Chen G.

I don't think so. Each of these three films is part of the overarching narrative, but also its own thing, especially given how they're made: one at a time, by different filmmakers. At no point was I pointing out that it's Luke's story to criticise The Last Jedi. The film's issues lie elsewhere. Besides, its not like Rey is sitting idly in The Last Jedi. She doesn't have much of an arc, but still.

I think Tolkien himself is on record as saying that Sam is the true hero of The Lord of the Rings; I believe Boyens said as much about the film, as well.

Fair point, but its more complex than that, now is it. In The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo is the audience surrogate, as well; whereas in Return of the King, Sam becomes the protagonist. In that sense, Frodo is what you'd call the false protagonist (Tolkien was really fond of this trick), which is the function Rey fulfils here.

To be fair, there is a school-of-thought that holds that the protagonist is not the one to drive the plot as much as he or she is the one through's point-of-view we see the world of the film: the audience surrogate character. So yes, its a more complex issue (what isn't?), but still. Certainly it can't be defined by "the most compelling character". Namely, because that's more subjective a criterion than "who's driving the plot?" Different people will be more compelled by different character stories.

Its not convenient, its the way films are evaluated. You think Roger Ebert fussed over such minute detail?

That's not how you determined who the protagonist is. There's no shortage in films where some kind of secondary character or character dynamic steals the show. That doesn't make that character the protagonist. The protagonist is the one who's decisions drive the plot at the most critical junctions: i.e. between acts, and especially in the climax of the third act. He's (or she's) the personification of the narrative thrust. So, If you break down the narrative format of The Last Jedi, it goes like this: ACT I end at around 50 minutes when all the storylines are established: Finn and Rose are en route to Canto Bight; Rey is training with Luke and establishes her Force-connection to Kylo; Poe is having trouble with Holdo. So a long first-act, which is par for the course in this series. ACT II, part A ends with the revelation that Luke is responsible for Kylo turning to the dark and Rey choosing go after him at the 1:20:00 mark. ACT II, part B includes a FALSE ACT III, where Finn confronts Phasma, Rey and Kylo confront Snoke and Poe confronts Holdo, which concludes at about the 1:55:00 mark. ACT III climaxes with Luke confronting Kylo, allowing for the escape of the surviving resistance fighters. After the denoument, the film closes at the 2:23:00 mark. Only one of the turning points of the narrative (the midpoint twist) is driven specifically by Rey, and even that only happens in light of a revelation as to a previous decision by Luke. And the most important turning point - that of Act III, is driven by Luke's decision, and coincides with him completing his arc. So, as part of his "lets surprise the audience in every turn" policy, Rian Johnson spent the majority of the film getting you sold in the Rey/Kylo dynamic, building up to this climax with Snoke, only to go "psyche! you thought the film ends with Snoke? wrong!" and "oh, you thought Rey is the protagonist? Haha, gotcha!"

Yes. In terms of her skills, she is absurdly gifted. In terms of her internal state, however, she's full of vulnerability and insecurity. Really, I have no real issue with the character. But than, this film wasn't about her, now was it? It was about Luke. He is the protagonist.

Who cares?! If I enjoy the story, I can't be bothered with each individual beat and every little detail of production design. The question is whether the piece works as a whole, which it brilliantly does.

The Last Crusade is the best of the bunch. The father-son relationship imbues the film with both more weight and with more humor than Raiders.

Oh yes, not to mention it’s a desert planet, so there are cutaways between Anakin on Tatooine and Obi Wan on that planet (I can’t for the life of me recall its name) that leave me confused for a moment: “wait, where are we now?”

Outside of Empire Strikes Back, Star Wars was never too exceptionally photographed. There are a couple of nice touches in Return of the Jedi, but otherwise it’s very high-key, plain cinematography. So it wasn’t a big bar for Revenge of the Sith to clear. Especially after Attack of the Clones. The use of long takes and extreme close-ups serves Revenge of the Sith quite well, I find; and shooting on digital never hurts, either.

