Posted on 12/23/2017 9:06:41 PM PST by GraceG
To say I’m not a fan of what Disney is doing to Star Wars is putting it mildly. Disney paid $4 billion dollars to buy the franchise and now they want to make money, but the older generations — those who watched movies before the advent of Hulu and Netflix — aren’t the target audience for this new trilogy. No, the millennials and their willingness to spend their disposable income on entertainment are the real target. To that end, Disney has introduced a new cast of characters who have begun to remake the galaxy far, far away in their own narcissistic, millennial image.
(There are spoilers ahead: if you insist on paying The Mouse, I mean seeing the movie before reading further, then you must do what you feel is right…)
Setting the tone is the DJ character: He’s not a millennial himself but he has their ethical code: no loyalty to anything, he only cares about himself.
Finn: OF COURSE he fled the First Order… because they wanted him to, like, kill people and stuff! I mean, YUCK — that was a hostile work environment! He wants to work in a fun, diverse place. Everyone wearing the same uniform, always having to wear your helmet, no self-expression at all? Forget that noise: Finn wants to work where superior officers have purple hair and ambiguously gay pilots are promoted to the rank of Commander despite not really doing anything to deserve it.
Poe: OF COURSE he gets the most excited when BB-8 came back — what millennial doesn’t go insane when separated from their smart-device for a few minutes? And Poe doesn’t do half of the work that BB-8 does on a mission anyway. If he was a programmer he would copy and paste everything from StackOverflow and hard code his unit tests to pass. (For non-programmers: that’s equivalent to saying he’s a plagiarist who acts like he’s authoring original material.)
Admiral Holdo (the Jurrasic Park lady): Purple hair is a nice nod to non-cultural-conforming self-expression, but she’s clearly not a team player… I mean, secrets don’t make friends! She had to stay behind to die: millennial justice demands it. However, she does earn millennial hero points going out in an act of suicide. Whether it was for the greater good or because she was never going to be accepted for who she was doesn’t matter.
Kylo is a bit of a quasi-millennial. He’s not allergic to doing grunt work (very non-millennial) but he’s pissed about not being respected and mentored and reaffirmed by his boss… so he kills him. Be very scared of a highly motivated millennial (but don’t worry too much, they are exceedingly rare).
Rey is the prime example of a millennial who expects to be coddled and coached and have her emotions nurtured… and when she doesn’t get what she expects she pursues the call of the dark side because why put in the hard work? Having her actually turn to the dark would have made sense as a millennial — this is one area where Disney isn’t mirroring the culture with her character. That and not immediately trading bodily fluids with Kylo even if they don’t believe in the same things — that’s anti-millennial too. But she’s on target with her quest to learn more about her parents: she narcissistically can’t believe that she is nobody from nowhere because she FEELS like she’s SOMEBODY. Clearly someone isn’t affirming her beliefs sufficiently.
Han, Luke, and soon (in the first scene of Ep. 9?) Leia will be dead. Because they have to be — they are victims of the updated “Die yuppy scum” and “Trust nobody over the age of 30” memes. There’s no place for them in this Mickey Mouse version of the Star Wars galaxy but, from a certain point of view, their characters are in a better place now. We’re guaranteed never to have a scene of Han and Chewbacca talking about their feelings or of Luke sending a green laser-sword Instagram message to Kylo Ben — or of Luke getting his milk at the local Whole (sea)Foods.
Let the past die indeed. Too bad the future of Star Wars isn’t dying with it.
There’s a lot more truth in this review than not.
They should have called this one “Star Wars: The SJW Cut”.
Then put out the real one without all the SJW crap. We want to see the heroes win and the villain suffer big time!
In the circle of life and the real food chain; birds do get eaten; so do other farm animals. It’s a delicious fact of life.
Just got back home from seeing this with my family. Overall, I enjoyed the movie, although there were a lot of ‘what the heck is going on’ moments. Helps to have a nephew who could explain things. One of the best parts of the movie was watching it in a theater with reclining seats.
The biggest WTH moment for me was wondering why the First Order didn’t jump a couple ships ahead of the fleeing rebels and take the out.
Haven’t seen it yet but I love Ann and SuperMerd so I trust his analysis
Last Jedi was by far the worst “Star Wars” film I have ever seen, and perhaps one of the 20 worst I’ve EVER seen. Horrible. Idiotic, pointless “characters.” Massive plot wasters. SJW dialogue. Ridiculously false and inconsistent science (as if TFA wasn’t bad enough). HORRIBLE.
