Star Wars & The Last Jedi

first of all I don't think it's a waste of time to talk about Star Wars it may seem like we take this stuff too seriously but whether we like it or not and I don't mind much Star Wars is our culture I don't mean sociological and I mean artistically Star Wars is one of the few works of art we pass on engage with from one generation to another you know there was an 800 year period in ancient Greece where you got the Greek myths the Iliad and the Odyssey and that was about it each generation was expected to reinterpret the same stories for themselves whereas if you were a teenager a 1980's like me I mean I hope you're not too attached to whatever music you're listening to because it's already obsolete there's not only an entirely new genre being invented at CBGB's or broken on k-rock the genre you love will spend the next several years being crapped on by Rolling Stone for no longer being relevant prog is killed by Punk gives way to New Wave replaced by hair metal until grunge and I skipped a lot in between each of those and whatever your parents were into it doesn't matter what it was you sure as hell weren't into that under no circumstance did you ever watch or read or listen to anything they like whereas my friends who are teachers now go see some of the same movies play some of the same games their students play when I was a student no teachers played any games at all of any kind I had one teacher in like six years who had read dune none of them had an Atari or a Cliquot version so having grown up in this deeply a historical environment where it was assumed that everything would be always thrown out forever it's nice to see something finally being held on to we might object as I sometimes do that the presence of these things mean we get movies like guardians of the galaxy based on a comic that's started in the 60s rather than own original space opera well we had an original space opera that I loved nobody saw it smoothly pass so it's Star Wars it's 1977 and star wars opens and one thing I want to correct the record on a lot of prequel apologists like to argue that Star Wars has always only ever been popular with kids and a desperate attempt to justify their love of those deeply terrible 90s movies they would like us believe that the reason we don't like prequels is because we're adults now and if we'd have been adults in 1977 we debated that movie - that's just not true Star Wars was a cultural juggernaut all you have to do is go watch videos on YouTube of local reporters covering the massive lines for Star Wars in 1977 and you see who was going to this movie everyone everyone all ages all backgrounds all went to see Star Wars the only way you have a massive hit like that by the way is you make a movie literally everyone sees the movie was so popular Freddie Mercury wrote a lyric in a queen song telling everyone to shut up about Star Wars what kind of movie is Star Wars this is an important question to me because it sets the tone for everything that comes after I think everyone these days realizes that Star Wars is not science fiction that's too simplistic we should distinguish science fiction as a setting from science fiction as a kind of story as a setting Star Wars is absolutely science fiction it's got ray guns and rocket ships and bug-eyed aliens but that's all wall paper it's not a science fiction story it's not speculative it doesn't imagine what if but science fiction has always been way more a literary tradition than a cinematic one for most movies science fiction is just a look and feel very few science fiction movies are like children of men that legitimately ask what if and then give us a thoughtful answer in fact Lucas's on record that Star Wars is not science fiction there's a great interview with him right before the movie opened in the American Film Institute's magazine where he talks about how he really doesn't like what 2001 did to this genre he loved 2001 made science fiction plausible Kubrick literally has engineers and scientists working on the film for months to figure out how all these things would work what is zero-g like what will the moon look like close-up science fiction movies after that all thought they had to be like 2001 thoughtful and boring whereas Lucas hated all that he wanted to swashbuckling Romance of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon he wanted gosh gee whiz and sense of wonder you wanted magic that is why nothing that happens in Star Wars makes any literal sense lightsabers are impossible there's no sound in space there's no gravity who cares if you ever see who I'm trying to explain the physics of Star Wars they have very badly missed the point if it's not a science fiction story what kind of story is it well it's right there in the opening it begins with once upon a time it features a farm boy who meets an old wizard and has to go rescue the princess from the Dark Lord these are all or mostly terms from that original movie Luke literally grew up on a farm Ben is called an old wizard Darth Vader is called a Dark Lord of the Sith in that original 1977 novel by Alan Dean Foster and Leia is literally a princess and they live happily ever after what kind of story is that it's a fairy tale it's interesting to me that Lucas and j.r.r tolkien both had the same goals Tolkien lamented the destruction in 1066 of what he viewed as the original authentic English culture and wanted to create an original myth for England Lucas wanted be the same thing for America and I think they both succeeded beyond their wildest dreams so it's a fairy tale okay fairy tales impart lessons that's their job what is the lesson of Star Wars what is Star Wars about I have known people talk to people who dismiss the idea that we should even think Star Wars is about anything the only way they can fit Star Wars into their worldview is if they assume it's just cinematic junk food lacking any nutritional value I think that's the Marvel movies mostly fun not really about anything but that 1977 movie is absolutely about something and it goes right back to Lucas's reaction to Stanley Kubrick in 2001 Star Wars is about how technology is the opposite of a humanity what is Ben say about Darth Vader he's more machine you know that's bad but why do you know that's bad why is it bad for someone to be more machine than man and says it and we understand it's bad but here in the real world we post videos of soldiers learning to use their new arms and legs and those people are heroes but in Star Wars we all understand Ben is not making a positive or even a neutral statement he's making a very negative statement Vader is evil how can you tell because he is more machine than man the Empire is evil and so what kind of base do they have a giant machine devoid of humanity this is what Lucas thought about the movie 2001 Lucas wasn't the only one lots of people felt that movie lacked any human element I mean that's sort of the point of 2001 we'll talk about that another video the fact that the humans in that movie are behaving like robots but whatever it's also by the way a criticism of American foreign policy and if that seems like a stretch go back and watch American Graffiti and see how it ends I mean the bit after the end where you find out they all died in Vietnam watch Return of the Jedi where Lucas expands on this theme and shows us a technologically primitive people successfully fighting off a machine Society what's that about in the end how does Luke defeat the Empire sitting inside a machine fighting a machine using a machine to guide him he puts away the machine and trusts himself trusts the force trusts his own humanity everyone else failed because they were living machine lives doing what their computer has told him to do Luke succeeds because he ignores the machines and follows his heart that's a powerful lesson and appropriate to a fairy tale it's a lesson that gets more appropriate with each generation but away the machines be a human Lucas gets a lot of flack but history will be kinder to him than we have been the dude who made American Graffiti and Star Wars will go down in history as one of the great American filmmakers very few directors have a one-two punch like that in their body of work and because