fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #4595 ]

[ SECRET POST #4595 ]

⌈ Secret Post #4595 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 28 secrets from Secret Submission Post #658.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
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02. https://i.imgur.com/NYYvEYJ.png

I'll take mindless rehashing over an annoying assortment of cheap, smug, self-congratulatory gotcha moments strung up in a row (with a garnish of clumsy social commentary, abysmal pacing and dumb tropes) that thinks it's much more clever and genre defying than it is any day.

Which movie do you think you are describing? That's not TLJ at all.

Except that it is.

It did have pacing problems, I will acknowledge that. And if we're criticizing Star Wars movies for being tropey, I think we're going to have problems beyond TLJ.

But also, it's weird to me how much of this is concerned with the movie "thinking" it's better than it is - it's smug, it's self-congratulatory, it thinks it's clever and genre defying, etc.

I have no issue with a Star Wars movie being tropey. The thing is: Johnson made a huge fuss about how what he was doing was so different and totally original and new when in the end it wasn't.
And why do you think it's weird? Because that's basically what Johnson was doing. And people who love that movie really like to use those arguments in several variations as arguments why they like it.

It may not be genre-defying in terms of the entire scifi genre, but it certainly is very different from all the other Star Wars movies. I'd argue in a good way, maybe you don't see it that way. But I don't think you can realistically claim it isn't doing something different from the other movies in the series.

Defying genre in Star Wars is like defying genre in My Little Pony. Nobody comes out of it looking good, and yet so many people keep trying.

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(Anonymous) - 2019-08-05 23:29 (UTC) - Expand

It's weird because you're not talking about the movie itself, you're talking about being annoyed by Johnson making a fuss about things, and by what people who like the movie say they liked about it.

I mean ...this may be a shocking truth for you but a movie is not a living, thinking creature. So the movie itself doesn't do anything on its own.

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(Anonymous) - 2019-08-06 08:21 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2019-08-06 11:03 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2019-08-06 15:57 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2019-08-06 19:02 (UTC) - Expand

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(Anonymous) - 2019-08-06 21:30 (UTC) - Expand

I don't recall Johnson himself making any such fuss. He was just having fun and being a fanboy. Now fans I can definitely see making a big thing about the 'originality' - and it's true it did diverge from a lot of the stale expectations people have of what the ST would be. But it's wasn't exactly marketed that way.

I don't know where it was but I watched an interview where he was pretty annoyingly smug about things. He definitely had a lot of fun just making "his" Star Wars fanboy vision without even trying to properly connect it to the first movie. And like TFA or not, at least some logical continuity would have been nice.

+1

I devoured all the pre-TLJ information I could, and I found him to be pretty humble about the whole thing. He was definitely excited to be a director/writer for StarWars, but he wasn’t arrogant or gleefully lord in it over fans or anything.

I still think TFA is better than Clones or Menace. It's definitely good that Clones and Menace were more willing to try weird stuff and expand the universe but boy, did the execution fall down.

I do not agree. Well, no, actually I do agree with a lot of what you say about TFA. I just don't agree that TLJ is moving in a better direction. (It also isn't that new? I'm not sure what you saw that was 'fresh' about it?) TLJ continues a lot of what I thought were bad elements from TFA, and it did also borrow heavily from ESB the same way TFA borrowed from ANH (Skywalker family revelations, personal connections being drawn between the light and dark sides, unfortunate moral choices, etc).

Mostly, though, I think I just don't like the sequel series, and I freely admit that it's more for feel than any objective reason. The sequel series just makes the galaxy feel small. Everything's winnowed down to a couple of big forces duking it out in what feels like an empty backdrop rather than a living galaxy (a feeling which TLJ in particular did nothing to make better). The prequels at least added a lot of worldbuilding depth to the galaxy, even if not all of it was particularly appreciated, and the original trilogy at least had a tangible sense of weight and scale from the moment Alderaan was destroyed. You felt every death on Alderaan through Leia's reaction. The six planets destroyed by Starkiller Base left you feeling nothing. The Empire felt huge, ponderous and grinding, but the First Order feel like a dying remnant throwing a massive flailing tantrum at emptiness. There's reasons for them to feel that way, yes, but it doesn't ... Everything feels small and sordid in the sequel series. It's just not a sensation I like in a Star Wars movie.

