After yesterday, I contemplated this mess and there's many things that I can't wrap my head around.
1) I'm still flabberghasted by how they introduce Palpatine and how bad the beginning is structured. It's utterly surreal and bizarre to me.
We learn of the wayfinder in the title crawl -boom- Kylo is slaughtering random guys on a random planet -boom- he finds a random chest with his quest-item -boom- he's on Retirement-Castle-World and meets Palpy ... and joins him.
I talked about how atrocious the pacing is, but here's the deal: What the fuck is up with the people he killed? Why do they have the wayfinder? Why is it stored in some random chest? It's ridiculously badly written.
2) The movie is doing the "A good question for another time" thing again with how Palpatine is still around. You just have to admit, it's kind of ballsy for a plot writer to refuse to actually fucking write a fucking plot.
3) Ever since yesterday, when all this shit broke loose, I started watching rotten tomatoes like a hawk, when it started out at 55%. I watched it slowly go up to like 62% and then down to 59% again. Now I refresh that page regularly, being oddly scared to see it rise above 60% again, but it flip-flops around 58% and 59%. And whenever it drops down from 59%, I am giddy as a schoolboy on the first day of the holidays. Shit man. This is so unbelievably cathartic. It's at 260ish reviews and 57%. TLJ's score was based on 360 reviews in total, so this score isn't going much higher. This is a bloodbath.
4) I don't know if it's just a rumor, but didn't Disney buy Star Wars as a Cinematic Universe that would ultimately replace the MCU once that ran its course? If so, holy fucking shit. They devalued their brand new franchise within the course of 7 years. It's not utterly worthless, seems the Mandalorian does ok, might become the thread that Disney can cling to in order to get their franchise back on track, but if that "MCU-replacement" rumor is true, this is fucking insane.
Also, people in this thread really need to learn to ignore Dollar-Store-Dynastia-wannabes, especially when they are known for easily being made butthurt themselves and blocking people.
And geez, took me like 3 or 4 hours to catch up with this thread.
That's a good point. The original Star Wars is used as the "ur example" in screenwriting, like that's the formula screenplays use. By carrying on that tradition and bringing it full circle, they could do the "how NOT to write a screenplay" with Disney's trilogy. Then every single film student will get tired of Star Wars. Absolute genius.
They did the "how not to write a screenplay" thing quite literally. They started production of an entire fucking trilogy without a screenplay in hands.
As Suburban pointed out, the pacing is too damn fast for it's own good. This to me is a sign the movie was hacked up in editing. Basically, remember the Fantastic Four reboot from a few years back? The one that had a ton of shit cut out of it and was totally different from what it was originally supposed to be as a result? Well, that was because due to poor test screenings, they knew they had a stinker on their hand so they basically hacked the movie up the best they could so it would be around 90 minutes long, make sure it was semi presentable and then released it. Why do they do this? Because more showings = More money. So they basically cut their losses with a hacked up movie rather than a longer movie that will make less and be more costly.
This strongly indicates the leaks about reshoots being true.
Only difference is: this movie is still over 2 hours long. Since JJ had to essentially cram 3 movies into one, they had to jumpcut at every moment, skip atmospheric scenes or scenes that develope characters and setting or help the plot transitioning.
They had to cut out everything that's not EXPOSITIONEXPOSITIONEXPOSITIONEXPOSITIONEXPOSITIONEXPOSITION, since otherwise, the runtime would be monstrous.
I need prayers, fellow Kiwis. I am going tonight, and I don't see Joel and the bots anywhere.
As I said many pages ago--but again since we have lots of new folks--I have rather a unique situation: in a masterstroke of manipulation, my 22-year old, who knew I did not want to see this film in theaters, pulled a fast one and ordered tickets for opening night, THEN turned around and made the tickets CHRISTMAS PRESENTS for me and my wife, and included the younger kids to make it "about family." Yep.
He's a full-on lover of TLJ and Ruin Johnson, and it's my secret hope that this shitshow will turn him around. But I'm not holding my breath. I will however be glad to report on the level of dumpsterfire. I can tell you that there are EMPTY SEATS still left at this 7:30 premiere, so that's something.
We know about the plot, tell us about the audience. How many empty seats, do people grunt during the movie, what is the overall reaction?
Frankly, at key moments, you should yell "god, that's fucking stupid!". Like pretty much at the beginning during the title crawl.
So, Admiral Pryde has shining blue eyes. And I thought his name was SUBTLE.
