I hated the movie, but recognized some good in it, so here we go.
The first moment that came to my mind was the shoulder sweep. Too bad it was somehow cheapened by the revelation of him being a projection, but was a nice moment and the theater went wild (that ONE time). It brought the true Luke Skywalker to the screen for a few moments. Everything else about Luke was handled awfully, although I also liked the Leia interaction.
The idea of a weapons merchant selling TIEs and X-Wings alike is an interesting one. Del Toro was even a good actor for that. So the idea and the casting was good - nothing else, as this too was handled badly and ultimately went nowhere.
The Holdo Maneuver was great visually, I'll give you that.
Some of the Yoda interactions were good, even on the verge of great. Ultimately what he said did not make sense in the context of the ST and the OT, but the dialogue was well written and you can tell that Hamill enjoyed acting with that old puppet (CGI-thing) again.
At the very end I hated the broom flying into the kid's hands, since in a world where droids can do everything, why would they keep kid slaves and why would they clean stables with brooms... my head hurts thinking about it, but let me find the one good bit in this: it was reminiscent of the end of one of my fave series, Buffy, where Buffy figured out how to wake up the potential slayers all around the world. This idea of "inspire someone to be a Jedi" is an interesting new one for SW, and I wouldn't be against seeing it played out. A galaxy full of Force powered individuals, some good, some evil, some just average would be - again I'm using this word - interesting to see. Provided whoever films it, cares about the idea and tries to have it make sense inside the SW universe, it could even be good to see. But of course, this idea was completely dropped when IX came out, so we'll never know.
Oh, and the Porgs were cute.
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Ace_Spade (9552)
3 years ago
Great points on both the ups and downs of the film.
I liked more of Luke than you did. First of all, regardless of the material, Hamill's performance was top-notch, and it made me sad that they used him so poorly.
Some of Luke's teachings were interesting and I wanted more exploration in those areas. When he's trying to tell Rey that the Force is bigger than the concept of "Jedi", I was very intrigued. It made me think of somebody going, "The idea of God is bigger than religion!" and that's a cool philosophical idea.
I hated that Luke just gave up, though, and it felt especially cheap that it happened off-screen. Maybe I could've bought it if I watched it happen, but not off-screen. So I thought they handled his character poorly and did him dirt, but I thought there were some positives to his interactions with Rey. Not many...
Yeah, the "common enemy" or "useful evil" of a weapons merchant is interesting. Hard to work into Star Wars, and if it was going to happen, it should've been the main focus of the movie, if not the trilogy. I thought the "message" of the good guys being a little corrupt just because they're buying weapons from somebody who is also supplying the Empire was stupid. It's like, gang members buy Glocks. They use those Glocks to shoot each other, innocent people, and cause mayhem. Are the cops morally worse because they buy Glocks to defend people against the gangs? Bit of a stretch, isn't it? (Not that cops can't be corrupt or a problem, too, unfortunately - but it's not because they buy weapons from the same place gangsters buy 'em).
Excellent points, also, with the broom kid. On the idea of keeping human slaves in a droid-verse: yes, but the Prequels already had that. Anakin and Shmi were Watto's slaves even though Anakin could just grab random junk and make C-3PO. My take on it is that some people are just kinda horrible. Evil behaviour (like slavery) doesn't have to make sense. Could be a status thing. Or a power thing.
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aavfreak (3329)
2 years ago
When he's trying to tell Rey that the Force is bigger than the concept of "Jedi", I was very intrigued. It made me think of somebody going, "The idea of God is bigger than religion!" and that's a cool philosophical idea.
Back when I worked a repetitive menial job, I listened to a lot of books on audio. One of my favorites - that I could listen to multiple times - was Star Wars: Darth Maul Shadow Hunter.
There was a short passage in that book about the nature of the force. That there is no such thing as a light side and dark side of the force. That the force was above such petty concepts of light and dark. The fact of the matter is that there was simply the force. How someone used it was what mattered. The Jedi saw the force as an end in itself an the Sith knew that it was a means to and end - and that end was power.
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Ace_Spade (9552)
2 years ago
Yeah, that's philosophically interesting. Even the idea that the denizens of the Star Wars universe have very different conceptions of the Force is cool. I liked that this movie was willing to explore that a little bit and poke around at some of the larger spiritual aspects of the Force.
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