Topic: Movie thread.

J.J. Abrams rather ho-hum style of ‘mystery box storytelling’ meant that all The Force Awakens did was pose questions, and left it for people to answer them. I thoroughly dislike that. When questions are asked of the audience, they should have some kind of payoff, and shouldn't be rapid fire, like they were in The Force Awakens.

Off Rian Johnson goes and says "bugger it", and pretty much answers everything in some way, which - to me - seems to be a fundamental part of the backlash this film is receiving.

Snoke is easily comparable to the Emperor, who by the end of Return of the Jedi we still barely knew. He was a way to grow Kylo Ren, and I think it made sense. Revealing that he was the one who created the Force link between Rey and Kylo Ren, and then Kylo Ren hiding himself in the Force as a result until he kills him (the look Kylo Ren gives Snoke at the linking revelation says it all) works for me. It's more boring to have an Emperor rehash exist through IX and give J.J. Abrams the same problem he had in The Force Awakens, which is too much similarity with another film.

So Rian gets rid of him, which I like.

Same thing goes for Rey's parents. Star Wars has always been about being special; Anakin was special, Luke was special, and Rian is going out of his way to show that in a universe that is as large as Star Wars, random nobody’s can be heroes as well! I have a sneaking suspicion J.J. Abrams might retcon this as Kylo Ren lying, but that would be rubbish, and go against the ending to this film, with the stable boy, who is another example of hope with a nobody, somebody who can grow into a new destiny, not fulfill the one that everyone says they should have.

As for the Luke Skywalker plot, in terms of execution, it's my favorite Luke Skywalker plot in the franchise, in no small part due to how remarkable Mark Hamill was in his role. For all the people that were upset that The Force Awakens had Princess Leia and Han Solo back in the same role they were thirty years ago with little to no change, it seems silly to argue against this characterisation, whereas Luke has grown.

He's a broken hero, who could not possibly live up to the hero he became at the end of Return of the Jedi. Legends are often wrong, and that's the point in the film, to a degree, and Luke's arc in thisfilm is embracing his legend. "What do you think I'm gonna do, take on the First Order with a laser sword?" he asks Rey. It sounds silly on paper, until he shows up at the end of the film, and in that moment, the legend of Luke Skywalker is reborn. Personally speaking, the point where he's walking towards the doors and all the Rebels are coming into frame ending in Poe, the swell of the music, it might be my favourite Star Wars scene to date. It was a legend inspiring a new generation to keep fighting, and it was exactly what Luke Skywalker was supposed to be after all these years.

Even Luke's thoughts of killing Ben make sense, considering how important the idea of a legend is in this film. With another Skywalker falling to the dark side, the legend will slowly turn into a curse for the family, one that threatens to mess up the galaxy for generations. I understand why Luke was considering it, but he didn't, and he felt ashamed, and it worked. Somehow, deconstructing the myth of Luke Skywalker, not putting the myth to screen, was the best possible way to handle the return of the character, and I can't applaud Rian enough for what he did.

Sticking with the Jedi aspect of the film, how this film goes to define the Force is what I wanted the prequels to teach me. We had three films devoted to a standing Jedi Order, and this film deals with the Force more than all three of those combined, and makes it more tangible than it felt in any of the original trilogy films. The balance, the light rising to meet the dark, how easy Rey goes to the darkness, it creates for a narrative that goes past a hokey space religion that, for most of the films, was used to move rocks and trick people. Kylo Ren’s struggle to not go to the light in The Force Awakens echoes Rey's issue with not going to the dark side, and it further connects those two characters in an interesting way.

I must admit that the Finn subplot was quite rough, I cannot really say otherwise. Having Finn and Rose sneak on board the Star Destroyer without wasting fifteen minutes in Canto Bight seems like a much stronger choice to shorten the film and get to the point. Saying that, it is only about fifteen minutes in a two and a half hours film, and that's not even considering the fact that the escape sequence, with that John Williams score, is actually pretty enjoyable.

I think the plot for the Resistance was fine, and for all the complaints I have seen about Holdo not telling Poe the plan, when she did, he told Finn, and DJ overheard, and how many people were lost as a result? It's a decent way of justifying the storytelling choice, and as a whole I thought Poe's arc was surprisingly decent. Leia's Supergirl moment was a bit daft, and on paper I can see the idea working fine, but how they put it to screen didn’t really work.

Just saw this last night. I'm disappointed so many people seem to be reacting poorly to it, although I think I do get why. The film seems to take an almost active interest in deconstructing major aspects of the Star Wars mythos, from the cinematic trope characters to situations the original trilogy used so brilliantly. The likable rouge just out for himself is... actually just out for himself in this film: there's no hidden core of nobility to him like there was with Solo. The wise hermit is actually someone who is incredibly embittered and unapproachable, as could be reasonably expected from people who go to lengths to hide in some remote, relatively unknown location in the Galaxy. The "redeemed villain" plot completely fell through: Kylo Ren has been at this dark side business much too long to simply abandon it because blush he touched holographic skin with Rey. Her too: the lone wolf, powerful hero with secret powers and a mysterious past. Who could her parents possibly be?! If you're used to the vaguely aristocratic norms of the other SW movies, you're expecting a hidden connection to a powerful bloodline. Many were expecting her to be a Skywalker or something. But, no, her parents were drunks and louts who sold her. The last ditch effort by the experienced rebel underling to save it from the arrogance of a higher up who was going to get them killed? Well, as it turns out, that whole scheme was completely useless: all Poe did was engineer a situation where half or more of the remaining Resistance fighters were wiped out. Turns out Holdo knew what she was doing. The "Jedi" aren't some special group of mystical space monks who are the only ones capable of saving the universe. Instead, the legacy of the Jedi is in the hands of Rey and other ordinary people, as this film went to lengths to democratize the force. The big bad guy from TFA turns out be vain and easily tricked and killed by Kylo Ren. It goes on and on.

