Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, on home media Mar. 13, 2018

[Seto Kaiba]

21 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

Rewatching his scenes in TFA, I was reminded that he holo-projected himself to be ten times bigger than he really is for... literally no reason. Whatever else he does or says, it has to be filtered through that lens. He made a scary face? He holo-projected himself to be ten times bigger than he really is, THEN made a scary face. Said something cool? He holo-projected himself to be ten times bigger than he really is, THEN said something cool. It's almost like he was literally projecting a facade that looked more imposing than he really was... And the tactic seems to have worked, too, at least in a metafictional sense.

You say he did it for no reason, but you gave the reason... to be more intimidating.

Palpatine did the exact same thing in Empire Strikes Back, appearing as a giant hologram to Darth Vader.

You have to admit they both kind of needed the help.  Palpatine was an old man in a hooded robe whose face looked like a scrotum.  Snoke was a deformed cripple who wore a gold glitter bathrobe everywhere.  Neither was particularly intimidating in the flesh without knowing first-hand how powerful they were.

[kajnrig]

4 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

You say he did it for no reason, but you gave the reason... to be more intimidating.

Palpatine did the exact same thing in Empire Strikes Back, appearing as a giant hologram to Darth Vader.

You have to admit they both kind of needed the help.  Palpatine was an old man in a hooded robe whose face looked like a scrotum.  Snoke was a deformed cripple who wore a gold glitter bathrobe everywhere.  Neither was particularly intimidating in the flesh without knowing first-hand how powerful they were.

Oh, for sure. I suppose it's the assertion that either of them is a "badass" that made my head turn. Snoke, for his part, is far crueler than Palpatine ever was. That doesn't make him more villainous, just... well, more cruel. It's a perfectly fine twist on the Emperor Expy that he otherwise would have been. It's no surprise that Kylo lashes out against him as much as he does. He's very much like an abusive father, and his relationship with Kylo Ren is exceedingly personal, whereas Palpatine seems more scheming, and his relationship with Vader is nowhere near as intense.

...I mean I guess personally I'd have preferred that he not existed to begin with. He was never going to be as good as Palpatine, and the fact that TFA tried only hurt it. Considering what it had to work with, I think TLJ put a good twist on him. For all the faults that TLJ has, I don't consider him to be among them.

[Bolt]

51 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

Kinda sounds like you want it both ways here. You want something to be original, yet the movie that does original things with the setup it receives you proceed to trash because it doesn't take those setups in a familiar direction...

I think it’s just that TLJ could have taken some of the major plot points (such as Rey’s lineage) from TFA and gone in a more interesting direction . To say the least..

 

[Bolt]

5 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

..I mean I guess personally I'd have preferred that he not existed to begin with. He was never going to be as good as Palpatine, and the fact that TFA tried only hurt it. Considering what it had to work with, I think TLJ put a good twist on him. For all the faults that TLJ has, I don't consider him to be among them.

I agree with the not having Snoke at all. Unless there is some twist in episode 9, Snoke was wasted potential or a redundant shadow of Palpatine. Yet another model JJ aped from the original trilogy.

[Smacky]

48 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

Kinda sounds like you want it both ways here. You want something to be original, yet the movie that does original things with the setup it receives you proceed to trash because it doesn't take those setups in a familiar direction...

Rewatching his scenes in TFA, I was reminded that he holo-projected himself to be ten times bigger than he really is for... literally no reason. Whatever else he does or says, it has to be filtered through that lens. He made a scary face? He holo-projected himself to be ten times bigger than he really is, THEN made a scary face. Said something cool? He holo-projected himself to be ten times bigger than he really is, THEN said something cool. It's almost like he was literally projecting a facade that looked more imposing than he really was... And the tactic seems to have worked, too, at least in a metafictional sense.

