Chen G.

He was asked on the subject previously. Sometimes he sounds interested, sometimes - not so much.

I’m not a fan in the slightest, but just like it was interesting to see Steven Spielberg tackle an animated feature, so too will it be with Jackson. I’m on-board!

I don't think so. I think that - if there were caveats, they were more along the lines of "Rey needs to make it to the end, 'kay?". Otherwise, I think Johnson got to make the film that he wanted. I don't see any interest on Kathleen Kennedy's side to kill Luke Skywalker, at least prior to IX.

No convincing needed here. I like the movie. But I'm not too enamored with Carpenter. From memory, I really only like this and Halloween.

Very true! Its not just that its overkill - its that its a model that Star Wars doesn't necessarily sit well with. The original sextet is more like The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter: it has an overarching story, with a defined conflict and a certain set of characters that participate in it. Marvel is more episodic - its just the returning characters that form the throughline, rather than any one central conflict. Kathleen Kennedy tries to apply both models to contemporary Star Wars (with the "saga" films and the spinoffs, accordingly), and I don't think they mesh together all that well. Also true. Look at Boba Fett's backstory, both in Attack of the Clones and with the rumored James Mangold film - how is that going to work for new audiences "binging" the series? All this setup for a character that barely has any lines of dialogue and dies pathetically in Return of the Jedi? The same is true going forward: unless IX offera really good conclusion, at the end of the day I think a lot of people would rather imagine that the series ended with Return of the Jedi, with the main cast alive and well.

That isn't necessarily the highest of bars. He's not the most consistent director; indeed most "horror directors" aren't. Its telling that some of the best pieces in the horror genre are from directors that don't confine themselves to it: Scott, Spielberg, Kubrick, Demme, Fincher, etc... which was nominated for a Razzie at the time.

While I do agree that Solo's failure is entirely its own fault (as a production, rather than as a film necessarily), there's is a negative trend here which I'm sure has people in Lucasfilm and Disney at least somewhat worried

I don't know that I'd dismiss the significance of Solo's box office failure too lightly, though.

But that's where the choice to make a film so thematically and stylistically distinct out of the middle chapter of a trilogy becomes so odd. I just can't see IX paying this thread off. Johnson's concept for this film would have worked better as either the first or last episode in this trilogy - not as the middle chapter.

Its a stupid massage, anyway.

No. Have this happen and have Finn stay on the ship and see how he takes the accusation. Having joined the Resistance only to immediately be suspect of treachery? How will he deal with that? Will he prove it, as it were, by joining Poe's mutiny? That's a much more interesting internal conflict than the one we got for Finn. Wait, did we get an internal conflict for him?

Uileann pipes are actual bagpipes - just of a different variety. But the pipes on the track "The Battle of Stirling" sound much too drone-y for uileann pipes. The "disonant sounds" are synth and alphorns to simulate horn-calls. An odd choice, but it works well to complement the harsh reality and contemporary, kinetic filmmaking style that the movie takes up whenever there's an action sequence. They're also used to build-up towards a shakuachi riff or taiko stroke as a scene transition occurs. I love that effect: most of these transitions are simple cuts, but the way they coincide with a stinger gives them a real agression.

That's an excellent idea! Plus it would have made the whole Canto Bight subplot unecessary!

Hey, diegetic music counts, too! Plus, the pipes in the buildup to the battle of Stirling don't sound like ulieann pipes, to me.

Braveheart actually has quite an impressive palette: large orchestra, boy choir, solo tenor, synth, taikos, anvils, bodhran, dungchengs, alphorns, pibgorn, whistles, quena, shakuhachi, uileann pipes, highland bagpipes, etc... Outside of the celtic flavor, Braveheart does share a little similarity with Titanic: For Braveheart Horner replaced (thank god!) his trademark three-note danger figure with a two-note low brass figure (guess he thought he ought to up his game or something) and that figure also features prominently in the second half of Titanic. You know the one - it kinda sounds like the Batman motif from Nolan's Batman features.

Kathleen Kennedy is the producer. She had nothing to with choices regarding character - that's entirely on Rian Johnson as the writer and director of this film. I think its quite clear from the content and style of the film that he was indeed given free reign. I don't know that too much thinking in the way of a social agenda went into the introduction of Rose and Holdo. Essentially, with every sequel you can't just keep following up on the same characters - you also have to introduce new ones. Even in something like The Two Towers, which is more of a "part two" than a traditional sequel, there was a point being made of introducing new characters. And yes, there is a case to be made that the film is a failure by that standard, because - of the new characters, one had died and the other is really not that interesting.