Why even waste my time or money on such an overblown dead fad? There are hundreds of good movies which have stood the test of time and thousands of great books to be immersed in. The SW fad feeds on the cult of the current and the naivete of young people with some money to part with.
“Last Jedi” - $321 million
“Force Awakens” - $440 million
Comparing 2nd-Friday to 2nd-Friday, “Jedi” is 50% below “Force.”
Last Jedi has probably killed off the franchise. I couldn’t stand the new movies because the characters are boring and unlikable. Last Jedi managed to destroy the Starwars lore. They’ll keep making them, but they’ll never see the same kind of returns again.
It would take an awful lot for me to stop being a SW fan...yep, this does it! Onward and upward to better things.
I think the only thing more embarrassing than to be seen shopping in a mall is to be seen going into a move theater.
SPOILER
(haven’t even seen the film yet but details have already widely leaked)
Kinda short sighted of them to kill off the old cast and the one still standing is the one who died in real life.
I lioved Guillermo del Toro’s new movie “The Shape of Water”
Force Awakens and Rogue One both stunk. Horrible characters, mind insulting plot lines, rank stupidity. Oh, the combat scenes were done realistically, but those were the only saving grace from these 2 entire pieces of worthless tripe.
Star Wars is dead. I won’t watch another one. Not even out of curiosity. Not even for free. Disney could not have screwed up the Star Wars franshise any more thoroughly if they had tried.
Disney has completed the death that Jar Jar Binks began.
Have any of the people who made this movie seen an adventure serial (”come back NEXT week for CHAPTER IX!”)? If they had they’d learn about continuity.
Have any of the people who made this movie seen an epic film (with built in intermission) in a theater? If they had they’d learn about pacing and story arch (ACT I, ACT II, ACT II) and even giving the audience a break to take it all in and to take a pee break. When a film runs nearly 3 hours with no break, they are saying you can step out at any time and not really miss anything, it’s a wandering mess.
Have any of the people who made this movie seen the original? You know, the reconnect with the premise?
Have any of the people who made this movie seen the knockoffs that came in the wake of the original? Battlestar Galactica (AKA TV Star Wars), Star Crash (AKA Italian Star Wars), Battle Beyond The Stars (AKA Roger Corman’s Star Wars), Buck Rogers (AKA TV’s relaunch of one of the inspirations for Star Wars), Flash Gordon (AKA Dino DeLaurentis’ relaunch of one of the inspirations for Star Wars)?
I’ve got to say that some of those knock offs of Star Wars are a lot better than many of the prequel or sequel chapters of Star Wars (1977). They’d also learn what looks like an obvious (and inferior) swipe from “Chapter IV”.
Star Crash trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pzfuNSpP0RA
Battlestar Galactica tv promo 1 (1978)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0H7PXqfHcU
Battlestar Galactica tv promo 2 (1978)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxV3PmYTA5s
Battle Beyond The Stars trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksJTPdNNQB4
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century NBC promo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S37dDbS7bgY
Buck Rogers theatrical release tv ad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBhNZPZT1gw
Flash Gordon trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzFwECV8Kkk
Lawrence of Arabia trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zmr1iSG3RTA
1976 Star Wars trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHk5kCIiGoM
1977 Star Wars trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1g3_CFmnU7k
1936 Flash Gordon trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8BFrd1ckSw
Buck Rogers serial trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-lrz1apTvw
And one more “Lucas” pulp adventure serial franchise
Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) - Original Trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uABsht2bgY
I get that Star Wars morphed into its own thing far beyond its origins as a proposed “serial” or escapist tale. But it doesn’t account for shoddy storytelling (that gets major revision script doctoring umpteen times AFTER a trailer has been released) or rehashed plot elements again and again (a new Vader, another Death Star, snore).
Last Jedi trailer
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0CbN8sfihY
At this point Star Wars is like James Bond, a franchise beyond its time sequeled to death.
And the studio has no plans to let it rest when Chapter 9 comes and goes.
So I'm trying to have her refund my money for cutting short my movie or should I really bother?
From the little I saw it was very lame to the point of being pathetic. Heck, even The Phantom Menace was the worst of the earlier series but this hits a new low.
I thought two of the Daniel Craig Bond movies were good...
There can be good and bad bond films, but there is no longer any cohesion in the “series” or need to go out and see them all.
Just as there are numerous people playing Batman and the approach from film to film is starkly different (campy comedy to edgy psychosis).
I agree. I prefer Craig as Bond, and Bale as Batman.
I see them as separate series.
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