The Watching Artist wrote:The combo of TFA and TLJ have pretty much killed my enthusiasm for Star Wars (still not seen Solo). There is just so much I no longer care about. I've not liked the way elements of the past have been used and its failed to present me with new things that interest me. I look at the main characters and barely feel a thing. It makes me sad.
I actually enjoyed Solo a lot. It’s not the film’s fault that Harrison Ford ages like the rest of us. The actor did the role decent enough.
And the twist at the end is worth it.
Tafdolphin wrote:If you disliked both of those, I don't think there's anything for you in Solo. It's by far the worst of the recent entries; a mismatched, uneven film that doesn't really know what it wants to be and makes some desperately sad stabs at linking itself to the lore.
It's a story that didn't need to be told, and a story told in such a bland manner that it's forgotten as soon as it's over.
Solo is a quality watch if you're not going to dissect it and go full critical analysis on it (as is prerogative if that's how you roll). If you are, it's unlikely you'll get anything from it and it'll probably only irritate you.
A great quote from Billy Dee Williams at the Star Wars celebration. Stephen Colbert ask him "what was it like to come back to a character after so many decades?" Billy replies "He never really left me!"
Yep - prequelitis foreshadowing everything but quite cleverly done here - if Abrams did know he was bringing Lando back. And that picture, Donald Glover definitely passes in looks for a young Lando.
Monkey Man wrote:
That first Coke logo is brilliant. It looks alien but you think you can still read it! Probably $20 a pop.
Here I am trying to watch this Mandalorian panel, and Youtube will not stop pulling errors out of its server ports.
STOP DOING THIS WITHIN EVERY MINUTE AND ALLOW ME TO WATCH THE PANEL!
And the panel has now ended, and we at least have a bit of info. Not much, and we didn't even get to see a trailer, but we know our mains and a bit of behind-the-scenes.
Now, Youtube, kindly do not pull this ridiculousness during The Clone Wars panel. I actually care more for that one.
The thing about TLJ, to bring it back, is I find that people zone in or some insignificant stuff that has no bearing on the overall plot and direction it too things in.
The prank phone call is horrendous - it's just excruciatingly bad. But it's throwaway comic relief in the opening moments of the movie. Magical Leia was a little jarring, but the idea was to show she did have some latent force abilities. I think they could have done that in a slightly better way, but, like, a lot of the SW films show the Jedi using powers in new ways. I don't know how tjje Leia incident stands out, amongst a sea of other fantasy-related powers. Even so, again, it's about 30 seconds and a relatively minor part of the film. It's just meant to show she has some use of the force deep within in, though maybe not enough to use it at will. Fisher's death will sadly stop us seeing what was planned for her in Episode 9, but as it was said she was going to have a large role, they might have explored her connection with the force and her lineage.
Again, it's a very minor point. And these films, even the ones you really like, all have throwaway goofy moments or bouts of stupidity. Look at "Blind Han" on the skiff in Jedi, that bit always makes me cringe at how dumb it is. And in TFA, the bit with those smuggled creatures on the Falcon always strikes me as being completely unneeded and desperate to be edited out of the movie entirely. I don't like it. But, the movie isn't crippled by that scene.
Criticism of the slowest chase ever, I can understand. I remember thinking it at the time and I do think there were better ways to imperil the Resistance. Like I said before, TLJ's big problem in terms of plotting was that it has to be set in the moments immediately after TFA, due to the latter's cliffhanger.
We had to see Luke and Rey"s first meeting. It was a bit restrictive as to what you could do with next, seeing as most Episodes are at least a year apart in in-world time. I think they wanted the Resistance in danger and on the brink, and had to think of ways to get them to that point. I think it could be done better and I do think the timeframe means that it's a little off, that they go from blowing up Starkiller to being strawberry floated in a few days.
Again, I think this is a lack of hindsight with the writing process. There's no reason TFA couldn't end with Rey flying off in search for Luke, leaving their meeting to be the focal point of TLJ (as it was anyway). Sure, the rabid fans probably wanted Luke in TFA but they could have been made to wait for that, if it aided the story. I think TFJ would have definitely benefitted from being set a bit further forward in time after the events of the previous film.
But still, I do think that even the chase is relatively not the most important bit of plotting. I don't quite like the concept but I can yield a little and accept the core idea of the Resistance imperiling themselves through the pyyrhic victory in the opening space battle, and how that drives character development in Poe.
I do think that the resistance part is a little weaker and undercooked. But as I said before, the film works for me because of the relationship between it's three main characters - Luke, Rey and Kylo. Finn and Poe's storyline also develops their characters, but admittedly it's not quite as compelling at all times.
But the notion that TLJ fails because of it some slightly awkward sidesplotting or dumb jokes, well, it's fine if people think that of course but I do feel that, if you look at the other SW films with that critical outlook, then they must similarly fall apart too. Basically all of the episodes have them, some to a much worse degree.
You don't need a fine tooth comb in order to find things that are awkwardly fitting, contrived, illogical or dumb in these movies. Someone mentioned the trade talks already. No-one recognises Palpatine as soon as he puts his hood up. Snoke dies too early? Maul has two lines and about five minutes of screen time. Anakin falls to the dark side almost in an instant. The Empire's plan is to build two similarly flawed super weapons and that's all the first three movies can think up as an overarching threat.
