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[scriver]

The Force Awakens is the most "Star Wars" movie that has ever existed, arguably moreso than the *actual* original trilogy movies

I not 100% certain that is what you are saying, but I get the feeling that what you're saying means that you would consider Eragon the most Star Wars story ever told.

[Reelya]

the plethora of minor characters that never did jack shit.  Like the scene with Darth Vader and the bounty hunters, where most of them never come back.

I disagree that these are odd or unexplained moments. They're things that actually make the world more alive. Side characters in a film that aren't important to the plot are necessary in the same sense that people have said it's tiring if they have to shoe-horn every character into the Skywalker family. It's what TV and film directors do to give you a sense of a "living world": a world that's bigger than the story.

If Vader only directed one bounty hunter, and exactly one bounty hunter found the Falcon and came back, then that would be neater but it'd be less realistic: if Vader knew ahead of time who would succeed, he probably wouldn't need to hire anyone: Vader hires multiple trackers for the reason that Vader lacks the information. It's actually a well-thought-out scene. In real life, many unimportant characters do come and go from the shot. It makes sense that Vader paid a bunch of bounty hunters to go and find the Falcon, but only one of them found it and reported back, it also makes sense from a movie-making perspective that whatever happened to those other bounty hunters isn't important enough to be on-screen: it happened somewhere in the galaxy, and each bounty hunter has their own story, but none of the events that transpired as a result had any relevance to the main plot: the camera follows Boba Fett, because Boba Fett got it right.

[Egan_BW]

Now we just need to teach AIs to write all those extra stories that we don't bother following, creating practically infinite starwars content and making it the first ever fully realized fictional universe.
:P

[EnigmaticHat]

The Force Awakens is the most "Star Wars" movie that has ever existed, arguably moreso than the *actual* original trilogy movies

I not 100% certain that is what you are saying, but I get the feeling that what you're saying means that you would consider Eragon the most Star Wars story ever told.

I think I was making a small point and I worded it too strongly lol.  I get the comparison between Eragon and SW but I always went to LoTR.

Let’s just focus on the main thrust of what I was saying with that sentence.  We went from TFA which is clearly trying to fit the OT formula and TLJ which isn’t.  Rogue One also broke the formula but it wasn’t mainline.  So people had differing expectations with TLJ.

[EnigmaticHat]

-snip-

[Dunamisdeos]

Things like the space worm and trash compactor serve to add unknown elements into the universe. Makes it seem like a larger and more rich setting.

Luke started out as a whiny bitch and ended up defying the emperor and saving his father. He lost his parental guardians, his hand, fought in an actual war, etc. Rey started out as an incredible badass and ended up as an even more incredible badass with no sacrifice or training, and then the writers/directors get confused as to why people don't like it. It's like that friend who has God Mode on from start to finish and then brags about how good he is at the game.

Like, the movies are fun to watch, but the characters lack any and all substance and show no indication of ever being anything but shallow. People tolerated the copy-paste story from TFA because they were clearly setting up a new story and universe with new characters. TLJ was the one where everyone openly expected characters to deepen and become more interesting, and then they outright avoided it entirely (Except for Kylo Ren, he's developing right along).

Anyway that's the root cause of the hateboner everyone seems to have for it, from what I can tell. I still enjoyed it.

[Starver]

Rey has the infinity-mirror and Luke's wariness, to pair with Luke's tree-roots dream/vision-thing and Yoda's "ready, you are not" (and Annikin's actual sand-people slaughter some time after the "fear leads to anger", from Kermit?)

Luke was (apart from youthful restlessness) the consummate son-of-a-dew-farmer, unsatisfied but knew his way around the environment (not so much the Mos Eisley environs, but that's his Uncle Lars). Rey knows her way around her patch of desert, 'farming' the wrecks, and also deals with the town trader (not a patch on his ME counterparts) and seems to have done all the growing up portion of her life already (what Luke had been largely insulated from, either just because of his edge-of-mappiness or additionally because Owen was asked to keep him away from potential trouble) and so we don't need to see so much of Rey's learning experience. She's well beyond the Yippeee!!! stage of excitable child-Annikin, both having tinkered with repulsorcraft but Rey having got past the reckless stage, while Luke probably knows how to mod a stock speeder/change its sand filters (through necessity, having doubtless had to tinker after a Womp Rat run ended up with a face-plant into a dune) and has the innate Star Wars universe knowledge of how to effect basic droid maintenance.