No. Dreaming of Bag End features two of Bilbo's themes: The Baggins theme, and the Tookish side theme. Bard's family is quite similar, being that both themes are meant to be homely, and as Shore himself remarked, Laketown's soundscape shares The Shire's English sound. I believe Jackson's direction to Shore was "music for 17th century pirates in Cornwall." Bard's Family is kind of halfway between the Baggins theme and the Master's - Bard's family life being the thing that anchors him in the face of greed, unlike the Master. The liner notes often refer to these chords, which often appear on their own and serve their own thematic purpose. They are to Smaug's theme what the Hobbit accompaniment motifs are to the Hobbiton theme. I like the name Dragon Breath motif for them. The gamelan (which is the percussion you keep referring to) is only part of Smaug's oriental palette. There are also Shakuhachi (in 1:03), dizi, rebab (you can see in the production diary in 7:08), tanpura, tibetan bowls and bells and on and on - instruments that the Gamelan Orchestra that they turned to happened to have. Some eastern instruments used in other parts of the score (Tabla for the Woodland Realm, for instance) also came from the Gamelan Orchestra's storage.

Its Bard's family theme. Its kind of between Bilbo's theme and the Master's theme. Makes sense: the Shire material (hence Bilbo's, too) is designed to evoke homeliness, and so too does the theme of Bard's family.

Absolutely. I mean, there's a case to be made for Apocalypto being his most "visionary" work. Namely, because its much more "out there", visually and narratively, and because Gibson also co-wrote it. But Braveheart works better from a dramatic standpoint: it makes you feel more stuff.

Could be. Johnson had some overt prequel influences, both in the design (especially of Canto Bight and Snoke's Throne-Room), shot composition (Kylo Ren and the Stormtroopers marching into the Rebel Base), in his temp-track choices and in referencing Sidius. In fact, Johnson even tries to be apologetic about the prequels' treatment of the Jedi Order, attempting to recontextualize it, as if George Lucas was providing commentary on their stiffness and vanity (which is bollocks but never mind). Curiously, he also let in some of the prequel trilogy's weaknesses such as some passages of inane dialogue (I'm thinking about Rose in particular), the stronger reliance on sci-fi elements, and some bad effects shots - mostly in Canto Bight and Crait - and of course their balooning running times. Whatever it was, it still has nothing to do with the core themes of the film, and as a result it just doesn't do the film any favours. Of course, there are also those who will begrudge this throwback to the prequels for that very reason: that they are throwbacks to the prequels.

Holdo is there to facilitate Poe's growth into a responsible leader, as well as to (of course) subvert expectations. Usually its the plucky, hands-on guy who's right and the stiff, distant authority figure that's wrong, but Rian Johnson - being Rian Johnson - said "psyche!" In this case, I would say her being a woman is more incidental than anything else. I still find the way he upstaged this trope to be mechanical and overwrought (given that he does it over and over and over again) but my issue isn't that Holdo's a woman. I feel like Rose's monologues in Canto Bight (which I don't care for in the slightest) are there more to provide her with a sympathetic backstory than to act as social commentary outright. To be fair, the social commentary is certainly there but honestly, I'm more critical of the inclusion of an off-the-wall commentary of animal cruelty and arms trades. Really, as long as its not a 50/50 cast (which it isn't), and as long as there aren't overt "leave me alone, I'm a strong independent woman, y'know!" (which there aren't), then the presence of female characters is fine by me.

Come on, @Mattris, there's plenty to criticise (and yes, plenty to like, too) about The Last Jedi. No need to scrape the bottom of the barrel.

That's one of the best things about this film: it somehow combines great harrowing tragedy with some of the funniest humor ever in a film - and somehow it all meshes together. The humor is also essential because it (among other things) helps to offset a lot of the cheesy overtures that plagued this genre in the 60s. For instance, the dialogue in the romantic scenes, or that of the villain. I love that Longshanks says the cheesy "bring me Wallace" and follows it up with "alive if possible, dead - just as good..." That's, I think, one of the essential tenets of the epic as a genre: not the scope of the cast or the locations, but that of the genre itself. In watching Braveheart, one is treated to a drama, a comedy, a romance, a revenge-action film, an epic war film, and finaly a tragedy. The Battle of Stirling is, by the way, the best large-scale swordplay battle ever put to film. And to think that this was the director's second feature film, after a small domestic drama. Its bonkers. I should be very much interested to see just how royally Outlaw King will fail under the shadow of this film.

Hey, that's in The Last Jedi! That shot of water spewing from the hole (whatever that was) on the island and than past Rey? That's an old Rian Johnson trick (he does it in Brick with a trash bag) where they clearly poured water on Daisy Ridley and played it in reverse.

A lot of the alternates and pieces on the fan-credits, OST and Symphony function like concert arrangements of thematic material: Concerning Hobbits, The Black Rider, the Gandalf the White and instrumental Evenstar pieces in the fan-credits of The Two Towers, etcetra...