Star Wars: The Last SJW

[redneckdevil]

Look, the fact is, no matter how beautiful your message is, bad storytelling makes a bad movie. I don't care if they wanted to make the heroes people of color or the bad guy an angry white boy. All I wanted was a good, logical plot. And they couldn't deliver on that. It's clear that JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson had very different ideas, making the story disjointed. Too many cooks spoil the broth and all that.

Agreed. Just as comedians can say or push any message, they HAVE to be funny to push it though. If a movie wants to push a message, it has to be entertaining and good. Each platform has a "goal" to meet, otherwise all they did was pat themselves on the back while wasting people's time and wasting the opportunity to get it across.

 

The movie sucked and I didn't even pick up on all this sjw BS or even know about it. Right now star wars is dead to me except the original trilogy

[algroth]

Making a film about the tearing down of the white patriarchy is all fine and dandy, but how long can we go on doing these and still claim they're subversive? The message isn't subversive by now, it's trendy and that's precisely why Disney go with it.

[Blarghagh]

Why are you guys taking a website called bitter Gertrude so seriously?

[ShadySands]

I didn't check the permissions on my Facebook review of the movie so friends of friends got to see it instead of just friends and I had someone telling me I was sexist and racist even though I never once mentioned sex or race. TBH I don't even think the movie is that diverse. I don't mind what they tried to do with it I just think they didn't do a good job with it and I wasn't entertained and entertainment is what I want from a Star Wars movie. Anyway, crazy internet people gonna crazy.

[Malcador]

I've been called racist for thinking Finn is boring and uninteresting. Which is kind of funny given my racial background Seems 'subverting expectations' was the only thing Rian Johnson can do : Leia, Finn/Rose, Luke. More I think about TLJ the more disjointed and rushed I think it was.

[redneckdevil]

Don't take it to heart y'all, now adays anyone for any reason can be called a racist. They wearing the word out to lose it's meaning.

Crazy internet being crazy.

[The Architect_1]

Look, the fact is, no matter how beautiful your message is, bad storytelling makes a bad movie. I don't care if they wanted to make the heroes people of color or the bad guy an angry white boy. All I wanted was a good, logical plot. And they couldn't deliver on that. It's clear that JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson had very different ideas, making the story disjointed. Too many cooks spoil the broth and all that.

 

Easier said in hindsight, but I would've asked Michael Arndt to write 7, 8 and 9, so you get an overarching story. Next, get some people in who notice when things don't work such as the Finn-Rose subplot, Mary Poppins Leia and misplaced humour. Last, but not least, it should never have mattered if Luke overshadowed the new characters or not because the new kids on the block are getting another trilogy and chance to shine. I like the idea of having different directors, though. I would've stuck with Trevorrow if they had the stories well thought out.

[FlintlockJazz]

I enjoyed the Last Jedi, thought it was good and one of the better Star Wars films, but it is NOT subversive at all let alone af.  Those who say it is must not have been paying attention when (if) they watched Empire Strikes Back (of which it is pretty much in theme with, though less of a copy thankfully than TFA was of ANH) or Revenge of the Sith. 

[Agiel]

Man, all these people who are so triggered by TLJ having a black guy and an Asian girl as some of the leads seem like the type of folks who would have been annoyed seeing James Earl Jones in Dr. Strangelove or Yaphet Kotto in Alien in their days.

Edited January 1, 2018 by Agiel

[Oerwinde]

I liked the message TLJ pushed that it doesn't matter if a legendary figure was an awful bitter old hermit who tried to kill his nephew, his legend is more important and inspires others to be better people. Seems like a parallel to how college kids keep trying to ruin the legend of historical figures by focusing entirely on their negatives.