 

That’s actually not the point I was making at all.  How can you have any continuity when the characters have changed so dramatically from movie to movie.  It would be as if the director of Die Hard 2 decided to make John McClane a pansy with no explanation, it would have made for a pretty bad sequel.  

[jenius]

I was going to argue "but without Snoke, Kylo would have never turned in the first place" but, in hindsight, I think the story works better without Snoke. If it was just some mystery as to why Kylo turned the story wouldn't really be any worse off. I guess the only purpose Snoke serves is to fill the role of Kylo's master once he abandons Luke with the notion that someone needs to be training him for him to ultimately end up super strong in his ability to use the force. The problem is, the ability to believe Kylo is well trained relies on the belief that Snoke is a valid master and they didn't do a whole lot to prove that.

[Smacky]

37 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

Oh, for sure. I suppose it's the assertion that either of them is a "badass" that made my head turn. Snoke, for his part, is far crueler than Palpatine ever was. That doesn't make him more villainous, just... well, more cruel. It's a perfectly fine twist on the Emperor Expy that he otherwise would have been. It's no surprise that Kylo lashes out against him as much as he does. He's very much like an abusive father, and his relationship with Kylo Ren is exceedingly personal, whereas Palpatine seems more scheming, and his relationship with Vader is nowhere near as intense.

...I mean I guess personally I'd have preferred that he not existed to begin with. He was never going to be as good as Palpatine, and the fact that TFA tried only hurt it. Considering what it had to work with, I think TLJ put a good twist on him. For all the faults that TLJ has, I don't consider him to be among them.

Palpating is not a bad ass?  He single handedly orchestrated the demise of the Jedi Order save for a handful, was able to equal Yoda in single combat, and took out Mace Windu (sure with help from Anakin, but he did it to lure Anakin to the dark side), officers were scared shitless at the mention of him,  I’m not sure who qualifies as a bad ass then.

[kajnrig]

1 hour ago, Smacky said:

That’s actually not the point I was making at all.  How can you have any continuity when the characters have changed so dramatically from movie to movie.

I suppose it's a difference in interpretation of degree of change, then. I felt like I pretty much got the same characters coming out of TFA as going into TLJ. With regards to Snoke specifically, the point I was making was that whatever characterization he got in TFA should have (or perhaps it's better to say could have) been taken with a grain of salt because, again, he was putting on a show to appear more intimidating than he turned out to be. Me, I already thought he was a poor JJ Abram's Palpatine, so I didn't take in anything having to do with his character except that he was generically evil.

1 hour ago, Smacky said:

Palpating is not a bad ass?  He single handedly orchestrated the demise of the Jedi Order save for a handful, was able to equal Yoda in single combat, and took out Mace Windu (sure with help from Anakin, but he did it to lure Anakin to the dark side), officers were scared shitless at the mention of him,  I’m not sure who qualifies as a bad ass then.

...yeahhhhhh, but all of that happens dumbly in a series of dumb movies, so I don't really count it.

I think the important thing is this: When I picture Palpatine, I don't picture him in a cool action pose with something exploding behind him, or him walking into the foreground with something exploding behind him, or him performing some implausible stunt that kills all the kidnappers and saves the hostage at the same time... with something exploding behind him. I picture him sitting on his throne, or him electrocuting the bejeezus out of Luke.

Contrast that with someone like... let's take Isamu Dyson from Macross Plus. Dude can't even kill his best friend with a transforming airplane, but no one'll deny that the way he went about trying was pretty badass.

1 hour ago, jenius said:

I was going to argue "but without Snoke, Kylo would have never turned in the first place" but, in hindsight, I think the story works better without Snoke. If it was just some mystery as to why Kylo turned the story wouldn't really be any worse off. I guess the only purpose Snoke serves is to fill the role of Kylo's master once he abandons Luke with the notion that someone needs to be training him for him to ultimately end up super strong in his ability to use the force. The problem is, the ability to believe Kylo is well trained relies on the belief that Snoke is a valid master and they didn't do a whole lot to prove that.

