The Last Jedi was an amazing deconstruction of Star Wars. I don’t think better execution would have helped it with a fan base that wants to be stuck in the past reliving the hero’s journey ad nauseam but it had a lot more potential than you see on screen.
TLJ takes a bunch of the exact same elements from the original trilogy including the young jedi training in a remote location, the empire/first order finding the secret rebel base with the main characters escaping at the last moment, the protagonist being captured by their rival and being brought before the sith leader where they wind up battling, the protagonist finding out that they’re related to their rival, the hermit jedi master sacrificing themselves etc, etc, etc. The last trilogy is just a recycling of the original to the point that they had to add stupid dialog like “it’s salt” in a vain attempt to convince people that they aren’t just copy and pasting major plot points from the original
That seems like a distinction without a difference.
Just for the fun of it, I took a screenshot of Google AIs take on the “deconstruction” argument:
“Challenging the Chosen One narrative”
Rey’s parents were “nobody” yet so were Luke Skywalker’s parents. The final film is titled “The Rise of Skywalker” on her path to becoming the chosen one.
“Revisiting Luke’s Heroism”
Rehashes the same failures Obi Wan felt for not preventing Anakin from going to the dark side.
“Undermining Jedi Ideals”
Irrelevant point that could just as easily signify the film’s creator’s not being familiar with the intricacies of the source material.
“Exploration of Failure and Complexity”
Throughout all the films, the rebels are constantly facing failures. They get attacked, captured, fail to prevent events from occurring, etc.
“Subverting Expectations”
An expression ripped straight from the final season of GoT and widely mocked. This film didn’t subvert any of my expectations as it all plays out quite predictably in Disney fashion where the “good guys” come out on top in the end. The fact that this argument is even made illustrates the similarity to the previous films which set an expectation for how things are going to play out. I don’t see how they really differed in any meaningful way as it all plays out the same in the end.
Well, I mean nobody has actually made any defense for the movie here other than repeating the word “deconstruction” without elaborating any further, and I’m not going to do a deep dive and write out a counter argument to my own position, so the machine will have to do. For all we know this is the same machine that Disney used to recycle these old plot points for TLJ 😆
Disagree. The first two sequels kept making a defeated bad empire stronger and stronger without any explanation. The rebels then suddenly became just 400 to 20 people. A different type of journey would have been welcomed with open arms if clever enough.
And I think embracing the jedi, but killing the wars aspect, rather than trying to destroy the jedi but keeping the wars it would have been a much better answer to the franchise.
How Ben and Luke tell the story of how the latter nearly killed his nephew could’ve used better execution/storytelling, that alone would significantly reduce the amount of discussion on how the movie “killed his character”
I think I’m really unusual in that I dislike almost everything after IV. I think the first film was brilliant, back when Lucas was fighting for money and had to rely on vision and had Campbell to advise with. After that it was all introducing cutesy characters strictly for marketing, they all lacked the charm of the original.
I know I’m an exception. Nearly everyone liked V and/or VI more. Everyone dunks on Jar Jar, but I could not stand the Ewoks. It was so disgustingly blatant.
At the time I was dying for sequels, and when they finally came I was so disappointed. You know, I think I just realized that it was the Vader/Luke connection that sunk it for me. That all of the major characters had to be related somehow made the universe smaller, and more petty. They only got worse after that; I think I watched all of I-III, but I actively hated those.
Anyway, I think there might have been a path, and I’m no story teller so I couldn’t fix it, but I think the while thing went off the rails after IV.
Good friends have told me the Mandelorian was good, but “Baby Yoda” represents everything I loathed about the series and I refuse to watch it.
Anyway, what were you saying about the Hero’s Journey? Maybe I should watch The Last Jedi, because while the Campbell formula worked for the first film, it didn’t improve any of the sequels, so maybe I’d like it. As long as there are no obviously pandering character designs that exist clearly because they can easily be marketed as toys. Looking at you, BB-8.