Star Wars is the culture now we know a lot more about how that original movie got made the movie we watched was largely built from scrap by his wife Marsha she's the one who decided for instance that the Death Star should attack the rebel base in act 3 after they were done shooting the movie she decided that they did a lot of effects inserts without actors and recut the actors dialogue to get that original film didn't have it imagine Star Wars with the Death Star not threatening anything in act 3 they're just sitting there in space no stakes no ticking clock not threatening anyone and the rebellion just murders everyone on board Marsha Lucas made a thousand little decisions many of which required creating new lines out of different recordings or looping footage to get the beat the pacing needs or reversing a reveal to create a set up madness George Lucas is the author of this world and the story but Marsha Lucas is the author of that movie I think she won an Oscar for it by the way and deservedly so and the dialogue we quote Lucas didn't write that that was done by uncredited script writers Gloria cats and Willyard Hyuk I never heard this guy's name said out loud so that was my best stab but Lucas deserves credit for a lot more than this he basically invented idea of telling and not showing I'm just never explaining anything just say it and move on don't explain what the Kessel run is don't show us the Senate I love to the Emperor when he was a 30-foot tall hologram of just a head that Vader vader kneels too and in that original shot they had the actor wear a monkey mask with a hood to make him see more alien that worked by the way when we finally meet the dude in 1983 for me then as a kid it was a huge letdown he's just a guy Lucas who grew up watching Flash Gordon serials these little shorts that ran before the movie and the thing about this was they were already 20 years old by the time Lucas saw them theaters didn't bother showing them in order and if they did you couldn't go to the movies often enough to make sure you saw them all so you missed nits and had to fill in the gaps suddenly this character has an eyepatch in a robotic arm and another main character is just gone and a new one has arrived and you never saw their introduction so you had to make up what happened yourself and you'd come out of the theater arguing with your friends about what you all thought happened and this is a profoundly creative exercise in this day and age where we have movies that use dialogue to explain everything and music to tell us how to feel nothing is left to the imagination because we're spending billions of dollars and any hint of ambiguity terrifies the producers the lesson that it's more fun more creative to just skip bits and start with Episode four and not explain anything is groundbreaking it's revolutionary I wish more people learn from it by forcing your audience to fill in the gaps I was 7 when Star Wars came out and talking about trying to understand imagined explain the Star Wars universe was the thing we all did that year you make the audience storytellers now there are no longer passive consumers they are your co-authors that's a hell of a trick Empire comes out in 1980 and there's one thing about that movie I think folks didn't notice someone on reddit I think once asked what would have happened if Luke had listened to Yoda and stayed on Dagobah to complete his training and I said he'd still be there that's the point Yoda in that movie is not a Jedi Knight he's a Jedi Master he was a knight once but not anymore when Luke says he's looking for a great warrior Yoda just tosses off a brilliant line of dialogue Orr's do not make one great ah what a gut punch just completely pulls the rug out from under Luke's expectations and centuries of our own cultures benefice Asian of war and its hero's Yoda is a brilliant character and delivers the most poetic lines of the whole series real genuine poetry luminous beings are we not this crude matter forget the clunky dialogue Lucas wrote there is some genuinely brilliant writing in these movies well Yoda is a teacher now though and one of the things teachers do which the last Jedi knows but we'll get to that is teachers set boundaries teachers say don't go beyond the edge of town you're not ready to go into the forest they set the boundaries and then forget about them and the way we know we're ready is when we throw off the shackles and ignore those boundaries and start doing it ourselves Yoda teaches Luke a lot but he can't teach him everything that's the point he can't teach him self-reliance Luke knows when he has to disobey his master and strike out on his own heedless of the consequence it's a great moment and an important one and one I think the last Jedi sort of flirted with and then ran away from for no obvious reason Return of the Jedi comes out in 1983 and this is where the wheels start to come off the bus I sort of detected a problem when this happens Luke shows up in his badass Jedi costume very cool and his dialogue is great but the actor Mark Hamill couldn't do it in 1977 when Lucas needed someone to just stare off into the sunset and look wistful Emma aced it which Kuleshov effect notwithstanding is not easy to do it takes a good actor a cinematic one not a theatrical one to just sit there not saying anything and convey their internal monologue to us their hopes and dreams and 1977 Mark Hamill could do that but success spoiled Luke Skywalker and the dude in 1983 didn't have the gravitas necessary and we're back on Tatooine which we'd been to before and wasn't the whole point of these films to visit three new places every movie but that's okay we forgive it Jabba's palace is new and in any event we have so much affection for these characters there's so much inertia in the story pulling us forward we forgive the movie's many sins we forgive Vikki walks it's not that we object to cute teddy bear is it we object to cute teddy bears who can defeat the Empire it's just ridiculous it makes the bad guys look like Keystone Cops and that kills the tension the tension we need to create drama to trick us into believing in the stakes in the end as in 1977 they live happily ever after because this is a fairy tale and Luke redeems his father how does he do that by just believing he can be redeemed Luke takes no action to defeat the Emperor all he does is look at his dad like a human being and say I believe in you and Darth Vader has a crisis and in that moment he can't maintain the illusion that he's 100% evil he's an a-hole but he's not 100% a dick he's more machine than man but not all machine 100% machine so then we get the prequels and less said about those things the better we understand now that 1977 was not the result of some singular genius working alone it was a collaboration without those collaborators who had all left by Return of the Jedi we don't get anything like the movies we started with the new movies come out and while everyone else was worried about getting their heart broken again I was saying actually I think only George Lucas could screw up Star Wars the way he did you may not like these new movies but I thought they're going to break your heart and I think I was proven right really I think we all just want to fall in love and if you give the audience that chance and don't screw it up you will make your audience happy I fell in love with the force awakens I saw it several times in the theater I was hugely entertained but after the fact thinking about it after the fact it made me really angry it still does actually same with rogue one so it passes the refrigerator test and therefore succeeds as a movie it's only as part of this cultural tradition that gets me angry the refrigerator test by the way is something Alfred Hitchcock talks about where you watch a movie and in the moment you completely buy it but later that night you wake up and go into the kitchen for something to eat and you're standing there in your pajamas staring into the fridge and you think hang on that movie didn't make any sense too late it worked in the moment the smoke and mirrors only has to hold up until the credits roll for the movie to be a success and by that criteria whatever else I think about these first two new