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The Last Jedi (spoilers): Failure is a great teacher


Kalbear

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12 hours ago, divica said:

How is the metacritic score better? You are saying the opinion of a small number of people (which I have no idea if they have interest in the movie sucess)

This really should be the end of engaging with this discussion. When talking to someone who's bought into the 'critics conspiracy', you are simply not going to make headway. Typically when you're engaging with that argument you're arguing with someone who, if TLJ had made double what TFA did at the box office, would simply and smoothly move on to a different way of 'proving' that it was a failure. 

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13 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

(And as long as the LEGO keep selling, I'm fine)

And the LEGO does keep selling.

The local Sainsbury's (large UK supermarket chain) in my hometown just re-stocked their toy section full of more LEGO Star Wars. The last day I had a look in my local Tesco (another large UK supermarket chain) to see what LEGO Star Wars they had, they were down to only a couple of sets. I wouldn't be surprised if they have re-stocked since.

I was in London last week and had a field day looking at the LEGO Star Wars on show in the LEGO Shop at Leicester Square. Managed to bag myself a discounted 'Ahch-To Island Training' set at the duty-free shop in Gatwick airport, too.

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What an abysmal movie. I held out significant hope for this one. TFA had its issues but I was generally able to look past them and enjoy the film (maybe I just bought into all the hype and fanboyed out too hard), and even after the snooze-fest that was Rogue One, I still remained optimistic and positive going into TLJ. I wanted to like it so bad. I re watched all the films the day TLJ came out. Now I am just completely and utterly disappointed. Unless subsequent films get rave reviews, probably won't be giving Disney any of my money going forward.

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2 hours ago, Sun Worshipper said:

What an abysmal movie. I held out significant hope for this one. TFA had its issues but I was generally able to look past them and enjoy the film (maybe I just bought into all the hype and fanboyed out too hard), and even after the snooze-fest that was Rogue One, I still remained optimistic and positive going into TLJ. I wanted to like it so bad. I re watched all the films the day TLJ came out. Now I am just completely and utterly disappointed. Unless subsequent films get rave reviews, probably won't be giving Disney any of my money going forward.

Rogue One was at least competently made, if muddled for the first half. This film is all over the place and ranges from emotionally moving to incredibly stupid/undercooked, sometimes within the shifting of a scene. It's mind-boggling that they ran with the script as it is. Of course, they decided to create a trilogy follow-up to the biggest serial of all time, and didn't even bother planning out a basic three movie arc, so I guess it comes as little surprise.

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1 hour ago, kuenjato said:

Rogue One was at least competently made, if muddled for the first half. This film is all over the place and ranges from emotionally moving to incredibly stupid/undercooked, sometimes within the shifting of a scene. It's mind-boggling that they ran with the script as it is. Of course, they decided to create a trilogy follow-up to the biggest serial of all time, and didn't even bother planning out a basic three movie arc, so I guess it comes as little surprise.

It really does feel like they went ahead to the shooting stage with only a second draft completed or something. The slow speed chase and the Canto Bight strand of the story in particular feel like half-developed ideas at best and the flow through those parts of the story is frequently frustratingly clunky. :huh:

That said, three of my favorite individual parts of the film came out of that branch of the story - the Holdo maneuver, BB-8 teaming up with DJ and Leia skywalking YES I LIKED LEIA SKYWALKING, ANYBODY WANTS TO SAY SOMETHING BAD ABOUT HOW OUR PRINCESS USES THE FORCE THEY GOTTA GO THROUGH ME?!?! :angry2:

...

Sorry, don't know what came over me there. ;)

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8 hours ago, kuenjato said:

Rogue One was at least competently made, if muddled for the first half. 

Rogue One had a shit ton of reshoots, and the entire ending was re-edited and changed to be something different from what it was supposed to be. Hell, some of the coolest scenes form the trailer didn't even make the movie. I wish we could have seen the original version. 

 

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zcviSX13Pqg/maxresdefault.jpg

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On 08/02/2018 at 8:54 AM, mormont said:

This really should be the end of engaging with this discussion. When talking to someone who's bought into the 'critics conspiracy', you are simply not going to make headway. Typically when you're engaging with that argument you're arguing with someone who, if TLJ had made double what TFA did at the box office, would simply and smoothly move on to a different way of 'proving' that it was a failure. 

However in the real world TLJ did 2/3 of TFA box office and user reviews everywhere are much much lower than critics reviews.

The people that liked the movie are the ones that make up all kind of theories and arguments to try to.convince people the movie was a huge success when it wasn t.

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3 hours ago, divica said:

However in the real world TLJ did 2/3 of TFA box office and user reviews everywhere are much much lower than critics reviews.

The people that liked the movie are the ones that make up all kind of theories and arguments to try to.convince people the movie was a huge success when it wasn t.

Tilting at windmills still, eh? You'll get them someday.

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These new ones have fallen in for me with other superhero and action franchises are so it's always interesting to me where people's likes and dislikes fall for different franchises with similar calibers of production, scripts, and actors.  

