Off-topic Star Wars discussion

[CharlesPhipps]

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.

Rose didn't win me over because she abuses Finn and prevents him from doing anything heroic. It's like she's an anime character in Star Wars.

[Worffan101]

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.

Rose didn't win me over because she abuses Finn and prevents him from doing anything heroic. It's like she's an anime character in Star Wars.

Abusive? I didn't really catch that.

I loved how in the first act Rose was a fresh character concept executed well (which was reassuring because the opening battle was pure idiocy), and I liked her and Finn finding a geeky solution, tbh I would've preferred that the nerdy solution be the one to save the day instead of getting everybody killed.

[MrL1992]

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.

Unless they're lying about their revenue, it is. No franchise has ever made 3 movies in a row that crossed a billion dollars (2 billion in one case), the MCU has yet to match that.

[TGLS]

If we're going to be talking about rewriting, here's what I would have done:

- First things first: it wouldn't have been Empire Strikes Back with some Return of the Jedi thrown in.

- Instead of the First Order somehow totally destroying the Republic's armed forces off screen, the movie would be the Republic giving the First Order a beating. While this is all going on the Republic is taking losses in something seemingly meaningless. As the movie progresses, the losses mount and mount, it eventually causes some disaster that shifts momentum towards the First Order.

- I think we can still fit in the Poe is a loose cannon plot, though I would be more inclined for him to be burned more literally at some point in the movie.

- The Luke/Rey plot would have been him refusing to teach her, at least, at first. After Rey does something with Force powers, he would reverse his opinion. It would then be revealed that Luke mistakenly believed that if stopped training Jedi, the force would go out of balance and the Dark Side would be destroyed too. When Rey manifests Force powers without training, he concludes that Jedi will still happen without training, so the force will balance anyway.

- If we need something like the Casino plot in there, then I'd shift the emphases a little. Instead of going to pick up some hacker on planet decadence, it would be Rose and Finn would be investigating some company or something. The big reveal would be that company X supplied weapons to the First Order, simply to start a war for profit or maybe for political reasons.

- We will follow the First Order around a little through out the movie. As the First Order takes an incredible beating, the officers start losing faith that Snoke actually has a plan to win the war. Snoke continues to insist that when they find Luke Skywalker, they win. Kylo is sent off to go find Luke, and we show him looking, following Rey's trail. Eventually, the generals get together, decide Snoke is liability, and assassinate him.

- Third act begins with the First Order beginning to push back hard on the Republican forces. Kylo reports back on Luke's location, and the FO decides to send a battlecruiser to destroy Kylo (because they think he'll be upset when he hears they killed Snoke), Rey and Luke in one fell swoop. Rose and Finn make it back to Republican HQ with device that could possibly counter the FO's battlecruiser. With forces tied up facing down the FO's advance, they are sent in a small ship to test the weapon on a lone battle-cruiser (which happens to be the one sent to the planet Luke is on). They're bombing the planet, and Kylo's trying to get a message through to the FO to stop bombarding until he gets off the planet. They're ignoring the message. The FO stops the bombardment when the Republic ship shows up and turns its weapons on them. Luke and Rey persuade Kylo that he was betrayed. He wants to go and get some revenge, and starts running for his ship. Rey follows. The Republic ship is getting torn apart and they can't get in weapons range. Finn, Poe or Rose kamikaze the Republic ship to provide cover for a shuttle to slip aboard the battlecruiser. They try to use the super duper weapon, but it only messes up the battlecruiser and they get captured. Kylo's fighter shows up, and they drop the shields, figuring they can execute him after he docks. He starts firing and then the Falcon comes in too and it's firing. The team on the battlecruiser escapes, then the battlecruiser is blown up. Kylo scampers off, and the movie ends.

[Worffan101]

I mean, to make it a decent movie isn't that hard. Cut the casino bit, have the main plot be Rey and Luke with Poe, Finn, and Rose on the ships trying to figure out a solution and clashing with the Admiral.