Basically, Rey got over her whiny-bitchiness, off-camera and pre-starscroll. She grew up quickly. Annikin grew up quicker, probably (and had to deal with life as slave-offspring), but the action focussed in him also much earlier. Side-by-side, Rey (as we see her) is far more mature than Equivalent-Age-Luke, whilst EAAnnikin has had several years more under his belt, since adventure found him. (In fact, I think, probably post-Mustafar and having experienced many bad things including widowerhood, though I ought to check the likes of Wookipedia to confirm my idea of the timings.)

[EnigmaticHat]

Things like the space worm and trash compactor serve to add unknown elements into the universe. Makes it seem like a larger and more rich setting.

Luke started out as a whiny bitch and ended up defying the emperor and saving his father. He lost his parental guardians, his hand, fought in an actual war, etc. Rey started out as an incredible badass and ended up as an even more incredible badass with no sacrifice or training, and then the writers/directors get confused as to why people don't like it. It's like that friend who has God Mode on from start to finish and then brags about how good he is at the game.

Like, the movies are fun to watch, but the characters lack any and all substance and show no indication of ever being anything but shallow. People tolerated the copy-paste story from TFA because they were clearly setting up a new story and universe with new characters. TLJ was the one where everyone openly expected characters to deepen and become more interesting, and then they outright avoided it entirely (Except for Kylo Ren, he's developing right along).

Anyway that's the root cause of the hateboner everyone seems to have for it, from what I can tell. I still enjoyed it.

I'm trying to explain to you guys that most people don't have a hate boner for the movie, its just a crowd that heavily intersects with bay12...

To be clear, I *like* the odd bits in the OT.  But they're from a different era.  Around... I'd say, somewhere in the 90s... American action movies gained a prominent feature of American culture, which is the fear of silence.  Modern American action movies have no wasted time, no stationary camera, no silent moments.  The exception being imported foreign movies (like Snowpiercer) and "retro" directors like Tarantino.  Not sure which category Fury Road goes in but it counts.  The point is, could you imagine a modern action movie having 10 minutes of R2D2 wandering the desert and getting captured, with no audible dialogue?  Or the whole Mos Eisley/Cantina extended scene?  That shit would scare Michael Bay.  He'd want to get rid of it.

Oldstyle American action emphasized physicality over the spoken word.  When we lost that our action movies didn't work any more, which is why in the modern day successful Hollywood action movies tend to be genre fusions.  JJ Abrams is a Star Wars fan and he *got* Star Wars, but.  He's a modern director.  TFA is a dense, no down time movie (with the exception of one scene).  The movie is so breathlessly fast and tight that it wants to shove the space battles, ground battles and exposition all into the same scenes.  It runs a modified version of the Death Star plotline, combined with the climaxes of both Ep. 5 and 6, in about a third the time that the death star plotline was given in A New Hope.

Its like, imagine with Fury Road what we got was a movie by George Miller that had all the ridiculous BDSM outfits and post-apocalyptic desert with the same general plot structure of Max learning to care about a group of ragtag survivors.  But, instead of Fury Road's style we got a modern hollywood action movie.  It would have been Max Max cleaned up, Mad Max as people remembered it.

TLJ on the other hand is willing to sit around showing us where the blue milk comes from.  Its not a retro style movie fully, because its "quiet" moments often have bright lights or loud sounds.  But that movement is usually an illusion.  Example, Kylo Ren beating the crap out of his helmet or Luke getting shot a billion times.  Yeah there's stuff moving on the screen, but its none-the-less a "still" beat because nothing is happening and the camera is relatively still.  I think most directors would dislike the way that scene was edited.  They would want to cut to different angles, get the camera panning around so we could get those differing foreground/background movement speeds.  But that would de-emphasize the action that's happening.  We don't need the camera and music to make us afraid for Luke.  That can be left as an implication.  What we're watching is a bunch of giant weapons being shot at one person and we're allowed to just watch that happen for a bit.  Because that its the physical action, rather than the emotional stakes, that is emphasized in the camera work.

So anyway, that's what I mean by TFA being a cleaned up OT.  People have forgotten that sometimes Star Wars means sometimes you're going to spend a few seconds watching a bug headed alien play the trombone, with nothing else explicitly happening.  What people remember is light sabres and Darth Vader and the space battles.  TFA provides a straight shot to the artery of concentrated Star Wars icons.  But to me its not the full Star Wars experience.  Look at the way Max Kanata was shot between the two different movies.  I think JJ Abrams thought he was shooting a quiet exposition scene, but he really wasn't.  It was full of tense musical cues, multiple plotlines going on at once, frequent cuts (including to things that weren't even present at the moment, like the spaceship from Rey's memory) and then the whole thing culminates in a giant fight scene. IIRC they even had cuts to the First Order's parade grounds and firing the starkiller laser.  It was supposed to be Obi Wan sitting Luke down in his house, but it wasn't that at all.  By contrast the way Max Kanata is used in TLJ *resembles* a needlessly action packed blend of exposition, movement and noise.  But the camera is stationary, the scene sticks on one minor point of the plot, we never actually see any of the fight, and the ultimate payoff of the scene is jetpack Max Kanata which was awesome and meaningless.  That's Star Wars as it was, given a new shiny new coat of paint to fit in with all the other Disney fare.