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6 minutes ago, aceluby said:

These new ones have fallen in for me with other superhero and action franchises are so it's always interesting to me where people's likes and dislikes fall for different franchises with similar calibers of production, scripts, and actors.  

I never watch Marvel movies (got bored of superhero films immediately after the first Avengers and haven't really watched one since) but I did catch Thor: Ragnarok just because I was bored on a friday night. TLJ did actually more closely resemble Thor than it did a typical Star Wars movie - most prominently in its humour and tone.They both opened with a joke, for example. This is probably my biggest gripe with TLJ. I didn't go into it expecting to watch a Marvel movie with a Star Wars coat of paint on it.

 

12 minutes ago, Week said:

Tilting at windmills still, eh? You'll get them someday.

Thought it was pretty common knowledge TLJ did not do as well as predicted. Not that it didn't make a lot of money, but it didn't do nearly as well as Disney had hoped.

14 hours ago, kuenjato said:

Rogue One was at least competently made, if muddled for the first half. This film is all over the place and ranges from emotionally moving to incredibly stupid/undercooked, sometimes within the shifting of a scene. It's mind-boggling that they ran with the script as it is. Of course, they decided to create a trilogy follow-up to the biggest serial of all time, and didn't even bother planning out a basic three movie arc, so I guess it comes as little surprise.

Can't even name a single character from the movie. None of them had any real personalities or character arcs and none of them made an impression on me. It's like they had a movie, removed all the primary characters, then removed all the secondary characters, and left us with a bunch of boring tertiary characters who no one really cares about.

Was I supposed to care when Forrest Whitaker sacrificed himself? The music told me I should care. But I didn't. We got like 6 lines of dialogue from him before his death. Couldn't have cared less that he died. Same goes for everyone else.

12 hours ago, Davrum said:

It really does feel like they went ahead to the shooting stage with only a second draft completed or something. The slow speed chase and the Canto Bight strand of the story in particular feel like half-developed ideas at best and the flow through those parts of the story is frequently frustratingly clunky. :huh:

That said, three of my favorite individual parts of the film came out of that branch of the story - the Holdo maneuver, BB-8 teaming up with DJ and Leia skywalking YES I LIKED LEIA SKYWALKING, ANYBODY WANTS TO SAY SOMETHING BAD ABOUT HOW OUR PRINCESS USES THE FORCE THEY GOTTA GO THROUGH ME?!?! :angry2:

...

Sorry, don't know what came over me there. ;)

It's also due to the fact that I went in to the theater expecting to watch a Star Wars movie, and got 30 minutes of anti-capitalist, casino gambling, horse-racing, animal cruelty awareness. Was this really the best anyone could come up with? Not a single better subplot? I don't even want to think of what the first draft looked like...

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Before I watched The Last Jedi I was anti-capitalist and pro-animal.

The Canto Bight section was so half-baked I left the theatre and immediately spent all my savings to buy stocks in a horse-whip company.

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10 hours ago, Relic said:

Rogue One had a shit ton of reshoots, and the entire ending was re-edited and changed to be something different from what it was supposed to be. Hell, some of the coolest scenes form the trailer didn't even make the movie. I wish we could have seen the original version. 

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/zcviSX13Pqg/maxresdefault.jpg

Whilst that's true, the scene you specifically point to there was never in the film. When they were cutting the trailer someone suggested that shot (which is actually in the film itself, sans TIE) and apparently they thought it was a bit boring, so stuck a TIE Fighter in there specifically for the trailer.

The big change was in the geography of the battle. Originally it was more involved and the characters were in different places, doing different things. Exactly why they changed so much is unclear but it might have been issues with the clarity of WTF was going on during the battle.

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However in the real world TLJ did 2/3 of TFA box office and user reviews everywhere are much much lower than critics reviews.

 

The Force Awakens was the first Star Wars film in 10 years, the first Star Wars film that people suspected wasn't going to be utter shit for 16 years and the first Star Wars film with Han Solo, Princess Leia and Chewbacca in it for 32 years. There was zero chance it wasn't going to make serious bank on release.

The Last Jedi was the third Star Wars film in two years, coming just after a lot of superhero and big SF movies (some of which had done poorly) and when people knew that we're going to get Star Wars movies from now until the end of time. It's unsurprising that there's been some franchise fatigue, not to mention "big event movie" fatigue in general. The Last Jedi was also a darker and more depressing film in general, as compared to The Force Awakens' much lighter, more kid-friendly action-adventure tone. The Force Awakens picked up a lot of repeat business because it's a feel-good movie that kids love, The Last Jedi is not. It's exactly the same tonal difference between Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, which is why ESB made a lot less money despite being far superior on a critical level (I'd argue that The Last Jedi is also not as good a movie as The Force Awakens, but that's a different and more subjective debate): kids were bummed out (if not actually freaked out) by Han being frozen, Luke having his hand cut off and the Empire winning and did not want to sit through that again, and if the kids don't want to go for repeat business, the parents aren't going either. The Last Jedi was also a lot longer than the other SW movies, suffering from the same problem that Blade Runner 2049 did. In this age of streaming and people having much better home viewing experiences, if a movie goes much over 2 hours, people tend to switch to waiting for the home release rather than having to plan toilet breaks and stuff before going into the cinema. I strongly suspect that IX will be well under TLJ's viewing run time as a result.

