The Last Jedi (Spoilers): Force-Choke or Tour-de-Force?

[DMC]

13 minutes ago, Davrum said:

He tried to run away from the "rebels". Then he realized he was wrong and came back. That's a Finn thing, not a Poe thing.

I'll pushback on this.  Han had a very pressing need he had to attend to that eventually contributed to being carbonite-d.  Finn runs away because he's just scared - definitely in TFA and even in TLJ using "I want to protect Rey" is a flimsy excuse that rightly gets him zapped.  I think the two are very distinct; one has a tangible reason to be self-interested, the other is almost purely self-interested in survival.

And yeah, Han never rebelled against the rebels, but he was certainly the only somewhat dissident voice among the heroes - which is reflected in Poe being devil-may-care pilot.  However, I totally agree Han's perspective is echoed much more in DJ's brief screentime.

[Davrum]

1 hour ago, dmc515 said:

I'll pushback on this.  Han had a very pressing need he had to attend to that eventually contributed to being carbonite-d.  Finn runs away because he's just scared - definitely in TFA and even in TLJ using "I want to protect Rey" is a flimsy excuse that rightly gets him zapped.  I think the two are very distinct; one has a tangible reason to be self-interested, the other is almost purely self-interested in survival.

And yeah, Han never rebelled against the rebels, but he was certainly the only somewhat dissident voice among the heroes - which is reflected in Poe being devil-may-care pilot.  However, I totally agree Han's perspective is echoed much more in DJ's brief screentime.

I'll pushback on this pushback.

Thing is, Han's "very pressing need" is a very pressing need motivated entirely by self-interest in survival. He's (rightly) scared that next time one of Jabba's bounty hunters shows up he might not be as fortunate as he was with Greedo. And Han lets us know that without a shadow of a doubt he's (rightly) scared as hell of that Death Star.

"You don't think I'm fool enough to stick around here do you? ... What's the good of having a reward if you ain't around to use it ... besides, attacking that battle station ain't my idea of courage, it's more like ... suicide."

That's why Han coming back to save Luke from Vader - completing his arc by overcoming his fear and pure self-interest in his own survival - is so powerful. It's also why Han is the most relatable of the three heroes in the OT (like us, and unlike Leia, Han has flaws, and like us, and unlike Luke, Han has no superpowers).

Also, it's only halfway through TFA that Finn is running away purely out of fear. Within 3 minutes he's forgotten that fear and by the end of TFA he's firmly established as not only brave, but crazily courageously dedicated to the safety of his friend Rey. Then in TLJ as he tries to abandon a ship he knows is doomed by hyperspace-tracking (an assessment which is proven correct later in the film) the idea that he wants to leave to save Rey is anything but flimsy, and in fact is 100% supported by both the text and by Boyaga's performance. Hell, as soon as Rose helps him realize there IS a way to try to undoom the rebels Finn abandons his idea to abandon ship and takes on a far more dangerous mission than simply heading off to warn Rey.

[Rubicante]

21 hours ago, Risto said:

I said that in terms that no one believed that SW dialogue can be THAT bad, not that GoT writing is that good.

I know ins and outs of this forum  

Yeah, you have just slightly more posts on this forum than I do.  I'm almost to 200 though! 

I more so just can't pass on an opportunity to insult the Game of Thrones television show.  But it's interesting to note the similarities between Game of Thrones and the The Last Jedi in that they are both incoherent messes.

[Darth Richard II]

The new Han Solo is BB-8, duh.

[HexMachina]

Happy news for the MRAs who were so cruelly victimised by this nasty Star Wars film that dared include women. Now there’s a 46 minute MRA edit cutting out all teh women’s!

And yes, they sound exactly as ridiculous as you would expect

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Also, at least the intro sequence is now very watchable and actually much cooler without all of Leia’s nitpicking. Now it’s all one united Resistance fighting without inner conflict and that’s much more satisfying to watch. Due to the extreme shortening, the whole movie is much more fast-paced now, at times unfortuantely also rushed due to a lack of usable filler footage.

 

[RumHam]

Wait, how do you do a fan edit before the Blu-Ray comes out? 

Edit: ah nevermind I see the article mentions it's from someone filming it in the theater. 