[Zoraptor]

Meh, if Phantom Menace was released today some people would describe Jar Jar hate as racist. Most people dislike the black guy and asian girl because they were pointless narratively in TLJ and padded run time, with the pandering aspects of their ethnicity being a distant second. Indeed, if the movie was good and their characters good nobody would care- hence why nobody cared about JEJ or Yaphet Kotto. Same for Phasma, people don't hate the character for being female and people don't hate Brienne as an actor; what people don't like is that they clearly aimed for an iconic Boba Fett type, but achieved Capt Panaka instead. People also tend to dislike Rey for being a colossal Mary Sue rather than disliking her because she's female.

 

As for TLJ itself, the whole thing is kind of funny. First movie of the Star Trek reboot was described as someone who hated ST and wanted to make a Star Wars movie instead; TLJ is more like someone who hated SW wanting to make a Star Trek movie instead. One doubts the super duper innovative tactic that should revolutionise space warfare will ever be heard of again once Death Star 2 Starkiller 2 shows up in Not Return of the Jedi- and that is 100% pure Star Trek. At least Jar Jar Abrams wanted to make a SW movie even if it was extraordinarily derivative and made no sense in context; it was always going to be difficult to make movies post RotJ that aren't inconsistent/ 'disrespectful' with the originals in some way. It hardly looks like JJ and RianJ even talked to each other.

[smjjames]

Not sure what the whole Jar-Jar dislike was about, other than being a goofy clumsy character.

[Raithe]

Well, I think it was going back to the originals.

 

Lucas put in R2 and Threepio in part as homage to the Hidden Fortress. That aspect of the heroic adventure being seen from the view of the two serf/peasants (low end of the blue collar scale) who get caught up tagging along with the "noble" heroes. They not only served as that figure for audiences to relate to and contrast with the heroes, but provided a certain comedy sidekick element to it all - however, in the original trilogy they generally weren't slapstick comedy.

 

It seemed that Jar-Jar was meant fill that role in the prequels, but they pushed the abject slapstick dumb element more than anything else. Which turned him into a generally irritating character rather than an amusing one. Then tag on the over-the-top pseudo jamaican style accent and it made more people wince than anything else.

[Zoraptor]

Not sure what the whole Jar-Jar dislike was about, other than being a goofy clumsy character.

 

Raithe covers most of the reasons people dislike him. He probably doesn't deserve all the hate he gets, but he's emblematic of the problems that TPM had so attracts the hate. It's mostly relevant because he was played by a black actor with an affected ludicrous 'black' accent, but neither was the reason he was disliked so much. The accent contributed a bit, but not much.

 

I don't think anyone knows what the original plan for Jar Jar was (Lucas: "Jar Jar is the key to all of this" is an actual quote), the reaction to him saw his role in the later films massively reduced. I suspect, to use another Lucas quote he "may have got carried away a little in places" especially when it came to Jar Jar and just loved the idea of a CGI character as well as wanting to appeal to kids who are the primary target for merchandising. The end result didn't really appeal to kids and tended to annoy adults. Lucas always needed someone to tell him when he was going too far, shame he only employed yes men like McCallum after RotJ.

Edited January 1, 2018 by Zoraptor

[Blarghagh]

Phantom Menace was meant to expand on space fantasy. Just as 'A New Hope' was the farmboy joining up with a pirate and learning magic from the old wizard to save the princess from the black knight's castle, Lucas thought it would be good to add more fantasy tropes to the universe to try to evoke the same wonder as the original did.

 

It didn't work, but it's why we got space chariot races, a knight of the order and his squire, the child queen and the magic prophecy of the chosen one, the evil demon to overcome. The city of Thebes might as well be populated by elves, and the battle droids are practically an army of Harryhausen skeletons matched against the savage gungan hordes on their space horses with their space spears and space shields.

 

How does Jar Jar fit in this? Good old George made Jar Jar as his version of the Shakespearian Fool, a space jester. He even follows Shakespeare's pattern of having the fool dispense the advice that turns the tide: 'Wesa got grand army!' He just seemed to miss the part where the fool was generally wiser than he appeared, because George is terrible at seeing depth.

