Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

It also reminds me somewhat of a comment a character in a fanfic (made where Order 66 didn't go off right as large sections of Clones refused to carry it out, tons of Jedi survive and Clones defect so the war continues) that kind of falls to the wayside in the way the ST handles the "mistakes" of the Jedi. A new Council is made and they discuss reforms in how the Order operates and one of the traditionalist voices puts forth that sure some of their traditions failed them but ignoring ones that worked for a long time cost them just as much directly pointing to letting Anakin in despite his age.

It feels very relevant with Ben having been even older than him and from what the EU makes it sound probably even older than Luke was.

Gray Jedi is something that was rejected on a certain level by one of the top writers I think.

Edited by doineedaname on Apr 7th 2019 at 10:43:17 AM

That was also a thing in some of the books where some clones thought the order coming through was mistake I believe.

One particular book had a group of clones help their Jedi commanders escape. This was all before clone wars revealed that the clones have chips in their head that would prevent that sort of thing.

"When I offered to make Norea my third back-up girlfriend she just glared at me and started throwing things at me.." Renee Costa

I meant on a far more massive scale with a Jedi's entire force largely going over to them instead of just letting them escape, to the point that they have the military necessary to openly go to war with Palpatine.

Edited by doineedaname on Apr 7th 2019 at 10:50:47 AM

Man, remember those rumors that said Rey would accept Kylo's offer to train in the Dark in addition to the Light? And they say the backlash is big now...

Edited by HamburgerTime on Apr 7th 2019 at 10:00:24 AM

Those same rumors also said that the conflict would involve Rey’s love child, and that is...no.

Man Reylo becomes even creepier when you realize the two have a pretty big age difference.

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

@Revolutionary_Jack: I do think calling people who like or dislike TLJ "not true fans" is something that should stop. Everyone who watches and enjoys any Star Wars is a fan, no matter what.

But I also think that there's this kind of Cult of George Lucas, where there's a belief anything that came during Lucas's era was great and anything that came after was crap. Which is incredibly, obviously not true. Lucas was responsible for The Holiday Special, for god's sake. Sure, Jar Jar was a technical marvel, but as a character, he was...well, terrible. The same goes for a lot of things about the PT, including the direction — I think Lucas was great at worldbuilding, great at making a story with epic scope, but when it actually came to directing his actors, their performances (aside from Ewan McGregor) all fall flat. That's kind of the real tragedy of the PT — it's greatness is hampered by the acting.

Despite the fact that the ST overly relies on nostalgia and the Used Future aesthetic of the OT, JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson are both great at getting good performances out of their actors. Anakin Skywalker's turn to the Dark Side and killing his wife felt silly to me; Kylo Ren begging Rey to cross over to his side, because everyone thinks she's nobody except him is super compelling for me. It's seriously one of the best scenes in the entire franchise for me.

Edited by alliterator on Apr 7th 2019 at 9:01:24 AM

Well it's not just fans. Here's Ben Burtt, the sound designer who is responsible for Vader Breath, the lightsaber sounds, R2-D2 and the sounds people imitate by making noises in their rooms and waving sticks and toy blasters: "It wasn’t always easy working with George, but at least it was one voice. And you could get his attention and have your say and present something and get a yes or a no. But it was just one person you had to get past. Not banks of different people who want to have a say."

No he wasn't. He gave TV producers some concepts and ideas but gave them freedom to do what they wanted. Big mistake. Lucas was the only one willing to take Star Wars seriously and stuff like that convinced him to take a stronger hand in stuff because if he didn't Star Wars could quickly have been undone.

Kids say otherwise. Jar Jar Binks only ever had a tiny and small role in TPM. He's not as big a part of it as people think, so why people are so fixated on him is beyond me.

Obviously I disagree with every single word and line in your paragraph about this. YMMV and all that. The prequels aren't weakly directed at all. They in fact contain some of Lucas' best work as a director and some of his most innovative and wonderful touches and Revenge of the Sith is the best Star Wars movie ever. One of America's most respected contemporary critics makes a good argument for what Lucas was doing there.

You know there was a time when nobody actually cared about the acting in Star Wars. Nobody judged these films on those terms you know. And as far as the OT went, many critics snarked about how Lucas got the most character work done from what is essentially an audio-visual puppet (Vader). The acting of the PT is right for the character, scene and genre.

And Ian Mc Diarmid, who became one of the most iconic villains of this century for his work in those prequels, as Palpatine, and Samuel Jackson whose low-key performance as Mace Windu anticipated his turn as Nick Fury in the MCU, especially the Avengers and the Winter Soldier, and also Unbreakable (I know people wanted Jackson to play Jules Winnfield as a Jedi but you know Lucas decided to cast against type and treat him as an actor, because maybe he has better insight than people actually give him credit for, better perhaps than many of the people making such remarks). And Hayden Christensen is quite good as Anakin. And while Natalie Portman is poorly served by the material her scene in the third prequel where she announces her pregnancy is one of the all-time best acted scenes across all the movies.

Again. YMMV.

Edited by Revolutionary_Jack on Apr 7th 2019 at 9:23:22 AM

Again, you're kind of just proving my point.