It must be like someone taking a beloved thing from your childhood and putting it under a scalpel to show the defects. Unlike TFA, which was nothing more than a less inspired retread of the same plot of ANH with less interesting characters, TLJ actually sets out to create a new vision of Star Wars: unfortunately, this can only be had by deconstructing the conceptual clutter left behind by years of Star Wars media, so that a new, reconstructed vision of the franchise can be erected in its place (which it starts to do at the end).

I still had some issues with the movie, of course: While I liked aspects of the plotline, the casino planet bits went on way too long and felt like they were padding out the run-time.

I can't ignore that the entire Holdo/Poe situation was caused by a complete lack of communication. Even if Poe was ultimately in the wrong, it was Holdo's unwillingness to communicate with him that ultimately caused all of this to happen. It was a failure of leadership on her part. When he pleads with her to give him some sense of what they're going to do, she merely insults his character and tells him to go sit down and shut up.

Is there a Bechdel test for men? Because Finn would fail it big time. He spends most of the film obsessing about Rey, smaller portions of the film relating to Rose, and almost none of it developing any actually interesting character traits. I was sad that his bromance with Poe was nowhere to be seen here, as it was one of the few charming things about TFA.

Most of the new characters just fundamentally aren't very memorable. While I get that this works for TLJ and its populist vibe, I can't help but feel that, in ten years, almost nobody is going to remember Finn, Rey, Rose, Holdo, Kylo Ren, etc.

Let's talk about the things I did like, though: I didn't much care for the treatment of the force in TFA, but I really liked its depiction here. It felt very much like something sacred and ancient that was constantly a force in human life. It was refreshing to see the ease with which one could fall into the darkness, or, like Kylo, stay there to hide from the light.

The battles in this film are absolutely spectacular. The battle where Kylo Ren and Rey take down a room full of First Order soldiers is probably my favorite in the series to this point: it's visceral, lightning-fast, and utterly thrilling.

As I mentioned, the wonderful, deconstructive nature of the film itself. I'm not surprised, as Rian Johnson is a master of taking circumstances, breaking down the illusions characters hold regarding them, and seeing things to their terrible, inevitable ends. This should be clear for anyone who saw Johnson's work on Breaking Bad. Particularly, the masterful Ozymandias, which is arguably the most well-written hour of television ever made. Another recent example is the stellar Looper.

This film is an actual ensemble piece where everyone gets to contribute. Rey has a central role in the film, but she doesn't ridiculously Rambo her way across it like she did in TFA. This made TLJ so much more satisfying to watch.

Overall, this feels much more cinematic and less glitzy and Hollywood than TFA. This was also a quality missing in the prequels. Despite the changes and subversion, this is the first time I've felt like I was watching a proper follow-up to the original trilogy.

The movie starts out decent enough. A group of scientists have discovered a way to shrink organic matter, which, eventually, gets applied to humans. Humans are able to be shrunk to something like 1/100 of their size, and en masse. Thanks to their drastically reduced living requirements, people who are miniaturized are able to live like kings on relatively little money. $20,000 or so becomes millions for people who are miniaturized. There are also tax benefits the government uses to incentivize people to transition. The first half hour or so of this film explores the implications a bit: what would this mean for humanity's impact on the environment? What would it mean for the social and especially economic spheres of social life when masses of people are dropping out of normal consumer life altogether? Would there be prejudice against differently-sized people? This is the only decent part of the movie. None of this is ever explored again. The main character is a Paul Safranek, an occupational therapist who is played by an incredibly bored looking Matt Damon. He and his wife are having money issues and want a change in their life, so, after talking with some friends who were downsized and seeing that they could live like millionaires in a mansion in a downsized community, they decide to sell off their property and transition as well.

Safranek goes through with it, but his wife flakes out in the middle of the procedure and then proceeds to abandon and divorce him and apparently steals a good majority of his money in the process, he's forced out of his luxurious estate and into a normal working life in the community. Here we see him... date a mousy and pensive single mother... build a relationship with an apparent drug lord neighbor who likes to laugh at people a lot... and then, finally, become the indentured servant of a vietnamese refugee after he breaks her artificial leg in the process of trying to make it more comfortable for her. We see a lot of this refugee and the slum she lives in on the outskirts of the downsized community as the film becomes a social drama. I think they're supposedly falling in love as she constantly berates him and orders him around... I didn't see it.