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angelfromanotherpin
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Post by angelfromanotherpin »

hyzmarca wrote:How the hell do you go from a guy in a green outfit riding a giant dog to this?

Image
Probably through the same process that turns Superman into a murderer and Batman into a mass murderer.
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Post by Prak »

Stahlseele wrote:If that were the case, more movies would be about the white man going out and conquering and less about the white man being attacked by non white men and needing to defend themselves.
Not quite. The bog standard white supremacy narrative is that whites are under attack by non-whites, and their violence against those people is self-defense.
hyzmarca wrote:There are many reason to complain about Justice League. I don't think racism against minorities is one of them.
Eh, sure. It was more noticeable that the female characters did virtually fuck all, than that the minority characters did.
We have an epic saga of war and family reduced to one asshole with an axe looking for some computers. New Genesis doesn't even get a mention. Plus they continue using the darker aesthetics from Man of Steel, instead of using Jack Kirby's designs, which is extremely disappointing.
Personally, I hate the Kirby New Gods designs. But watching the battle with Steppenwolf in Justice League, I did suddenly realize that it was like I was watching a God of War fight. And not a good God of War fight.
angelfromanotherpin wrote:Probably through the same process that turns Superman into a murderer and Batman into a mass murderer.
Yeah... very shortly into Justice League, I remembered all the shit Batman was doing in BvS:DoJ:WtF:CiA:VtM:MtA:MtG:MtR:HtR:DtF, and... how the fuck are people going to say to the guy who was going around branding common criminals and say "yeah, you seem like a totally reasonable person, I will fight beside you"
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Post by RobbyPants »

Prak wrote: Yeah... very shortly into Justice League, I remembered all the shit Batman was doing in BvS:DoJ:WtF:CiA:VtM:MtA:MtG:MtR:HtR:DtF, and... how the fuck are people going to say to the guy who was going around branding common criminals and say "yeah, you seem like a totally reasonable person, I will fight beside you"
Presumably because he's a billionaire who's already invested in his own infrastructure and would be helpful to their cause.

That, or this wasn't really taken into consideration, and the branding thing was part of making everything all dark and edgy and giving Superman and Batman more reason to hate each other, and then it was promptly forgotten.
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Post by Sir Neil »

hyzmarca wrote:How the hell do you go from a guy in a green outfit riding a giant dog to this?
I've never seen his green outfit before, the toy I had looked like this: http://www.dcuc.info/wave_11/steppenwol ... s-version/
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Post by Mord »

hyzmarca wrote:How the hell do you go from a guy in a green outfit riding a giant dog to this?

Image
I think he looks more like a demon from Buffy or Angel than anything else.
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Post by schpeelah »

RobbyPants wrote: Presumably because he's a billionaire who's already invested in his own infrastructure and would be helpful to their cause.

That, or this wasn't really taken into consideration, and the branding thing was part of making everything all dark and edgy and giving Superman and Batman more reason to hate each other, and then it was promptly forgotten.
Haven't seen it, but from the way Movie Bob describes it, Justice League tries to pretend Man of Steel and Batman v Superman didn't quite happen the way they did and were a lot less edgy grimdark.
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Post by Voss »

Sir Neil wrote:
hyzmarca wrote:How the hell do you go from a guy in a green outfit riding a giant dog to this?
I've never seen his green outfit before, the toy I had looked like this: http://www.dcuc.info/wave_11/steppenwol ... s-version/
That's the one I recognize, probably from some animated thing or other. Vaguely genghis khan looking stereotype mother fucker that effectively acts as a herald/harbinger to prove how badass the boss is.
Last edited by Voss on Wed Nov 22, 2017 9:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Josh_Kablack »

Opened that bottle of Monkey Shoulder I had been saving. Will not be buying another. It's not exactly bad - just massively overhyped and moderately overpriced. You can get a cheap scotch for cheap prices. There's no reason to pay midshelf prices for one.
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Post by angelfromanotherpin »

My disappointment in The Last Jedi is close to total. If I had to pick a specific moment, it would be the Holdo maneuver. It looks cool, but it also completely invalidates having capital ships in the setting.
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Post by Voss »

Haven't seen it yet, but the fact that the writer/director is running around less than a week after release going 'Well, actually, what the film means is X, Y, Z.' is a terribly bad sign.