The whole series is littered with such things, not just TLJ. So I find it odd that given how much people vehemently seem to hate TLJ, they don't turn that approach and just tear apart 80% of the series. Bar Empire and, at a push, A New Hope, Star Wars is full of them. It is, at its core, sci-fi pulp.
A lot of interesting points and I do agree that many of the problems TLJ has are problems which are consistent throughout the franchise.
That said, to go back to the humour point, there are two particular bits of humour which for me spoiled scenes which should have been more serious. As you say, Star Wars has always had silly moments of humour but usually they're separated from the more serious moments. For example, we don't see Vader and Luke dropping wise cracks during their battles. The prank phone call, though cringeworthy, takes place before any serious plot points occur, it didn't really bother me. Space Leia doesn't look great either but again, she's using the force to survive and it was great to see her using her force abilities even if it looked a bit daft. I don't think that scene was helped by the Yondu sequence in Guardians 2 because for me that's all I could think of during it.
What did bother me was when Luke sees his father's lightsaber after all these years, handed to him by this mysterious stranger who has found him in exile, he takes it and throws it over his shoulder. It almost feels like it should be followed by a laughter track. It's a moment that fans had been waiting two years for and they did that... I thought it was awful and simply didn't fit the tone that scene should have had.
Another example is after Snoke is killed and Hux goes back to the throne room, only to find him lying their with his tongue out. It's a completely silly, unnecessary moment and again, it just doesn't fit the tone of that moment of the scene.
I agree that Rey and Kylo had some really interesting story developments and the interactions between their characters are two of the highlights of the film. I personally didn't like a lot of what they did with Luke's character - I just didn't feel like it felt like the same hopeful Luke we saw at the end of RotJ who redeemed his father. Luke was always going to be a hard character to write but I think they could have given him more purpose to being on Ach-To. Maybe he was studying the force because he knew he couldn't defeat Snoke without more knowledge, this could have left him too weak to go and take down the first order (avoiding the problem of having a superpowered Luke running around) but allowed him to pass the knowledge to Rey. Angry hermit Luke, who abandoned everyone and everything and tried to kill his nephew because he had bad dreams just isn't Luke Skywalker. Yes, to an extent the ending of TFA was restrictive but I'm sure they could have come up with something better.
I also didn't like the character developments of the majority of the other characters in it. Poe and Finn don't have particularly interesting plot lines. I get that the idea behind them both is that they learn how to be part of the resistance in their own right but I just didn't enjoy their story arcs. Characters like Maz Kanata and Phasma, who were largely wasted in TFA are once again, wasted here. Holdo, DJ and Rose don't really add anything that couldn't have been done by an existing character which is a shame because I found Kelly Marie Tran really likeable as Rose and we all know how talented Del Toro and Lauren Dern are, their roles felt a bit wasted/unnecessary to me.
The casino subplot is often heavily criticised and again, I found it to be mostly pointless nonsense. Finn and Rose's plan not only achieves nothing but it also makes very little sense, the main ship is running out of fuel and everybody is stuck aboard yet somehow they manage to go to another planet unnoticed and then come back? It felt like they just needed to fill some time with those characters and it's another chunk of the film that just didn't work for me.
There's still plenty to like, I enjoyed the battle scene on board Snoke's command ship and thought it was an interesting way to flip a lightsaber battle on its head rather than just having a duel between Rey/Kylo. Similarly I liked the reveal that Rey's parents were nobodies because it was unexpected and far more interesting than her being x and y's child. Similarly, I didn't mind what they did with Luke at the end. The alternatives would have either been a carbon copy of Obi Wan in Ep 4 or him being a superpowered Jedi, which would have rendered Kylo a pointless villain. I also liked how the ending left things so open.
Overall, I don't hate it but I didn't like certain directions the story took (moreso than in any other films in the series). It felt a little bit like Rian Johnson valued the shock value of 'subverting expectations' a little more than he did actually developing the plot threads of TFA into a coherent story and that's a shame. Of course, I do think it will be hard to fully judge TLJ until the saga is complete anyway to see how well it works as the middle film in a trilogy.
Jamo3103 wrote:The casino subplot is often heavily criticised and again, I found it to be mostly pointless nonsense. Finn and Rose's plan not only achieves nothing but it also makes very little sense, the main ship is running out of fuel and everybody is stuck aboard yet somehow they manage to go to another planet unnoticed and then come back? It felt like they just needed to fill some time with those characters and it's another chunk of the film that just didn't work for me.
Just to touch on this: one thing I don't think the film did as well as it could've and is often missed is that it's a film about failure. Almost all of the main characters fail in their goals: Finn and Rose fail to disable the tracker, Poe fails to save the fleet, Rey fails both to get Luke off the island and to turn Ren. Even Luke failed to train Ben.
The point is that, as Yoda points out, failure is the best teacher. Finn gains appreciation for the Resistance, Rey gains a greater understanding of herself and the Force, Poe comes to understand what leadership is. Luke himself comes to realise he can't just ignore the consequences of his failure anymore.
This does get lost in the film itself however as it's nothing if not messy.
Two great posts in a row there. I don't necessarily agree with all jamo's points but can definitely see where they come from.
