Aside from froggy's embarrassing white knighting nobody seems to even bother defending it or even pursuing (edit - meant 'praising') it... Which is incredible given the reviews/box office. The only debate here seems to be on *why* they're so awful and the precise degree of their awfulness. So c'mon, it can't be that hard to defend a film with a metacritic score of 84!
sharethey are technically well made films that have solid acting
shareYes, and dark is bright :) .
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They do have better effects than the prequels and aren't completely reliant upon crappy video game like CGI, that is really the only positive thing I can say. Story wise the sequels are a complete mess.
shareCritics dont matter anymore. They done so many obviously cowardly ratings (to keep their jobs) that noone gives a sh*t about the messages from the blogosphere anymore.
And about the box office: That movike mae most of its profit from presold tickets. Noone knew back then how desastrous this movie will be like. There never ever was a Star Wars movie before which box office profit has fallen so fast and hard (and at countries were it started a few weeks later and didnt even got some profit at all). This is Star Wars at its worst. So which sane person should defend it?
TFA was ok, I know people say its a rehash but I can understand why they played it safe due to the disappointment in the prequels, but TLJ is so very disappointing, and it really puts me off future Star Wars movies .
I certainly wont be watching Rian Johnsons new trilogy
I highly doubt Rain's trilogy will still happen after this. TLJ made $800 million less than TFA. Disney doesn't like that.
shareI hope, but he's writing it now and it starts production in may , I hope it bombs massively
shareThat means nothing. They could fire him, tear his contract up at any time. Even IF they allow him to sh!t his movie out they will quickly bar him from sh!tting the other two turds out.
Disney isn't going to run with a guy who p!ssed off half the Star Wars fanbase and netted a much smaller profit than episode VII.
Wow, they should use these comments on the DVD box set!
"Technically well made"
"Ok"
I just find it amazing. Have any films in history been given a free pass like this?
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I'd defend TFA. But thats only because that movie would get a free pass if TLJ and episode 9 ended up being awesome. TFA was wat fans needed, it brought Star Wars back and it was very well crafted and left alot of story treads open for sequels to really expand the mythology and lore of the movies (why does the lightsaber call to Rey, who are her parents? why did they leave her? why is Luke gone? Is he off to learn secret Jedi stuff? Powers maybe? Truths? Why is this Snoke guy? He seems really strong and powerfull, creating this First Order, he must be someone special, maybe Palpatines teacher? Why did Kylo turn to the dark side? Why did he kill Han Solo? How does the universe look now? who is in command?)
So many questions and 2 movies left to satisfy everything.
What they did however, was totally fuck al these storylines into the ground and just give the biggest middlefinger to the fans.
soo thanks I guess. TFA was for nothing, it didnt matter. Nothing mattered. So I can't defend it anymore..
Amen brother!!
Should have never let Johnson get past his pitch. They were just asking to F everything up. I still watch TFA and pretend that TLJ never happened. But it did :(
You see, this right here is the biggest problem for me.
"...because that movie would get a free pass..."
This is exactly what happened. TFA got a free pass. It got a free pass because the prequels sucked. What kind of standard is that?
I think this really explains why some people hate TFA so much and others are so forgiving. For me, it was the sequel to the best film trilogy ever so the bar was really fucking high, not non existent because TPM was shit. Nothing needed to be rebooted the slate didn't need to be wiped clean... we had an amazing universe full of great characters and crucially they could have gotten ANYBODY in on the new Star Wars; the best writers, the best directors, they could have told any story and instead we got one that renders the original trilogy pointless, and the bulk of that blame lies with TFA not TLJ.
And lets dismiss this notion that TFA 'set things up'. Leaving gaping plot gaps is not 'setting things up' it's just JJ being a lazy hack fraud. Anybody can ask questions, it's coming up with satisfying answers that's hard and you can't just throw somebody a hospital pass like JJ did and then be surprised when the receiver loses possession.
And he set the standard in lazy plot telling so why the hell would the follow up film try any harder? TFA success both critical and financial has ensured that we won't get a well written blockbuster until audiences/critics demand one.
I see what you are saying. I disagree with this point however : ''...Anybody can ask questions, it's coming up with satisfying answers that's hard..''
