m wrong Opinions differ. My reasons for liking it are personal, as they should be, this movie touched me and moved me and that’s all I want in a film.
While I find this to be a good analysis, there are several problems. First of all with Poe's arc. If he hadn't taken out the Dreadnought, there wouldn't have been a movie. The Dreadnoughts guns would have been able to blow up the Rebel ships meaning that the chase wouldn't have been possible. So while the Rebels suffered casualties, the trade of their bombers and several pilots for the Dreadnought and it's entire crew is both worth it and necessary. Secondly, while one can argue with Holdo not telling Poe the plan, to begin with, though I personally find it stupid, one cannot make the same argument when he is performing a mutiny. And let's remember, that had not Luke just shown up, pulling back from that suicide run on Crait would have doomed the Rebellion. Probably the only chance the First Order had of breaching that door was that canon, so giving up and letting it fire would have ended in more people dying that sacrificing a few pilots. I don't have a problem with Fin's arc in the movie. The big problem is that it's pointless. The entire subplot with going to Canto Bight, getting a code breaker and sneaking on to the First Orders ship didn't amount to anything in the grand scheme of things. A movie has a finite amount of time and TLJ already feels bloated. Skip Canto Bight and cut down on the sneaking mission would make the movie feel a lot better. Ray has a number of problems but they aren't with how this movie is built, they are with how her character is built, starting in TFA. While I think that she is a Mary Sue, I'm going to put that aside. I agree with you that it isn't a problem with the fact that Ray's parents are nobodies, the problem I have with the seen is that it just tells us that they were nobodies, it doesn't show us. Show, don't tell. Another thing in the movie is that she seems to go back and forth. One minute, she thinks Kylo is unredeemable, and the next she thinks she can save him from himself. And while the movie has arcs for the character you have to ask if the main story works, and it simply doesn't. The movie can only work because the First Order consists of nothing of idiots. To start with, why fire of the rebel base when you can fire on the Rebel ships in orbit. The base isn't going to move, while the ships can leave. And why didn't they have screening Ties already deployed when they came into the system. If they are a splinter of the Empire, the should know that the resistance favours smaller strike crafts. And why didn't they just open fire on Poe when he stopped in front of them. They were there to wipe them out. And during the chase, why not have a detachment of Star Destroyers jump ahead of the Rebels and intercept them. And the Holdo manoeuvre causes a problem for every single Star Wars movie already out and forever. If that can be done, why hasn't it ever been done before? And now you have to expect that it will be done in every space battle including larger ships.
In the grand scheme of things the Canto Bite plot doesn't really go anywhere. The plan fails. But, had you considered that you could say exactly the same thing about the asteroid sequence in Empire? They put a bunch of screen time into Han and Leia's attempt to avoid being captured by the Empire which ultimately also fails. So what's the point? In both cases the point is character based. In Empire it's to put Han and Leia together to further their relationship. In TLJ it's to develop Finn's character (as discussed in this video) and relationship with Rose.
Also, "show don't tell" is a rule of thumb, it's not etched in a stone tablet somewhere. In this instance it's actually really important that it is Kylo telling her this information. It tells us a lot about Kylo, the way he tells her she's worthless. The eye-rolling exposition dump with the hyperspace tracking and Maz is, for me, the scene which really could have used a bit more show and a bit less tell.
Re: your comment about the Dreadnought firing on the base. It's a simple storytelling device, saying, "Hey, this is what this big gun will do to our heroes if they don't step on it." It sort of functions like the Death Star's attack on Alderaan, it shows you what this thing that our heroes are up against is capable of. Set up and pay-off.
@@j4yb0b, I would argue that it tries to develop fin's character but in the grand scheme of things fails, reason being everything works out in the end whether or not he was there doing anything. remove him from the story and you have the exact same movie. to give his screen time relevance he would have needed to have done something to affect the story, and I believe that the perfect thing would have been sacrificing himself to protect the resistance at the cannon. even if it was in vain. completing his character arc from a coward fearing for his life, to a hero that gave is life for something greater than himself. which would have been the perfect send-off storywise, if they try to pull it again it wouldn't have the same weight as it would have here.
Love this comment section filled with: "who cares if every single moment had a setup and a payoff and all the characters have arcs of their own... it still sucks." Sorry but the reasons for it sucking are shallow and nitpicky.
Really? That's your counter-argument to the gaping plot holes throughout the film? Like... how did Finn join the chorus of "tracking through hyperspace is impossible" just seconds after seeing Rey's hyperspace beacon and learning that it allowed her to track the fleet through hyperspace, and minutes before remembering that he used to clean the room in which Snoke kept his hyperspace tracker (but that similar devices would be on every First Order ship)? Why did Poe get demoted and SLAPPED by someone who was trying to demonstrate good leadership? Why would anyone assume that slamming a speeder at full speed into another speeder going at full speed would "save" the driver of the second speeder rather than killing them both? How did Finn drag Rose's unconscious fat ass over (what looked like) three or four miles of featureless terrain without being overrun or simply shot by advancing First Order armor? Or are those simply "shallow and nitpicky" reasons for disliking a movie?