I've spoiled myself rather thoroughly on the film (and barring a few surprises, it lives down to my expectations), and the big question to me is since he went a completely different direction from Abram's treatment of the setting and characters, what the actual fuck is Episode 9 even going to be about?

I thought announcing these films as a packaged trilogy would mean at least some coherence in the story arc, but apparently not.
Last edited by Voss on Thu Dec 21, 2017 6:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Stahlseele »

I thought they were basically doing a Star Trek and rebooting the entire thing just with the kids of the original characters?
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Post by Prak »

The film does continue character arcs, and part of that arc is "you can't let yourself be completely defined by your past," and it carries that message by setting things up to look like call backs to stuff in earlier movies, like desperate plans by hotshot heroes who think its the only hope, and then thwarting that to have a different result.
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Post by Emerald »

angelfromanotherpin wrote:My disappointment in The Last Jedi is close to total.
Agreed. I thought they couldn't possibly make a worse Star Wars movie than The Force Awakens, and then they gave us this piece of shit.

<rant>
Plot-wise, it's 40% Empire Strikes Back, 40% Return of the Jedi, 10% sitcom buffoonery, and 10% character assassination. A bunch of scenes are almost shot-for-shot ripoffs, like the "preparing for AT-ATs on Hoth AT-M6s on Crait" bit and "Luke and Vader Rey and Kylo going to the Emperor's Snoke's throne room to be gloated at" scene, and everything remotely original is pointless, terrible, or both.

Character-wise, Leia is Magic Jedi Space Jedi for no discernible reason, Luke's behavior invalidates his entire character arc in and since the original trilogy, Hux and Kylo remain jokes of villains that no one can take seriously, Poe and Finn talk like 2017-vintage Pixar or Marvel characters (complete with a "can you hear me now?" joke from Poe), and Rey continues to be good at everything for no reason but now has no chance of a reasonable explanation besides "lol the Force says so."

When even Mark Hamill hates how they handled Luke in the movie and has to go on the interview circuit to lower expectations...yeah, it's bad.

And yes, Holdo's hyperjump kamikaze is a travesty. Let's put aside the fact that hyperspace does not work that way in Star Wars (which can't be dismissed with "oh, new canon" because they specifically kept Interdictor cruisers and the mechanics of hyperspace), and that that plus the fucking stupid hyperspacing-through-shields thing in TFA renders literally every battle in every Star Wars movie irrelevant, and assume it would work...even if that were the case, they went ahead and introduced an annoying, no-name (but supposedly childhood friends with Leia) character who gets hundreds of people killed because she's a smug ass instead of just talking to people, and she gets to make the sacrifice after ranting at Poe about how heroics and crazy plans are obsolete and counterproductive!

And it's a Mon Calamari Cruiser named after a Mon Calamari general from Rogue One with Mon Calamari Admiral motherfucking Ackbar onboard, yet they kill him off offscreen after a few seconds of screen time in the beginning and have a new character do it instead, when at least having Ackbar pull it off would give one original trilogy character a proper sendoff!
</rant>
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Post by Voss »

Truthfully, I don't give much of shit about the old characters (beyond at least one 'critic' saying that since Carrie Fisher died any parts of the movie with her in it are immune to criticism, which is utter bullshit- Criticizing the film isn't a reflection on her anyway). Their arcs were finished in Return- one or two coming back to pass the torch in simple scene would be fine, but their actual handling is gratuitous and wrongheaded fan service.

It's the basic logic fails and shitty storytelling that gets to me. This is a film that's at least half an hour too long, with half a dozen B plots (and no A plot), most of which are meaningless, and yet he director claims he can't pause to flesh characters out and give them a point for being in the film in the first place.

The shallowness of the new characters also bugs the shit out of me. I have no idea what any of them want, or what their motivations are. You can shuffle them around on any of the B plots, and it wouldn't make a blind bit of difference. They're completely replaceable and interchangeable.
Last edited by Voss on Thu Dec 21, 2017 5:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by nockermensch »

The only way to appreciate Star Wars is to not think too hardly about it.

The old canon lost me completely when I read that the Hutts were supposed to be an entire race of kingpins, while being huge, slow slugs. How the fuck exactly a Hutt acquires the loyalty of a bunch of criminals? Do they sweat heroin? Are they mind controllers? It's a mystery!

