Star Wars Megathread

[Sheilbh]

The Empire Strikes Back is regarded by many as the pinnacle of the SW films and for good reason.  But the narrative is a mess and plot holes are cavernous. If you actually try to describe the plot to someone who never saw SW it would sound nuts.  The Rebels, fresh with the momentum of destroying the Empire's secret weapon and killing the top imperial minister, hole up in an remote, indefensible and logistically nightmarish ice planet where they are discovered through the simple expedient of sending a cheap probe. Rather than simply nuking the pathetic base from orbit using their vast fleet, the Empire implements a pointlessly complex ground assault using the worst designed AFVs in the history of any known universe, thus allowing sufficient time for the copiously plot armored protagonists to escape. The movie then splits into two plots: a getaway gone wrong with most of the main characters while the lead character (and audience) suffers through barrages of grammatically mangled koans delivered by a wrinkled muppet with a chronic throat condition.  The interlude proves to be mere time wasting as lead character belatedly rushes away to save the others, negating the purpose of the training that took up most of the previous hour.  After battling the Black Codpieced Bad Guy in a series of sets that --  like the Death Star in the original film --  appear like they were designed by a 10 year old that got bored with his erector set and quit halfway through, we get the big reveal: in a vast galaxy of quadrillions of people it just so coincidentally happens that hero and villain are related!  Then as our hero is on the verge of perishing he is saved by space ghosts to rejoin a vast mobile rebel armada . . . the existence of which makes pointless the whole Hoth base business that started things off.

See its easy to make it all seem silly through analysis.

But I think that's just looking at the plot. I kind of think this film isn't as good as a film. As I say the fight in the red room and the bombing sequence in the Last Jedi are really well-done, suspenseful action sequences. The equivalent sort of scenes here I felt were messy and often because I think they felt a need, especially in some scenes, to shoehorn in a reference to some character from Star Wars myth rather than focus on, you know, suspense and action. It got in its own way.

And I think the issue is MCU have raised the bar for how you do this kind of huge blockbuster movie because they're very good at having lots of ridiculous dashing and chasing, but enough scenes in between or moments to allow the characters to breathe (especially the last couple of films). I don't think the issue is Star Wars getting MCUed, I don't think it's MCU enough. I think there's a lot they could have learned from them, not least how to deal with secondary characters. If anything I think the issue is Star Wars maybe getting stuck up their own ares over what they should/shouldn't do and how a Star Wars film should be.

Also as I say on a purely character leve you have this running joke(?)/character point about Finn wondering about Poe's background. But it's just dropped in from nowhere, raised a couple of times in fairly obtrusive ways and then sort-of resolved. There's no pay off or character development from it because I don't think you ever care. This is why I wonder if it's an idea Abrams intended to put in his second film, but never got to so instead of changing just rushes it in this one.

I can sort of see the point that they needed some enemy from the past and then there's an adventure where you run to get the thing and then go off to do something etc - and on a level it's fine. My issue is I think there's another franchise that's doing that type of film better - and I think other films in this franchise have done it better.

[Berkut]

Look, its pretty simple. They never had a story. There is no story. It is just a bunch of action sequences that JJ Abrams thinks is what makes a movie, raggedly strung together. They never, at any point, had any overall story to tell.

In a lot of ways, the first three movies were better - well, at least in THAT way. They at least had a story to tell, and it is clear that the story was understood by the teller right when they started telling it.

You know perfectly well that nobody had any idea how the third movie would end when they started filming the first movie, nor did they know when they stopped filming the first movie.

[Sheilbh]

I disagree. My guess is this is what JJ Abrams wanted and he had a vague idea of where the three films would go. But they got Johnson in for the second one who had a different take (and I'm sure he had a rough idea what he wanted to do with film three). So when Abrams comes back he either has to re-imagine and build on what Johnson's done (which he doesn't) or try and do a sort-of greatest hits from what he wanted to do in 2 & 3 in half the time (which he does).

I've no doubt film 2 would have introduced Palpatine and built up the threat, if Abrams did it.

[Habbaku]

Abrams specifically stated he wasn't coming back after the first film, though. If he had an idea of what he was going to do, he obviously didn't communicate it very well with Johnson, or Johnson and Disney agreed to eschew it all. And then Colin Treverrow was fired/released/whatever, and...Abrams came back only to try to tack on what he wanted to do with the trilogy anyway and then rush through it?

That makes him an even worse storyteller.

[Sheilbh]

Interesting. He was interviewed on the Mayo and Kermode show here (for TROS) and said him and his writing partner had ideas of where it would go over the next two films.

[Habbaku]

I have no doubt that they did, and I have little doubt that they gave those notes over to Johnson and Disney/Treverrow.

I am 100% convinced that there was no mention of Palpatine's return, though.

[DontSayBanana]

I disagree. My guess is this is what JJ Abrams wanted and he had a vague idea of where the three films would go. But they got Johnson in for the second one who had a different take (and I'm sure he had a rough idea what he wanted to do with film three). So when Abrams comes back he either has to re-imagine and build on what Johnson's done (which he doesn't) or try and do a sort-of greatest hits from what he wanted to do in 2 & 3 in half the time (which he does).

I've no doubt film 2 would have introduced Palpatine and built up the threat, if Abrams did it.