Japeth321 No no no no no no and thrice no. Plot holes are a cancer on movies, especially when they break the film's internal logic in half. TLJ's disregarding of internal logic and even the flimsy standards of laws of physics in the SW universe leaves it completely undefined, and basically anything can happen. If force ghosts have been able to control the very damn weather this whole time, what threat can anyone pose to them? Same for hyperspace kamikaze tactics in space combat. Notice that this isn't something that's never addressed in the films but the audience would propose: in those cases suspension of disbelief can forgive that kind of behavior. But when those behaviors *are* not only demonstrated by the characters in the film, but also shown to be *devastatingly effective*, it breaks not only the film, but the entire Star Wars continuum. Also: if Luke never wanted to be found, why did he leave a map for people to find him? You know, the thing the entire last movie hinged around?
First of all, they state quite clearly that it's a map to the Jedi temple where they THINK Luke might be. "TLJ's disregarding of internal logic and even the flimsy standards of laws of physics in the SW universe leaves it completely undefined, and basically anything can happen." It's almost as if it does whatever the plot or characters call for at a given moment. Movies do that all the time, it isn't as jarring as you think.
"First of all, they state quite clearly that it's a map to the Jedi temple where they THINK Luke might be." That is absolutely not what they say. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-cad4xJWqYhU.html Han does mention that Luke went looking for the first Jedi temple, but Threepio tells Leia that the completed map will have enough data to "find Master Luke." Leia agrees with this. "It's almost as if it does whatever the plot or characters call for at a given moment. Movies do that all the time, it isn't as jarring as you think." Yeah, it kind of is - especially when it's violated as badly as in Last Jedi. I really cannot remember any movie that cares less about maintaining suspension of disbelief.
Dude, JRR Tolkien, who created one of the most expansive worlds in all of literature had to sacrifice continuity for drama here and there. In the Hobbit, Gollum offers the ring to Bilbo before his addiction to the ring was solidified by Tolkien. That is obviously not the same character we would come to know in LOTR. But according to you, all that character development for him in LOTR should be tossed out the window because it doesn't fall in line with a throwaway line he had written 20 years prior.
jcdf2 he never said that. He said Rey, Finn, Poe are the protagonists, each of them has 2 characters they conflict with, and everyone else is a plot device or meme. Snoke is a plot device.
I feel that you left out some pretty serious opposition to the movie that's based more on how well it executes what it's trying to do rather than fans not liking the direction the movie was trying to go. For example, Holdo didn't trust Poe with the plan because he's reckless, but he starts acting recklessly because he sees them doing something hopeless and cowardly. If he has to die, he wants to at least die fighting. Had she told him the plan it would have given him hope, or at the very least he would have done something reckless in support of her plan rather than trying to stop it. This is especially true after he publicly objects and calls out how dangerous it is and she has no response whatsoever. That would have been the opportunity to point out the abandoned base and the cloaking on the transports, or even just encouraging the crew to have faith and trust her. Instead she lets Poe undermine her (the kind of thing she should have expected leaving him blind like that). Sure, he's not a commander anymore, but he's apparently still charismatic and respected. After watching responses and arguments both ways for years now, it seems like all the praise the movie gets come from three camps: people who love Star Wars no matter what, people who love artistic creators no matter what, and people who like deconstructionism no matter what. It doesn't matter how long the list of problems, inconsistencies or instances of just plain bad writing; as long as there are some redeeming qualities to point out, the movie is brilliant.
2 points on that Poe bit; first, it's the military right? No commanding officer had to explain their orders to ANY subordinate for any reason. If they give an order, it will be followed without question. And second, you forget that the ship was tracked through hyperspace, something that nobody thought possible. There was a good chance that a spy was feeding the first order info on the ship's location, and it just so happens that the person who got demoted for recklessly destroying the whole bombing fleet wants to know the plan?? I wouldn't have told him either.
@@tvp900 The possibility of a spy isn't anywhere in the movie, even though that's a more likely possibility than tracking through hyperspace which, like you said, was "something that nobody thought possible." If they had floated the idea of a mole in the movie it would have helped things out tremendously: Poe could still have wanted to try something else and keep it secret because he suspected Holdo was the mole, and it would have made keeping the plan a secret make sense instead of just a naked attempt to demonstrate the Faith narrative that sort of appeared in that story-arc. And no, she doesn't have to explain herself to Poe, but he clearly thinks she does, and if she had explained herself then Poe wouldn't have tried to mutiny. Either Poe was badly written for having the authority he does and expecting the explanation or Holdo is badly written for not providing him one. Both of your points definitely can allow you to overlook those problems that I mentioned, but you can't get them from the movie and have to invent them on your own. Like Just Write said in another of his videos on the Last Jedi, it's a way of enjoying the movie that says more about you than about the film.
You can't pretend to ignore the fact, that these are a serialized movies, which follow a narrative arc from: 1-3, 4-6, & 7-9. Global: 1-9, so you can recolect from the trash can all film virtues of just this particular chapter, as much as you want. But you can't make a valid compelling narrative argument for this chapter as a valid piece of the entire saga, which is the very core of the actual world issue.
Exactly. Most defenses of this movie can never argue that and almost completely ignore it. Even when people claim it's what Star Wars needed. Conceptually, it's a terrible addition.
This is pretty much the best way u can describe the whole sequel trilogy: As films themselves, they're good As STAR WARS films, however, they're not If they weren't a part of the Star Wars universe, if they weren't a part of the entire Skywalker Saga, the sequel trilogy, especially The Last Jedi, would have better reception. The Skywalker Saga isn't just art, it's also a story about hope and unity that everyone can learn and be inspired from. In actuality, the Skywalker Saga should've ended with Episode 6 while the entire sequel trilogy would lay the foundation for a new saga, after all, they wanted to make more Star Wars films for new generations, and you don't necessarily need to bring back the characters from the previous trilogies, their stories have already ended in Episode 6 and deserve the happy ending they worked hard and struggled for, finally having brought peace to the galaxy. Episode 7 to 9 should've been many years to the point where whatever conflict has risen to plague the galaxy again will have nothing to do with what has happened from Episodes 1 to 6.