I won’t push you to watch Star Wars since it seems like you’ve landed where you have for good reason, but if in the event you were looking to give any piece of Star Wars media another chance, Andor is the one I’d choose.
There are a bunch of adorable space critters that you’ll think are that when you’re watching the movie, and they certainly were marketed and merchandised like crazy, but they’re actually there due to the unwanted presence of adorable Earth critters during filming. They couldn’t shoot the scenes without including these birds that lived where they were shooting so the solution they came up with was CGI-ing weird faces on them and including some close-ups to make them look deliberate.
I understand your point, but imagine you go to the movies expecting to watch [something you like] and it’s actually a two hours long lecture on how [something you like] is dumb and bad.
I’m also pro-TLJ, but I do think it could have done with a few tweaks to the script to catch some stuff. In terms of how it looked and was acted on the moment-to-moment scale they nailed it though, so I’m not sure if that falls under “better execution”
True, but I would argue that TLJ actually did substantially better than the Disney and Star Wars averages on the visual front. Not necessarily in terms of the technical execution of the effects since they’re always basically as good as they get for the time in both Disney and Star Wars stuff, but in terms of the composition of shots
Rian Johnson is a master of deconstructing genres.
if you went this long without watching it I won’t spoil it but to say the themes are not typical of the rest of the franchise and the fans hated it for that.
I love Rian Johnson’s other work, especially Brick and Knifes Out.
I also love Star Wars.
I thought TLJ was dreadful though. He was just a really bad fit for it IMO. Has nothing to do with not being open to change, but it has to be the right change. “Can you hear me now?” gags and Luke casually tossing away an item that had been set up as important in the previous film were not the right changes.
The Last Jedi was an amazing deconstruction of Star Wars. I don’t think better execution would have helped it with a fan base that wants to be stuck in the past reliving the hero’s journey ad nauseam but it had a lot more potential than you see on screen.
i love TLJ so much i skipped the rest of the movies
if you also like TLJ you should watch Kagemusha and When the Last Sword is Drawn and 13 Assassins
This seems counter to most complaints I’ve seen about the movie that they just rehashed the original trilogy.
That is an apt criticism of TFA and TRoS, but not TLJ at all.
TLJ takes a bunch of the exact same elements from the original trilogy including the young jedi training in a remote location, the empire/first order finding the secret rebel base with the main characters escaping at the last moment, the protagonist being captured by their rival and being brought before the sith leader where they wind up battling, the protagonist finding out that they’re related to their rival, the hermit jedi master sacrificing themselves etc, etc, etc. The last trilogy is just a recycling of the original to the point that they had to add stupid dialog like “it’s salt” in a vain attempt to convince people that they aren’t just copy and pasting major plot points from the original
TFA and RoS are rehashes, TLJ is a deconstruction
That seems like a distinction without a difference.
Just for the fun of it, I took a screenshot of Google AIs take on the “deconstruction” argument:
“Challenging the Chosen One narrative”
Rey’s parents were “nobody” yet so were Luke Skywalker’s parents. The final film is titled “The Rise of Skywalker” on her path to becoming the chosen one.
“Revisiting Luke’s Heroism”
Rehashes the same failures Obi Wan felt for not preventing Anakin from going to the dark side.
“Undermining Jedi Ideals”
Irrelevant point that could just as easily signify the film’s creator’s not being familiar with the intricacies of the source material.
“Exploration of Failure and Complexity”
Throughout all the films, the rebels are constantly facing failures. They get attacked, captured, fail to prevent events from occurring, etc.
