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Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson 2017)


Dixon Hill

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Amoral under what moral code? And so what? Jaime Lannister kills the king, fucks his sister, throws a 6-year-old kid out a window, and STILL gets redeemed. He’s some peoples’ favorite character!

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4 minutes ago, Chen G. said:

Lets put it another way: what more could Kylo possibly have done for people to accept him as being beyond redemption? Rape Rey?! 

 

That’s a great question which genre fiction often asks, often by beginning the character’s arc with a deplorable act.

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This film is not worthy of this much discussion three years after its release. 
 

It isn’t as terrible as some make out and it definitely isn’t the masterpiece others make it out to be. 
 

It’s just a massive pile of meh. 

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  • 1 year later...

So, I've compiled all the Force Theme appearances in Star Wars: The Last Jedi for a project. Before I upload it to YouTube, I would like to ask here if I really have captured all of them that appear in the movie. If someone has time and interest to look over it, I would be very happy. https://1drv.ms/v/s!AsnNMBoYMDStpzvQt5yK8Dic5Uur?e=V1GlEJ

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On 20/06/2014 at 3:52 PM, Jay said:

JJ 's next film probably won't come out until 2017 or 2018, and Spielberg' s next two films come out in 2015 and 2016

 

It's so fun looking back on this thread now. 

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  • 2 months later...
  • 1 month later...
1 hour ago, Romão said:

For all its flaws, it is for me easily the best thing to come out of Disney's Star Wars. And next to the first 40 minutes of TFA, it's the only new Stars Wars content worth watching

For me, the best thing is Rey's theme.  Without it, I would declare the sequels a net loss.  

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5 hours ago, Romão said:

For all its flaws, it is for me easily the best thing to come out of Disney's Star Wars. And next to the first 40 minutes of TFA, it's the only new Stars Wars content worth watching


No love for The Mandalorian?

 

Yavar

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4 hours ago, Edmilson said:

The rebels lose on one day only to win on the other day, who cares? The conflict is mostly pointless and only serves to make galaxy businesspeople profit with their war.

 

That's a surprisingly gritty, adult idea to a franchise that started as a traditional "good rebels vs tyrannical empire" story for children.

 

Eh. I don't think the attempts to inject a degree of moral relativism into the scenario really work.

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10 hours ago, Not Mr. Big said:

The ST may not be a great trilogy but it's better than no movies/scores at all.  

I don't see it that way. In all likelihood (as in almost 100%), Williams would have composed other things/films, had he not done the sequels. Either way, we would have gotten new Williams music.  

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As the world's biggest Bridge of Spies fan, boy I'd love to have gotten a Williams score for it (as much as I do like the Newman score quite a bit).  It's an impossible hypothetical for me.

 

I'll never have enough solemn horns moving stepwise in fourths and fifths from Williams!  :P 

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Somehow I think Williams' approach wouldn't have been too dissimilar from Newman's. Nice to imagine what might have been...

 

As for Ready Player One, just occurred to me he was clear of Star Wars from around June 2017 and still didn't score it. I think the official reason was he would be too busy with The Post to score both... somehow I think he was happy to pass on the project, regardless of availability.

 

From memory the book's author tweeted that Williams was working on the score months prior... weird!

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20 hours ago, Edmilson said:

Rian Johnson Stands by ‘The Last Jedi’: ‘I Really Swung at the Ball’
"The ultimate intent was not to strip away — the intent was to get to the basic, fundamental power of myth," he said.

 

Source: https://www.indiewire.com/2022/08/rian-johnson-defends-the-last-jedi-1234756515/

 

Ok.. but what about those Casino scenes, Rian?

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2 hours ago, Nick1Ø66 said:

 

I'm not so sure about that. Was he scoring anything else during that period, other than Spielberg films? 

 

I don't think he was saying no to stuff just because he was busy with Star Wars, which was three films over a 4-5 year period.  I thought he was semi-retired by the time of TFA.

I am guessing Ready Player One at least.  

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3 hours ago, Disco Stu said:

As the world's biggest Bridge of Spies fan, boy I'd love to have gotten a Williams score for it (as much as I do like the Newman score quite a bit).  It's an impossible hypothetical for me.

 

I'll never have enough solemn horns moving stepwise in fourths and fifths from Williams!  :P 

That's my least favorite part of his Americana sound.  (Like the beginning of Mr Adams Takes the Case)

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14 minutes ago, Not Mr. Big said:

That's my least favorite part of his Americana sound.  (Like the beginning of Mr Adams Takes the Case)

 

Here before me stands, stinking, the moral carcass of the gentleman from Texas, proof that some men are inferior, endowed by their Maker with dim wits impermeable to good taste, with cold pallid slime in their veins instead of hot red blood.  You are more reptile than man, Not Mr. Big, so low and flat that the foot of man is incapable of crushing you.

 

 

11 minutes ago, Jay said:

 

I LOVE that!

 

And the beginning of "The Court's Decision and End Credits" :love2::love2::love2::love2::love2:

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24 minutes ago, Disco Stu said:

Here before me stands, stinking, the moral carcass of the gentleman from Texas, proof that some men are inferior, endowed by their Maker with dim wits impermeable to good taste, with cold pallid slime in their veins instead of hot red blood.  You are more reptile than man, Not Mr. Big, so low and flat that the foot of man is incapable of crushing you.