Spoiler: digression (click to show/hide)

I'd say that between Guardians of the Galaxy (particularly the second one), Wonder Woman, and this, we're seeing a new school of action movie.

The oldschool formula for american action movies was to emphasize the contrast between peace and violence, stillness and movement, silence and noise.  And this was accomplished by making the transition between them as quick as possible.  The genre convention (with westerns, but also with say kung fu movies or even police dramas) was that violence happens suddenly and death quickly.  The "quiet" and "loud" moments were allowed to be "flat" and one dimensional, by modern standards boring.  This is because the tension came from knowing the moment of transition was going to come, but not knowing when.  It was a genre convention that people knew to expect.  Likewise the function of gore in these movies (which was frequent) was to establish the stakes.  The audience knows someone is going to be decapitated or impaled or fall into a giant grinder, that minor characters are going to be killed in pointlessly tragic ways.  The tension came from not knowing when it would happen, or who would make it.

If you imagine a "activeness" graph for an oldschool action movie, it would be a series of plateaus.  Suddenly transitioning between activeness and inactiveness with little time in between.  A modern hollywood action movie on the other hand would should show near constant, sustained growth with small oscillations in activity.  But most action movies are ultimately one continuous note of slow building to the climax.  And you can see this with the genre convention of the ticking clock.  Modern action movies constantly establish stakes by cutting to whatever it is that the hero needs to stop.  A bomb counting down, a hostage about to die, something like that.  By contrast an oldschool action movie leaves the stakes as an implication.  A common device was to put the characters in a situation where its clear to the audience that violence is going to happen, but the characters either don't know or refuse to acknowledge it.  An example would be the 3 way duel from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.  Everyone knows its about to get bloody, but what we get is 3 minutes of people staring at each other wordlessly.  The stakes aren't that any higher purpose is hinging on the duel; no innocent lives are at stake.  Rather the tension comes from knowing what is coming but knowing when.  The presence of Tuco also serves to establish stakes.  Earlier scenes have served to make him sympathetic, but he's also clearly the type of character that would die.  So the implication that he might is used for drama until practically the last second of the movie.  But its left as implication.  What the audience is shown isn't reaction shots from Tuco's brother or a cut to, I don't know, Blondie's family that needs money for medicine in an hour or someone's going to die.  We JUST get the physical reality of the scene; characterization and stakes are established through implication.

I think what we're seeing is a new school of action movie with a different mindset than either.  Spoilers for a couple recentish movies ahead.  The newschool action movies resemble modern action movies in tone and pacing, but keep the clear delineation of what is happening from oldschool action movies.  They keep the ticking clock sometimes, but the primary source of tension is the current POV character having flawed motivations and only the audience realizing it.  An example would be in Guardians of the Galaxy 2, the quantum asteroid field scene.  The nominal conflict is that a fighter is chasing them and they have to dodge asteroids.  However the actual tension of the scene is that Rocket and Starlord are fighting for control of the ship and its very obvious to everyone except them that this is a bad idea.  There are also several fight scenes in that movie where the tension comes from not who will win but how two characters relate to each other and whether they will end up being allies or enemies.  I'd also point to Wonder Woman as potentially part of this new school of action movies.  Most action scenes in Wonder Woman (with the notable exception of the beach scene) are one-way stomps.  There are several fight scenes that stick on the same sort of visual "frame" for a long time with no real change in the status of the fight scene.  In the No Man's Land Scene, its Wonder Woman blocking bullets surrounded by washed out colors.  In the climatic battle its Wonder Woman running through flames, knocking aside German soldiers with ease.  The tension in those scenes comes from Wonder Woman's character, not from the actual combat itself.  There technically was a ticking clock in Wonder Woman, and an alternate plot (the band of misfits trying to stop the bombs).  But honestly they were so de-emphasized that I almost forgot they were there.  Both those two movies have one thing in common, which is they both feature main characters failing to figure out something that is extremely obvious to the audience (Starlord's dad is evil, and punching random soldiers won't make WW1 any less awful).  I think that's intentional.  The point isn't teaching a moral to the audience.  Its creating tension from the fact that you KNOW the main character is messing up.  Its almost like a horror movie in that respect, except instead of a quiet moment heading towards a jump scare, its a big fight scene on screen and heading towards quiet failure.

