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Episode 7: Derivative but fun
Episode 8: Pure trash
Episode 9: Desperately trying to piece together the plot
Episode 7: derivative boredom
Episode 8: I like thi---WHAT THE HECK IS HAPPENING? WHY??
Episode 9: JJ desperately trying to piece together a plot
"Poe commits mutiny for the 12th time; learns nothing."
9 was a reaction to the challenge of actually having to tell a story. The challenge was not accepted.
9 failed as a follow up to 8 so badly I can’t even tell if it’s worse than 8.
How anyone thinks 9 is better than 8 is beyond me.
I've always said that the worst thing that 9 did was completely destroy any excitement for Star Wars in an instant.
Prior to 9 releasing, people didn't like 8 and were already souring on 7, but there was still discourse, people caught up on Star Wars news, people were excited for the new content.
After 9, the excitement dropped like a brick. It was the closure of a trilogy in one of the most profitable IPs in the world. There was still more content planned to come out soon iirc (the shows, and I think there was talk of more movies), so it's not like people stopped caring due to the lack of content. Nobody I knew was interested in discussing fan theories or analyzing the movies (except to rag on them, I suppose). It was as if millions of voices cried out in terror... And were suddenly silenced.
9 is just generic. It's mediocre. 8 is an active train wreck. God, I remember sitting in the theatre and being baffled by the opening 'conversation' between Hux and Poe. I legit thought it might have been another one of those fan vids that they show in the Alamo Theatre before the actual movie began, despite the opening crawl.
"Somehow", lightspeed skipping, 3PO not being able to translate from sith, the ancient dagger that is also the shape of the crashed death star from a highly specific angle, Palpatine fucks, whatever a diad is, 10,000 star destroyers.
I'm not pretending that 8 is a masterpiece, it isn't, and it's worse than any of the OT, but at least Johnson tried to do something to keep star wars at a galactic scale.
The worst bit of 9 is how small it makes star wars. Everything comes down to a tale of two families - Palpatine and Skywalker - in a way that nullifies everyone else's involvement. For a story that spans a literal galaxy, having it come down to those two families, twice, is terrible writing.
I mean, I agree with all of your criticisms of 9, I just don't agree that they make it worse than 8.
I mean, hell, "Finn immediately wakes up, loses faith in the rebellion"? The slow-motion chase through space? "Union negotiations" ha ha so funny? Carrie Poppins surviving for no real reason except perhaps to 'subvert expectations'? 3000 attempted coups of Poe and the uninspired leadership of Admiral Replacement? "I'm going to let you out of the brig, not because you've learned anything, but because committing mutiny is why I keep you around"? Hyperspace jumps can now be weaponized? Hoth 2 (this time it's salt) after an emergency landing with one ship? Twelve people survive out of the entire fleet so let's celebrate?
The ENTIRE Canto Blight nonsense, top to bottom? Especially the weird shoehorned animal rights bit? Benicio del Toro the arms dealer who exists for ten seconds (waste of a fantastic actor) and leaves on the stunning line "Maybe"? Grand Leader Whoever in a bathrobe talking about how much 'spunk' young Rey has and then dying in his first few minutes seen in person? Whatsherface falling in love with Finn over the space of a day or two and then managing to race her land speeder faster than Finn's, so she can catch up to him as he's going full throttle on a suicide mission and then save his life by... ramming him at full speed and wrecking both of their vehicles right on top of the enemy?
Luke casually throwing away the lightsaber like it was a piece of moldy bread? "The Jedi Scriptures"? Luke drinking blue milk fresh from the teat? Not even acknowledging (or barely acknowledging, I don't remember) Chewie coming back to see him, one of his oldest friends? The Porgs? Fuck. "Reach out and feel the force"? Luke decides to murder his innocent nephew in the middle of the night despite being such an idealist that he thought Darth Vader could come back from his atrocities? Casually brushing off his shoulder after getting his force projection blasted by the not-AT-ATs?
I'm probably missing so goddamn much. I'm not revisiting it. I saw it once, and once was one time too many.
There are only two things that 8 gave us that were good - the force bond on screen (and even that was tormented by the sheer awkwardness of it, especially asking Ben Swolo to put on a towel) and the almost Nietzschean philosophy embraced by Kylo Ren as a more articulate envisioning of the Dark Side. I do wonder if that was connected to KOTOR 2 or just one of those parallel evolution things.
As said, I don't think Last Jedi is a good film, so my defence is going to be pretty half arsed, but just a few points I'd like to challenge.
- Finn joined the resistance because he witnessed an atrocity as a trooper and didn't want to be a bad guy. He got disillusioned and questioned whether the resistance were actually good because they had to do things that also killed lots of people. He ultimately decides it's justified. I'd argue that characters overcoming struggles and having a bit of depth is a good thing.
- Carrie Poppins was a bad, bad, choice, agreed.