I think you just summed up nicely why I prefer the prequels to the sequels. The prequels really did feel like there was a whole universe. I feel nothing when it comes to the First Order.

I'm glad people are still enjoying Star Wars and looking forward to more, but honestly, I can't tell them apart. I am 99% sure i saw the movie in the secret but what happened or who was in it....

No clue.

And that's my biggest issue with them, anymore.

I feel that the people who are all "Force Awakens just copy-catted A New Hope," are being annoyingly simplistic. Did the movie utilize and play with similar tropes? Yes, it did, but Force Awakens isn't just a copycat, because it used these tropes in a different way.

For example, Luke Skywalker in A New Hope came from a normal, happy family background. However with Rey, it's clearly established that she has been alone for a long time and is used to being alone, a backstory which makes her personality/identity different from that of Luke's. Luke wanted to leave Tatooine, whereas Rey wanted to stay on her homeworld, only giving up on returning later on in the story, when it comes apparent just how high the stakes are; it's not just about delivering this robot and returning home.

Also when the shit hit the fan, Luke had Obi Wan to walk him through and explain things, whereas Rey only had Finn, and he didn't know too much more than she did about what was going on. Obi Wan was a mentor/teacher who could explain all this stuff about the Force to Luke, whereas Finn is more like an ally/partner. Finn wants to help, but like I said, he didn't know too much more about what was going on than Rey did.

The tropes are not why I personally refer to TFA as a copy though. I can't speak for all others of course, but what annoyed me were the literal copies, like the whole "fly through a trench and dump something in a hole to blow up the big gun".

The first time I saw that scene, with Luke, there was suspense. Of course I knew he would succeed, because SW is that kind of movie, but I was still on the edge of my seat. With TFA the suspense was not there. Not only did I know Poe would succeed, because TFA is that kind of movie too, but I had literally seen it succeed before.

TLJ copied plenty of scenes from other Star Wars movies as well though.

Sure, but it did new things with them. The references in TLJ were for the most part unique. TFA made references and did the exact same thing with them or mirrored them almost every time.

Except it wasn't really unique at all.

DA It honestly isn't that different. Large chunks of the structure of the movie are the same between TLJ and ESB. The Rebel fleet flees Imperial/First Order retaliation from Hoth/D'Qar. Luke/Rey are on Dagobah/Ahch-To seeking the old Jedi master Yoda/Luke to teach them/join the effort, but the old master is struggling with history/isolation/perceived guilt over allowing the current Dark Sider to come into being. During the movie, Han-Leia/Finn-Rose go to meet an independent shady ally in Cloud City/Canto Bight. Said ally promptly betrays them (though DJ had nowhere near the pathos and panache of Lando doing it).

Admittedly, Luke doing his Obi-Wan moment in the second movie rather than the first was a slight change, but not that much of one. And Kylo overthrowing Snoke is a semi-decent twisted version of Vader killing the Emperor. But honestly, a lot of the story points are beat for beat from the original trilogy even in TLJ. It's not doing that much different.

I remember when TFA came out and everyone complained about what a carbon copy it was. And then TLJ came out and suddenly TFA was new and innovative? Sure.

I have this weird relationship with the new Star Wars films that I think that TLJ is definately a better and mroe interesting film, but I did enjoy watching TFA much more (both of them have their drawbacks, but they are different drawbacks). I just hope that the last one makes the trilogy into something coherent, because the story doesn't really flow very smoothly right now from TFA to TLJ.

And re: Johnsonn - he's still working on his trilogy? It's just not going to be the first one that comes out, but he was never supposed to direct any SW film before 2021 or something like that. He went deliberatly directly into Knives Out to take a longer breather?

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