To me this trend makes TLJ all the more interesting because its the movie that most abandons modern convention.  It sets up that big disney finish with the ticking clock and the multiple fight scenes.  And then it just... fizzles out.  The Luke fight scene turns out to not be a fight.  The rebels quietly sneak away with Rey's help.  To me what makes TLJ tick is scenes like the throne room scene.  You've got this extended 2 vs many kung fu scene against the honor guard.  But its SW, we know the literal redshirts aren't going to kill either character and we know darkness isn't going to fully triumph.  But the scene wasn't about that.  The tension in the scene came from the fact that Kylo and Rey were going to have to come to an understanding between each other.  Their character motivations were uncertain and the fight scene was there to create suspense for the character drama.  It was drawing things out, while providing little visual hints of what might happen (like Rey and Kylo cooperating and the throne room burning down).  And I honestly didn't know what would happen.  Like I had a few ideas what *wouldn't* happen but I honestly could have bought Rey being corrupted, Kylo being redeemed, both of them walking away from the conflict, or what actually did happen.  And that's impressive to me.  I was on the edge of my seat in a Star Wars movie not because of intense action or suspense, but because I honest to god wasn't sure which way a character would jump.

So far all these movies have been well received.  We've already seen the MCU's mix of action of humor influence what a modern hollywood movie is.  But what I've noticed as that with Guardians 1 + 2, WW, and TLJ, is that their critics treat them as hybrid or outright comedies, while their biggest fans tend to de-emphasize the comedy aspect.  This very much applies to TLJ, a lot of the online criticism I've seen has been about how it had too many attempts at humor.  Whereas most positive reviews mention that its one of the darker SW movies ever made, which I agree with.  Anyway, I'm not really talking about TLJ anymore (hence digression).  I think this newschool of action movies has been consistently well recieved but its not fully defined.  I think future movies like this will drop more and more conventions of modern action movies.  I'm waiting for the action movie that's about a former criminal fighting his old gang while trying to reconnect with his family, and at no point in the movie is his family actually threatened.  With the conflict being that he's clearly still the person that his family turned away from and he needs to learn how to change over the course of the movie or its obvious to the audience that he will ultimately fail.  Something like that.  A more "pure" newschool action movie.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

But Star Wars is not an action franchise? There is action IN Star Wars, but that's like saying Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is an action movie (Great movie, btw.) The action has ALWAYS served (in the OT, ep1 is in the middle, and eps2/3 are straighter action movies) to further the emotional development of the characters. And it's not usually a bombastic set-piece battle, there's basically one every film, and in the new trilogy we already have at least four in the first two movies.

The power of the juxtaposition in TLJ is not really in question I think, rather that the individual sequences specifically are either OCD or boring. If you want to talk about editing, and cinematographic decisions, it's just crazy how badly paced the movie is and all the plot holes and questions that arise from that.

Let's dissect the beginning. Warning: This may be a little rough because it's been a while now since I saw the movie.

                                                          |<-------------The Dreadnought arrives?------------>|
Title crawl -> Rebels Evacuating -> Imperials arrive -> Poe goes to stop them -> Prank phone call -> Poe starts blowing up turrets and then the bombers arrive intercut with Leia acquiescing to Poe's terrible plan -> The Dreadnought blows up the now-deserted Rebel base -> Bombers getting picked off -> The Dreadnought refocuses on the Rebel cruiser -> Slow-mo bomber suicide -> Poe is recalled and the Rebel fleet flees.

So, in the opening sequence, we're launched into a compelling situation. The rebels are evacuating, but once again, the Imperials arrive just in time to fuck with them. They plan to fire on the base and then the ship. TENSION... and then Poe decides to cut that build up in half by pranking General Honk. Really? I mean, what the fuck. Already, right off the bat Rian writes himself into a corner that he shouldn't be in.

*Not to mention, A.) They could have just fired on the Rebel cruiser FIRST and not had this situation occur and B.) Not only is the visual design of the Dreadnought disgustingly awful, I guess the First Order is even building its main-line battleships with glaring weak spots now?

Moving on. We insert some clever Deus Ex Machina, via the incredibly SLOW MOVING bombers which just seem to appear in front of the dreadnought at a moment's notice to get Poe out of the situation he's in. Fighter's scramble on both sides, the fight is on.