Your points are credible but doesn't make the movie into anything good. This movie builds on 7 other star wars movies and completely destroyed the fabric of what star wars is. There was no true war, ( first move without a lightsaber battle). Luke becoming so dislikeable and dying peacefully by just stalling Kylo Ren? It's so horrible it's laughable. Adding new characters who are irrelevant and don't add much to such a linear plot. Ruining characters such as Snoke, Phasma and spending too long on Finn. A character who is just a waist of time. What was compelling about this movie?
You know, as much as I liked Force Awakens, I always thought Finn's arc in that movie was super rushed. He spends the first half of the movie wanting to escape the First Order, but after he sees some planets blow up he changes his mind and decides to help. Like, wouldn't seeing planets get blown up only increase his urge to run away...? It wasn't until watching The Last Jedi that his arc in the previous movie wasn't supposed to be his entire arc, but rather HALF of one. Like many, I was initially taken aback when Finn in TLJ seemingly starts out selfish again, but then then it is revealed that he was actually doing what he was doing to help Rey....just like he was during TFA. And throughout the course of the movie, he goes from only caring about Rey to becoming a Resistance hero: something that people believed him to be when he was never actually one. That's why I feel Finn's arc in this movie is a natural progression of his character and not just a retread like many accuse it of being. He goes from only caring about himself, to caring about someone other than himself, to caring about a cause greater than himself. So in a weird way, TLJ retroactively made TFA better for me. My biggest concern is that now that his chaarcter arc is done for good this time, there isn't much left for him in Episode 9. I'm afraid that they'll do what they did with Han Solo in Return Of The Jedi and just have him be there for the sake of it. Hopefully the writers have something good up their sleeve.
"My biggest concern is that now that his chaarcter arc is done for good this time, there isn't much left for him in Episode 9. I'm afraid that they'll do what they did with Han Solo in Return Of The Jedi and just have him be there for the sake of it. Hopefully the writers have something good up their sleeve." My guess is that in episode 9, he will have a similar arc to the one that Poe had in TLJ. At the end of TLJ Finn has finally joined the Resistance and joined a cause greater than himself, but then he ends up making the same mistakes that Poe made, so his growth isn't finished at all he's still catching up to Poe, he's only now gotten to the point where Poe was at the start of the trilogy. There's the implication in TLJ that episode 9 will be about the Resistance gathering allies, and rallying the galaxy to their cause. I think that a good way to make Finn care about more than just winning the war at any cost, to make him learn a more constructive and mature way to fight for the Resistance, is for him to have to help recruit new allies. Because in order to recruit allies he'll need to argue in favor of the Resistance, which means that he's got to talk about more than just blowing up the First Order, he'll really have to explain why people should side with the Resistance instead of the First Order, which means explaining the long-term idealistic notions that they're fighting for.
Do you think if Finn actually did sacrifice himself and Rose didn’t save him, that his arc would have been more fully realised? Because I agree in that I’d hate to see Finn get sidelined just because he’s basically the goodest boy now. He’s already beaten Phasma twice, what does he have to gain other than destroy the First Order in its entirety? That would be such a step back for his character considering he’s been exposed to both sides of the war, and knows that there are real people on both sides, not just enemies.
BattleUp Saber now Finn’s in the position For episode 9 that Po was in at the beginning of 8. Finn needs to learn to save the things he loves and fight another day instead of sacrificing himself.
I think you missed the point of Finn’s arc in 7. He didn’t randomly switch to helping the resistance to destroy the First Order. All he wanted to do was help Rey. He specifically states that during the mission. His arc was that of love and devotion. He was running out of fear and only trying to save himself, but Rey captures him like no one else before. So when presented with a choice to run or save Rey, he chooses to save Rey. That’s where he is at the beginning of episode 8, wanting to save Rey.
This is the most myopic analysis I've ever seen. Did you really say that Rey has a character arc? LMFAO. Where? What struggle's does she have to overcome? Her insecurities? Ummm, she does a pretty good job of that every 5 seconds when she becomes a master of whatever brand new task she takes on regardless of difficulty. Fly the Falcon flawlessly first time? Defeat a trained force user multiple times FIRST try? Become a Jedi with ZERO training and defeat a Jedi Master in combat FIRST TRY? Good hell, you call that a character arc? What we WANT is a good Star Wars movie, what we NEED is a new creative team at Lucasfilm.
My biggest issue with this movie was that I felt like none of the three plotlines were given enough space to breathe and feel organic. I understood how the conflict was supposed to play out and I didn't have any issues with the plot or the characters per se but felt like by attempting to tell three stories, they all felt rushed and shortchanged. I feel like the movie would have been more moving if it focused more on Rey and gave her story the significant bulk of the screen time. I actually like the themes in her story a lot and I wish they were given more time to be explored.
Yes and no. I feel like there would have been a perfect amount of time for all three plotlines if they could have cut out all the pointless fan service, cameos, meaningless extended action scenes and awkward humour.