How dare youuuu!!!!!!

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On 30/08/2022 at 3:16 PM, Edmilson said:

Rian Johnson Stands by ‘The Last Jedi’: ‘I Really Swung at the Ball’
"The ultimate intent was not to strip away — the intent was to get to the basic, fundamental power of myth," he said.

 

Source: https://www.indiewire.com/2022/08/rian-johnson-defends-the-last-jedi-1234756515/

 

See, this is interesting, because I always knew this was his intent with the movie, but this is the clearest he's ever been about it. 

 

It WAS a deconstruction, maybe more of a questioning of movies like Star Wars. Sure, the movie ultimately decided that that questioning amounted to believing in the myths and the legends like Star Wars. I think what confused people was...why are we doing this deconstruction exercise now? Why in part 8 of a 9 part story (supposedly) are we doing this questioning? The Last Jedi would have been a great standalone movie, but as part of the 9 it utterly failed...and that was all it needed to be. It failed at its role. 

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I don't mean to be contrarian and am genuinely interested, but what do people mean when they say TLJ was a deconstruction of the Star Wars mythos? To me it was just a poor man's remake of ESB and didn't offer anything interesting that didn't immediately become problematic.

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Yeah, interesting was, or to put it better a way, unfortunately not so interesting was, that when Rian Johnson himself joined the discussion about the criticism on TLJ he only spore about the characterization of Luke, the assaults on Kelly Marie Tran and his decision that Rey comes from no special bloodline, Kylo Ren's development or Luke's force projection, things which actually were the substantial parts in the movie, which were from good to ok.

But the, I think, the other really bad 60 percent of the movie, sending Fin and Rose on a sensless mission, Holdo trying to create some kind of tension just by not talking to anybody for no understandable reason and all the related clunky dialogs around all of that, no word from the master of the desaster.

 

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The Last Jedi is kind of like Return of the Jedi. It has an interesting core that has two or three characters standing around talking in a room. (Luke and Rey. Snoke and Rey, Rey and Kylo.) And it's fantastic. And then someone says "Oh, crap. We have a whole rest of the cast to deal with. And don't we need like pew pew pew?"

 

I was astonished at the time and I still am at how well the Rey and Kylo stuff works. It's not surprising that the Luke stuff works. Some people seems to act like this is a huge betrayal of the character or some drastic departure. "Luke eventually falls to the Dark Side" is practically a Star Wars cliche. Luke gets to expand and not fall into the trope of "And he's the bad guy now." Why didn't Hamill celebrate that? AND he's the hero at the end!

 

Everything outside of that is at most "Meh". Poe and Finn are wasted and then they introduce a decently interesting character (Rose) and they waste her too. BB-8 on the walker is as bad as anything in the prequels.

 

A lot of the stupidity is what he inherited from J.J. "Um... None of this First Order stuff made sense in the first movie. So it won't matter if I change it, because nobody knew what it meant in the first place." At the end of TFA the First Order had just lost it's enormous base. And the Republic is the standing government even if the capitol is gone. But now the First Order is powerful enough to hunt down... Everyone? What the f? And then J.J. took it back and got even dumber.

 

It's like Johnson said "Wow! I'm a Star Wars fan and now I'm going to spend millions of dollars to say all the interesting things I've always wanted to say about Star Wars! Oh, and I guess while I'm there I'll make a movie."

 

4 minutes ago, Demondm810 said:

The more time passes, the less I have any feeling one way or another with the 3 sequels. 

 

It was nice to see the cast. But yeah, I agree. My wife loves them.

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2 hours ago, Demondm810 said:

The more time passes, the less I have any feeling one way or another with the 3 sequels. 

 

The thing I loved about The Last Jedi was the fiery discussion behind it. 

 

But once Star Wars stops being a relevant cultural force, there's nothing to talk about. The movie is over, the sequel came out. The sequel gave us nothing to talk about. There's no love and desire to wonder where we go next. Therefore, there's no reason to discuss the direction of Star Wars.

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  • 3 months later...

Five years? Are you kidding me?!?

 

The worst thing I can say about TLJ is that I don't feel like revisiting it very often. But I can say that about the whole Sequel Trilogy. But I watch Rogue One and Solo rather regularly.

 

OTOH I loved it when I saw it. And I think some of my favorite parts are the ones that accepted wisdom tells me I should hate:

  • Carrie Poppins is freaking amazing.
  • Cranky old Luke is also terrific.
  • Rey and Kylo are interesting. I'm not shipping them or anything but they are great as a pair of people in a movie. Anakin should have been this interesting!

Poe has no point in this movie. Finn and Rose sort of do. (I like Rose.)

 

Where does the First Order get all of its money to make these arms dealers so rich?

 

How did the tables turn so completely on the Resistance from the end of the last movie?

 

I love broomstick boy.

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My kid has seen 1-2, 4-9, and Solo, each only once, and the only things that have really stuck with her are from TLJ - the battle with Paige dying at the beginning and the Fathier chase. She actually asked me to watch both last weekend.

 

I want to direct all of the people who ignore or don’t care for the thematic intent of the Canto Bight stuff  to my child (the intended audience of a Star War) who likes Canto Bight and the Fathiers better than the Mos Eisley cantina or the Ewoks.

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