Don't know how the fuck the Republic just vanished and nobody was coming to help, but whatever. Skip the "slow-moving battle in empty space" nonsense, have it be something more like ESB.

The whole thing's going to end up an ESB ripoff, but whatever, that's still not bad.

[MrL1992]

Rumours are circulating about the new live action series that it'll focus on the Mandalorians. It'll apparently be set soon after the original trilogy.

It will be good to see Manadalore explored on-screen in what will likely be considered 'official' canon. And anything that might pull from 'The Old Republic' is also a bonus.

Means we are u likely to see any Jedi or lightsaber action u less one of Luke's apprentices is running around.

[unknownsample]

I must be one of the few on here who actually liked TLJ.

[CharlesPhipps]

I think any idea where the Republic isn't being slaughtered by the First Order is awful. At the end of the day, the Resistance is the heroes of the story. If we ever saw the NR, I'd want them to be slimy incompetant elitists who get butchered to the man by the bad guys to show how tough they are.

[Winter]

One of the issues I have with Last is that it introduces to many characters and spends to much time on things that don't matter. You could have cut out Rose, Holdo, Snoke, DJ, Phasma, Rose's sister, the Temple caretakers, the Porgs, Hux and the various lines from random extras that do nothing but to point out the obvious.

Just keep the focus on Rey, Luke, Ren, Leia, Finn and Poe and explore their relationships. Everyone was asking for more screen time between Finn and Poe and even the actors have expressed interest in the two having a romantic relationship (Finn and Poe for the OTP Win!!!) and show how Rey and Luke change one another.

In Last, and this is something I pointed out in my own review, of sorts, in regards to my issues with Rey and why she is a pour substitute for Mara Jade is that she is never actually grows and Luke's lessons are just something for her to ignore. Plus her sudden infatuation with Ren is forced as she seems to just forgive him for killing her surrogate father and putting her best friend in a coma after just three conversations with him.

I don't mind the Force bond but at the end of the day their relationship is exactly the same as it was at the start of the film, their enemies that will have to kill and or redeem/damn the other at the end of the series.

And it doesn't seem that Disney has learned their lesson as Episode 9 will have more characters then any other Star Wars movie likely because Abrams saw Avengers: Infinity War and wanted to do that a well while over looking that that was a film that had been build up for over 10 years and had over a dozen films to established each of it's characters in their own movie. It should also be noted that AIW didn't have enough to time give give each and everyone of it's characters their own arc and the ones that did had to be summed up in a very short amount of time so odds are good that will also happen in Episode 9 only with the added bounce that most of these characters have had little to know character development so far.

It really says something when you have a show about Lesbian Space Rocks with most episodes lasting only 10 minutes and most of the characters then have more development in one of these single 10 minute episode then Rey has had over two movies both of which have a run time of over 2 hours!!!

[clearspira]

Let me introduce you to something here my friends: they are called ''the Chinese sales'' and how TLJ was down by 92% in its SECOND week. ''Oh, who cares about the Chinese sales?'' I hear someone cry. Because the Chinese market is now the second largest market in the world, not only capable of doubling the revenue for a film, but is actually factored into modern Hollywood budgets. The producers expect to make half of it up in the US and half of it up in China. The Chinese LOVE American films. The MCU is absolutely blowing them away. And yet, they turned their noses up at Star Wars.

If you want to know if a blockbuster Hollywood film is a critical flop, look at the Chinese sales. ''Yeah, well, so what? It still made a billion dollars, everything is doing great.'' In the short term, yes. But critical acclaim is what determines long term sales and continued brand viability - and that is in the toilet. You honestly think that Disney has put a hold on the planned next trilogy for no reason? That the Solo sequel is on hold for no reason? That the planned Obi-Wan Kenobi film is now in doubt for no reason? That Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson nearly lost their jobs for no reason? No. It is because that Disney knows full well what I am talking about and they are worried.
(Heck, I might as well throw in their falling toy sales while I am at it despite the MCU toy sales doing great).