I was so disappointed with the 'corrected' parent reveal in TROS. The revelation of Rey's lineage in TLJ was SO good. By far one of my favorite parts of that movie. It shows us that a hero can come from anywhere and that our destiny isn't determined by our past. To me, that idea was the true power of the story being told with this trilogy. But with TROS, JJ and Disney robbed the whole story of any lasting power. For what? Fan service... I feel they should have just stuck to their guns.
I can definitely disagree about opinions on art, but it does seem odd to me that anyone would think the parent reveal in TLJ was good. I only cared about who Rey's parents were because the movie told me I should care (I certainly didn't care about who Finn or Poe's parents were). the reason the parent reveal in Ep5 is good at subverting expectations is because it took something we thought we knew and changed it to something new. Its not like we were wondering if there was more to the story of Vader and Luke's father at the end of Ep4. TLJ doesn't subvert expectations with its parent reveal, it just delivers on expectations in an unsatisfying way. The audience already expected to have the mystery of Rey's parents resolved. TLJ tried to resolve it (as expected), but did it in a lame way. It would have been similar if after the big reveal that Vader was Luke's father in Ep5, that Ep6 reveal that Vader wasn't actually Luke's father.
@@omicronenoch9974 The revelation of Rey's parents in TLJ isn't good because it merely subverts our expectations. It's good because it subverts our expectations with the purpose of creating drama and, by extension, shifting our perspective on the story. There's this strange idea that revealing that Rey is a nobody was somehow a slight against the audience when, in truth, it's just presenting the character of Rey with the hardest truth that she could possibly confront - to realize that her parents are not only not coming back for her, that they never cared about her in the first place. This forces her to move beyond her past and forge her own destiny. In the big picture, however, it shows us that a Force sensitive person can be born from anywhere and sends a message to us as an audience that our potential is not constrained by what bloodline we hail from. Far from being a non-reveal, I believe this idea could have been the unifying factor of the entire trilogy. It's a powerful concept, especially for Star Wars. That doesn't mean you don't have to like it. But my point here is there's much more going on with the reveal than it might initially seem.
@Matt Jarjosa Thank you for the explanation. I can see from that perspective how meaningless parents could be appealing. I may have to go back and re-watch The Force Awakens because it felt to me like she had resolved this arc in that film. She made the decision to quit waiting for her parents and to instead go meet her destiny. She was even told by Maz definitively that her parents were never coming back. The notion that we needed to be told that bloodline was unimportant is odd to me though. That idea has always existed pretty deeply in Star Wars. The Force is in all things. Yes Luke, Leia, and Anakin are related, but they're it (at least until TROS). The prequals are teaming with powerful Force users that are no relation. Force users came from all species, and could manifest anywhere. If you just look at Ep4, its about a 'nobody' who recognizes his potential and isn't constrained by his family heritage. The fact that Luke later turns out to be related to Vader isn't significant because it reinforces bloodlines, its significant because it changes Luke's point of view and allows him to conquer evil through love instead of through combat. Star Wars has never been about bloodlines. Although admittedly if you're going to make call something the Skywalker Saga, it seems reasonable to assume that it specifically would be about the Skywalkers.
ChrosTV The thing that I struggle a lot with, is people who confuse liking or disliking movies with the movies being bad or good. You can enjoy watching things like The Room, Transformers or Twilight, but you have to admit that they are objectively bad. So is it with movies you don't enjoy. For example, I didn't like Snowpiercer, but I can see why people view it as a great film. Personally, I enjoyed TLJ. Despite being flawed, I think it has enough redeeming qualities to be considered good. If people don't like it, I understand. If people don't think it was good, I would disagree, but still understand. Sadly, that's not the case. People are overreacting, calling it a terrible movie, "the worst Star Wars movie ever", "Ryan Johnson has ruined Star Wars", "it is a garbage movie that does not deserve it's existence", "TLJ sucked lol". For some reason, reviewing movies and comparing good parts with bad parts to deduce what went wrong and what went right, so that the directors, writers, actors, etc can learn from it next time and improve their skills, has turned into a group of monkeys throwing shit at eachother. And all of that over some dumb Flash Gordon rip-off.
Yeah, TLJ took Abram's mystery boxes set up in Force Awakens and filled them with excrement. In TROS Abrams scoops out the feces and puts something in the boxes.
if these weren’t star wars characters with previously established stories and arcs that needed follow up in a SEQUEL i might agree with you but the Last Jedi took a shit all over what came before it and expects me to applaud it for being bold for doing so.
But, those seven basic questions only apply to a stand-alone film. This was to be the middle act of a 3-act story, and we all knew that going into it. In that case, do you not also have to consider the questions deliberately created by the first act? Would it not be considered bad writing in any other circumstance to make certain things central to the mystery or character development of the story in your first act, and then ignore those mysteries or character plot-points in the rest of the story? Imagine Voldamort getting killed off without explanation in the third book, and then never mentioned again, or the ring not being THAT ring after all, once Frodo and Sam set off on their own at the end of the first book. You would rightfully feel like the author wasted your time up to that point. I find it frustrating when people pretend like this film exists in a vacuum, and then sing the praises of its bold decisions. It's decisions were to crap all over the movie that came before it. Ryan Johnson must have been hated in his improv troop. Oh, you want to set all that up to be paid off by the next guy? Nope. Not doing that.