movies they worked on me as films as entertainment I was hugely entertained fell in love with both of them the force awakens to succeeds I think on the back of these new characters I love their new characters loved everything about them was always happy whenever they were on screen I especially love Poe Dameron because he's sort of the perfect Star Wars character totally one-dimensional and totally appropriate to a movie inspired by stuff like the dam Busters he's a world war one flying ace he's a forthright upright Ernest square jaw pilot who just inspires people it's a great archetype and one American culture doesn't really have I'd never liked Oscar Isaacson anything before this I instantly became a huge fan of him after it it was all the old characters that constantly brought me down anytime they were on screen I felt like the whole tone of the thing took a massive nosedive get off the stage you had your go let's have the new people back to me the most astonishing character in these new movies the most astonishing thing about the period is kylo Ren I regularly encounter people whom in an attempt to come up with something anything to say about these movies that might pass as insightful say they're just remakes of the original well obviously they are taking the same beats and reworking them like a Rondo Frank Cooper does the same thing with dune and no one yells at him for constantly featuring messiahs and desert planets across six books but those original movies didn't have anyone like kylo Ren in them he is completely new and original in Star Wars and his presence in there to me transforms everything elevates it kylo Ren is like the opposite of Poe Dameron where a Poe is simple straightforward one-dimensional kylo Ren is a character complete with three dimensions he has personality agency and inner conflict he is made out of inner conflict he's so conflicted he looks like he's undergoing gravitational collapse folks describe him as a kid as a whiny petulant kid but I don't see that I never see him whine about anything what I see is someone who is being tortured and manipulated by his master and is desperate to please that person and when he's with Snoke he's cowering acting trying to pull off confidence when he's alone he's raging in his own impotence and how ironic that is given his nearly unlimited power but when he is with Rey we see something amazing because he's been manipulated twisted by his evil master when he's with a total novice like Rey he is too confident he uses all the tricks it's not used on him lying telling the truth he's confident and manipulative and this makes him a fascinating character to me it helps that he's played by Adam driver who was one of my favorite actors right now because of these movies I've never seen him before but after that first movie I was down for whatever he did next the thing that bothers me about the force awakens it makes me think there's no one at Disney who really knows what Star Wars is about actually let me say that a different way I am skeptical that there's anyone at Disney who believes Star Wars is about anything has a theme should be about anything I think mostly those folks think Star Wars is set design and costume design and tone they think if they get those elements right they have made a Star Wars movie but I disagree I think you can do all those things and make a very entertaining movie I was entertained by the force awakens and rogue one but they both deliberately undermine what Star Wars is about what is the lesson of the force awakens as far as I can tell it's that fairy tales are stupid they don't end up happy they don't end up together they break up and their son is literally Hitler and he murders his father what I mean okay let's imagine that you agree with that thesis tape let's imagine you agree that fairy tales are stupid why would you buy Star Wars and make more Star Wars movies why make a movie that says you were stupid for believing they'd be together they'd live happily ever after what's wrong with you of course they're miserable everybody's miserable all the time we all die alone Star Wars look I know the real world doesn't work like a fairy tale that's the reason we have fairy tales hell it's the reason we make movies Lucas came out against the new movies and of course he did because when they had the opportunity to make whatever Star Wars movie they wanted the first thing they did was rip apart 1977 to 1983 why even before I knew that's what they were doing I wasn't happy to see old Han Solo why can't we let those iconic characters stay iconic leave them forever young in our memories I don't want to see them agent and decrepit when they were making a Star Trek to one of my favorite movies back in 1982 they thought this is gonna be the last Star Trek movie so they gave those characters an incredible emotional send-off we learn a lesson an important one about life and death and how those things relate to each other and how we are to live among those two elements and then the crew literally sail off into the sunset and I am 100% convinced they should have stopped there if they had stopped there those characters we'll be forever young in our memories forever voyaging instead we got to watch them all grow old well that's real life but is that why we go to the movies is that way we go see Star Trek or Star Wars movies rogue one comes out and gosh it looks like a Star Wars movie and that works on me it looks more like a Star Wars movie than anything we've seen since 1980 and I loved it I loved the moment when we see the hologram of Galen or so talking to his friend no idea if his daughter will ever see this message is even still alive and he describes the fact that he built his revenge into this machine that is an epic moment an emotional one and it worked on me it helps that they cast Mads Mikkelsen whom I love in everything all the criticisms of the film I agree with but I loved it anyway it's a mess a lot of it doesn't make any sense the characters all die and what seemed to me hugely contrived in undramatic ways the robot seemed lack all character and motivation existing only has an idea and not a person but holy crap when Vader shows up and the rebels are desperately trying to stay one step ahead of him literally one step I got this intense sensation that I knew exactly how Gareth Edwards felt on set I've got this one chance in a movie to show exactly how badass Darth Vader can be how badass we all knew he could be but never got to see it may seem strange to an alien watching this movie but I was seven years old Darth Vader was like a hero to me I had never seen any movie any story of any kind where the bad guy didn't get his comeuppance didn't receive justice that's sort of the point of the stories we read his kids but Vader escapes he lives to fight another day I remember thinking man that shark and jaws didn't escape Darth Vader is a bad guy but he is a cool bad guy and when you're a little kid you love characters who seem like they have it all together explicitly because you do not have it all together and Darth Vader was that so I want to stand up and cheer when Vader slaughtered his way through the rebel fleet to get to the plans I loved all the characters even the pointless robot and I think this is mostly a triumph of casting I've never seen Donnie Yen in anything but i 100% would have watched an entire movie with his character I loved Forest Whitaker and while some people criticized his affectations I thought it was a perfect performance for a Star Wars character I just thought his character was kind of pointless I love the idea that the rebellion is like a terrorist organization I loved the opening where we see diego luna's character straight-up murder a fellow rebel because these are desperate times Star Wars has a long and proud history of introducing characters to us by showing them smoke someone right out of the gate Darth Vader chokes adieu to death in the first five minutes of the first Star Wars movie han smokes a dude as soon as we meet him even though obi-wan chops off a guy's arm and that guy survived I don't think so so cats can and/or does what must be done and this shows us how the rebellion is like a band of terrorists okay I'm down with that I'll