Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

Hey someone had to go crazy.

She had to represent what the war was doing to the Jedi & how they were going down the Dark Side.

It’s an excellent idea really, the corrupting influence of war.

Edited by slimcoder on Sep 23rd 2018 at 3:40:53 AM

This probably won't make sense, but building a Jedi temple over an ancient Sith temple sounds like both an amazing idea and terrible idea at the same time.

Better than building a shopping mall on top of it, I guess.

Yeah, well, excuse me for not being excited about taking the character coded with islamic/muslim traits and turning her into a terrorist that kills innocents to deliver her point across.

Made even worse by the fact that, it happened because she was the ONLY character available that had any kind of relationship with Ahsoka that they could exploit to make her walk away from the war and survive for future stories.

If they had decided to build the story of her fall, then maybe I could excuse it. But not even that. She was a literal non-entity for 90% of the show's run, and suddenly shows up having been turned into a completely different character in the last episodes just to be used as a plot device to save Ahsoka from Order 66.

This was a character that before TCW was depicted as a healer that did everything in her capacity to help the clones and soldiers under her care, an unremarkable padawan that took far longer to complete her trials than many of her peers (she was at the time Anakin's age, before TCW retconned to be closer to Ahsoka's) because she wasn't that great a jedi outside of her force heal abilities, that struggled with a drug addiction that gave her a force rush, that finally completed her trials to become a knight and serve with Aayla Secura on Felucia before being blown apart by a fricking AT-ST in cold blood.

But no. She's now just a terrorist.

Eh to call her “just a terrorist” is a bit of disservice.

She’s a victim, a casualty in the Jedi’s entrance of the Darkness by Palpatine’s manipulation of them to enter a brutal war.

She marked the end of the Jedi Order as we know it cause war fucks you up majorly.

Edited by slimcoder on Sep 23rd 2018 at 4:37:33 AM

If we're talking about Barriss, I do wonder what Filoni's plans were for her since he spared her from her original fate.

He did teased us with the Seventh Sister Red Herring, as if to make us guess about her true fate.

Yeah calling her a terrorist is rather limiting to the character.

Honestly throwing padiwans into a war with them leading troops was not the brightest idea. I'm surprised more didn't end up like her to some extent.

That’s the kind of thing I was talking about. While that association is always there, that intense fixation on a specific actor’s performance to the expense of others is more a characteristic of more hardcore or purist fans than casual ones. Casual fans will remember those performances and keep that associated, but the general public as a whole is unlikely to shun a movie on principle because someone new is intruding on their memory of the original - especially nowadays, with reboots being so common. And even before then, characters like James Bond and the Doctor maintain steady popularity despite constantly supplanting beloved performances with new, unproven ones.

It depends on how much of the character's appeal seems to come directly from what the actor can do with the material. I can definitely see there being a huge backlash, from movie goers in general, not just hardcore fans, if someone other than Robert Downey Jr. was cast as Tony Stark, or someone other than Johnny Depp as Jack Sparrow.

It doesn't help that Ford has been Han since Star Wars started.

The character is so in twined with the actor their practically inseparable.

A 15-minute video comparing how Infinity War and The Last Jedi subvert expectations, and why the author personally felt Infinity War was better executed in that goal.

Cross posted in the MCU general thread.

Yeah, but the corrolary to that is popularity and the extent to which that popularity is ingrained with the audience. People will go up in arms if Tony Stark is recast because he's the face of the series he's from and is synonymous with its success. People might complain or be confused, but they will not go up in arms if Bruce Banner or James Rhodes is recasted because they're supporting character or less impactful heroes whose representation the audience isn't so die hard about (at least at the time). And as many Star Wars fans will tell you nowadays, Han is evidently the latter.

That attachment comes with both exposure and frequency: people would be irritated if Banner was recast now because Ruffalo is not just charismatic, but current with repeated appearances such that the regular audience is now in tune with him. The casial audience would've gone into conniptions if Han was recast while the original trilogy was current, in the 70's. Nowadays, only people whose attachment is to those original installments (IE, longtime fans or people who heavily identify with those movies for another reason, not the casual audience) really have those same inclinations, because it's a feeling that coincides with that original experience.

Or in short, again, it doesn't make a lot of sense for the general audience's lack of enthusiasm to be centered around Han, specifically (because both the idea that he doesn't deserve a movie and the idea that he's being done a disservice are things that are more associated with major or purist fans, which the modern casual audience by and large wouldn't - and in my experience interacting with them, didn't - care about either way). There's ultimately a lot more to it than simply that.

Edited by KnownUnknown on Sep 23rd 2018 at 9:23:47 AM

I have no idea why getting not-Harrison Ford to play a young, pre-OT Han would be an issue.

I watched it and it ended up being exactly what I expected: complaining about TLJ for a solid 7 minute block, followed by praising Infinity War for a solid 7 minute block, without actually comparing the two in execution of similar story devices. It's a very "I like apples better than oranges, therefore apples are objectively better."