The new canon had not only a weapon that sucks an entire sun to destroys planets in a way that's immediately visible to other worlds light years away (it doesn't matter if the attack itself is FTL, the light of the explosion still has to behave as light) but also has now:
[*] bomber ships that have to fly over the target ship to drop bombs. On space. Oh, and the bomb hatch activation mechanism is something that would look antiquated on Earth circa 1950. Oh, and this is a setting that has torpedoes. Fuck that scene.
[*] the hyperspace jump can be used as very destructive weapon. This has the effect of turning all the previous space battles in the series into a farce.
[*] "to blast this door we bring a big ass cannon to the surface". Except that Star Destroyers can enter the atmosphere, so there was nothing keeping the the space nazis from descending their big ass capital ships and firing their main guns at the door.

Add to this the general military idiocy from all sides (why the hell are like 3 star destroyers just watching the dreadnought being attacked on the first battle? why the hell didn't Leia just tell her fucking crew what was the deal about the retreat?) and the result is a movie you watch to follow the soap opera between the characters. And they seem to be aiming at this very segment, anyway. I've seen fandoms erupt into heavy shipping with much less material than this movie provides for Kylorey (Reylo? Kyrey?)
Last edited by nockermensch on Mon Dec 25, 2017 4:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Longes »

I am slightly miffed by the Knights Not Appearing In This Movie, characters zig-zagging (what happened to Kylo's fanboism over Vader?) and the continued Mary Sueness of Ray. As well as orbital bombardment of Luke Skywalker's character, and omniscient force ghost Yoda trolling Luke and the audience by blowing up the jedi tree after Rey has already stolen Luke's books and blowing up the tree is meaningless.
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Post by maglag »

Since the original star wars movie there is sound in sspppaaacceeee. The setting physics have always been whatever the plot demands.

How else do you expect the elite jedi to charge into battle with cloth robes and melee weapons then win with not even a scratch?
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Post by Username17 »

I don't understand the "Rey is a Mary Sue" complaints. She doesn't have a look or origin that doesn't match the rest of the universe. She doesn't have everyone everywhere falling over to tell her how wonderful she is. She doesn't have her one and only character flaw being that she doesn't realize how awesome she is. She's just a bog standard Star Wars Galaxy chosen one with a reasonably well established set of powers that other chosen ones have used in previous movies and games.

Yes, she learns Mind Trick on the fly super quickly, but Luke bent a fucking proton torpedo path in his first movie. Chosen ones just sort of do that shit.

But similarly, I find the people who are lavishing praise on Last Jedi to be pretty fucking weird. If the best thing you can say about a movie is that it trolls fans of the franchise and shits all over their childhood on purpose, that's pretty fucking faint praise.

Right wing internet trolls are claiming responsibility for the Last Jedi having a 53% audience approval. But honestly I believe Rotten Tomatoes when they say that the score is simply authentic. People are deeply divided on it, because it's an incredibly divisive movie, not because internet neo Nazis wield the power to tank word of mouth about Star Wars. The Alt-Right hated Rogue One too, and that one has an 87% audience approval.

I haven't seen Last Jedi because I've been working too much. But honestly it sounds pretty much like a "wait for video" movie. The only genuinely good thing anyone seems to say about it is that at least we get to see Leia kick ass one last time before the actress' death permanently puts an end to that sort of thing. I just don't get the desire to have Luke die by just critically failing a drain roll at an inopportune time so that there's room for a new generation of heroes to look good. A new generation of heroes can look good without having the old generation of heroes derping out at the last moment. There's no reason to do that except to piss people off. So it's not really surprising that the movie succeeded in its apparent goal of getting a bunch of people pissed at it. No idea why Disney would sign off on something like that.

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Post by angelfromanotherpin »

FrankTrollman wrote:The only genuinely good thing anyone seems to say about it is that at least we get to see Leia kick ass one last time before the actress' death permanently puts an end to that sort of thing.
Leia kicks ~0 ass in TLJ. Apparently she was supposed to get her big moments in IX, but oops.
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Post by Longes »

I'll elaborate later, but the short version is that I consider Rey to be a mary sue because she never faces meaningful opposition. Her lowest moment in TLJ is that Luke doesn't live up to her standards and expectations.
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Post by Mask_De_H »

Longes wrote:I'll elaborate later, but the short version is that I consider Rey to be a mary sue because she never faces meaningful opposition. Her lowest moment in TLJ is that Luke doesn't live up to her standards and expectations.
That's not what a Sue is, fam; that's what a wish-fulfillment protagonist just does. To be a Sue: everyone has to be fellating Rey's every action, she has to have no meaningful flaws (outside of being too awesome), and her very existence must warp the romantic/dramatic plot around her and not other characters of equal narrative weight (which, depending on how you feel about 1st trilogy nostalgia acts, may be true).