accept a lot grittier ideas and these in between movies and like all terrorists groups there are the folks running the show who want the seat at the table and are willing to compromise and then we have those guys living out in the wilderness on insects and bark who cannot be reasoned with and make the rest of us look bad classic dozens of real-world analogues but this is an instance where we never get any sense of that from Forest Whitaker's character huge wasted opportunity because we never see him do anything we never get any sense of why people treat him the way they do and in the end I felt like nice character could have cut all this like how do we know that punk solo is a selfish rogue it's not because they tell us that they show it to us when the chips are down he leaves he splits I think in a better movie Lucas probably would have killed him off folks criticized road 1 because the characters don't have parks and this is the kind of thing you say when you've learned one thing about writing and now that you have a hammer everything looks like a nail but lots of movies lots of great classic movies feature heroes with no mark Indiana Jones is exactly the same dude at the beginning that it was at the end Marty McFly doesn't change at all one bit in fact he's so cool he changed his time so that other people are different while he stays the same Frodo made it all the way to Mountain Dew without ever learning an important lesson when Elrond says listen bingo or Bongo whatever name is your only volunteering for this because you have no idea what's going on Gandalf straight up says it he says yeah but he'd go even if he did no because that's his character and that doesn't change he just gets the crap beaten out of him so hugely entertained by road one but again like the force awakens it made me angry I actually upset and again it's because the events in road one are sort of an attack on those movies from the 1970s Disney why are you doing that stop it I was so excited after my first road one viewing that I set up another viewing that gave me the time to wrote one and then immediately go watch Star Wars with an edit that says close as you can get in the 21st century to the original theatrical release and that's where everything fell apart because even though it was genuinely thrilling to see how the 2016 movie leads directly no gaps into the 1977 movie it robs the 1977 movie of something important it robs it of its whole theme of its reason for being because Star Wars was about how Luke did the impossible when someone walks up the target and says hey you know I think we might have a problem Tarkin was like dude what you were suggesting is literally impossible well yes for anyone except Luke because even though the light of the Jedi has gone out in the universe Luke is carrying it around while everyone else failed Luke trusted himself and did the impossible only Luke could have done that we understood in 1977 it's what makes Luke special it's not just a nameless pilot who got lucky he's special because he listened to obi-wan Kenobi if you had an obi-wan Kenobi teaching you you'd be special too but rogue one says actually I designed the space station to be blown up it's not a flaw it is literally a feature from the beginning I Galen or so built this little trap into it this isn't about you Luke it's about me I'm the quarterback calling the plays you're just the dude who caught the ball we have lots of dudes on the field who can do that you're not special what what on earth why would you do that don't get me wrong I in the moment I bought it and I loved it because I was watching rogue one and following the story of the earth owes and when they revealed with the actual plot of the movie is that we're not just getting the plans we're trying to find the map to the trap that Galen herself built I was thrilled it was only when I then put the movie next to 1977 I was offended yeah offended because whether we liked it or not Star Wars is this thing we're passing down each generation is engaging with it and do we have to then spend all our time taking the original stuff apart the prequels I just ignored those they were bad movies badly conceived badly executed but these are well put together movies entertaining can't they be entertaining without feeding on the corpses of these other things I love destroying Luke's agency making him just the one who got lucky and eventually someone would've got because the thing was designed to be blown up as a massive letdown to me I can tell these are very personal reactions on my part because it seems like no one else is bothered by this and folks are generally critical of Road one where I was usually entertained by it works and all the last Jedi then is the outlier unlike the previous two Disney Star Wars movies I wasn't entertained I was sort of bored there were a lot of really cool moments and strangely they did a lot of work reaching those moments only to piss them away several times over the course of movies running time I thought well what was the point of the last 20 minutes the movie opens with this extended comedic sequence and right out of the gate I thought oh I mean obviously we can have humor in Star Wars movies but opening with comedy just seems incredibly tone-deaf for one thing it just didn't work on me I didn't think it was funny I felt it was overtly contemporary in a way that doesn't make sense in an otherwise timeless story it only made sense to me if I imagined the screenwriters thinking they were being clever and that is not a good way to open your movie the audience laughed but in my experience folks will laugh at almost anything they would have laughed if the movie it opened with a pie fight but even apart from that it felt like a rookie you writing mistake humor in these movies in most movies and movies that aren't overtly comedies is done to humanize the action you know the jokes in 1977 Star Wars punctuated the tension and that works because people really do make jokes in these tense situations gallows humor is real go watch John Carpenter's masterpiece the thing it's one of the best movies I've ever seen great screenplay not an ounce of fat on it and there are jokes all the way through it comedic beats regularly punctuating the drama and that makes it all feel more real opening with that when we don't even know what the stakes are yet it didn't work on me it felt desperate and thinking back I mean exactly what did I expect Rian Johnson wrote and directed this movie and I don't like that guy's movies I thought brick was awful I thought looper was a two-hour contest to see which of two characters could be the most unlikable but I got caught up in the excitement and I was ready to love this movie I was on the hook to see it twice on opening day which I did which I regret because the movie doesn't make any damn sense there's this entire middle section of the film they could have cut and no one would have missed it someone decides poe dameron needs to feature more prominently and okay I like that guy I'm on board but he can't just be Poe Dameron he needs a park I think that's a mistake not all characters need arcs but I suppose there probably is one out there for him but not this one what he gets yelled at not very convincingly for disobeying orders and getting the entire bomber squadron murdered which he did and instead of learning any kind of lesson for this he proceeds to enable Finn and Rose in their madcap scheme that accomplishes literally nothing except meeting Benicio del Toro who sells them out and gets half the rebellion slaughtered if they had just stayed home everything would have turned out exactly the same except the escape pods would have all made it we have all gotten to go home thirty minutes earlier so what does Poe learned from that I have no idea nothing really he has one moment of insight in act 3 but any version of Poe we've met so far could have had that moment so apart from simply not believing in the entire casino sequence they didn't feel organic or authentic to me it felt invented by concept artists which is a plague we're all suffering through this decade apart from not caring about the slaves they use because they just exposition to them at us artlessly and not believing in the