Weren't we also just throwing around the idea that the Jedi temples were there to focus and guide Force users lest they naturally gravitate towards the Dark side if left to their own devices?

Edited October 13, 2018 by kajnrig

[jenius]

I just think the mentor angle helps solidify the claim of being very skilled. Sure, people might gravitate to the dark side (or just be kinda douchey) without the Jedi scooping them up and hammering them with discipline but to be a truly malignant threat (a good movie bad guy) they would still need someone to train them in using the force. So, a movie where Kylo just wakes up one morning and narrowly avoids being killed by Luke so he decides he's evil now wouldn't have the same cache'. That said, the audience might just conclude his training under Luke, while not specifically dark, was enough to make him a super skilled force user. Soooo, maybe it all just works out fine without Snoke.... I'm sure the audience would find a reason to hate that too though :):

[sketchley]

9 hours ago, kajnrig said:

Rewatching his scenes in TFA, I was reminded that he holo-projected himself to be ten times bigger than he really is for... literally no reason. Whatever else he does or says, it has to be filtered through that lens. He made a scary face? He holo-projected himself to be ten times bigger than he really is, THEN made a scary face. Said something cool? He holo-projected himself to be ten times bigger than he really is, THEN said something cool. It's almost like he was literally projecting a facade that looked more imposing than he really was... And the tactic seems to have worked, too, at least in a metafictional sense.

 

Don't forget that the Emperor in ESB was doing the same thing - albeit with only his disembodied head.  Something, it should be added, that Snoke did in TLJ, no?

[electric indigo]

14 hours ago, jenius said:

I just think the mentor angle helps solidify the claim of being very skilled. Sure, people might gravitate to the dark side (or just be kinda douchey) without the Jedi scooping them up and hammering them with discipline but to be a truly malignant threat (a good movie bad guy) they would still need someone to train them in using the force. So, a movie where Kylo just wakes up one morning and narrowly avoids being killed by Luke so he decides he's evil now wouldn't have the same cache'. That said, the audience might just conclude his training under Luke, while not specifically dark, was enough to make him a super skilled force user. Soooo, maybe it all just works out fine without Snoke.... I'm sure the audience would find a reason to hate that too though :):

It would have worked out even better (IMO) with the Knights of Ren as Vader cultists setting out to discover the Power of the Dark Side, training themselves,  and doing horrible things on that course (like killing their fellow students under the guidance of Kylo).

[Seto Kaiba]

22 hours ago, electric indigo said:

It would have worked out even better (IMO) with the Knights of Ren as Vader cultists setting out to discover the Power of the Dark Side, training themselves,  and doing horrible things on that course (like killing their fellow students under the guidance of Kylo).

Considering what their leader's like, they may well be Vader cultists... 

Which makes you wonder how they'll take Kylo Ren's sudden change of heart vis a vis finishing what Vader started.

[sh9000]

 

[Chronocidal]

Ok, that already sounds several orders of magnitude less stupid, just from having Ackbar actually get a line.  The music is also probably one of the best remixes of that particular theme I've heard in a long time, and something all of the movies need more of, and even worked in some cues to Duel of the Fates, which makes me wonder if it was used in ROTS trailers.

I'll be interested to see where they go with it, but this is exactly what I was hoping people would do with TLJ: use the footage to piece together something that doesn't suck.  

Edited November 7, 2018 by Chronocidal

[Thom]

On 11/5/2018 at 11:56 PM, sh9000 said:

 

Oh, don't do this to me! You get me feeling hopeful for a movie that was already made and I know is not as good as that would ever be!

If I was JJ, I would be proposing a fourth film in the trilogy, just to give him enough room to fix Rian's mess.

 

[Bolt]

Nice remix. How can people in the movie industry who claim to have such respect and adoration for the franchise mess it up so.. 

Its one thing to be a fan. It’s another to further IMPROVE the story..