Edited by alliterator on Apr 7th 2019 at 9:31:53 AM

What? I am not supposed to think George Lucas is a genius and great artist, and that his vision is irreplaceable and can't really be matched, and that his handling and understanding of the world and mythos and the characters are better than anyone else?

The ST has its charms and good qualities. There's good acting and stuff, and I am one of the few people who saw TLJ and came out liking Canto Bight. But it's fundamentally weak and handicapped by a lack of single vision, and poor writing and Worldbuilding. Kylo Ren's character for instance based on the on-screen stuff makes no sense and depends a great deal on fan projection and fill-in-the-blanks to get that across, and even that is not satisfying.

...Okay, I think you're deliberately playing Jar Jar's role down. He's in the film quite a bit, actually (though I admit I couldn't find a reliable source of how much screen time he has - if there's anyone who could find something like that, I'd greatly appreciate it) - certainly enough to get on people's nerves. And even kids do like him, it's probably not a good thing if they're by and large the only demographic that likes him.

How dare we expect things like "quality".

Anyway, not gonna act like the ST doesn't have its flaws, but I'm pretty skeptical of this sort of auteur theory stuff.

Edited by KarkatTheDalek on Apr 7th 2019 at 1:46:17 PM

Oh God! Natural light!

There are no sacred cows. Every criticism of George Lucas, you respond with "No, what you think is bad is actually good!" There is no criticism of Lucas you will appear to accept.

Like: the acting of Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman in AOTC and ROTS is seriously some of the worst acting I've seen. But your respond to this criticism was "You know there was a time when nobody actually cared about the acting in Star Wars." Which is fundamentally untrue and avoids what I actually stated.

Lucas was good at mythmaking and worldbuilding. At directing, he was fairly average — not bad, but not great. But sometimes, the directorial choices he made were actively bad — I'm thinking of, specifically, Hayden Christensen's line readings about sand (and how it gets everywhere), the weird, bizarre way that Padme was treated throughout ROTS, or the birth of Darth Vader, which should be this huge, epic moment, but was epically marred by a Big "NO!" that just came out sounding silly.

You can try to say that all of those things are actually "good," but there's a reason that they were made into jokes in the fandom.

He had a tiny role on AOTC and a small cameo in ROTS, but in TPM, he had a huge role.

Edited by alliterator on Apr 7th 2019 at 10:53:23 AM

Sad thing about Hayden, apparently he is a good actor but was given God awful material & direction by Lucas.

Its like what Ford once said "You can type this shit but you can't say it."

"I am Alpharius. This is a lie."

Apparently, Shattered Glass, where Christensen played Stephen Glass, a journalist who actively made up stories, was really good and he was really good in it. And we know that Natalie Portman has a ton of acting talent.

I should also add that Samuel L. Jackson is one of those few actors who can turn in a good performance under any director. See: Snakes on a Plane.

Edited by alliterator on Apr 7th 2019 at 10:56:43 AM

I wouldn't exactly call Jar Jar huge. He was an important side character at best.

"When I offered to make Norea my third back-up girlfriend she just glared at me and started throwing things at me.." Renee Costa

According to IMDB, here is the screen time breakdown for The Phantom Menace:

That means Jar Jar got just slightly less screen time than Obi-Wan himself.

And screen time doesn't exactly mean important. I'm pretty sure most of us remember he was in the movie a lot. He met with the Jedi pretty early in the film.

Doesn't mean his screen time amounted to much in terms of actually doing anything of importance for all those times. So yeah he was a side character that had a lot of screen time.

Honestly his value was higher in the second movie even if he didn't appear a lot.

"When I offered to make Norea my third back-up girlfriend she just glared at me and started throwing things at me.." Renee Costa

That's kind of what I meant by saying he had a huge role. Not that he was important to the plot, but that he was literally in the movie a lot. Doing things like, you know, eating and or getting his tongue zapped or, you know, other "goofy" stuff.

“Jar-Jar wasn’t important in a lot of his screen time” is part of why his big role was so aggravating, not proof that it wasn’t big.

Which exactly means his role wasn't huge at all, he simply had a lot of screen time that amounted to nothing.

Edited by Darthwyn on Apr 7th 2019 at 2:47:20 PM

"When I offered to make Norea my third back-up girlfriend she just glared at me and started throwing things at me.." Renee Costa

His role was "huge" as in "a lot," not as in "important." Words have more than one meaning. His role was huge, just not in the way you are using the word.

Edited by alliterator on Apr 7th 2019 at 11:55:03 AM

I don't see how any of that changes what I said. In every sense of the word Jar Jar was not 'huge' which is what I said from the very beginning.

"When I offered to make Norea my third back-up girlfriend she just glared at me and started throwing things at me.." Renee Costa

He had a lot of screen time, hence "huge." I think I covered that pretty well.

And I disagreed with the idea that a lot of screen time means the character is 'huge'. Not sure how that was misunderstood. It simply means Jar Jar was on screen a lot and at most was a side character.

"When I offered to make Norea my third back-up girlfriend she just glared at me and started throwing things at me.." Renee Costa

Because you are using a different definition of the word "huge":

I'm using the first definition, you are using the third.