For comparison's sake, The Last Jedi has made far more money than any Lord of the Rings movie, any Harry Potter movie (well, it should by now, it was just under parity with the highest-grossing Potter film) and any Transformers, James BondPirates of the Caribbean or Pixar movie, ever. It's even made more money than fucking Frozen, despite the lack of annoyingly catchy songs. 

Someone saying the film was a financial disappointment on any level is frankly not in touch with commercial realities of how movies work. This movie made Disney and Lucasfilm an absolute shit-ton of money, probably after they were worried because Rogue One made "only" a billion. This film smashing past that by more than 30% will have helped restore any kind of wavering confidence in the boardroom about the franchise. In that light, how well Solo performs is going to be interesting.

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I keep seeing people saying TLJ didn't meet DIsney's expectations at all, but there is any source for that? I know it was off but from what I;ve read it was expected to do around 1.6billion and instead looks like its going to finish at around 1.4 billion, which yeah, its off, but its not like...Justice League numbers off.

Also, Leia SKYWALKING, That's brilliant and I'm going to use that.

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Also with regards to R! and its trailers, I know the first trailer in particular contained a lot of stuff that was shot or changed specificcly FOR the trailer, like the mentioned Tie Fighter scene. From what I understand the people who made the trailer at the time were just sent a bunch of random footage and dailies(some that was just the actors messing around on set) without any context and had to assemble somethgin from that. The extensive reshoots didn't help either, I'm sure.

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I thought this was pretty funny.  

TLJ wasn’t my favorite film ever.  The Canto Bight segment really did drag and I don’t quite understand why Rose would prevent Finn from sacrificing himself to to protect the base.  But I have seen worse films.

I really wish the makers of SW would confirm that space in the SW Universe isn’t a pure vacuum.  It would explain so much.  Why the fighters maneuver the way they do in space and how Leia could survive to pull herself back into the ship. 

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On 2/10/2018 at 5:21 PM, Werthead said:

The Force Awakens was the first Star Wars film in 10 years, the first Star Wars film that people suspected wasn't going to be utter shit for 16 years and the first Star Wars film with Han Solo, Princess Leia and Chewbacca in it for 32 years. There was zero chance it wasn't going to make serious bank on release.

This is true, but surely seeing Luke (actually do something) would be a bit of a draw as well for TLJ?  And it's pretty common for sequels to very well received movies surpassing the previous iteration at the box office.  For example, Dark Knight Rises made more money than Dark Knight, and likewise Spiderman 3 > Spiderman 2.  In both cases the sequel was a clearly inferior movie but still made more money, partly because of lingering good will for the previous film.  While I think it would be unrealistic to expect that of TLJ, (for reasons you mentioned), I think to underperform as much as it did compared to TFA is a bad sign. 

On 2/10/2018 at 5:21 PM, Werthead said:

For comparison's sake, The Last Jedi has made far more money than any Lord of the Rings movie, any Harry Potter movie (well, it should by now, it was just under parity with the highest-grossing Potter film) and any Transformers, James BondPirates of the Caribbean or Pixar movie, ever. It's even made more money than fucking Frozen, despite the lack of annoyingly catchy songs.

Let's not get crazy.  TLJ only surpasses many of those films because of ticket price inflation.  Using the adjustments on Boxofficemojo, it's worldwide gross is well behind both the first and the last Harry Potter movies, and only slightly ahead of all the rest.  It's behind all three Lord of the Rings movies.  It is behind Pirates:Dead Man's Chest.  It's behind Frozen. 

TLJ isn't anything special compared to other blockbusters of the past 20 years when you adjust for inflation.  Obviously it still made a ton of money, but Star Wars has made tons of money on bad movies before, so that doesn't impress me.  I think it's reasonable to call it a missed opportunity.  It's partly that it isn't a crowd pleaser the way TFA was, but it also isn't that good a movie.  I think in five years it will be remembered only slightly above the prequels - some great parts, but with too many flaws to ignore. 

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1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I thought this was pretty funny.  

TLJ wasn’t my favorite film ever.  The Canto Bight segment really did drag and I don’t quite understand why Rose would prevent Finn from sacrificing himself to to protect the base.  But I have seen worse films.

I really wish the makers of SW would confirm that space in the SW Universe isn’t a pure vacuum.  It would explain so much.  Why the fighters maneuver the way they do in space and how Leia could survive to pull herself back into the ship. 

That was amazing.  And yeah, the prequels were definitely worse than this film.  I'd rank it between the prequels and all the other full length films as far as my enjoyment goes.  I have absolutely zero expectations for Solo and will only see it in the theater if my wife takes me or the reviews are out of this world after a week or two.

I really love the idea of space not being a vacuum.  That would actually explain a lot and make me hate the Leah dead force walking + door opening to a vacuum to save her scene a lot less.

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