- Poe leading a mutiny because he didn't know what was going on, because he'd been demoted, because he didn't follow orders, demonstrates that while he may be a great pilot, he's far too impulsive and his own actions are what holds him back. This shows where his character can, and needs to, grow if he's ever going to be at the top table.
- Canto continues with the strong anti-imperialism of the original trilogy. The purpose of that entire piece is as a commentary on the military industrial complex, and how it has conflicted goals as it benefits more from continued war than peace.
- "The animal rights bit" - dude, the culmination of RotJ was the Empire being beaten by teddy bears, this again is a constant theme throughout the OT, that exploitation occurs everywhere within an imperialist system.
- it's been 30 years since we last saw Luke, and even then his training was incomplete, because he'd run away impulsively to get back to Han and Leia. Luke is flawed - my biggest peeve with certain parts of the old EU was how some authors painted him as almost christ like and perfect, perfect is boring - and ultimately failed to rebuild the academy. He fucked up so badly that, yes, he misunderstood a vision, and thought Ben was going to go to the dark side. He then caused this, couldn't forgive himself, and lived in self-imposed exile as penance. Of course he didn't want the lightsabre that he'd already given up. Wouldn't it be even weirder for him to be all "oh, thank you so much for giving me back the sabre I purposefully discarded after I tried to murder my nephew and turned him away from the light, it would look great on my wall!"
- don't kink shame blue titty drinking! 😂
Again, was it a great film? No, far from it. But at least it tried to give depth to characters, had them tackle challenges, and overcome them and/or grow through failure.
With Palpatine coming back, somehow, in 9, it completely destroys Anakin's redemption, because it turns out that he didn't actually kill Palpatine after all, so no final great act, no meaningful sacrifice, Vader dies for nothing.
For all its faults, and there are many, nothing Last Jedi did destroyed the main character of the fanchise's arc quite like that.
Of course he didn’t want the lightsabre that he’d already given up. Wouldn’t it be even weirder for him to be all “oh, thank you so much for giving me back the sabre I purposefully discarded after I tried to murder my nephew and turned him away from the light, it would look great on my wall!”
That was actually Anakin's lightsaber, the one given to him by Ben that he lost in the duel on Bespin, that most people presumed was lost forever after having been shunted out of a trash chute into the atmosphere of a gas giant. He didn't make a conscious decision to give that one up, though I understand his reluctance to accept any lightsaber in the first place what with everything that happened that we learn about throughout the movie, but the casual toss-over-the-shoulder for laughs was pretty inappropriate considering the tone of the same scene at the end of 7, explicitly framed in such a way implying that Luke had an emotional reaction to seeing either Rey or the Lightsaber again.
Fair point, but let's not pretend that that scene in 7 was anything more than JJ's usual mystery box, set up with no plan for execution, writing.
How on earth Disney allowed a trilogy of films in a franchise as massive as star wars to not even have a speculative outline for an overall arc blows my mind.
Oh, for sure, I'm pinning the blame on JJ for the bad setup and RJ for running with it without a plan. Disney Lucasfilm should have had a tighter grip on the project from the very start.
I see it the other way, 8 was an alright movie if it was standalone and not part of SW. The things most people disliked are fine if it was some generic sci-fi action movie. “Jake Skywalker” is a nonissue if you don’t think he’s supposed to be Luke, the quippy lines were common, the weird bits like the Mary Poppins scene or the Holdo maneuver are acceptable in some other sci-fi movie. Wouldn’t have been a masterpiece, but it’s still relatively put together.
9 struggled to be a film. Remove it from SW and it’s almost worse— 8 could feasibly be greenlit and released by lazy execs, but 9 would’ve been cancelled in production. Pacing was jarring to the point of feeling unfinished, plot was one of the least coherent in a mega blockbuster, and story conveniences were nauseatingly poor even if it wasn’t Star Wars. It feels like they just put something together real quick without the editors and it got leaked. None of it was serviceable. And god, not to repeat myself, but the pacing and story were horrid.
Add it back to SW, and the Sith life transfer/dyad nonsense is as much an affront to Lucas’s story as TLJ Luke. Possibly more: sure, doing that to Luke was shit, but TRoS butchered basic Force principles. It’s like a bad DM fucking up a pivotal NPC vs fucking up the entire game system.
I dislike both of them nearly equally, but I could probably watch 8 again. 9 is like an indecisive amateur’s attempt at Lego Star Wars machinima, down to poor editing and an inability to order scenes. Didn’t see another movie so sloppy until Thor: Love and Thunder.
In short, it's a JJ Abrams film.
I knew it was bad news the minute they did that whole "can you hear me bit" at the beginning between Hux and Poe. It was clearly them forcing marvel level humor into star wars and it felt sooo stupid.
It's like the exact opposite of Han on the intercom in the first ( or fourth) movie. There Han knows he's messed up and tries to play it up, but the bluff is immediately called. The humor is in the ridiculousness of the attempt. With Hux, it's played the opposite and it just raises more questions about how Hux and the First Order ever became a serious threat.