Basically, what Frank said, but with more parentheses :tongue:
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Post by K »

I think the problem with Rey is that she didn't have a two-minute scene where she is introduced to the Force. Seriously, just that small of a scene would have completely dispelled my authentic disbelief that she could fight toe-to-toe with a clearly powerful Sith.

The problem with the Last Jedi is that its boring. There are too many characters and the things they do aren't important to advancing the plot. You could cut Finn 100% out of the movie and the narrative arc of the movie would be completely unchanged because all of his scenes ultimately don't matter at all. Arguably, the overall tone of the film would be greatly improved.

The high points in the movie consist of a single fight and a single spaceship battle. The low points consist of around 40 failed slapstick jokes, about an hour of Rebel political infighting, every scene with Leia, and an entire subplot about a set of characters who literally should have just appeared in the film as non-speaking background actors.
Last edited by K on Sat Dec 23, 2017 7:50 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Whipstitch »

Yeah, Finn's bit is basically a separate movie and your interest in it lives and dies by how much you care about his attachment to the Resistance. It's an awkward as hell fit because when it comes to motivation these films already largely hand-wave politics and social matters in favor of just having a dude in a black cape kill planets with super weapons and calling it a day. At this point any time spent throwing a spotlight on "Why should the Resistance resist?" is mostly an exercise in reminding the audience that they don't really know what the fuck is going on in this universe because decades later all the world building in Star Wars is still being done by the seat of the producer's pants.

I don't get why people are acting like someone raped their dog though.
Last edited by Whipstitch on Sat Dec 23, 2017 9:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by MGuy »

Every time I see someone talk about the Last Jedi the complaints and praises are different and weird to me. Some match up but always with a different twist. I thought the movie was pretty middle of the road but honestly I've never had a super high opinion of any of the Star Wars movies. I feel that Rey 'is' a Mary Sue who can pretty much do all the things in Star Wars that are things anyone cares about. Fighting w or w/o lightsaber, shoot, pilot, fix stuff. Her only real problems are caused by herself and when she does get in trouble the Force neatly gets her out no questions asked. People also all pretty much like her. Finn, Solo, Chewie, the old lady who's name I don't know, Snoke, Emo-Ren are all either extremely friendly/helpful to her or are super deep interested in her. Luke is the only one who actively rebuffs her presence. I had a lot less of a problem with it in The Last Airbender/Jedi because she doesn't really 'do' anything of note in this one aside from move some rocks and not die. Every time someone compares her with Luke it makes me scratch my head. Luke could pilot well in 6 and that's it. He makes one incredible shot with Ghost-Obi whispering the cheats to how to pull it out and Obi actually taught him a damn thing about the force before he did it. That being said OP Rey doesn't bother me that much. It bothered me more in the first movie but not nearly as much as Finn being a bumbling idiot which was a thing that bothered me a lot. In this movie it's barely a problem at all. Most of the jokes didn't land for me but they did for my nephew so I guess target audience success.

My biggest complaint about the movie is actually Leia but I'll get on that later. I think the second biggest problem I had with the movie was how much useless shit was in it. What happens in the movie FEELS like a waste of time. Everything Finn, Rose, and Po does in this movie is ultimately meaningless and nigh inconsequential. There are consequences but I'll also touch on that below.
First let me mention seeming wastes of time that I won't count.
Po's insistence on taking out the Dreadnaught. It establishes Po's lesson he's supposed to learn and thins out the resistance's numbers which raise the stakes. Also. I thought the scene leading up to it was funny and watching him fly was entertaining.

Rey's attempt to get Luke to help. I actually like Luke's arc in this so Rey actually failing to convince him to help is actually alright with me. Actually Rey seems to be the only one who doesn't stray into complete waste of time category... Except the hole thing. There's probably some EU lore about it but fuck me that doesn't do a damn thing for this movie. People insist to me that because she fails with that, that I should also consider it a waste of time but I disagree and have been willing to argue about it.