[Seto Kaiba]

On 11/5/2018 at 11:56 PM, sh9000 said:

 

While the MythBusters did conclusively demonstrate that it was, in fact, quite possible to literally polish a turd... I remain somewhat bewildered when people seem to think the result of a turd-polishing session will be something other than crap that is now slightly glossier than when they started.

Fan edits can fix bad editing, but The Last Jedi was not a badly-edited film.  The problem with The Last Jedi was that it had a mediocre, fanfic-ish screenplay directed by the relatively inexperienced fanboy who wrote it.  Having seen a few of Johnson's other films I suspect he's one of those writer-director types like Gene Roddenberry or George Lucas who shone when he had someone holding his leash and filtering his ideas through a lense of common sense and turns out garbage when he's left unsupervised.  Looper was well-received, so someone well-meaning idiot clearly thought he could be left to his own devices.

 

2 hours ago, Bolt said:

Nice remix. How can people in the movie industry who claim to have such respect and adoration for the franchise mess it up so.. 

Simple.  It's precisely because they are fans who respect and adore the series that they f*ck it up.

 

[Chronocidal]

3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

While the MythBusters did conclusively demonstrate that it was, in fact, quite possible to literally polish a turd... I remain somewhat bewildered when people seem to think the result of a turd-polishing session will be something other than crap that is now slightly glossier than when they started.

Fan edits can fix bad editing, but The Last Jedi was not a badly-edited film.  The problem with The Last Jedi was that it had a mediocre, fanfic-ish screenplay directed by the relatively inexperienced fanboy who wrote it.  Having seen a few of Johnson's other films I suspect he's one of those writer-director types like Gene Roddenberry or George Lucas who shone when he had someone holding his leash and filtering his ideas through a lense of common sense and turns out garbage when he's left unsupervised.  Looper was well-received, so someone well-meaning idiot clearly thought he could be left to his own devices.

This seems to be a lot more than an edit though, and more of a re-writing of the entire film using the existing footage, as well as new dialogue.

And actually.. you can still accomplish a ton that way.  I'd argue the same was done for ANH for its final cut, due to the way that a significant portion of the battle of Yavin was completely re-written, and recut using clips of prior scenes, with off-screen dialogue overlaid to produce relevant scenes.

ANH's original screenplay was also pretty mediocre as I recall, and the entire final battle had little to no tension, because there was no running countdown.  The computer displays showing the Death Star's firing arc were added in post-production, and Luke's second trench run was the only one we ever saw.

Honestly, I'm pretty okay with both the start and ending of TLJ.  I'd just like them to get there without turning several of the "heroes" into utterly unlikeable characters whose only skill seems to be dodging a 500 karma pileup.  The Resistance (and the entire franchise even) would've been on much better footing if Holdo had shoved Poe out of an airlock for treason.

Edited November 12, 2018 by Chronocidal

[Dynaman]

8 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

This seems to be a lot more than an edit though, and more of a re-writing of the entire film using the existing footage, as well as new dialogue.

And actually.. you can still accomplish a ton that way.  I'd argue the same was done for ANH for its final cut, due to the way that a significant portion of the battle of Yavin was completely re-written, and recut using clips of prior scenes, with off-screen dialogue overlaid to produce relevant scenes.

ANH's original screenplay was also pretty mediocre as I recall, and the entire final battle had little to no tension, because there was no running countdown.  The computer displays showing the Death Star's firing arc were added in post-production, and Luke's second trench run was the only one we ever saw.

Honestly, I'm pretty okay with both the start and ending of TLJ.  I'd just like them to get there without turning several of the "heroes" into utterly unlikeable characters whose only skill seems to be dodging a 500 karma pileup.  The Resistance (and the entire franchise even) would've been on much better footing if Holdo had shoved Poe out of an airlock for treason.

