Sfdebris.net

Starting a new thread because this has nothing to do with Star Trek or Chuck's review of Discovery.

StarSword wrote: ↑Mon Aug 06, 2018 11:12 pmBy the way: TLJ was a fantastic film, and Luke was completely in-character, up to and including the Rashomon telling of his confrontation with Ben Solo. Having beaten the Dark Side once doesn't mean he's never going to be tempted again.

Dude, come on. It was a structural nightmare. It ended 4 times, it had hack bad comedy clashing with it, and it had an entire superfluous sidequest that sucked time away from the actually interesting (if controversial) core story with Rey and Luke, which meant the whole film came off more like the prequels than anything.

I'm on record as hating TLJ, but my biggest problems were the awful way the best character (Rose) was shoehorned into a crappy role as a last-minute love interest out of nowhere, and the fact that the movie is a structural nightmare that fails basic filmmaking, and the fact that Admiral Holdo fails at being a hardass (Why. Is. Poe. Not In. The. Brig?), and the fact that the comedy clashes horribly with the movie...

I mean, I don't like the way Luke is portrayed like they completely forgot he had character development in the OT, but I'm gonna be honest, if they WERE going to go that way, the way it's told is pretty solid and it could've been done a lot worse (see: the Jedi Academy trilogy from the novelverse), it's just that it keeps getting interrupted by the superfluous casino plot and the weak attempts to ship Rey with psycho-boy.

Also, where was Rey's character development? Where was Rose's story arc and why was she a glorified tour guide? Why does Admiral Holdo act like a soccer mom instead of locking Poe in the brig for insubordination and why doesn't she get a uniform?

Also, if we're going to talk box office, I'll remind you that Batman vs. Superman actually made a boatload of money, but like TLJ it had a high weekend-to-weekend dropoff and the NEXT couple of movies had steadily decreasing box office gross. It killed the franchise despite making a huge amount of money because nobody wanted to take their kid to see a movie where Superman mopes around wondering if he should save people and then dies graphically after Batman spends the whole movie acting like a serial killer.

What's really going to matter is Episode IX. Solo was always a bad business decision and was always going to be hard to make work, but if Episode IX has a significantly decreased box office from TLJ then they're going down in flames. In the same vein, Wonder Woman was never given the resources to make more than it did despite its frankly insane tenacity at the box office, but it was Justice League that effectively ended the DCEU as it was when its box office came back as a pathetic mess.

The huge drop off was on a Christmas Eve weekend, a weekend that's historically been so bad for business that movies released on that weekend have a higher second weekend than their opening. Not only that, but adjusted for inflation TFA to TLJ is the lowest first to second film drop in any star wars trilogy.

Personally, I think that despite the pacing issues, TLJ is only beaten out by ESB, I think if they'd cut Canto Bait in favor of an extend infiltration sequence (cutting the Maz cameo in favor of DJ being a would be deserter that over hears them), it would have flowed better.

I saw it...2 weeks after Christmas? With my dad and brother, on a weekend. Big theater, outside of San Diego. Wealthy area with lots of families.

Maybe a quarter of the seats had people in them?

By comparison, saw Justice League opening weekend in Media, PA (outside of Philly), wanted my money back by 10 minutes in, that theater was about half full.

TFA was also a pretty weak movie that made megabucks just because it satisfied the fans, and ANH was a phenomenon that's probably never going to be repeated while ESB had production woes, whereas Phantom Menace was way overhyped and was bad enough that it probably ruined AoC's chances before the latter even started production.

I'd have cut the casino nonsense completely, found a less clumsy way to make the rote deconstructive point about how heroes are really just shitty idiots and we shouldn't like Star Wars, and spent most of the movie focused on Rey and Luke. Is it a rehash of ESB that doesn't need to be made and is never going to be as good as the original? Yeah. Is Rey's obsession with her parents similar to Luke's daddy issues? Yup. Is the rehash still going to be a good story if told well and will it still blow audiences' minds? Yup.

Also I'd have killed off Kylo Ren and found a villain, ANY villain, who doesn't annoy the crap out of me. I get that he's supposed to be an immature moron on purpose, but it really seems just so unimaginative; they're so busy aping the original trilogy that all they can come up with for the villain is "like the original villain, but a pathetic little boy trying to fill a man's role". Snoke's a nonentity so he's no good, but there has to be SOMEONE, right?

The Last Jedi is the only Star Wars movie I genuinely hated.

I didn't dislike the casino part.

But it's one of the few parts I didn't hate.