Yes, the movie is competent. But your last point is based entirely on opinion. Most fans will not agree they "needed" this movie to be done the way it was. There's plenty of videos and dissections of the movie that have described how the exact same plot beats could have been done, but with better flow, less social politics, less weird humor and without going against the previous films. Just like people dissected Episodes I-III in the same way. Which you can claim Episodes I-III are also competent stories with clear motivations and resolutions. But it still doesn't change that there's tons of pacing problems, cringe-worthy dialogue, gratuitous CGI and most characters feel flat (despite having completely obvious arcs).
I wouldn't say the movie is competent at all. I think it's fairer to say that it checkes some boxes - not all boxes, just some - and does even that incompetently.
Boogus.if u can competently answer how did the first order come to exist,then u may have a point.but u cant come into a franchise at movie 7 and 8 and try to give a story that doesnt tie in to the other stories.come on dude.u just like this movie becuz its pretty.and to say that holdo explained why she didnt tell po about the plan is really dumb.So even as he was committing mutiny on the ship becuz he didnt know there was a plan she still didnt trust him to tell him that? thats the dumbest thing ive ever seen in cinema ever.and so is the rest of the movie. SW 7 and 8 and just beautiful stupid movies about nothing
You can't really argue for Rose's character, even if she has a reason to exist such as conflict. This video is effectively an analysis that the film uses a simple screenwriting concept, and I could tell you're going somewhere with this, but that doesn't mean it was executed well. I'd actually hardly call this film competent, I daresay that it trips itself up by writing itself into a corner to fulfil these 7 questions.
Seeing writing like a mathematical equation is what makes your analysis fail. Narrative is more than just a bunch of so-called “sophisticated” checkboxes; it takes more than just a set of cold desk rules for a story to be delightful - it takes HEART, but that's something the video doesn't even care considering since that is not a measurable metric. TLJ is a bullshit SW movie, no matter how many narrative tropes you throw in to make it look otherwise.
"These 10 characters encompass the entirety of the moral framework...." Wait, there are only 9? In crawls Snoke from the bottom left. I can't laugh any harder. Sage is a genius for both is critical analysis and subtle humor.
Saw this last year, but it keeps coming up as a suggestion due to all the RoS vs. TLJ stuff floating around there now. Wonderful video, but if you think the Rogue One Vader scene was just "pandering" or "fan service", then you need to take a closer look at THAT movie's themes. Because that scene is absolutely on point and essential. Cheers!
@@milesdarcey483 - No, it was essential. You never even backed up your claim. The Vader scene showed how important the disc was that Vader personally went to retrieve it and how close the Rebels came to losing it. Want to get even artsier? Ok, Vader represents the unstoppable force of the empire closing in on the Rebels who must sacrifice and work together to preserve the disc which is their only hope. It's shows the beginning of the desperate hand-off effort that continues into Episode 4 and shows that they are just barely making it by the skin of their teeth. There, happy?
All you have here is a series of ridiculous assertions that are conpleyley baseless. Neither Poe nor Rey exhibit what you claim in this movie. None of those needs or wants exist except in your head.
Exactly what I was thinking. Yes a character needs conflict, but what if said conflict is contrived or stupid? It'd be like if Aragorn couldn't kill the orc general or had problems tying his shoes. But at the end he can tie his shoes. That's not a character arc.
This is extremely interesting to watch, and I definitely think you got me thinking and reevaluating my previous notions on The Last Jedi. I can't thank you enough for these well-thought and articulated videos; they are beyond engrossing to me.
Let me bring you back to the light my friend. Ask yourself, what lesson did Poe truly learn? Because the entire resistance was about to die, so retreating is essentially a death sentence. The "lesson" Poe learned was I can't lead my men to death so I'm gonna retreat and have them die anyway. The end of his arc makes no sense. Similarly, Finn should have died. Why didn't he? It made no sense for him to not die there. His arc was perfect, complete. And then Rose comes in and smashes it to pieces for the sake of subverting expectations. Holdo not telling Poe the plan is fine. Holdo not telling Poe that there is ANY sort of plan is inexcusable. If you have a loose cannon on your team, you should probably calm him down, not freeze him out. All she had to say was, we have a plan, it's need to know, you don't. Poe is one of their highest ranking members and people look up to him. You can't just sideline him during a crisis and expect that to sit well with your crew. Rey had an interesting arc but I don't think the whole parents were nobody is groundbreaking writing. It's not even unique to star wars. I did enjoy Rey and Kylo more than anything else and RJ should've taken all the time spent on Canto Bite and put it into this plot. There's also no villain in the story anymore now that Snoke is gone. Kylo is obviously gonna return to the light and Hux was neutered as a villain for laughs.
I think a more brave stance to take in a video like this would have been to examine why about half the audience, myself included, failed to like this movie even though they “did everything right” and it’s “the movie we need.”
I think this disconnect lies in the gap between the 'theory' of writing and the 'art' of writing. In theory this movie does a lot of exciting things with the characters, story, themes etc.. But the execution of all of those ideas was haphazard and tone-deaf. A great deal of the polarization about this movie has to do with post-hoc rationalization. If you like the themes and concept behind the movie you make excuses for the deeply flawed execution. If you really disliked the incoherent execution you feel like the 'themes and theory' of the movie are moot.
