RatCreature (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ratcreature) wrote2017-12-16 12:32 am
ratcreature) wrote2017-12-16 12:32 am
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
I watched the new Star Wars this afternoon, and overall I really enjoyed it. One non-spoilery thing I'm curious about, do you think the "Jedi" in the title is meant as singular or plural (or did you take it as ambiguous)? Because I noticed today that for German they translated it as plural. (I watched it in English, but eventually noticed German posters...) Seeing the English title earlier and more often, I myself had always assumed it to refer to just one.
Anyway, on to the spoilery parts of my post...
Kylo Ren worked better for me in this one than in SW:TFA. I still don't really care much for him, but then I rarely do about villains, but I liked that he killed Snoke in Sith fashion to take his place, but did not repudiate the Dark Side, even though his connection with Rey felt real. I liked the dynamic with General Hux too.
I kept thinking that it just seems a really bad idea to train powerful force users like Anakin Skywalker or Ben Solo young so they get corrupted by apparently seductive and easily accessible dark forces. The ones that start their training after their volatile and immature teenage years are over like Luke or Rey (and possibly Leia, unless surviving being spaced is instinctive) don't seem to suffer too much damage in lack of competence, but withstand temptation much better. I guess the sample size is small, but it does seem a safer option to wait with active exposure to cosmic forces until brain maturity is further along... Clearly the original Jedi approach to attempt sheltering through cloisters didn't work out either.
I liked that Rey was not a Skywalker offspring or otherwise of some special bloodline (I hope that wasn't Kylo Ren lying). And that then was picked up again with the ordinary, downtrodden (enslaved?) boy telling resistance stories at the end.
Also I liked the Poe and Leia parts for the emotional resonance (also that female Vice Admiral), but the whole mutiny plot doesn't hold up well. I mean, with a group this small and beleaguered at some point sharing the whole escape or retrenchment plan for morale seems worth the, at that point, slight risk to operational security or whatever the reason for secrecy was supposed to be.
The whole tracker explanation set-up earlier lost me too, like how could the First Order track the Rebel fleet? When Rose figured that out and did the info dump on that it was somehow too fast for me.
I mean, I'm generally not too bothered by the logistical side of Star Wars plots, but I kept stumbling over what shape the Rebellion as a whole really is supposed to have had, how many people were there supposed to be at the start and how many were picked off that we are then left with just a rag tag band of survivors at the end? It just piled up.
However I found a lot of the details quite delightful. Like the porgs and the scene with Chewbacca being guilted by them for roasting one. (But then I'm a vegetarian...) Also BB-8 throughout. And his First Order counterpart. Really the droids in general (the ironing!).
I liked the twist that Luke wasn't physically on the planet at the end when facing Kylo Ren but had just projected himself there, and him becoming becoming one with the Force from the effort left me a bit sad, because I like Luke, but the "mentor dies" solution to the hero coming into their own seems to be the Star Wars default.
As far as the new character Rose goes, I liked that she stopped Finn's suicide mission, having already lost her sister to one, and I think her character had potential, but I didn't really connect to her.
This all makes it sound like I was less happy with it than I was, but I found it really enjoyable to watch, just it's one of these things where when you poke at it, you will have to apply fannish fixes or such, to have it hold up to scrutiny.
Anyway, on to the spoilery parts of my post...
Kylo Ren worked better for me in this one than in SW:TFA. I still don't really care much for him, but then I rarely do about villains, but I liked that he killed Snoke in Sith fashion to take his place, but did not repudiate the Dark Side, even though his connection with Rey felt real. I liked the dynamic with General Hux too.
I kept thinking that it just seems a really bad idea to train powerful force users like Anakin Skywalker or Ben Solo young so they get corrupted by apparently seductive and easily accessible dark forces. The ones that start their training after their volatile and immature teenage years are over like Luke or Rey (and possibly Leia, unless surviving being spaced is instinctive) don't seem to suffer too much damage in lack of competence, but withstand temptation much better. I guess the sample size is small, but it does seem a safer option to wait with active exposure to cosmic forces until brain maturity is further along... Clearly the original Jedi approach to attempt sheltering through cloisters didn't work out either.
