The LiquidLegends Lounge - Page 1807

The humour felt way more natural to me than gotg2. You could feel the influence of the marvel movies,
as there were a few more of those humour moments, but it all fit in the flow of the scene it was in rather than the gotg2 method of stopping time to deliver a one liner, then resuming time after it's delivered.

My main observation, (not so much a criticism as I'm not sure it's a bad thing,) is it feels like they went to great lenghts to confound expectations. Almost every major plotline + Show Spoiler [major spoilers] +

On one hand it kept things fresh and it was nice not actually knowing how each scene was going to end, but on the other they might have gone a little overboard with it. Basically becoming an anti trope trope.

Also some confusing moments. He gave leia dice made of the force which then disappeared? Ships can use warp speed as a weapon to destroy literally anything effortlessly?!? (Why has nobody tried this before, could have oneshot the deathstar by just shooting the millenium falcon at with the autopilot on.)
And is snoke seriously just never going to be explained? Guy who seems 500 years old appears out of nowhere only 30 years after the previous films were meant to take place, where there was definitely no snoke, and then just randomly dies with no explanation?

Was pretty good movie though, and pretty much everyone seems to be enjoying it a lot. 62 year old who hadn't even seen TFA to 14 year old, all thought it was great :p

SO many completely irrelevant plot points and events.

Let's see, what else?

First Order throne room was visually fucking badass, aside from Snoke looking like CGI from 1997. Also I'm a little sick of Andy Serkis being the go-to CGI-instead-of-real-people guy between Planet of the Apes and this (and LOTR..? I dunno why.)

On that note though, despite the basassery of that whole scene, they had to go and rip me right out of it by having the two of them fight like 10 goddamn trained bodyguards when Rey HAS NO TRAINING. Just because you have the strongest wtfzomg force powers ever doesn't mean you know how to fight people fucking 3 on 1. So aggravating.

One other thing that annoyed me and in my opinion would have been way more elegant than Luke peacing out for no goddamn reason ( after force projecting himself across the fucking galaxy? Force powers are stupid and arbitrary.)
Would have been if he literally showed up ex machina style (which is kinda unbelievable on its own, but hear me out) only to actually suicide himself via AT-AT and then have the rest of the scene progress the same way, only instead Ren would reveal that he was fighting his Force ghost.

People I know in the military pointed out in discussion that the admiral’s actions were about asserting chain of command. Poe had just been demoted and chose to confront her about her plan while everyone else was still filing out. In the military that’s way, way out of line. They felt Poe got off lightly by not being sent to the Brig on the spot.

Most of the subplots in the movie just made me frustrated. The whole admiral crap made no sense. Why wouldn't she just tell him that they doing a diversion tactic to a base? Why does everyone know but him it seems?
What did any of it accomplish at the end? Did they just want some kind of tension for a "character" arc? This also isn't an organized military but a rebellion that lost most of it's leadership, chain of command being in disarray makes sense. Not actively establishing the situation so everyone is on the same page and instead being all secretive so you cause tension with factions inside your own rebellion makes no sense though.

Honestly if they cut the whole subplot with him and that admiral as well as the whole casino section I'd have enjoyed it a lot more. It just felt like every time I was getting what I wanted in the movie it decided it was a time for a break to do pointless subplots that go nowhere. At the end of the day each section or plot may have worked if they dedicated actual time to it instead of haphazardly jumping around trying to do everything in one movie.

Still not enough time to get out everything I want, but they left in what seems like throwaway sideplot to emphasize that failure happens, especially with Poe. Poe is the icon of the OT nostalgic notion that these plucky rebels will figure some shit out right? Right? No. You fuck up, people die, your actions have consequences. If you would've shut up and listened to your superior officer less people would have died. That it was all pointless is literally the point. It should never have happened, because Poe should have trusted in his superiors. That's basically what Leia told him too.

Edit: I'll even add in that I'm sure we all thought that sideplot was extremely relevant while watching right? We sided with Poe? We thought Holdo was the most awful admiral in history, basically a traitor! The sideplot isn't 'meaningless' because you can take it out of the movie in hindsight with no consequence(which isn't even true, their sideplot made things worse, there was consequence), it absolutely added to your feeling as an observer while you were wathcing the movie.

