Empire Strikes Back

[Admiral X]

Actually my take is that Rian Johnson read through what people were saying on the internet and did stuff to specifically mock them and slap down their theories.

[Winter]

So switching gears back over to Empire I really like Chuck's theory that Luke pulling the lightsaber to him was Luke crossing a threshold and was ready for the next step in his training. A quick omission, while Star Wars is my favorite series of all time, aside from The Thrawn Trilogy, Knights of the Old Republic and The Clone Wars/Rebels I haven't really seen/read/played that much of Extended Universe so I have no idea of what Chuck was talking about, i.e. him seeing Obi-Wan was the first time he had seen him, if Vader knowing that the image of where the Rebels were was because of what Luke did but I for one like the idea so I'm adopting it as my head canon.

[Jonathan101]

Vader knew it was the Rebel base because of Force intuition, not because of anything Luke did.

I think that really was the first time that Luke had seen Ben since the Death Star, but I could be wrong.

There are two Expanded Universes- the old Legends canon and the new Disney canon-, and they handle the aftermath of the first movie a bit different.

[Beastro]

Failure 1: JJ sets up to many loose ends without a clear vision of where they are going to lead.

Failure 3: The third part has nothing to tie up and everything that is going to be re-setup in order to create any sensible loose ends leads to no satisfactory ending.

Hmmmmmm, that sounds familiar.....



That after that series people still take anything he and Lindelof do seriously baffles me.

I don't know much of what else Abrams has done personally, but I was able to predict how Prometheus was going to pan out(The same failures you list all in one movie being part of it) once I saw his name on it as co-writer.

[Yukaphile]

It really irritated me that SF Debris was yelling about Vader returning to the Executor. I mean, I loved that edit. And I prefer the new line over the original.

I also disagree that showing the wampa diminishes the threat level somehow. And it's ironic he'll bitch about Boba Fett's voice change, but make no single mention to inserting the Emperor's scream and grafting it onto Luke as he falls down the core shaft. Dafuk?

[SFDebris]

The scream was removed.

[Worffan101]

Failure 1: JJ sets up to many loose ends without a clear vision of where they are going to lead.
Failure 2: Rian Johnson can't find a thread to follow and meanders around trying to fix loose ends instead of telling a coherent story.
Failure 3: The third part has nothing to tie up and everything that is going to be re-setup in order to create any sensible loose ends leads to no satisfactory ending.

Basically this.

As hard as I am on Johnson and TLJ for fucking up and being a colossal disaster, respectively--at least Johnson tried? Abrams produced a watchable product, but he didn't try. He shat out a boring retread of ANH with moderately different characters and just threw in some vaguely mysterious shit that he thought seemed cool.

I mean, for the life of me I have no idea WHY people like Maz Kanata. Yes, she's voiced by an actress who I love and who's a truly fantastic performer! But the character is a halfassed ripoff of Yoda with no freaking context who exists to spout mysterious-sounding exposition.

And again, for all Johnson fucked up, and I've whined at length about how disastrously he fucked up everything from Rose as a character (turn her into a love interest at the last minute? You fucking idiot, she was infinitely more interesting as presented in act 1 before the stupid casino bullshit) to his intended plot and message of "learn from the past, don't try to burn or emulate it"...Johnson at least made an effort? He failed, he failed catastrophically and delivered a shambling mess of a film that has 4 climaxes, three plot threads of which only 1.5 are at all relevant, interesting, or done well, three different sets of annoying background CGI bits and bobs, social commentary that manages to simultaneously be muddled and as clunky as a Michael Moore movie, three villains of which one is a pathetic incompetent joke, one is a boring, irritating emo, and one is literally just a dude on a throne with no interesting traits, a mediocre performance, and a general "ripoff of Palpatine without the things that made Palpy mildly interesting" aura about him, AND that managed to break the rules of the universe so thoroughly that anybody with a passing familiarity with the setting would immediately call bullshit and have their immersion broken--but you know what, at least he tried to do something new, even if that something was tedious edgelord bullcrap that makes Revenge of the Sith look like a triumph of cinema.