horse-racing scene except instead of horses everyone's riding the dog thing for The Last Guardian apartment just not caring about any of it it seemed not to serve the plot it's both boring and useless there's a shot in the movie or Chewie sits there thinking about eating a pork and the pores are apparently self-aware enough to recognize that a chunk of charred meat was once a pork and they make a sad face at Chewie and you may think that is cute or funny but see in the second time I thought this scene is a metaphor for the entire movie it may be cute or funny but it is literally pointless if they had cut that little scene no one would have noticed it makes me wonder if they'd cut from the first movie to the third movie would anybody have noticed I missed the fin from the first movie I missed the desperate conflicted former stormtrooper who wants to do the right thing but it's sort of worried they're all gonna die horribly because damn the empire sorry first order is massive compared to this little rebellion that's a great character and for Star Wars an original one instead we got this guy who I did not like he has this one moment which had no set up were in he decides he has to leave and I think the point of that was he's worried about Ray and convinced that if he stays aboard the ship rebels are going to lead the Empire to her but a that wasn't well explained and be it goes nowhere instead he meets a girl named Rose who I liked I like a lot of bits of this movie and she comes armed with a character switching zapper she hits thin with it once and suddenly he's Luke Skywalker from the first movie we have to save the princess I have a mad scheme but all those same beats from 1977 made sense there's a death star out there okay that's enough for me let's go blow it up here instead we get like five minutes of Finn and Rose turning to the audience to explain badly how tracking through hyperspace must work I feel like I was watching a bad Star Trek episode what is technobabble doing in star wars furthermore what we're being tracked through hyperspace which is fairly impossible we just learned and someone on board is walking around the transmitter that is designed to explicitly let people do that and no one thinks to say hey maybe it's this little blinking light Leia is wearing or you know okay maybe they just trust her fine but if they're tracking us there must be a tracker on board somewhere let's tear the ship apart looking for it okay instead we're just gonna burn out all our fuel and make no effort to fork the Empire sorry first order except through sheer bloody mindedness the only plan we have is terrible and fails and gets everyone killed and there isn't a single moment afterwards where anyone involved has even a moment of self-awareness or introspection hey that was a bad idea I screwed up I'm a terrible person it kills me to see this from John boyega especially because I loved him and attacked the block where his character is casually cruel and callous but we like him a lot and we sit there hoping he's not gonna become a genuinely bad person and then he has this great redemptive moment where he says I wish I'd never done none of those things and from that moment forward he can be a hero he realizes what his actions have meant he is contrite he wants to be forgiven and this frees him to be the hero we hoped he was why can't we have that perfectly good redemptive arc just go grab it and stick it in this movie okay don't like that fine but grab something there were so many moments in this movie where I felt like they'd done all the work to achieve something really spectacular and then they just walked away from it dropped it like the whole thing was a waste of time kylo Ren has a great line a very seductive sentiment which I think works on people let's past die killed if you have to of course he would say that look at what happened to him his master the famous Joe knocked the only Jedi the dude who almost single-handedly saved the galaxy came to murder him in his sleep this is the dude who thought Darth Vader still had good at him and Luke even if only for an instant as we later learn decides nope my nephew has to die that would miss a kid up and it did so of course let the past die kill it if you have to but he can't do it and that's something I loved about this movie in the moment when he has the chance to smoke his mom he can't pull the trigger as much as you or I or George Lucas might want kylo Ren to settle down and be a two-dimensional character he steadfastly refuses to be that simple he kills snow spoilers he kills Snoke in a moment that blew me away I was reminded of a frankly better and more complex and more earned similar moment at the beginning of act 3 in spider-man homecoming where a door opens revealing a character and my jaw dropped and from that moment forward I had no idea what was gonna happen next that is hard to do I've seen a lot of movies it is hard to surprise me and leave me with that feeling of I have no idea what's gonna happen next that's how I felt when Snoke died wait what holy crap is kylo Ren the bad guy of this entire series I like Snoke in this movie by the way I thought he was really well acted animated I don't know realized portrayed in spite of walking around in a Hugh Hefner 1960s robe I was just getting into this guy as the bad dude when kylo Ren surprised the hell out of me and then they just threw it all the way having done all the work for to what I expected well I think we deserved was a moment where Ren turns to Rey and says join me ok we did get that but I'm not done I wanted to hear his argument he was in a position to make a really compelling argument and I love it when movies allow their protagonists and antagonists to each have really well considered but irreconcilable arguments for doing what they're doing that's drama Ren could have said I think should have said ray I can save all those people your friends there doesn't have to be a rebellion anymore because there doesn't have to be an empire anymore I can end it with an order with a word I can dissolve the first order I can save your friends and we can rule the galaxy together that's a powerful argument and one that should even if only for a moment have worked on rain and then she says and will restore the Republic and he says well hang on I didn't say that and then they have to fight maybe it's because I played Republic of Rome and read Robert Graves and watched I Claudius but I really believed in the idea of the Republic any Republic I think it would be nice to live in one but Ray hasn't seen those things I'm not sure she has any connection to the Republic certainly these movies all of them going back to 1977 have made a pork a sport no one ever explains why the Republic was virtuous it seems only to stand in for that older time when everything was simpler a kind of analog for Lucas's childhood in the 1950s where indeed if you were a middle-class white kid in Modesto California things were simpler so maybe that moment wouldn't work I would have made it work because I would make sure we have some sense of what these people are fighting for what are they trying to restore why was the Republic worth fighting and dying for like everything else the whole casino gambit the conflict between kylo Ren and Rey I didn't believe any of the crap happening off the coast of Ireland either ray spends most of the movie following Luke around like a puppy and then just leaves without ever apparently having learned anything from him or about him she hasn't become a better Jedi she hasn't decided Lucas useless and should just do it herself any of those things anything dramatic would have been better than the nothing we got the Rey who leaves the island is the same as the Rey who arrived there the whole sequence was a waste of time the whole movie seemed like a waste of time like we need a middle movie in this trilogy I guess this will do I'm totally on board with Luke being a bad teacher by the way an array having to learn for herself but that's a very different arc than the one we got Luke says it's time for the Jedi to end and in fact that seems to be the thesis statement of these movies and in principle I'm okay with that I remember watching that first movie thinking we