TLF surprised me because it broke what I expected from 3-act structure and blockbuster formula. I genuinely did not know how it was going to end. Infinity War rarely did because most of its subversions were based around maintaining that formula. It was fun enough but I knew exactly how it was going to end.

Who’s stronger Snoke or Thanos?

No joke, I would like to know how Snoke compares with other Darksiders. Especially because the TLJ Vidual Dictionary says that while he is very strong in the Force? Unlike Palpatine his apparent physical frailty is not an act - he is legitimately very old and sick.

Edited by HamburgerTime on Sep 23rd 2018 at 12:00:10 PM

Aside from the obvious Palpatine, the only other characters I could compare Snoke with are Volfe Karkko and Joruus C'baoth. All 3 are Dark Siders who primarily use the Force to fight other force users and show little to no skill with Lightsaber combat, as much as can be proven anyway. Compared to both Karkko and C'baoth, It's obvious Snoke comes up short in terms of power and utility due to the latter's limited screentime. But, there you go.

Snoke seems more like Kadann — the real one from the obscure Abel G Pena short stories, not the fake one from Jedi Prince

Snoke, for the virtue of being sliced in half so easily (he seriously could not figure out what lightsaber is Kylo Ren thinking), is only slightly more powerful than Count Dooku and Darth Maul in my books. And even that's debatable since I think Maul and Dooku can put up a hard fight.

I don't know what TLF means, but I will say that breaking the formula completely is sometimes not a good thing. There's a reason why it works in the first place. And really, if this is an attempt to make IX completely unpredictable, it fails in my eyes because I now don't care about the characters or how this story is going to end.

In contrast to Infinity War, where I know there is going to be a happy ending but I have no idea exactly how it's going to play out and the film left me wanting more. So many unresolved questions like how will Tony get back home and deal with it on Earth? How will the Avengers undo Thanos' work. Is it possible to bring back Loki, Gamora and others back from the dead even though they weren't snapped.

In terms of raw power, it's difficult to say, but the fact that he can simply bypass defences of Force users makes him far more powerful than any other Sith in canon, bar Sidious.

I'm somewhat influenced by the EU here, as Jedi and others were trained to resist outside intrusion. Which is why pulling a lightsaber straight from someones hand is a significant feat, let alone simply just levitating them and holding them there.

I'm actually quite interested what they'll do with Snoke and compatriots in other media now, unless the dude comes back as a spirit, as some dark siders have a habit of doing.

The points in the video about Infinity War vs. TLJ are well-done. Also I particularly latched onto the "why Thanos is a great villain" because yeah, he succeeds where Kylo fails imo in being an "understandable" baddie. Heck Killmonger from Black Panther and Vulture from Spider-Man Homecoming do as well.

Also the whole "villain doesn't win because the hero's are idiots" is also something that IW did far better imo.

" Infinity War, where I know there is going to be a happy ending but I have no idea exactly how it's going to play out and the film left me wanting more. So many unresolved questions like how will Tony get back home and deal with it on Earth? "

And yet this can be bad as well since at least for me, the whole snap scene feel cheaps since they all gone to come back, but loki dying like that? now THAT is a shock.

Anecdotal evidence only counts for so much. In my experience, nobody I know went to see the movie because Han's a sexual predator and they didn't want to watch a movie starring a sexual predator. "F*ck Han Solo" was the consensus opinion where I come from. But obviously that is not the universal reception. Different social groups develop different opinions.

But yes, it does make sense for the lack of enthusiasm to be centered around Han. It's Han's movie. Enthusiasm for Han was going to make or break the film. This is not some random new character in a new IP; it's an established character and, in fact, the single most popular character in a trilogy of movies that is to this day still considered some of the most defining movies in all of film. Very few people went into this movie having no opinion whatsoever on Han Solo.

You're wrong to say that only the purists care about actors. It's the casual filmgoers who care more about actors than characters. "In this movie, Tom Cruise teams up with Will Smith to fight demons from Hell! It's a great Tom Cruise movie and a great Will Smith movie!" The casual filmgoers are the ones more inclined to ask "Who's in it?" when approached about a film than "What's it about?" They're more interested in seeing their favorite actors than in necessarily following a premise.

And when a film is as big as Star Wars: The Original Trilogy, it's kind of a stretch to say that people aren't really that attached to it anymore.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Sep 24th 2018 at 7:27:36 AM

You know what, even if it's just friggin Kingdom Hearts, I desperately need Vader in a properly good game made by a company who would appreciate the value of the IP. KH is about to release its finale, its swan song. There's not much time left. Could you imagine the gummi ship sections replaced with battling your way through Heartless Star Destroyers? Nobodies in Stormtrooper armor? Optional boss encounter with Vader? A play-as mode a la Kingdom Hearts Days, where you play as Vader? God, I can't believe how mad I am that EA is squatting on that license right now.

There will actually be more Kingdom Hearts games after III.