[Corvinus85]

Han Solo movie official synopsis released. No trailer yet

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"Through a series of daring escapades deep within a dark and dangerous criminal underworld, Han Solo meets his mighty future co-pilot Chewbacca and encounters the notorious gambler Lando Calrissian, in a journey that will set the course of one of the Star Wars saga's most unlikely heroes."

Also, John Powell will be scoring the soundtrack, with John Williams writing one of the themes. Powell is a great choice for the SW universe.

[Jordan La Cabra]

This is slightly off topic, but...

A friend of mine had never watched any Star Wars films apart from TPM when it first came out when he was a kid. I decided I’d show them to him in episode order. We just finished AotC at the weekend, which is probably the Star Wars film I’d seen the fewest times, barring everything since TFA. Boy, did I forget how bad the dialogue was and how soppy some of Anakin’s lines were.

I enjoyed TLJ but didn’t think I’d rank it any higher than any of the OT or the PT but having it fresh in my mind to compare with AotC, it’s definitely a superior film to that, at least.

I don’t know if any of you will agree with this, but what I found when comparing Anakin in AotC to Kylo Ren is that I feel Kylo Ren would be more believable as a young Darth Vader than Anakin is. 

I am one of the few that actually think Hayden Christensen did a good job in playing Anakin Skywalker. I feel he was let down by the writing more than anything, and two things in particular: 

1. There was far too much of a difference in personality between the kid Anakin in TPM and the Anakin ten years later in AotC. I just don’t find any continuity there. They may as well be two different people (and I don’t just mean actor-wise). I mean, being sarcastic and not following the orders of your Jedi Master is hardly symptoms of becoming Sith.

2. The obvious rushed manner in which they had him turn to the dark side. For me, I found Anakin far too likeable as a character to become Vader. Which is why I think Kylo Ren is almost how a young Vader should have been written. Ren is conflicted between good and evil, and my opinion on whether I sympathised with him fluctuated scene by scene in TFA and TLJ.

With Anakin, he was a bit of a brat, but I felt it too easy to sympathise with him in the PT until he all of a sudden turned Sith in RotS. I think they maybe over played the good side of Anakin and didn’t show enough of the dark side, until they lumped it all on us at once midway through episode 3.

Simply put, I think Kylo Ren has many more layers to him than Anakin Skywalker ever did, and his story would have been more compelling as the history of a young Darth Vader than the one we were given in the PT.

As I said, quite off topic, but just a thought.

[Corvinus85]

46 minutes ago, JordanJH1993 said:

This is slightly off topic, but...

A friend of mine had never watched any Star Wars films apart from TPM when it first came out when he was a kid. I decided I’d show them to him in episode order. We just finished AotC at the weekend, which is probably the Star Wars film I’d seen the fewest times, barring everything since TFA. Boy, did I forget how bad the dialogue was and how soppy some of Anakin’s lines were.

I enjoyed TLJ but didn’t think I’d rank it any higher than any of the OT or the PT but having it fresh in my mind to compare with AotC, it’s definitely a superior film to that, at least.

I don’t know if any of you will agree with this, but what I found when comparing Anakin in AotC to Kylo Ren is that I feel Kylo Ren would be more believable as a young Darth Vader than Anakin is. 

I am one of the few that actually think Hayden Christensen did a good job in playing Anakin Skywalker. I feel he was let down by the writing more than anything, and two things in particular: 

1. There was far too much of a difference in personality between the kid Anakin in TPM and the Anakin ten years later in AotC. I just don’t find any continuity there. They may as well be two different people (and I don’t just mean actor-wise). I mean, being sarcastic and not following the orders of your Jedi Master is hardly symptoms of becoming Sith.

2. The obvious rushed manner in which they had him turn to the dark side. For me, I found Anakin far too likeable as a character to become Vader. Which is why I think Kylo Ren is almost how a young Vader should have been written. Ren is conflicted between good and evil, and my opinion on whether I sympathised with him fluctuated scene by scene in TFA and TLJ.

With Anakin, he was a bit of a brat, but I felt it too easy to sympathise with him in the PT until he all of a sudden turned Sith in RotS. I think they maybe over played the good side of Anakin and didn’t show enough of the dark side, until they lumped it all on us at once midway through episode 3.

Simply put, I think Kylo Ren has many more layers to him than Anakin Skywalker ever did, and his story would have been more compelling as the history of a young Darth Vader than the one we were given in the PT.