I liked that Rey was not a Skywalker offspring or otherwise of some special bloodline (I hope that wasn't Kylo Ren lying). And that then was picked up again with the ordinary, downtrodden (enslaved?) boy telling resistance stories at the end.
Also I liked the Poe and Leia parts for the emotional resonance (also that female Vice Admiral), but the whole mutiny plot doesn't hold up well. I mean, with a group this small and beleaguered at some point sharing the whole escape or retrenchment plan for morale seems worth the, at that point, slight risk to operational security or whatever the reason for secrecy was supposed to be.
The whole tracker explanation set-up earlier lost me too, like how could the First Order track the Rebel fleet? When Rose figured that out and did the info dump on that it was somehow too fast for me.
I mean, I'm generally not too bothered by the logistical side of Star Wars plots, but I kept stumbling over what shape the Rebellion as a whole really is supposed to have had, how many people were there supposed to be at the start and how many were picked off that we are then left with just a rag tag band of survivors at the end? It just piled up.
However I found a lot of the details quite delightful. Like the porgs and the scene with Chewbacca being guilted by them for roasting one. (But then I'm a vegetarian...) Also BB-8 throughout. And his First Order counterpart. Really the droids in general (the ironing!).
I liked the twist that Luke wasn't physically on the planet at the end when facing Kylo Ren but had just projected himself there, and him becoming becoming one with the Force from the effort left me a bit sad, because I like Luke, but the "mentor dies" solution to the hero coming into their own seems to be the Star Wars default.
As far as the new character Rose goes, I liked that she stopped Finn's suicide mission, having already lost her sister to one, and I think her character had potential, but I didn't really connect to her.
This all makes it sound like I was less happy with it than I was, but I found it really enjoyable to watch, just it's one of these things where when you poke at it, you will have to apply fannish fixes or such, to have it hold up to scrutiny.
no subject
The B&W/soundless sceen when the ship goes through the other ship was really powerful (but breaks the laws of that universe and makes a logic-hole as big as the hole it left in the ship)
But I liked it a lot too. It hit the right notes of funny at the right places.
no subject
I think my main problem with the sequel trilogy is that I really can't figure out what exactly the First Order and the Rebellion are (size, structure, financing...), and how they got there. Maybe some supplemental material explains how that whole "restoration of the Republic" project failed after the original trilogy and how the First Order took over, but the movies don't do that, and the setup just doesn't hold together enough to allow conclusions.
no subject
I saw it today and enjoyed the movie a lot as a movie, though it didn't really wow me or make me have fandom-type feelings. Like you, I had similar logistical problems with the worldbuilding, actually with the entire setup of the New Order/Rebellion; the worldbuilding just seems very ... shallow, for lack of a better way to put it. I can handwave it in order to enjoy the movie, but I think that's part of why the movie didn't really make me want to think more deeply about it in a fandom-type way, because the universe doesn't feel very plausible. (Even by the standards of the previous movies! I got a lot more of a sense of how the whole thing works in the original trilogy than I did here.)
I think this movie confirmed for me that these are AU, in my head, to the original movies, not my future headcanon for those characters. But I still liked it.
no subject
For me the whole shape of the Rebellion and First Order conflict remains unclear in the sequels and the movies just don't explain or imply anything. As you say, with the original trilogy you can infer more, also it could be vague more easily, because it did not have to fit with anything else.
Then you could just handwave "okay there is now a tyrannical government, earlier there was a republic, some people are resistance fighters" and it works but now you have backstory and the state you saw them in last and need to imagine a line from there to here.
As much as some people scoff at the prequels (though I actually liked them), at least you get a general idea of the overall conflict an role of the players and how this then led to the original trilogy. It doesn't all hold up to close scrutiny but it's there.