were seeing the force operating when Finn sort of wakes up to the morality of being a stormtrooper and says screw it I don't want to do this anymore in fact I still think that I think that's what's happening in that first movie I never believed Rey was anyone the whole idea made no sense she's obviously just a random person obi-wan laid it out in that first movie the forest is in and between everything and us we don't need a training montage I was ready for Luke to say listen kid I'm a terrible teacher we learned that already I think the best ray you can be is one who drives this all for herself leave me out of this but instead we got I don't even know what there's this one moment a good one but some of the day the sex Mackinaw where Yoda shows up and says some genuinely profound stuff he says too profound things which is to more than for instance and even Marvel movies have he says it's up to Luke to teach ray his mistakes otherwise what was the point of making them Wow yeah that is a really good point very wise good job Master Yoda so does Luke do that nope what does he do he basically commits suicide but in this kind of Rube Goldberg device way he projects himself across half the galaxy when he could have just gone there in person we saw his x-wing down there we remember him being unable to lift it out of the swamp in 1980 ray made it in the Falcon he could have done the same perfect set up instead we get this amazing reveal which I 100% love where we discovered he's been an illusion the whole time Wow and they give him a great line of dialogue see you around kid something Ben solos dad might have said and then he dies what it kills him which they foreshadowed well I thought when kylo Ren tells Rey you're not doing this the effort would kill you well he was right what was the point of all that exactly he could have flown there himself so what was the point of force projecting himself I feel like the folks watching the movie thought oh yes this is that woman from 1977 where obi-wan dies failing to have any awareness of why obi-wan did that Yoda brilliantly says it is our curse to be what they grow beyond yes that is true and something Yoda in 1980 hadn't realized when he tried to stop Luke from saving his friends that's good dialogue good job pay plus it's why obi-wan lets fader kill him because he sees Luke is watching and he realizes as long as I'm here Luke will always look up to me always want to follow me want to please me he needs to be his own person and that can't happen while I'm alive inspiring him to be his own person is the best last thing I can do time to die okay great so we have the same setup in the last Jedi but none of the context no context ray doesn't see any of it she is nowhere near the place Poe is watching but so what all he does is decide to leave the cave through the back door which we didn't need to kill Luke to achieve you know I don't mind Luke dying if it's done in a meaningful way han Solo dies to inform and advance kylo Ren why does Luke die like I said I love that reveal where we see Luke is still in Ireland and force projecting himself I loved see you around kid because in that moment I thought holy crap are we gonna see Luke versus kylo Ren in movie three so when I found out we weren't getting that I sort of wondered what the point was again as I was watching it the first time I legitimately thought the movie was gonna end with kylo Ren running at Luke and just boom smash cut to credits movie over see you in 2019 I would have stood up and applauded instead we got nothing end of movie basically the same is beginning nothing learned nothing earned mistakes made but no growth just two hours of circling around the bowl maybe Luke will return in movie three and impart some wisdom into write great that would make that movie good but this movie lives and dies between the opening and closing credits and the movie we got didn't make a lot of sense to me it wasn't all bad I liked a lot of the same moments you liked I love the moment where the Admiral decides to suicide into the enemy fleet that was one of the best shots in all of Star Wars I have no idea why she waited like 20 minutes alone on the bridge with nothing to do except watch her people get shot out of space one by one I think the only reason you sit there doing nothing when you could save the day is because you've read the script and you know the writers are trying to amp up the stakes so I didn't believe the opening I didn't believe the middle I didn't believe in Luke and Rey and the end made no sense to me but I really liked kylo Ren you know what else I loved I loved Benicio Del Toro's character in a movie with very confused morality which is not the same as ambiguous morality in a movie with very confused morality we meet this deeply ambiguous character who thwarts all the heroics merely by being right hey kids the same guys you hate because they fund the Empire also fund the rebellion so maybe the world isn't as black and white as you think it's funny because I was literally thinking that in the opening space battle man who pays for all these ships the rebellion seems really well kitted out it's a great line it's a great moment a great idea it showed in 'we affect Finn inform his character moving forward does he believe it does he reject it why instead it's like he wasn't even listening it affects him not at all it means nothing to him I never noticed this before but Benito Charles acting in this movie reminds me a lot of James Dean I now see Dean in a lot of del Toro's performances it seems obvious to me now probably everybody but me knew that he has two of my favorite lines in any Star Wars movie first we get this amazing thesis statement don't sweat it kid today they blew you up tomorrow you'll blow them up wow what a what a great line I know folks perceive this movie as being morally ambiguous but to me heat is morally ambiguous this is just a mess but this character really is that his dialogue is all stuff Han Solo might have said in those moments before he met Luke Skywalker and sort of became more level when Finn rails at him and says something completely forgettable like you won't get away with this he says the best possible thing he just looks at Finn and shrugs and says maybe yeah maybe you will that's the whole point kid del Toro's character 100% believes that it's possible Finn will come get his revenge or maybe not who knows the world his character is saying is not a movie sometimes you get justice sometimes you get nothing there's no sense to it it's all a machine kid don't join you know what else I loved see it's not all bad I loved r2d2 showing Luke the Princess Leia hologram because it gave us something rare in these movies it gave us a moment where a character thinks something but doesn't say it and we know we can tell what's going on in their head Luke doesn't say it but he still can't let her down not his sister perfectly human thing to let your relatives down he can't let that girl down that girl who's been fighting for the Republic for 40 years how can he say no to her could you I couldn't so Star Wars is our culture now and therefore I think it's reasonable to talk about this stuff I was never one of those people who thought the prequels ruined or damaged the originals and it's not they were really bad movies but I do feel like these new movies are deliberately trying to take apart of the stuff I grew up with I wish they wouldn't do that but I can't stop them and I have my own stuff to create I think I'm probably gonna turn off comments for this video because in my experience when you come out and say this stuff a lot of people just want to argue and snipe at each other and score points and none of that interests me so bass if you thought any of this was interesting share it with your friends if all I did was make you angry go do something relaxing go paint minions or write or go for a walk let it go don't let me bring you down also did anyone else wonder if Yoda was even there at all the whole time I was wondering if Luke had just gone crazy alone on that island I could just hear Yoda tormenting him all the time I was also ready to learn that Luke had been a force ghost the entire time but the movie was not prepared to be that weird