“Subverting Expectations”
An expression ripped straight from the final season of GoT and widely mocked. This film didn’t subvert any of my expectations as it all plays out quite predictably in Disney fashion where the “good guys” come out on top in the end. The fact that this argument is even made illustrates the similarity to the previous films which set an expectation for how things are going to play out. I don’t see how they really differed in any meaningful way as it all plays out the same in the end.
i ain’t arguing with a machine
Well, I mean nobody has actually made any defense for the movie here other than repeating the word “deconstruction” without elaborating any further, and I’m not going to do a deep dive and write out a counter argument to my own position, so the machine will have to do. For all we know this is the same machine that Disney used to recycle these old plot points for TLJ 😆
Disagree. The first two sequels kept making a defeated bad empire stronger and stronger without any explanation. The rebels then suddenly became just 400 to 20 people. A different type of journey would have been welcomed with open arms if clever enough.
And I think embracing the jedi, but killing the wars aspect, rather than trying to destroy the jedi but keeping the wars it would have been a much better answer to the franchise.
How Ben and Luke tell the story of how the latter nearly killed his nephew could’ve used better execution/storytelling, that alone would significantly reduce the amount of discussion on how the movie “killed his character”
I think I’m really unusual in that I dislike almost everything after IV. I think the first film was brilliant, back when Lucas was fighting for money and had to rely on vision and had Campbell to advise with. After that it was all introducing cutesy characters strictly for marketing, they all lacked the charm of the original.
I know I’m an exception. Nearly everyone liked V and/or VI more. Everyone dunks on Jar Jar, but I could not stand the Ewoks. It was so disgustingly blatant.
At the time I was dying for sequels, and when they finally came I was so disappointed. You know, I think I just realized that it was the Vader/Luke connection that sunk it for me. That all of the major characters had to be related somehow made the universe smaller, and more petty. They only got worse after that; I think I watched all of I-III, but I actively hated those.
Anyway, I think there might have been a path, and I’m no story teller so I couldn’t fix it, but I think the while thing went off the rails after IV.
Good friends have told me the Mandelorian was good, but “Baby Yoda” represents everything I loathed about the series and I refuse to watch it.
Anyway, what were you saying about the Hero’s Journey? Maybe I should watch The Last Jedi, because while the Campbell formula worked for the first film, it didn’t improve any of the sequels, so maybe I’d like it. As long as there are no obviously pandering character designs that exist clearly because they can easily be marketed as toys. Looking at you, BB-8.
Out of curiosity, have you seen Andor at all?
I won’t push you to watch Star Wars since it seems like you’ve landed where you have for good reason, but if in the event you were looking to give any piece of Star Wars media another chance, Andor is the one I’d choose.
Over Mandalorian?
There are a bunch of adorable space critters that you’ll think are that when you’re watching the movie, and they certainly were marketed and merchandised like crazy, but they’re actually there due to the unwanted presence of adorable Earth critters during filming. They couldn’t shoot the scenes without including these birds that lived where they were shooting so the solution they came up with was CGI-ing weird faces on them and including some close-ups to make them look deliberate.
I understand your point, but imagine you go to the movies expecting to watch [something you like] and it’s actually a two hours long lecture on how [something you like] is dumb and bad.
I’m also pro-TLJ, but I do think it could have done with a few tweaks to the script to catch some stuff. In terms of how it looked and was acted on the moment-to-moment scale they nailed it though, so I’m not sure if that falls under “better execution”
I mean it’s a high budget Disney film, the script should be the only place for improvement.
True, but I would argue that TLJ actually did substantially better than the Disney and Star Wars averages on the visual front. Not necessarily in terms of the technical execution of the effects since they’re always basically as good as they get for the time in both Disney and Star Wars stuff, but in terms of the composition of shots
Never watched it, but am intrigued. How so?
Rian Johnson is a master of deconstructing genres.
if you went this long without watching it I won’t spoil it but to say the themes are not typical of the rest of the franchise and the fans hated it for that.
I love Rian Johnson’s other work, especially Brick and Knifes Out.
I also love Star Wars.
I thought TLJ was dreadful though. He was just a really bad fit for it IMO. Has nothing to do with not being open to change, but it has to be the right change. “Can you hear me now?” gags and Luke casually tossing away an item that had been set up as important in the previous film were not the right changes.