That's actually very close to the reason Kathleen Kennedy gave for switching late in production and bringing JJ Abrams back in as a "ringer" to close the trilogy:

Well, I wouldn't say it didn't work. Colin was at a huge disadvantage not having been a part of Force Awakens and in part of those early conversations because we had a general sense of where the story was going. Like any development process, it was only in the development that we're looking at a first draft and realizing that it was perhaps heading in a direction that many of us didn't feel was really quite where we wanted it to go. And we were on a schedule, as we often are with these movies, and had to make a tough decision as to whether or not we thought we could get there in the time or not. And as I said, Colin was at a disadvantage because he hadn't been immersed in everything that we all had starting out with Episode VII.

Even though she's talking about Trevorrow, it's not like Rian Johnson was in on those discussions, either- sounds like they're very much aware that the short production cycle and choice to direct with an ensemble pretty much made it impossible to tie things together neatly as a trilogy the way audiences were expecting from the first 6 core movies.

[Berkut]

Yeah, I don't know why anyone would ask me to believe what a bunch of people invested in their narrative tell me rather than what I saw with my own eyeballs.

And listen to what they are actually saying. They had a "general sense of where the story was going". Do you think Tolkien when he was wrapping up the first book had just a "general" sense of where his story was going?

A "general sense"? OK. That means...nothing. It means they knew that movie three would have Finn and Rey and Kylo in it. It does not mean that at that moment they knew who Rey was, or what all that foreshadowing meant (which turned out to make no fucking sense at all).

Bullshit. Bullshit. Double bullshit. JJ Abrams knew where it was going my ass. Their "general sense" means not a damn thing. You don't need a general sense, you need a specific idea of the broad outlines of the structure of the story. Who are these characters. What are the reveals, and why? You can fill in the treasure hunts and adventures and secondary characters along the way, for sure. But there is no fucking way you can convince me that when they started this thing, they knew Rey was going to be the grand-kid of Palpatine. If that is true, I want to see the dated storyboards.

I do not believe it one bit.

Hell, if it IS true, that would actually make it worse, since if they actually knew where they were going, it makes their incredibly terrible execution of getting their that much worse. Snope? WTF was the point of Snope if the eventual Real Bad Guy is Palpatine????

[Valmy]

Well it is not like JJ Abrams doesn't have a history of setting up things without any idea of how to pay it off and badly fumbling trying to do so.

[Berkut]

Indeed. Why anyone would just take their word for it that no, really, they totally had a plan! I have no idea.


It's someone calling "Bank" after the shot already went off the glass. Except in this case it missed entirely.

[Solmyr]

First of all, Force Ghosts are really a Jedi thing.  No idea if a Sith has ever come back in that way.

Darth Marr. 

[Tamas]

Berkut is right.

[celedhring]

I find the notion that there was no direction for the trilogy pretty hard to believe, at least for the main character arcs. Lucas kinda came up with the OT after the first one became a huge success, even swerving in stuff like Leia-Luke-Vader's relationship (retroactive incest, yay!) but he never thought he'd make more than one which was clearly not the case here.

I find it more likely that they have been switching gears after every movie which lead to the current mess. I suppose eventually we'll know what went down.

Something I'd love to know is Lucas' original plans for the new trilogy, the prequels are exemplars of terrible filmmaking and screewriting, but at least there's a purpose to them, and tell a story that leads up to the OT. Then again I remember this bit in the press (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dfdltj1U8AEw2lN.jpg) and maybe we didn't lose that much

[Josquius]

I disagree. My guess is this is what JJ Abrams wanted and he had a vague idea of where the three films would go. But they got Johnson in for the second one who had a different take (and I'm sure he had a rough idea what he wanted to do with film three). So when Abrams comes back he either has to re-imagine and build on what Johnson's done (which he doesn't) or try and do a sort-of greatest hits from what he wanted to do in 2 & 3 in half the time (which he does).

I've no doubt film 2 would have introduced Palpatine and built up the threat, if Abrams did it.

That sounds right.
3 definitely has the feel of trying to cram in more than one film.
And 2 as a chase movie really didn't fit.

[celedhring]

That sounds right.
3 definitely has the feel of trying to cram in more than one film.
And 2 as a chase movie really didn't fit.

The Empire Strikes Back is a chase movie. They are very similar on that regard, the objective of the good guys in both is merely "live to fight another day".

My belief in the existence of a framework of a plan, even if a shitty one, is precisely all the derivative parts of the new trilogy that are taken straight from their OT counterparts, which is a constant throughout all the movies. I think they had some of those story beats in place right off the bat - maybe even Palpatine's return and Snoke being a smokescreen, so they could re-enact ROTJ in the third -, but they kept tinkering and reversing course, which lead to a mess.

All in all, the best moment in these films is probably the scene in TLJ where they kill off Snoke and Dark Helmet Kylo Ren takes over as big bad, there's a hint of something different and interesting there, by refusing to just replay Vader's story of redemption (like they ended up doing anyway), and I kinda wish they stuck to their guns on that regard and let the Kylo-Rey arc play differently than just Vader-Luke but with kissing. The rest of TLJ is deeply flawed (I think it undermines itself by reversing every single plot cliche they can lay their hands on instead of keeping focus), but at the end of the day it's the best film in the trilogy.