Channel: Matthew Colville

Views: 332,511

Rating: 4.6527734 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: HC8vSlSsbwI

Length: 44min 46sec (2686 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 27 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/mattcolville]

I'm aware, any time I make a video like this, that I'm alienating some of my subscribers. But I felt like I had something to say and while keeping my mouth shut is certainly the safer option, I don't want to live my life second-guessing the audience.

Looking at how quickly the video is getting dislikes though, I stand by my decision to disable comments out of the gate. We all know what those comments would be right? Some people will agree, some disagree but respect the argument and some people will just post to score points. And we've seen all that before.

In the end, I don't think any reasonable person would hold up Rian Johnson as a writer of the same caliber as Lawrence Kasdan. The dude who wrote The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Big Chill is one of the great screenwriters. I don't think Rian Johnson will ever write anything approaching those screenplays and I suspect he would agree!

We'll see how the third movie breaks. The Last Jedi hasn't poisoned the well for me, but it has greatly diminished my enthusiasm by reminding me these guys making these movies are mortals. Not legends.

[u/JustaFleshW0und]

Ok, last comment i have to make on this video. First two were about things i related to, this is the one thing in matt's argument that i totally disagreed with, and that was him saying that rey did not change. Her whole storyline was her realizing that she was the hero. The whole movie is her chasing her hero that can save the rebellion. First it's luke, until she gives up on him and declares Kylo Ren as 'the only hope we have left' (she still doesn't see herself as any worth). Then when kylo betrays her, she runs out of heroes. Finally at the end when she lifts the rocks, and sees what's left of the rebellion stare at her in awe, she realizes that she is the hope. She's the hero she's been looking for. She doesn't need luke, she doesn't need kylo, she just needs to keep fighting, and maybe she can become that inspiration that the legendary luke skywalker needed to be. Her shutting the falcon's door in kylo's face was the final moment of that arc. I think in the third movie we will see Rey as a leader and an inspiration, rather than just another soldier like how luke sees her when she first shows up on the island.

Edit: forgot to mention the last 'hero' that rey was looking for was her parents. Her coming to terms with the fact that her lineage was worthless was the last step in moving on from relying on others and deciding that she is the hero the rebellion needed, which also mirrors kylo, who is still stuck hanging on his heritage, and that has brought him to the dark side.

[u/Dengosuper]

I thought in the scene where Benecio del Toro betrays them Finn said "You're wrong!" Not "I'm gonna find you!" And Benecio del toro just said "Maybe" because it didn't matter to him if he was wrong it was just something he was saying in passing.

I thought it added to the scene

[u/JustaFleshW0und]

I had a similar thought as matt regarding Kylo's 'argument' for Rey joining him. It really felt like they were building up to some sort of moment where we see that Kylo Ren has a motive that could be honorable by his own logic, and maybe even convincing. I was expecting a sort of "no gods, no masters" thing where he wants to disassemble the rebellion and the first order and just let the galaxy be. Instead he just says "Rey join me, because i want you to" and she obviously turns him down. It feels so weird to have that payoff missed completely. Great video though, there's so much to talk about with this movie, i could probably make a 40 minute video myself haha.

[u/Val_Ritz]

Not done yet, but I will stand behind anything that sits up and asks "Why does everything have to be dystopian deconstructions of the things we like?"