Overall, I believe that the movie was a 6/10. It had a lot of really interesting risks, and the first honest to god attempt to make a good movie in the franchise since Empire. It also had a lot of flaws inherent in a movie that actually attempts to be ambitious. I've written a ton on this, but I'll cliffnote it here for TL by just saying the three best and worst things of the movie:

Best parts:

1) Visually strong! It was a really interesting color palette, they actually attempted to compose things in interesting ways, and even used visual symbolism for more than referring to the original trilogy. Crazy.
2) An attempt to make a cohesive motif! Almost like a good movie would have! It wasn't executed well, but even the attempt to have themes in the movie, in this case failure and the need to move on, reflects well on where the franchise is headed in the future. They really tried with this one guys go team.
3) Fuck Star Wars. The movie had potential in the way they set themselves up to cast off tropes. The big evil cartoon villains, the unlikeable overly-altruistic Jedi, it was all being resolved. When they burned the tree down, I got really excited, because I thought it potentially signaled the end of the film's possessive attachment to its predecessors. Of course, it ended up meaningless, but I guess this is coming from the guy who wanted Episode 7 to start with all the old star wars characters blowing up and dying to demonstrate that the audience's expectations would not dictate the story the writers wanted to tell.

The BAAAAAAAADS
1) None of the main characters do anything. I mean this in two ways; first, none of the main characters outside of Kyle Ren impact the story. Their arcs all resolve with them learning from failure, which is nice from a thematic cohesion standpoint, but more or less wasted by the fact that none of their failures actually impacted much of anything. The second way is that none of the characters progressed the plot proactively. This is expressly bad writing, and I'll get to it after I address that first statement I made.

Finn and Rose: If they aren't in the movie, the outcome doesn't change aside from the codebreaker they brought on board. They also took up a significant amount of runtime from an already bloated movie. If their impact is so minimal, it maybe should have been scrapped. No, it absolutely should've been scrapped. Ugh.
Poe: Almost does something! And he's proactive about it! But in the end he accomplishes nothing and ultimately only learns to follow authority at the expense of everything. Where he not in the story, the ending remains exactly the same. It is possible to have failures for the character to learn from while still having that failure impact the end of a story! And yet, it almost never occurs here.
Rey: She finally makes it to Kylo Ren, and then immediately floats in mid-air while Kylo decides to move the plot. Her presence there is the only way she impacts the story, not anything she's actually done. I'm more forgiving for this character arc because at least she did have some impact on Luke's character arc, which does end up having something to do with an ending.

Essentially, all the main characters fail to impact the ending. I understand and admire trying to have them all fail, in an attempt to create a theme of learning from failure. However, it is possible to have characters fail and still have them impact the ending of the story. Watching this movie a second time, the weight of the runtime becomes increasingly burdensome. It's so bloated by stuff that will never resolve that the script turns into a mess.

On the second part of this issue, Finn and Rose are god-awful to watch in this movie. At least with the other characters, things occur due to the characters making and executing decisions, albeit ultimately meaninglessly. But in this arc, Finn and Rose land, exposit endlessly about Rose in an attempt to connect us to the character as fast as possible, and then get them arrested before they do anything. Then, someone else lets them free; they stand there while the codebreaker decides to move the plot. Then, some kids let them out on the animals. They're still just following giant plot arrows. They're basically the audience. They're rescued by the codebreaker again before they've even done anything but run out the gate that was opened for them. They fly into the big ship (hey, a proactive decision!) before immediately getting captured. Then they get freed AGAIN by external forces over which they have no control, in this case the destruction of the ship. They try to pretend like Phasma as foe makes any sense for Finn's character arc, but of course it's all meaningless because in the final fight, Finn, on the verge of FINALLY affecting the plot with his suicide into the Death Ram Thing, is tackled by Rose out of the line of Plot Fire. How fitting that, at the climax of the film, he is once again sidelined out of the movie by Rose. This whole arc needed to be scrapped. It's very bad.