Now for the things that happen just because for reasons I'm not sure of.
1) Finn and Rose. Everything they do is pointless. Their mission fails but it is oh so much more than that. Finn is supposed to re-learn a lesson he was supposed to have learned in the very last movie. He was a bumbling coward in the last one and has regressed to being that again. It still bugs the fuck out of me. Then there's Rose who doesn't have an arc as a character and along with Finn get absolutely nothing accomplished. Their whole escapade to the casino and on board the First Order's main ship really... just goes nowhere. They go to the casino but can't even get in contact with who they think they need, reject another guy who can do what they need who promptly escapes without them, agrees to do the mission with them for barely any reason, helps them fail at it, then as a chain effect makes the Rebel's escape plan fail. I kind of get what they wanted to do with some of the scenes, wanting to set up certain messages but god damn it was just the most awful way to attempt it.

2) Leia living. Everything about this was disappointing. I try to stay out of all the behind the scenes stuff so I don't know what they had planned for IX but considering what happened to the actress the stunt they pull in this movie seems absolutely pointless. It was the kind of pointless that hit hardest when the movie ends because there is no pay off, no one really reacts how they should to how fucking amazing that shit was, and the movie rolls along as if she was never basically fucked to begin with. It bothers me more than the first thing despite it being less of a drain on the plot. It just absolutely fucked with all my expectations and had no pay off and unlike Finn (who I don't like) and Rose (who I don't care about) I LIKE Leia and it's just... a waste.

3) What was the point of not telling Po they had a plan? This is a prime example of the consequences of 1. They 'wanted' the little side adventure with Finn and Rose but how do you get Po to send them on that adventure if he KNOWS that they have a plan already? Easy, just have the leaders in this incredibly bad situation decide for no reason not to tell him they have a fucking good plan. It's so fucked up because if Po 'hadn't' sent them on their side mission it seems to suggest that the plan would have actually fucking worked.

4) The salt speeders (?). I don't know what they were supposed to do. It didn't seem to do anything at all. I don't get the point of that scene. I don't get the point of why it was supposed to be a good thing to not let Finn save the day just to let Rose die. Several people before Finn sacrificed themselves. If you wanted to teach a lesson that this was wrong think why the hell did at least 3 different people and now 4 with Rose do exactly that and have those be treated as good?
Having listed those, I can see why I should think worse of the movie but I really don't have very strong feelings about it. I liked what they did with Luke, Rey, and Emo Ren. That was enough to make it watchable for me I suppose.
Last edited by MGuy on Sat Dec 23, 2017 10:09 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Voss »

K wrote:I think the problem with Rey is that she didn't have a two-minute scene where she is introduced to the Force. Seriously, just that small of a scene would have completely dispelled my authentic disbelief that she could fight toe-to-toe with a clearly powerful Sith.

The problem with the Last Jedi is that its boring. There are too many characters and the things they do aren't important to advancing the plot. You could cut Finn 100% out of the movie and the narrative arc of the movie would be completely unchanged because all of his scenes ultimately don't matter at all. Arguably, the overall tone of the film would be greatly improved.
Finn (and Rey, at least coming in to this movie) have two big problems.
One, they're interchangeable. Part of this is the advertising for TFA, centering around the 'Finn holding the lightsaber' scene. Up until Rey actually gets kidnapped and then suddenly, randomly manifests force powers, the 'who is the secret Jedi-to-be?' question is completely open to either one of them. And with TLJ's insistence that characterization and development don't matter and anyone can be a hero, you can pretty much swap the characters around at random and reach the same end point.

The other reason is these characters have terrible goals for an epic space fantasy. Finn's major drive throughout movie #1 is to run off, get the fuck out and hide somewhere. This is briefly replaced by 'rescue the girl who doesn't need it.' Rey's major drive is to fuck off back home and wait.

Neither has much of a reason to care about the Resistance, Finn has a slight bromance with Poe, Rey... got hugged by Leia after coming back to tell her Han was dead, then immediately left- that was her sum total of interaction any actual member of the 'Resistance.' She didn't even bother to wait for her fleeing buddy and would be rescuer to wake the fuck up.

Being confronted with an apathetic and aggressively indifferent Luke should put her back into her only character trait and real goal: fucking off and waiting to not be abandoned.

Neither character really has an attachment to the other characters they're dealing with, the story or even what's going on. The script says they have to, but the characters have no convincing reason to give a fuck. And it shows.
Last edited by Voss on Sat Dec 23, 2017 11:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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