I (finally) went to see the movie with no expectations. I was convinced that this trilogy was dead and couldn’t be saved after TFA. So, I didn’t take it very seriously and enjoyed it as much as I can. This is why it is hard for me to compare it to TFA, as I had a much worse experience with that one. Beyond that, the movie still disturbed me on a serious level.
The way they butchered Luke is probably the most noticeable error in the story. They disregarded how ROTJ left things. The big picture in the original 6 films is that Luke is to become the Jedi that Anakin was supposed to. We already experienced the tragic twist of one Skywalker protagonist and and doing the same with Luke isn’t just unoriginal, it harms the thematic continuity of the story. They seem to be obsessed with replicating what we saw in the OT so much that it ironically led them to do things that harm the OT. More importantly, Luke doesn’t have the justifications that Kenobi, Anakin, Yoda etc. had. He is simply pathetic in this trilogy, where he should be at his prime in every sense (especially wisdom).
Their obsession with the OT, and in contrast the way they ignore the PT sealed this trilogy’s fate imo. They did this to such an extend that they even ignored the technological advancement that occurred after the OT. PT made use of it quite well despite its flaws but Disney didn’t think to notice that stuff like AT-ATs don’t make sense anymore (something so immobile in such high tech? I can dig it in an 80s film, but not in 2017). Even lightsaber fights were OT style, which is literally insane when you think about it. Heck, they made Yoda look exactly like he did in the OT, despite how weird he looks right now, in today’s light.
Rey’s horrible character wasn’t fixed one bit, and Rose was even more disturbing. She has no function in the story, and is just an ugly ornament. Her interference with Finn’s sacrifice was quite stupid too. They constantly went for these little twists as if this is a “Usual Suspects” type of movie where the delivery of the plot and the twist are the most important parts of the story. Star Wars is meant to be watched multiple times. It shares a very rich story from an even richer universe. The next time I watch the movie, %60 of it will feel like garbage scenes where a twist will just erase everything that happens right before.
I have absolutely no idea why Rey and Kylo are equals btw, when Kylo’s raw power should be second only to Luke, and has trained amongst other Jedi under Luke, and then under Snoke. Rey has nothing going for her. It’s really stupid, really. Her backstory is so irrelevant and stupid that I almost hoped that she is Palpatine’s daughter. At least that would explain her OPness and the whole “her fall is inevitable” thing.
In general, the super powers/Jedi stuff was also handled terribly. They tried so hard not to show any raw usage of the power in combat situation, and gave a bunch of weird abilities to people whos basic capabilities haven’t been established at all. The abundant use of esoteric shit in this movie was cancerous. We have no clue what a master level Force user in action really looks like but we saw all kinds of weird stuff going on in the film. Luke’s last stand was supposed to finally show us what he is capable of, but that was wasted by some more esoteric stuff. I understand not exposing the capabilities of these super power wielders for the sake of the story, but I’m not sure how replacing traditional use of the force with this crap helps anything.
I guess TFA is still the shittiest, but TLJ is definitely not that far beyond.
Registered: May 2007
Location: Best company on the planet
TLJ is the second greatest Star Wars film not far from rots which could change in the future. It would seem a lot of people have mediocre to shitty taste. This was the film of the year. Luke apologists don't dictate canon. Whatever preconceived notions you may have don't dictate Star Wars reality but rather the creative folks employed by Disney.
Yeah, a lot of the big picture twists can be explained by that. Little things like Rose saving Finn at last minute or Leia surviving the bombardment happening every 10 minutes is a different story though. lol
Tbh people will love or hate it, it's rather subjective. But the numbers don't lie. This movie did not reasonate well with audiences and seems to be a financial disaster, relatively speaking of course...
Last edited by Stigma on Feb 15th, 2018 at 03:41 PM
Registered: May 2007
Location: Best company on the planet
I didn't expect it to go anywhere near TFA due to the time gap in between films. What hurts it is the negative perception out there. It still earned the highest box office out of the entire year and you're not going to hit it out of the park every time at the box office.
I do agree that would be a nightmare for Infinity War but this didn't make under a billion either it made three hundred million more than a billion. Your expectations of box office success are too high IMO.
Only thing I worry about is the perception but I expect that to dissipate entirely by the time episode nine rolls around. There was a lot of hate for Into Darkness by a small contingent of Trekkers. I loved the film as do I love this film. It's my favorite Star Wars film to date after various rewatches. Rots still has the best action but to me this was the best film.
I never pretended it did I think it's overblown and I personally loved it. I can't control how others view the film. We also were informed of a few thousand DC fans purposely putting up negative fan reactions to Disney films which definitely matters as well.
TFA reset the lore, had fair inferior acting, dialogue, thematic strength, ect.
TLJ was orignial and offered the lore something new.
Like Mark Hamil, Andy Serkis all vastly outacted their tfa counterparts save for maybe harrison ford who was given far worse material.
Kylo Ren was far more impressive in TLJ and Rey displayed wider range here. Only weak performance came from finn's new fling, but that's hardly enough to lower TLJ to a less well executed ANH rehash.
Being original is not a testament to quality within itself, and while I think TFA being a copy and paste of ANH is bad on the whole, TLJ being subversive, almost to the point of parody, really isn't much better. TLJ has some of the worst dialogue in the series, its themes are that nothing matters and that we should just throw away the past for no reason in particular, and the acting within itself doesn't make up for said dialogue or themes. Older actors being better than younger ones is not an achievement either. Neither is the younger actors coming back more experienced an achievement. These are just things that should logically happen as one practices any skill, which acting qualifies as.
Still, this seemed not to reasonate well with general audience and hardcore fans given the terrible audience ratings and possibly the greatest hate for SW movie since AotC (interesting tidbit: AotC outperforms TLJ with fans). On top of that, there is a growing movement among fans calling out for a boycott of the next movie as well as spin-offs. These are telling signs.
But the focus of the video I provided above is on actual numbers too as well as business decisions that may have recovered the film.
TLJ bombed financially, it seems, or at leats vastly underperfomed.
Last edited by Stigma on Feb 23rd, 2018 at 02:49 PM
If anyone is interested, concerning audience scores, I only see the RT audience score being posted, which has 183,957 audience scores/reviews and is at 48% (4.8) and IMDB'S audience score has a 7.5 with 316,948 audience scores/reviews.
Both sites score user/audience reviews out of 100%/10, obviously.
Honestly, audience scores are unreliable since a lot of people have extra accounts they use to bump up movies they like or rank down movies they dislike and a lot of people don't even have accounts.
The critics score is, imho, more important and valid.
Audience scores can be hugely unreliable, yeah. Review bombing is a thing that happens these days. And most formal critics aren't that much better. YouTube critics like Chris Stuckmann and Jeremy Jahns are more reliable imo since they're real people.
I agree that the latter score is definitely more reliable than the former of the two you mentioned. One is not more important, in certain respects (mostly pertaining to just liberty), but the critic score is certainly often a more nuanced and experienced consensus.
Neither, of course, can be utilized as a tool to measure objective quality, seeing as that is certainly not an aspect present in film-making.