Agree with Dumplin ^ people are ad hoc'ing the shit out of this film (myself included). However, with the avalanche of 30+ minute rage-rant videos online where angry fans go on anti-TLJ tirades without once attempting to find something redeemable because hating on this film has, for many, become like scratching an itch...why would Just Write (someone who liked TLJ) make ANOTHER video about the criticisms of the film and not attempt to make a video that demonstrates the things the movie does right? Because be real with yourself, the detractors are not offering fair and balanced critiques. They are saying that the movie did absolutely 0% right and should be struck from canon. No one on earth needs to be told why people didn't like TLJ. Newborn babies can already list the criticisms, people have been gathering into internet mobs and SCREAMING THEM OVER AND OVER AT THE TOP OF THEIR LUNGS. (Seriously, I did that because the number of TLJ-hate comments I have seen written in all caps is astounding). Frankly, I really think that the best critiques of this film are to be found in the positive reviews. Because the intelligent RU-vid critics out there (the MovieBobs, the Chris Hartwells, the Cosmonauts, the IHE's, etc.) have plenty of gripes and openly discuss them. Whereas the critics i don't ever rely on for intelligent analysis (the Jeremy Jahns, the Angry Joe's etc.) all give such reactionary, emotional, one-sided views that don't seem to even *want* to find positive aspects of the movie. I have heard nobody (NOBODY) either in real life or on the internet claim that this is an perfect film. Nobody. But I have seen countless comments calling it a worthless piece of blasphemous filth that should be stricken from the records of human history. So you tell me which side deserves to have their views better represented.
@ghani666 If you need to explain to me the best of the film or if any "intelligent" RU-vid critic needs to explain the greatness of the film, then the film failed. The story isn't written only for JustWrite and others educated in creative writing and literature. If the lowly need to read your comment or watch this video, then the movie failed. The re-watch-ability of the FA and TLJ are substantially lower than the other six. What good is a story if it just sits on a shelf?
Laurence Goldkamp The rewatchability is lower than the other 6? I deeply pray that you merely miscounted and are referring to the original trilogy, Rogue One, and Solo. You can't possibly be referring to the prequels, right? Please tell me you're not, because I was about to say that "lowly" is an insulting term and at no point would I refer to someone who didn't like TLJ that way...but I would definitely say that about someone who thinks the prequels in any way represent competent filmmaking. They literally teach college courses on what went wrong in the making of those dumpster fires and why they are objectively terrible. But let's not even get into a prequel debate right now. To address your point that the movie failed if people weren't able to grasp it is wholly ridiculous. I guess that makes movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey a failure too, right? Not mainstream enough? Okay, how about Empire Strikes Back? Upon its release, a vast swath of the population didn't understand the themes or the tonal direction of the film. Lots of people considered it a massive disappointment. Over time, however, "intelligent" fans and critics manage to illuminate the deeper, more elusive aspects of that film and it has since come to be considered a classic. Now, will that necessarily be the case with TLJ? I have no idea. Probably not. I don't think any SW film past the Original Trilogy will be considered a "classic." But to say that a movie fails if it introduces ideas and concepts that are too deep or complex to pick up on a first-time whirlwind viewing is to sound supremely anti-intellectual. You can hate the movie all you want, you can disagree with its themes on a personal level, but there is *objectively* a lot of dense, cerebral stuff in this story. There's a good deal of nonsense and childish bullshit too but that doesn't cancel out the extremely layered storytelling on display. Everything to do with Rey, Kylo, and Luke is some of the best shit in the entire franchise. There was a lot of really complex stuff going on that I didn't catch the first time. It takes subsequent viewings and lots of time to think and dissect anything of actual quality. If you don't 100% get it the very first time, then that's usually (not always, but usually) a testament to the film's quality, not a sign that it's a failure.
Yes we understand Holdo doesn't tell Finn the plan because he's reckless, but that's exactly why she *should* tell him: it's pretty obvious the reckless, impulsive guy is not likely to sit around doing nothing just because you told him what a naughty boy he can be. "Prove that he really is self-sacrificing" Psssssyke here's Rose to stop that sacrifice, wasting his entire ark and allowing the battering ram to breach the gate and for all they know kill all the people he was supposed to fight for. "Kylo's descent into villainy" Which one? Kylo is a revolving door of a character. "Allowing [Rei] to save the remaining rebels" Yes her nascent superpowers are part of the problem. Your argument that the story is competently told from the perspective that it answers some arbitrary questions to complete a type of character ark holds some water, though I think at the very least the one for Finn is completely kneecapped in that same movie. But then there's the issue of the "fan service." You dismissively praise the movie for resisting the urge for fan service, but this movie went in the complete opposite direction to spit on the IP and fans alike. They turned Luke from a man that would risk everything to redeem his father from the darkness into a bitter, impulsive, callous old bat that would attempt to murder a child in their sleep because the child might have naughty thoughts. That child being no less than his nephew, the son of his sister and best friend. Sorry but I call bullshit.
Poe is the reason the First Order found out critical details of Holdo's plan. He broadcast it over the channel to Finn and Rose, not realizing DJ was listening. That was exactly what Holdo was trying to avoid.
@@rev1595 Except that's not what's happening. Poe NEVER said the plan out loud. The plan is to use cloaking devices to avoid the First Order's radar. How DJ finds out about the cloaking devices is never explained.