*Oh wait, not only are being constantly taken out of the sequence by Leia impotently shaking her fists and Poe and then switching sides, but why the fuck do we have these bombers? Just give us the fucking Y-wings. We all know they exist.

Despite their best efforts, the dreadnought demolishes the Rebels' planetary base and dramatically realigns its cannons with the Rebel cruiser. Oh no. BUT WAIT, after having meticulously picked apart both the X-Wing escort and all but one of the bombers, it appears the the TIE pilots go on their court-mandated lunch break while Asian McSlowlyDying manages to get a finger on the bomb release button after her bomber miraculously drifts over the Dreadnought's literally massive weak spot. Woohoo.

Leia finally works up the nerve to reign in Poe and get him back aboard for a timely escape.

Jesus Christ, that is bad. And that is first sequence of the movie. I mean, hell, there's such a massive skip in everything between films--why is Poe is retarded? How do the FO have a crazy fleet again? Why are there literally NO Rebel ships? I mean... It's wild, right off the bat, the movie engenders questions that the audience shouldn't have. You can take some liberties in divulging from a previous film directed by someone else, but Rian Johnson did not give a single FUCK about where TFA was going.

I'm waiting for the action movie that's about a former criminal fighting his old gang while trying to reconnect with his family, and at no point in the movie is his family actually threatened.  With the conflict being that he's clearly still the person that his family turned away from and he needs to learn how to change over the course of the movie or its obvious to the audience that he will ultimately fail.  Something like that.  A more "pure" newschool action movie.

I mean that basically just sounds like Film Noir. And if the conflict is him reconnecting with his family, why is it an action film? That's Die Hard basically, but you want the physical and emotional plot lines separate and more emphasis on John McClane having deep conversations with his estranged wife than shooting bad guys? Why--it is an ACTION movie? Am I incorrect? You want action movie with less action?

John Wick is the gold standard for modern action films. Simple, but grabbing plot line. Visual action. Not cutting between every punch thrown and step taken, but actual continuous shots on long periods of movement.

That's an action film. The plot serves the action. If you want a drama film or an epic or something that is more about the emotional journey then the action has to serve the plot and characters. IMO, it doesn't really do that in TLJ or almost all Marvel movies for that matter.

[Dunamisdeos]

I agree with pretty much all of that. Star Wars is primarily an adventure/sci-fi, at least to me. They break up the adventure with set-piece action.

Nobody minds the side bits with the silly aliens or even plot holes brought on by space wizards and nonsensical space battle tactics. It's when you get scenes that make no sense in-universe or even in the context of its own movie that it bothers me.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Ya, there's plenty of silliness and campiness in the OT, but generally it builds world rather than take you out of anything. The campiness very rarely happens in the midst of a really important scene.

[Dunamisdeos]

For instance, the silly jabba-the-hutt alien music band scene did not occur during the rancor fight, because that would be retarded.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Yes, or in the style of TLJ, introduce the Rancor, then have Luke run from the Rancor THROUGH Jabba's dance party.

[ChairmanPoo]

The silly jabba musicql number was barely present at all in the original cut

[EnigmaticHat]

...the first lightsaber fight scene literally was in a cantina with aliens playing jazz?

I feel like you guys think I'm hating on the OT.  I'm not.  I'm saying if you held the OT to the same standard you're holding TLJ, it would not hold up even slightly.  I mean could you imagine if the same people arguing Leia's force powers are OP could have seen the Sarlacc Pit scene with the same eyes they're turning on the TLJ?  Leia strangles Jabba with his own chain, Han beats up an armored bounty hunter with a stick, and then Luke shoots the barge with its own lasers.

This to say nothing of the fact that Rey doesn't need to be a powerful force user for the plot of TLJ to work, not until the very end.  Most of her scenes that involve things actually happening are shared (arguably outright stolen) by Kylo.  In TFA on the other hand she doesn't even know she's a jedi until she's bolted to a table in the middle of the neo-Death Star, in the presence of a powerful dark side user and an army of storm troopers that are on high alert but not distracted by anything.  Yet she effortlessly climbs all over the starkiller base and runs circles around the First Order with no help at all.

And like I'm not criticizing it, Obi-wan did about the same in A New Hope and he was up against Darth Vader.  But its just weird to me that all the Mary Sue criticisms are emerging now and not before.  Likewise, why are people complaining about fuel and shields and such now and not before?  The previous movie had someone hyperdrive through a shield.  Hell it started with someone freezing a blaster bolt and a person they weren't aware of in mid air using the force.  But why is everyone analyzing the logic of it all now.