The same issue you bring up about the new movies ripping apart what made the old ones great is exactly why I find less and less reason to watch any DC movie that isn't Wonder Woman. After a certain point we have to stop being ashamed of Adam West and recognize that people like being able to believe in something without being terrified that it'll be ripped away from them in thirteen months when the new movie comes out.

[u/Mister_F1zz3r]

I'm five minutes in and I'm mesmerized by his bouncy hair. What kind of product does that and how do I get my hands on it?

Spoilers, obviously.

Okay, I usually love watching Matt's analyses of movies and story. We only sometimes agree, but I always get good insights from hearing more viewpoints. My thoughts, mostly unfiltered, are below. Impression: Matt thinks about these things a lot, even disagreeing with him will be a good experience.

I've tried, and I sadly can't see how Urso building a fault into the Deathstar removes the impact of Luke's success. Even without Rogue One, we are told in A New Hope that there is a fault in the Deathstar that could destroy the whole thing if someone is good enough to pull off a dangerous bombing run. Could someone have gotten lucky? Maybe. But Luke didn't get lucky, he trusted in Ben Kenobi, he used the Force, and that was what blew up the Deathstar. It's a perspective I haven't heard before though, so maybe over time it will sink in.

I was startled by how much I agreed with the analysis, but not the conclusion. There are a lot of tone disconnects between TLJ and TFA; I've heard this is because Disney has no overarching plot for the trilogy, if so "Yikes." The weird thing is, I liked the tone of TLJ. The sense of adventure was mixed with harsher realities of plans failing, betrayal, and overall Pyrrhic victories. We have three and a half reveals, in the death of Snoke, the parentage of Rey, and the Illusion of Luke. (I'd call the kid at the end with the Force broom thing half a reveal.) The reveals each play on audience expectations in addition to the expectation of the characters in the film. (Maybe you could argue for Luke throwing the lightsaber away as another.) Snoke was built up as a dangerous and mysterious villain, and he was VERY dangerous, and his actions mysterious, but his death was the first of the pillars to fall. Rey's parentage was made a big deal by the fans, and as a reveal it serves to push Rey away from Kylo. I also appreciate Rey being given all of the glory for being strong in her own right, rather than playing off the heritage of the past like Kylo. Finally, Luke's illusion and death punctuated that Pyrrhic theme.

I don't know. This movie had a new story to tell. I won't deny if had plenty of issues, (I too disliked most of the second act) but the things it did well I haven't seen Star Wars do before. The lightspeed kamikazi run was beautiful.

Matt, if you read this, please keep making these!

[u/GingerTron2000]

"He's an A-Hole, but he isn't 100% a dick"

u/mattcolville dropping Star Lord quotes haha!

[u/SaffiStarKnight]

I don't get Matt's criticism of how Galen Erso deliberately creating a design flaw in the Death Star somehow reduces Luke to 'some kid who got lucky '? How? Because there's a whole Rebel Alliance working to defeat the Empire and Luke can't do it alone?

[u/BlackHumor]

So, one thing I'd definitely disagree with you on as a whole:

The original Star Wars movies weren't fairy tales. The original Star Wars movies were an epic, in the vein of LoTR or Beowulf or the Illiad.

One of the big differences this means for the tone of the originals is that everything doesn't have to end happily ever after, it just has to end with the victory of the heroes. At the end of Empire most of the heroes are worse off, and certainly no better off than they were before. Luke is missing an arm and is feeling mighty conflicted to boot, Han is frozen in carbonite, and while Leia and the droids make it out okay, they certainly aren't in a better place at the end of the movie than they were at the beginning. The ending of Empire is waaaaaay more "fairy tales are stupid, the heroes can't win and the universe is cold and unforgiving" than any of the new movies have been at any point so far.

And hell, even at the end of episode IV the heroes aren't exactly in a good position. Yeah, they beat the Death Star, but Luke's aunt and uncle are dead, and so is Obi-Wan, and so are a bunch of other minor but sometimes named pilots, and all this to get the heroes in a position where their enemy doesn't have an overwhelmingly powerful superweapon. (This is basically also where the heroes are at the end of TFA.) It's not "happily ever after" so much as "we really have a chance, don't we?"

This is to say, I don't think the new trilogy tears up the themes of Star Wars the way you think it does, because I don't think the themes of Star Wars are quite what you think they were. I don't think that "unceasing belief in goodness and doing what's right, even in the goodness of your enemies, will always win" was a theme, because there are plenty of times where heroes die or lose while trying to do the right thing in the OT. I think the theme in the OT was that that unceasing goodness and belief in goodness was always worthwhile. And part of why I think the new trilogy gets that is that this is how the heroes win at the end of Return versus the end of TLJ:

At the end of Return, the Emperor tries really hard to make Luke fall to the Dark Side, but he does so specifically by encouraging Luke to strike him down and give in to his anger. The last few scenes with Luke in the throne room are all about whether he's able to stick to his convictions and not fight the bad guys or whether he will turn to evil by fighting the bad guys. Which is a very distinctive sort of theme, if you stop to think about it; most movies don't generally say that fighting the explicitly evil final boss is bad and that refusing to fight him when you're standing in front of him with a sword is good, but Star Wars does, and it does very explicitly.

And at the end of TLJ, Luke... continues winning through pure pacifism. In a continuation of the themes from the end of Return, Luke even goes in a form where he can't possibly hurt anyone. And it works. Luke successfully protects the Resistance, and he does so 100% peacefully. He probably even does so more effectively than if he came there in person, where he could actually get hit by all those lasers. The rest of the movie also has this theme scattered all over (e.g. Rose tells Finn more than once how protecting your friends and not defeating your enemies is what's ultimately worthwhile), which again is notable because it's definitely one of the weirder themes of the OT.