@@Ifatov they found out that Holdo planned to abandon ship because DJ overheard Finn's conversation with Poe. When they got caught, DJ cut a deal with the FO and the FO ran a cloaking scan to verify that this was happening. So by Poe talking about this with Finn in a compromised setting, it led to almost losing the entire war. And even if this weren't the case, the fact that it could happen in any other setting alone justifies Holdo withholding information from a character she doesn't trust. The secrecy of that information was the only thing standing in way of comple disaster
@@rev1595 I know that DJ overheard the conversation. So logically, DJ should tell the FO: "Hey, they're abandoning ship, they're using transports", and the FO officer going like "Do they? Well, that'll be a turkey shoot. We'll look at our RADAR, and as soon as we see the transports leaving, we'll blow them to smithereens." 15 minutes later, the Raddus is blown up without any apparent transport ships leaving the hangar, and the FO officer concludes: "Well, guess they didn't make it out in time after all. Time for tea!". For real now: Why in the FUCK would anyone switch on the decloaking scan? This is extremely specific and DJ has no reason to assume that the ships are cloaked. If DJ and the FO can conclude that in fact cloaked ships are leaving the main ship and they need to scan for them, but POE of all people (and Finn and Rose) can't come to a similar conclusion, then a very well written dialogue is warranted. TLJ doesn't give us that, hence why this hole plot is crap.
@@Ifatov DJ doesn't care of they are cloaked. He has nothing to do with that.. All he knows is that they plan to abandon ship for whatever reason. So when they get caught, that's the information he gives them. The decloaking scan was the FO trying to verify his claim. When they did, almost all was lost. That's why no general in their right mind gives critical information to someone they don't trust, especially if that information is the key to survival.
I used to admire this channel. But now I see advocacy of mediocrity. This video is about how poor writing is genius. It is especially bad as it destroys any momentum for the third film. Who cares about the inner conflict of the janitor? With no more parents to kill, Kylo Ren has no purpose. He even killed his foster father Snorkel. Rey was a dull character with uninteresting questions and you see how bad TLJ is to sell merchandise. Let us not forget that movies that please audience make better merchandise sales. For the first time ever TLJ managed to bring SW toys to the bargain bin in 3 months. Home video also crashed. It crashed in China with a second week drop of 92%. Now tell me why Lone Ranger is a genius movie... Unsuscribing from this channel.
Regular Guy exactly. That's why the Sequel Trilogy fails. We don't care about the new main characters. The characters we did care for (Luke, Leia and Han) were changed for the worse.
@@7632ios Hey now, take it easy on Mr. Nebulous. He needs his heroes to never make serious mistakes and to be placed on a pedestal so as not to shatter his rose-tinted nostalgia.
@@williamsmith5049 The movie didn't have cheap nostalgia callsbacks that serves nothing to the story. This scene has a huge effect on Luke's character and it made him train Rey. It also shows how he has become the Obi-wan of the story and that Leia needs him just like she needed Obi-wan. Luke is Leia's and the resistance's only hope.
@@Yoda-wf6bu But this moment isn't earned especially if you consider that there was no explanation to Luke being where we see him in TLJ compared to where he was at the end of RotJ, no character development. He is just a different character altogether.
Or maybe TLJ apologists who post daily videos on how TLJ is really good and people hate it "for the wrong reasons" are persistent. I mean, the movie sucks, just move on. But no. Every. Single. Day.
I think the issue is that you focus on the point of certain elements and not on the art of the execution. I can understand that Rian Johnson had ambitious ideas he wanted to convey, but coming from a TV background with all the runtime in the world, he was unable to execute his ideas in a concise matter needed for a movie. This led most of the interactions and events to feel unnatural, too blatant, and even insulting intellectually.
@@DannyTanimoto No, he basically notes that the movie checked the required boxes. But that's like saying an outline for a books is also a good story on its own.
To me, The Last Jedi isn't all bad. It does have good structure with certain parts of the movie, most involve the scenes with Rey and Luke. However, the tone it sets, humor it attempts, and questioable actions by the characters makes it, not the worst star wars movie, but one could argue the most disappointing. Although Abrams gets a lot of shit with his "mystery box" technique, it did raise a lot of cool ideas/theories that the series could explore.
@Sterman99 I'd argue that one of the main objectives of the first movie in a series IS to promise substance. Without these promises, we would get information/payoffs with no setup. The setup makes later stuff impact us more. In my opinion, the mystery box technique works up to a certain point in a series. What I mean is, if we kept getting them throughout the movies without any answers that's obviously a problem. However, that's not what happened, JJ didn't even get the chance to mess that up, it all ended up with Johnson. It's just that, there were SO many things Johnson could've done with those promises, but he just managed them poorly and subverted experiences. To me, when he subverted expectations, it felt like he did it just for the sake of it. If you don't believe that he managed the promises poorly I'd recommend watching some of matpat's (film theory's) videos before the Last Jedi came out and after Force Awakens.
So let me get this straight... you think Rian Johnson kinda succeeded in film writing 101 while failing everywhere else so.... good job? Poe Dreadnaught plothole - if he hadn't gone against Leia, the Resistance would have been destroyed by the Dreadnaught in the next scene Holdo is an incompetent leader - so we should trust those types of leaders blindly, right movie? Finn is horribly written with the sacrificial payoff taken away by Rose. 2 deleted scenes would have been put to better use than many theatrical cut minutes wasted. Rose monologue is completely against the rest of the film - the script is schizophrenic. Canto Bight - you can only get rich in a galaxy far, far away by selling weapons? Tell that to Lando on Bespin. Rey is a flat character. She just wants to find a family - she has no arc, needs no training, and everyone loves her. Stop spending time defending this crap script and honestly critique it... Even if there are parts you like - that's fine - but be honest about the product as a whole. When you defend the minuscule good aspects of this script and ignore the elephant in the room, it lessens your credibility as an objective critic. Based on this film, Rian Johnson is a great director, but a horrible writer. Even if the script has "competence", the rest is utter trash. Even a broken clock is right twice a day...