2) Hey guys look it's flaw #2 we made it. This one is simple. They keep holding onto the last vestiges of Star Wars Bullshit. When I say SWB, I mean things that have absolutely no role in the movie except to remind you that it's a Star Wars movie. Nothing undermines an honest attempt to make a good movie with artistic value more than a frequent reminder that you're feeding the Capitalist Juggernaut that is Disney at the expense of artistic integrity and your own childhood. Unlike any other movies, except perhaps Marvel Movies to a lesser extent, Star Wars has a preconceived checklist of what needs to be in the movie. You gotta have fighters, the characters you know and love, lightsaber battles, etc etc. In reality, these checklists have nothing to do with the original films, but rather are a product of the prequels and their accompanying marketing blitzes. They're not, for the most part, what made people like the originals, and in fact most of the time they serve as examples of why most Star Wars movies are actually very bad. You know 'em, you love 'em, and that't the whole point, let's montage quickly through useless old Star Wars Bullshit

Yoda-Chewbacca-C:3P0-R2D2-ATAT Walkers-ATSTs-Those Weird Box Droids from the Death Star-Lifting Rocks-DarkSide Spirit Quest on a Lone Planet with an Unwilling Hermit Exile Teacher-Don't Tell Me the Odds-Two Suns-Sith Lord Forcing Young Hero to Watch Her Friend's Rebel Fleet Die Through a Conveniently Placed Window-Red Imperial Guard-Copy That, Gold Leader-And Many More! Thank god they didn't have a stupid, meaningessly flashy lightsaber fight somewhere though. At least they're getting better with this stuff.

3) Can't believe you read this far, but hey. Kylo Ren is SO DUMB as a character and I hate it. The movie sets up to be really interesting; Rey and Kylo's interactions, combined with a lot of things Luke and Snoke say, baited me into thinking the movie was finally ready for a more mature view of the force. One where "true good' and "true evil" couldn't really exist in a plot where the writing was taking itself fairly seriously. One where Kylo Ren might have interesting motivations outside of "power" to kill his parents, and one where Rey might seriously have to consider where her values are (because, as it is, she has no real values outside of being the Good Guy). They meet, Snoke dies, Luke has burned the remains of the Jedi Order, and it seems as though they could say fuck everything and be complex characters. This is a hope immediately dashed when Kylo Ren just decides all of his interesting character potential is stupid and says "hey join me and lets kill your friends." Then he immediately turns into the cackling malevolent villain I finally thought Star Wars had the balls to get rid of. It's really a shame.

All in all, I can respect the movie for being the first attempt at a real, competent film, which Star Wars hasn't had since Empire, but in the end it's too huge and ambitious, and ends bloated, messy, and self-fulfilling.

My main problem is that Star Wars, thanks to pop culture, turns into the poster boy for mediocrity for the sake of itself. I still firmly believe that mediocrity does not justify itself, and this film was the first honest attempt I've seen to exist in some capacity outside of the sphere of Star Wars mediocrity, and for that, I think it's the third best Star Wars film ever made. The best since Empire. And still not very good.

This was the tl;dr version guys I have a LOT more pages written down somewhere.

Oh and last thing, since apparently this is being discussed too now. Just because something is geared for children (WHICH THIS MOVIE IS NOT, THIS IS CLEARLY BEING MARKETED TO EVERYONE) does not justify stupidity and laziness in a movie for the sake of a child's understanding. Good writing can make something appear simple to understand, but still contain depth. Good writing for children does NOT include the characters voicing out their motivations and reminding you of stakes and plot points every five minutes, which is something really annoying that this movie did. Children's movies are not excuses for mediocrity! See the Lego movie for a great example of how to give depth to a simple concept, if you're so worried that children won't understand what's going on.

I love that they want to emphasize that failure happens. I appreciate that motif, and I talk about it in-depth on my previous post. However, it doesn't solve the issue that the arc is meaningless to the story. Just because it looks relevant because you don't know how it ends doesn't make it relevant. Other than the bombers at the beginning,
nobody died as result of Poe's mutiny. In a very long string of very odd events that characters had no control over,
the codebreaker gets on board the enemy ship and sells them out. But that can't be seen really as an honest result of Poe's decisions, because it's not even the guy he told them to get, among many other things.

But more importantly I wanted to talk about you saying that a plotline with no resolution or impact is not meaningless because it made you feel something when you watched it. That isn't true at all. There's no point to watching the movie again, because everything you're watching builds up to nothing. A movie shouldn't be built for only one viewing; that's called flimsy, gimmicky writing.