I'm not going to watch episode 9. I have no confidence in Abrams as a filmmaker, and Johnson successfully destroyed any interest I might have had in seeing where the boring plot threads JJ halfheartedly threw out there were going. I can't say it wasn't Johnson's fault, because he owns that fuckup, but I don't have contempt for him like I do for Abrams.

[RobbyB1982]

That after that series people still take anything he and Lindelof do seriously baffles me.

1-I don't know why Abrams gets such shit over LOST. He helped with the idea and worked on the first episode. And only the first episode. He had no other involvement in the show. It'd be like giving Joss Whedon shit over Agents of Shield.

2-The show handled itself fine in regards to its plot threads and loose ends. If you paid any attention it answered any reasonable questions you might have. (Most of the questions were actually answered by season three. After that it was playing with the consequences of those answers.) If the mystery box hook was the only reason you were there, you missing the main point of the whole thing. That was the hook, not the show.

Stretched out weekly with hiatuses over the course of six years it might wear a little thin, and I can understand why people that only watched it that way might have been frustrated by it or forgotten details, but if you marathon it, it comes together pretty well all in all. The character stuff and the life stories on display were all really solid.


I am similarly constantly surprised by people throwing having issues about the ending of Battlestar Galactica when they followed up things flat out stated in like episode 2, and the first line of the first three seconds of the opening of the original series. Other problems with the show along the way that make no sense, absolutely (everything to do with the original 5 for instance) but the ending wasn't one of the problems.

[Proman1398]

even if that something was tedious edgelord bullcrap that makes Revenge of the Sith look like a triumph of cinema.

I'm not going to watch episode 9. I have no confidence in Abrams as a filmmaker, and Johnson successfully destroyed any interest I might have had in seeing where the boring plot threads JJ halfheartedly threw out there were going. I can't say it wasn't Johnson's fault, because he owns that fuckup, but I don't have contempt for him like I do for Abrams.

Okay going to come off as a bit of a contrarian but Revenge Of the Sith is pretty good, no triumph of cinema but it is my favorite Star Wars film ever, is in clunky at parts, sure but at times I find that just to be in character for the characters.

Still, I do agree with you about having no confidence in Abrams. I think he can create good films, and I don't have anything against him but there isn't anything for a trilogy finale in the TLJ ending for him to work with. It isn't even Johnsons fault, even if I do have major issue with his style during interviews, he shouldn't give any, but it isn't his fault he was given a middle movie with plot thread he obviously didn't want to work with, that didn't even have any answers when they were thought up, in a verse that he wanted to deconstruct more than he wanted to create a middle point for the final film.

Still, on topic with the Empire, it's funny how future stuff like the Prequels and the Clone Wars series play with this approach with Yoda. Because he always thinks he's right, sometimes he is but not for the reasons he thinks he is. Not general Force stuff but interaction with people, interaction with government and how to teach lessons just seems to be something that he fails at in certain points of learning. It's funny to think of how all the Jedi to turn to the dark side in the series, come from his teaching lineage. Which goes Yoda teaches Dooku who teaches Qui-Gon then Obi-Wan and then Anakin.

And the people who try to listen to him tend to either be the one to turn or have the student who does. Obi-Wan listens to him at most points even over some of his own judgments, Dooku learned directly from him as his apprentice.

[Yukaphile]

I prefer reading Revenge of the Sith, Matt Stover's novel. Then yeah, it's the best of the originals and prequels. And yeah, Yoda and the Jedi are out of touch. But then, that's the Jedi in a nutshell.

@SFDebris Oh hey! Was it really? I only have the 1997 special edition. And what's this about Hayden Christensen being grafted onto something else? That was official? I always thought that was bad fan editing...