The thing is, everyone on the freaking internet came up with satisfying answers. Why Snoke? Well he is Darth Plagueis, who after hiding and gaining power, has come back to be the ultimate bad guy. Why is Rey so powerfull? She is Kylo's sister. After the Jedi Temple got burned down, Luke hid her away so Kylo couldn't get to her and turn her.
Why is Kylo bad? Well Darth Plagueis seduced him (we can show how exactly this happend in either episode 8 or 9).
Why is the First Order there? Granted, I don't like the whole idea that there is another stormtrooper based enemy thats basically the Empire. But even here we could explain it. Its Snoke's army that he has bought, trained in secret. In the end of TFA, the First Order could also just be destroyed once and for all so that episode 8 and 9 won't have to be 'Rebels vs Empire' again. I could go on and on and basically write episode 8 and 9 for you. But I'm not gonna do that. People that write movies for a living and make loads of money off it, should be able to come up with something. TFA isn't some magical movie that nobody could follow up on. It just requires some more effort and imagination. Something Rian Johnson extremely lacked.
Yes you've made some good points and RJ could have done better but it's not as easy as it seems. That's the beauty of JJ's 'style' - I fucking hate it but a blank space is harder to criticise than a definite thing because it can theoretically be anything. This is how he avoids criticism: he's no writer so he just avoids writing, but that can only get you so far and the moment the blanks are filled in it all falls apart.
You see RJ didn't just have to come up with answers to part VIIs blank spaces he had to explain why they weren't in part VII. Flashbacks are cliche ridden and fuck up pacing and all kinds of things. Yes I know there was one but only one - you can't have a film that's all flashbacks and you would have needed a Godfather part II style split timeline to explain everything that was missing and that wouldn't have worked in Star Wars.
JJA essentially made part VIII - then had the poor sucker following him try to tell part IX AND part VII simultaneously and that's really fucking hard to do - especially given Disney's constraints. You know why there's no Plagueis? Because the prequels are verboten. Off limits.
TFA is a terrible movie. It got a pass because people were excited to see Star Wars again and it wasn't TPM. But it provided foundations of quicksand for the rest of the triology. RJ might be a Hux level buffoon but JJA is Palpatine. Or KK is at any rate.
Why are the prequels off limits? Oh yeah I remember, because the internet had to just burn it to the ground... Thanks internet.
shareYep. I enjoyed RLMs take down of the prequels but it's a classic case of be careful what you wish for. And then they gave a pass to TFA like everybody else. Great. Also, half in the bag is shit. Friends finding their other friends' weak jokes so so amusing. It just grates.
shareLeaving gaping plot gaps is not 'setting things up' it's just JJ being a lazy hack fraud. Anybody can ask questions, it's coming up with satisfying answers that's hard
"But didn't you ever learn that the answers are often irrelevant? Answers represent the end of a search, the end of imagination."
Good answers aren't irrelevant though bad answers might be and nothing represents the end of imagination more than JJAs inability to write a decent script that doesn't butcher somebody else's ideas.
Let's not pretend that this is "picnic at hanging rock", these aren't intriguing mysteries designed to illuminate the world through their very unsolvable nature, this isn't some kind of Koan, it's a plot stolen from a film made in 1977 only they left out the bits that made make sense!
The briefcase in Pulp fiction is a nice little Maguffin that has no bearing on the story, there's no way you can compare it to them just not mentioning who the First Order is are or why they came to be (for example). And we both know the real answer to this little mystery, it's that they're the Empire with a new name and considerable less gravitas.
The absence of plot is not a mystery. It's just bad writing.
Christ, I bet you just loved Prometheus didn't you?
Hard to say. On one hand you are talking about the sequels as a whole, but then much of your post goes on to point out TLJ In particular as the problem. Guess my take is...I like the sequels well enough until TLJ, but since TLJ took steps to undo much of the ground work set up in TFA, it is hard to find any relevance in such a disjointed trilogy...definitely no desire to see how it concludes.
shareYeah TLJ makes TFA useless, so watching TFA is useless. Everything that happens in TFA get undone in TLJ...
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