Outside of those random zoom-in/outs, there’s very little in the way of faux-documentary style in Star Wars: certainly little in the way of hand-held. Revenge of the Sith is one of the better-shot films, yes: I like the long-take at the top of the film. Very cool!

Exactly what I meant. There's a shot of Poe going into the trenches with a very obvious green-screen that sticks out like a sore thumb. It also features one of the unfortunately-lasting contributions of Attack of the Clones to Star Wars: faux-documentary style of camerawork. Ugh! Which is to say nothing of Canto Bight!

Its like I said:

My main issues are: The Finn-Rose storyline, in its entirety. Some of the humor doesn't work. The production isn't as polished as The Force Awakens. More generally, the film just lacks any form of restraint: you can just feel Rian Johnson saying "more twists, more jokes, more themes, more camera flourishes, more, more, more!" Especially with his constant need to surprise the audience, his film just ends up feeling overbearing. Connected to that, some of the visual comedy and surprises in the story really feel like they parody Star Wars. As a casual fan, I don't care; but I can see how more ardent fans would be offended by that.

It just isn't as good a film. If, of all people, my first reaction when credits rolled was "that was looong" than something's wrong!

More than twice as much!

Its a less even picture. Some parts are better than The Force Awakens, others - decidedly aren't, and all of them lack the polish that that film had. I had to force myself to rewatch The Last Jedi, and having seen it three times (I always watch a film twice to really evaluate it, and I wanted to watch it a third time on the small screen to see how it fares there, as well) I have no interest in rewatching it, and I've been hearing that response from others, as well. Whereas whenever The Force Awakens pops on television - I will probably sit down and watch it; and that's true of the other good episodes, as well. The fanboy backlash compelled people who enjoyed the film to pretend its this masterwork of a film, where it really isn't.

So you think it had nothing to do with the fact that The Last Jedi is also an inferior film? Because I do.

Possibly. Garrett Stiger seems to agree. Chris Hartwell, too. Personally, my favorite in terms of an earnst superhero narrative is The Dark Knight trilogy (I can't really pick which one) and, as an action-comedy (which I maintain that most Marvel movies are), The Avengers. Just Tony, really. The best character in the MCU.

To be fair, we did, kinda. Its called The Force Awakens.

Maybe not, but seeing as how that aspect of his idea was what he chose to disclose (rather than "it would have been about Luke discovering the Whills, for instance), and seeing how his prequels turned out for very similar reasons, I would bet good money on that.

Like I said, by the time Return of the Jedi took shape, any and all ideas to create a nonet were shut down, so that inevitably made Revenge of the Sith his last film in the series. His idea of making a trilogy about this "whills" doesn't sound appealing to me, either. One, by putting so much emphasis on exploring an aspect of his fictional world (the whills here, the Republic in the prequels) he is putting the character stories at the back-seat, which is always a good way to end up with an unfocused narrative. Furthermore, all this talk of feeding off of the force and microbiotics would probably follow in-line with Lucas' concept of midi-chlorians and would probably only serve to furher de-mistfy the concept of The Force.

Yeah Right... George Lucas was always full of it. He didn't have this series planned out. At best he had vague ideas, mostly a recycling of the lesser ideas found in earlier drafts of his screenplay to Star Wars. What little we know of these ideas is that his original intention was for the sequel trilogy to form a sextet with the first three films, with episode IX essentially being what Return of the Jedi ended up being.1 By the time Return of the Jedi took shape, any and all plans for a sequel trilogy were in effect abandoned, because the story had reached its conclusion. And, as much as I'm not a big fan of Return of the Jedi, I still think his idea for a nonet was stupid: You'd watch only a half of Luke's story only to go back to hear Anakin's and than return to see the second half of Luke's story? _____________________________________________ 1 Interview with Gary Kurtz (IGN: 2002), p. 4.

Isn't there a rule against quoting Attack of the Clones?