As I said, quite off topic, but just a thought.

It gets even worse when you consider Anakin from the Clone Wars series. I agree with you that for the most part, Anakin was shown as being a good guy, a heroic figure, but with a maverick nature. He does lose his temper really easily, and we see that when he butchers the sand people, but that came from the raw emotion of losing his mother. I don't think Lucas did a good job at reconciling a man who is afraid to lose his wife, but at the same time had done so much good, with a man who utterly destroys the institution that uplifted him, and murders and destroys everyone in his path.

[Werthead]

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I am one of the few that actually think Hayden Christensen did a good job in playing Anakin Skywalker. I feel he was let down by the writing more than anything, and two things in particular: 

 

Christensen gets a lot of hate for being a bad actor, but people seem to very conveniently ignore that Ewan Magregor and Natalie Portman were equally as bad in those movies, and even actors as good as Samuel L. Jackson and Christophe Lee still felt stiff and awkward. No-one other than Liam Neeson worked out of those three movies with much respect. Everyone else had other work to contrast against, though, whilst of course Christensen didn't and so was rather unfairly dumped on, rather and George Lucas's poor scripts and lukewarm direction.

[Jordan La Cabra]

11 minutes ago, Corvinus said:

It gets even worse when you consider Anakin from the Clone Wars series. I agree with you that for the most part, Anakin was shown as being a good guy, a heroic figure, but with a maverick nature. He does lose his temper really easily, and we see that when he butchers the sand people, but that came from the raw emotion of losing his mother. I don't think Lucas did a good job at reconciling a man who is afraid to lose his wife, but at the same time had done so much good, with a man who utterly destroys the institution that uplifted him, and murders and destroys everyone in his path.

The bolded part is a perfect way to sum it up. I think Anakin is far too likeable as a character to turn evil as quickly as he did, and for that transition to be anything but rushed and unbelievable.

A lot of people probably don’t like Anakin, but I’d say a lot of that is down to their opinion on Christensen and how bratty yet soppy he is. But I find it hard to believe anyone dislikes him because he’s a bad person. He’s just a guy who lost his mother in a tragic way and was desperate not to lose his wife. How can you not feel sorry for him? It’s his reaction to losing them that just didn’t sit right with me. Less so to losing his mother, as it was a spontaneous burst of anger.

All this is why I feel what has been done with Ben Solo would have been a far more believable back story / young version of Darth Vader, as he seems a much more troubled character. Anakin turns to the dark side as a result of the travesties that happen in his life; Ben just seems to naturally lean towards it. 

What’s weird is that I think Anakin Skywalker is a great character in the prequels and enjoyed his story. I just don’t think it works as the back story for Darth Vader.

[Jordan La Cabra]

3 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Christensen gets a lot of hate for being a bad actor, but people seem to very conveniently ignore that Ewan Magregor and Natalie Portman were equally as bad in those movies, and even actors as good as Samuel L. Jackson and Christophe Lee still felt stiff and awkward. No-one other than Liam Neeson worked out of those three movies with much respect. Everyone else had other work to contrast against, though, whilst of course Christensen didn't and so was rather unfairly dumped on, rather and George Lucas's poor scripts and lukewarm direction.

That’s a good point. Other than Jumper, I’m not familiar with any other work he has done. The rest of those bigger stars have countless brilliant credits to their names that their performances in Star Wars is almost an anomly. In fact, none of those actors are best remembered for Star Wars, whereas Christensen clearly is. He was no worse than any of them, either. It’s unfortunate that he had to work with low level dialogue or else he could have been brilliant, I think.

 

[Maithanet]

22 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Christensen gets a lot of hate for being a bad actor, but people seem to very conveniently ignore that Ewan Magregor and Natalie Portman were equally as bad in those movies, and even actors as good as Samuel L. Jackson and Christophe Lee still felt stiff and awkward. No-one other than Liam Neeson worked out of those three movies with much respect. Everyone else had other work to contrast against, though, whilst of course Christensen didn't and so was rather unfairly dumped on, rather and George Lucas's poor scripts and lukewarm direction.

Lucas brought out the worst in his actors with constant greenscreens, terrible dialogue and poor characterization.  Jackson, Lee and Portman do the best they can, and are mostly unsuccessful in bringing their characters to life.  McGregor was the most successful of any of them, he was at least having fun most of the time, which brought a certain humanity to Obi-Wan.  But Christensen still stands out as particularly terrible.  Anytime he's talking with Portman or McGregor, he has no chemistry and every conversation is a chore. 