I legitimately like this one, it was no fooling the best Star Wars I had seen since Return of the Jedi. I did like the character dynamics, how it tore down the mythology of Star Wars to just focus on a series of character narratives again. It was a good film... before the dark times, before the Hatedom. A bunch of myopic twats not only didn’t like it, which is fine have whatever taste you want, but tried to say it was objectively a bad film, raged and moaned til Disney ordered the entire thing undone. Next film, oh all of a sudden the Force does care who your parents are, all of a sudden Rey’s parent were somebodies. All of a sudden Ren gets redemption, and with true love’s kiss so not only is his moral bridge rebuilt after burning it down, his relationship with Rey is too. All of a sudden Jedi are uncomplicated paragons again instead of flawed humans Luke was rightly disenchanted with. Everything is like the original again, we are ignoring the potential reawakening of Jedi in a younger generation still, and Emperor Palps is back again to reveal “It’s me Austin, It’s me Austin, it was me all along, Austin!” And did the previous Hatedom rejoice in being pandered to? No, they just pointed and laughed and said “LOL even the fans of the last one hated this one”, yeah you schmucks, because your never ending whining made the creators think they had abandon the changes to the universe set-up and turn Star Wars back into a crib for whinny little babies who pretended they were upset about a narrative but just drunk on bad-faith-criticism.
Flawed humans doesn’t apply to Luke Skywalker. Not anymore. He can’t go from trying to redeem space hitler to murdering his student over a bad dream. He can have flaws he always had them, just not in that way.
@@arnoldgreen4278 Luke was always a confused kid trying to compensate for a cruddy galaxy. And quite frankly the Jedi have gotten burned more than once giving folks the benefit of the doubt. Keep in mind Luke had just read he records of the Jedi Council during the clone wars AKA he had just watched the Prequels. Which not only explains his *vast* disenchantment with the Jedi but sort of emphasize that if you see some angsty up and comer acting like a Sith Lord that maybe you shouldn’t ignore that. He, for a split second, thought of making sure there couldn’t be another Darth Vader before deciding it was wrong. That’s really not out of character for him. It also strike me as a very human thing to do.
@@mesektet5776 Oh I agree its not out of character for him. However the way he did it? He went to Defcon 1 instantly. I mean when *you* put it like that, it makes sorta sense. Shame the movie didn't cover it that well. I feel like if it covered a little more of Kylo and Lukes relationship building to that moment, then yeah people would've bought it. Cutting out a little of Canto Bite in favour of some development between Luke and Kylo and seeing why Luke would react so viciously even for a split second would be amazing and really sell people like me the idea that Luke would react this way.
thanks for this. I deeply enjoyed the movie, but then pretty quickly got overrun with videos and reviews with the angry reactions - like your downvoters at this video and some of the commenters. And so then I kind of accepted some of the points they make and it got me to see the flaws. But then I watched the movie again at home and I loved it even more - thats when I started to look for videos that dive more deeply into the analysis, like the Movies with Mikey, and Cinemawins and Lessons from the screenplay and your own. And yes, I agree. Not that I personaly observed all the same details, but retrospectively I can recognize you're making sense and it feels like it explains why the movie is so enjoyable to me.
The problem with Holdo isn't that she didn't tell him the plan... it's that she didn't tell him anything. She doesn't trust him? Cool, then tell him exactly enough to keep him from going and doing something insubordinate (like sending 2 people off on a side quest...) or setting up a mutiny, exactly like he did. That would've been plenty.
Dorian sapiens you're right, she didn't HAVE to do anything so far as Poe was concerned. That doesn't make it not dumb as bricks to treat him the way she did rather than have him use his charisma and respected reputation to keep everyone calm.
The brilliance you outline in the film is duly noted. However, there are established space mechanics and historical character arcs that are simultaneously leveled in RJ's gamble with the franchise that I (and many) believe effectively broke Star Wars.
I have to disagree with how well they got across Poe's arc, at least at the beginning. If they hadn't taken out the dreadnought, the massive cannon on it would have obliterated them, maybe Poe was a bit reckless, but he still saved more people than would have died if he'd followed orders.
Let's agree that having a Good idea on what the story is trying to do is in no way an argument for the quality. I agree, those were all Good ideas, but they were executed horribly. You talk about how Good the idea of these characters representing these sides is, and praise the brilliance of it, but under that same idea, the room is the best movie ever for having coheseve themes and characters representing something in some abstract representation of it. TLJ was a great idea, that was executed in the most insulting way possible. if you could divorce the movie from the other 8, it stands as a Good science-fantasy movie. The issue is that it is not. And even on its own, just because something makes sense it doesn't mean it's good. Anyway, enough of my rant, TLJ was a great idea. Too bad it stayed that way.
Exactly! It would've been fine as a standalone "A Star Wars Story" but it wasn't.. it wasnt even the first movie in the trilogy (which if it was I would've actually liked it) it was a sequel, now is not the time to veer off! TFA and TLJ should've been more cohesive, and since TFA came first guess what Rian? You need to work WITH that! Not ignore it! The trilogy needed to move in one uniform direction, this is why the whole story should've been mapped out from the begining so as to not fall in the hands of the director's ego! People who love TLJ shit on TRoS for ruining it while ignoring that TLJ ruined TFA..