Or perhaps, maybe, just maybe, letting on  that there is an actual plan and they are not just running till they run out of fuel - she would not even have needed to give details of the plan.  The deleted scene with someone saying there was a spy onboard would have helped a great deal in explaining why they didn't but since it got chopped.

I've never heard of a cut of Star Wars (I remember when it was just Star Wars) with Luke doing two trench runs - would be interesting to read about that (and I'll be looking it up soon).  I have heard the original, cringe worthy, dialog from the original script since that was shown on some of the screen test clips that still exist.  Prequel Trilogy levels of stilted dialog!

 

[Mommar]

2 hours ago, Dynaman said:

Or perhaps, maybe, just maybe, letting on  that there is an actual plan and they are not just running till they run out of fuel - she would not even have needed to give details of the plan.  The deleted scene with someone saying there was a spy onboard would have helped a great deal in explaining why they didn't but since it got chopped.

I've never heard of a cut of Star Wars (I remember when it was just Star Wars) with Luke doing two trench runs - would be interesting to read about that (and I'll be looking it up soon).  I have heard the original, cringe worthy, dialog from the original script since that was shown on some of the screen test clips that still exist.  Prequel Trilogy levels of stilted dialog!

 

Dude, the organization of the entire film was redone in editing.  Everything was out of order and director friends of Lucas told him it was a spectacular mess.

[Chronocidal]

It's a really enlightening bit of documentary.  

Recutting the plot in TLJ to actually make sense and make literally anyone in the movie on either side look remotely competent would go a long long way toward making the movie more palatable.

[electric indigo]

Keeping Finn in stasis would be a good start and spare us his side plot.

Instead of the slo-mo car chase, have the resistance jump and then a countdown running until the FO shows up again due to a spy within the resistance fleet (BSG has shown ho to do this properly). Poe is on the spy, while his squadron gets decimated against the wave of TIEs the FO sends out every time before the next jump.

[tekering]

1 hour ago, electric indigo said:

Instead of the slo-mo car chase, have the resistance jump and then a countdown running until the FO shows up again due to a spy within the resistance fleet (BSG has shown ho to do this properly). Poe is on the spy, while his squadron gets decimated against the wave of TIEs the FO sends out every time before the next jump.

And how are fan editors supposed to accomplish that?  Repurpose footage from Battlestar:Galactica?

[Knight26]

2 hours ago, electric indigo said:

Keeping Finn in stasis would be a good start and spare us his side plot.

Instead of the slo-mo car chase, have the resistance jump and then a countdown running until the FO shows up again due to a spy within the resistance fleet (BSG has shown ho to do this properly). Poe is on the spy, while his squadron gets decimated against the wave of TIEs the FO sends out every time before the next jump.

Hmmm, that sounds familiar, kind of like what I suggested over a year and a half ago, and included in my write up of how to improve TLJ

[electric indigo]

4 hours ago, tekering said:

And how are fan editors supposed to accomplish that?  Repurpose footage from Battlestar:Galactica?

The space shots are there from the beginning of the movie, the rest is dialogue/overdubbing. Imagine the bonfires if the spy turns out to be Holdo... 

[Bolt]

I don’t see how the next installment can make TLJ any better or improve its issues. 

Of course , it should stand alone , but it was cut off at the knees..

 

[Thom]

8 hours ago, Bolt said:

I don’t see how the next installment can make TLJ any better or improve its issues. 

Of course , it should stand alone , but it was cut off at the knees..

All they can do (if not making TLJ all Finn's dream while in stasis) is to go forward with the jumble Rian left them. Concentrate on what worked, such as the give and take between Rey and Kylo, really work Luke back into the story line despite his ghost status - or Hell, just bring him back to life! And bring Phasma back also! Stop making her some cowardly joke and turn her into the total badass we all expected her to be. She could return all scarred from the fires and on the rampage to finally destroy the Resistance. Also give us a good reason as to why their support didn't show up at the end.