But I believe Lucas deserves most of the blame for why the prequels are so poorly acted.  A better actor might have improved Anakin from terrible to so-so, but no better than that. 

[Myshkin]

I read somewhere a long time ago (can’t remember where) that one of the reasons the dialogue is so atrocious in the prequels is that Lucas insisted on personally doing line readings with all the actors. This means that none of them where ever really able to make choices with their line deliveries or even to fully embody their characters. It further means that all of them spoke in the same (George Lucas’) voice. The reason that Neeson, and to a lesser extent Jackson, were able to differentiate their voices from the rest of the cast is because they were big enough stars already to ignore Lucas’ demands on how they delivered their lines.

[Ran]

Dialog has always been Lucas's real weak point. Ford's famous "You can type this shit, but you sure can't say it" line rings a bell.

Hayden Christensen was fantastic as Stephen Glass in Shattered Glass, FWIW, so I think he has some chops... but the whole prequel process with Lucas micromanaging, the excessive green screen, etc. simply did him no favors.

[Davrum]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

Christensen gets a lot of hate for being a bad actor, but people seem to very conveniently ignore that Ewan Magregor and Natalie Portman were equally as bad in those movies, and even actors as good as Samuel L. Jackson and Christophe Lee still felt stiff and awkward. No-one other than Liam Neeson worked out of those three movies with much respect. Everyone else had other work to contrast against, though, whilst of course Christensen didn't and so was rather unfairly dumped on, rather and George Lucas's poor scripts and lukewarm direction.

Neeson was the best of the actors playing good guys for sure, but the MVP of the PT is Ian McDiarmid without a shadow of a doubt.

[HexMachina]

3 minutes ago, Davrum said:

Neeson was the best of the actors playing good guys for sure, but the MVP of the PT is Ian McDiarmid without a shadow of a doubt.

Definitely. He made even the most cringeworthy or banal dialogue work, somehow

[Kalbear]

Apparently Natalie Portman almost killed her career thanks to Star Wars. 

[dbunting]

I think they force fed the movie to hook little kids too much and in doing so couldn't, or wouldn't do what would have really worked. Had they included a couple scenes into TPM showing Anakin using his powers without realizing it, when angry or tense, it would have helped us believe his turn. I mean they had his life of slavery and such to get his character to be jealous and angry but chose to show him as a happy go lucky kid instead. One time, had they maybe had him get angry and say a crack appeared in a wall...or while pod racing, had the person who was bumping him crashed after Anakin made an angry scowl at him or a "force" hand gesture then maybe it would have been an easier transition. But no, they chose to do a blood test, a freaking blood test to tell us how powerful he was.

I mean, FFS you use CGI for everything in that POS movie and instead of showing us his force abilities you used the Maury Povich meathod...to Anakins assumed dad, "The results are back and you are not the father!!! Anakin is instead an immaculate inception!!!..." cut to a scene of the dad either dancing or crying...

 

[Corvinus85]

11 hours ago, dbunting said:

I think they force fed the movie to hook little kids too much and in doing so couldn't, or wouldn't do what would have really worked. Had they included a couple scenes into TPM showing Anakin using his powers without realizing it, when angry or tense, it would have helped us believe his turn. I mean they had his life of slavery and such to get his character to be jealous and angry but chose to show him as a happy go lucky kid instead. One time, had they maybe had him get angry and say a crack appeared in a wall...or while pod racing, had the person who was bumping him crashed after Anakin made an angry scowl at him or a "force" hand gesture then maybe it would have been an easier transition. But no, they chose to do a blood test, a freaking blood test to tell us how powerful he was.

I mean, FFS you use CGI for everything in that POS movie and instead of showing us his force abilities you used the Maury Povich meathod...to Anakins assumed dad, "The results are back and you are not the father!!! Anakin is instead an immaculate inception!!!..." cut to a scene of the dad either dancing or crying...

 

And he should never have started his story as a kid. Teenager would have been better in TPM, show that maybe he has dark moods from the beginning. And it would not have made the Council's stance that he is "too old" so ridiculous. Are the Jedi taking babies from the cradle to train them?