 

Of course none of this worldbuilding and design panned out because it was in service of an awful story, barely more than exposition for the next bits. The original wss a fantasy story (a quest, even) while this was just more and more fantasy stuff added to a half-baked political thriller. If George had spent half as much time learning about character arcs and story structure as he had trying to put every fantasy trope into his universe, Phantom Menace would have been fantastic. But that design and dedication to insane, balls to the wall space fantasy is the one thing why I still like it.

[Raithe]

There's so much there that has potential that I can never actually wash my hands of the prequels.

[Zoraptor]

Yep, the prequels desperately needed good editing at the concept and scripting stages but the base story and ideas are mostly fine, they just needed someone else to tune them. I'd still rate RoTS as a good movie overall though, and the last third (minus dying of sadness) as very good. But when it comes to Lucas I'm always reminded of a story about The Beatles and why Lennon/ McCartney was such a great song writing duo while Paul McCartney solo was a load of self indulgent tosh- John could tell Paul when he was being self indulgent and most importantly Paul would pay attention when told. But I'll say this for the prequels, they do at least make sense overall as a story even if the journey along the story is not always... optimal, and while the dialogue is often stultifying it is at least memorable even when Anakin is espousing a deep loathing for silica particles.

 

I can't say the same for the sequels, the continuity between them and the original trilogy and even between TFA and TLJ is questionable and while the dialogue certainly isn't bad it is arguably something worse- it's literally unremarkable. "Amazing, every word you just said was wrong" is about the only line from either sequel film I can remember at all. Even setting the memes aside I could probably quote a dozen lines at absolute minimum from any other SW film; and I've only seen the prequels one time more than TFA and seen both sequels far more recently. Still, nice action scenes and set pieces as always, and if you leave your brian in neutral enjoyable enough.

 

(Best thing about the prequels and probably SW overall is and always will be Ian McDiarmid playing Palps as a pantomime villain and mugging the camera unapologetically every chance he got as that made the absolute most of what he was provided with. And whatever else you can say about Lucas he had at times- when he wasn't trying to just sell merchandise- a true talent for impressive set pieces; that very first Star Destroyer shot in Star Wars is still perhaps my absolute favourite.)

[ShadySands]

With JJ back at the helm I'm interested to see if he revives any of the mysteries he set up in TFA and Johnson discarded in TLJ

[Malcador]

With JJ back at the helm I'm interested to see if he revives any of the mysteries he set up in TFA and Johnson discarded in TLJ

Probably just leave us with more.

[Guest]

With JJ back at the helm I'm interested to see if he revives any of the mysteries he set up in TFA and Johnson discarded in TLJ

Is this about the red arm?

[ShadySands]

Any, I don't think JJ has thought up a mystery he didn't like

[FlintlockJazz]

Any, I don't think JJ has thought up a mystery he didn't like

That's the thing I hate about Abrams, he makes up these 'mysteries' on the fly and just keeps spamming them thinking they make the audience go "ooh" only to then either give a poor answer (because he made it up without thinking of what the answer was in the first place and now has to make one up) or never actually answers it like his Lost did.  The guy's a hack and I genuinely don't know how he manages to get the jobs he does.

[Guest]

 

Any, I don't think JJ has thought up a mystery he didn't like

That's the thing I hate about Abrams, he makes up these 'mysteries' on the fly and just keeps spamming them thinking they make the audience go "ooh" only to then either give a poor answer (because he made it up without thinking of what the answer was in the first place and now has to make one up) or never actually answers it like his Lost did.  The guy's a hack and I genuinely don't know how he manages to get the jobs he does.

 

Well said. He really isn't capable of more than fan service.

[The Architect_1]

With JJ back at the helm I'm interested to see if he revives any of the mysteries he set up in TFA and Johnson discarded in TLJ

 

He should stick to his guns on Rey's origins.

[Darkpriest]

With JJ back at the helm I'm interested to see if he revives any of the mysteries he set up in TFA and Johnson discarded in TLJ

 

I doubt, it would require a whole bunch of rewriting and people coming back from death...