My changes would be this:

* I'd rewrite everything with Luke and Rey, having had him stripped of the Force by Ren and Snoke, and trying to seek a cure at the Temple.

* DJ is a Magnificent Bastard and after getting paid by the First Order, shuts down their shields, allowing
the battering ram.

* Leia should have been the one to do the starship crash, leaving Holdo leader of the Resistance.

* Luke doesn't die after saving the Resistance.

Weird, I hated the casino scene like...second-most? The worst part was when Rose got turned into a shallow love-interest out of nowhere, and then Luke died cartoonishly, but I no longer gave a fuck at that point because I checked out of the movie during the 3rd or 4th of the 6 dramatic climaxes.

Also the porgs are creepy and annoying.

I was going to say, can some please make a separate Episode VIII debate thread to stop this one getting bogged down? You can't comment on a YouTube video about say the upcoming Clone Wars mini-series without someone starting a fight over it.

Worffan101 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 07, 2018 5:27 am I saw it...2 weeks after Christmas? With my dad and brother, on a weekend. Big theater, outside of San Diego. Wealthy area with lots of families.

Maybe a quarter of the seats had people in them?

By comparison, saw Justice League opening weekend in Media, PA (outside of Philly), wanted my money back by 10 minutes in, that theater was about half full.

And what does that prove? It made a heck of a lot more than Justice League, more than any other film of the year in fact.

MrL1992 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 07, 2018 3:07 pm

Worffan101 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 07, 2018 5:27 am I saw it...2 weeks after Christmas? With my dad and brother, on a weekend. Big theater, outside of San Diego. Wealthy area with lots of families.

Maybe a quarter of the seats had people in them?

By comparison, saw Justice League opening weekend in Media, PA (outside of Philly), wanted my money back by 10 minutes in, that theater was about half full.

And what does that prove? It made a heck of a lot more than Justice League, more than any other film of the year in fact.

It's evidence in support of a major dropoff.

Justice League barely even HAD an opening weekend, and the theater still had more people in it than TLJ had 3-4 weeks in, which is when the Avengers movies are still making $50,000,000/week domestic with ease.

Worffan101 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 07, 2018 3:34 pm

MrL1992 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 07, 2018 3:07 pm

Worffan101 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 07, 2018 5:27 am I saw it...2 weeks after Christmas? With my dad and brother, on a weekend. Big theater, outside of San Diego. Wealthy area with lots of families.

Maybe a quarter of the seats had people in them?

By comparison, saw Justice League opening weekend in Media, PA (outside of Philly), wanted my money back by 10 minutes in, that theater was about half full.

And what does that prove? It made a heck of a lot more than Justice League, more than any other film of the year in fact.

It's evidence in support of a major dropoff.

Justice League barely even HAD an opening weekend, and the theater still had more people in it than TLJ had 3-4 weeks in, which is when the Avengers movies are still making $50,000,000/week domestic with ease.

People got most of their viewing done around Christmas when kids are out of school and more people off work. Justice League attracted curious people who waited for the ticket prices to lowerm f
Given the less than stellsr reviews.

See? You can extrapolate many reading grom isolated examples in one town.

MrL1992 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 07, 2018 4:47 pm

Worffan101 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 07, 2018 3:34 pm

MrL1992 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 07, 2018 3:07 pm

Worffan101 wrote: ↑Tue Aug 07, 2018 5:27 am I saw it...2 weeks after Christmas? With my dad and brother, on a weekend. Big theater, outside of San Diego. Wealthy area with lots of families.

Maybe a quarter of the seats had people in them?

By comparison, saw Justice League opening weekend in Media, PA (outside of Philly), wanted my money back by 10 minutes in, that theater was about half full.

And what does that prove? It made a heck of a lot more than Justice League, more than any other film of the year in fact.

It's evidence in support of a major dropoff.

Justice League barely even HAD an opening weekend, and the theater still had more people in it than TLJ had 3-4 weeks in, which is when the Avengers movies are still making $50,000,000/week domestic with ease.

People got most of their viewing done around Christmas when kids are out of school and more people off work. Justice League attracted curious people who waited for the ticket prices to lowerm f
Given the less than stellsr reviews.

See? You can extrapolate many reading grom isolated examples in one town.

Except that Justice League had a catastrophic dropoff too. And ticket prices don't normally lower THAT much between the first Saturday and the second--first-night ticket price hikes are generally for opening-night fan events with special fancy BS around them.

Either way, while isolated anecdotes are just that, I still don't think that TLJ was the success Disney will say it was.