Star Wars: Episode VIII (The Last Jedi) - SPOILERS POSSIBLE*

I have been a fan since 1977 and I joined the official Star Wars fan club in 1978 as a charter member. Still have my membership card. And I love the Last Jedi. And if I was Mark Hammil I would be very pleased to have such a central role in this new trilogy and be given so a special 'send-off'', saving the day and being a hero.

 

And Mark currently is happy with the final product and how he left. He has been complimentary of both Rian Johnson for seeing what he didn't. Of course the anti- last Jedi conspiracy theorists are convinced the only reason he changed his mind is because Disney is holding his family hostage or some similar made up fantasy.

 

Don't bother. It is an utterly dreadful film.

 

From what I read regarding episodes 7,8 and 9, the general idea is that they conclude the so called “Skywalker saga”, completing 9 episodes focused on Skywalker lineage (Anakin, Luke, Leia and, and, as many expected, some of their heirs (at the moment Kylo can be considered from the same blood line, some fans expected that Rey would be actually the main Skywalker in this trilogy, etc.). All other movies (the Rebels animation, the Story movies, the eventual new Rian Johnson trilogy, and whatever could come in the future is set in the SW universe, without being part of the Skywalker 9 parts space opera, and they are free to do whatever they want with the franchise in order to make more money.

Now, the question is how successfully Disney fulfilled this plan so far. I think that Rebels series are very entertaining and well made, and I believe they hooked many kids. I also liked Rogue One for what it is. But I think that they failed with the main “Skywalker” episodes (if you ask me, I think that the Skywalker story is perfectly shaped and concluded within the previous 6 episodes, but if they decided to exploit it further for 3 more episodes, they should rely and focus mainly on what the original fans would love to see (and since many of the original fans were kids in the late 70’s and mid 80’s, plus there’s another wave of younger fans hooked in 1997, there’s enough audience to rely on). So, it wasn’t necessary, nor very clever, these final 3 “Skywalker” episodes prime focus to be some imaginary newborn audience, instead doing all possible to satisfy the majority of the older fans (which are not that old or dead, ranging mainly between 55 and 30 years old, most of them – grown up boys). These fans supported the franchise for decades, they are millions all over the world, and they are capable to support further the franchise for some more decades. It’s not very clever business thinking, IMO, to overlook such a perfect and dedicated audience in favor of some hopes to win today's teenage girls or something like that.

 

I think "The Last Jedi" is quite good, and I'm fine with Hamill/Luke's role in the film. I wish Luke hadn't been killed off, but I only feel that way because Hamill was so good in the film and I would have preferred to see more of him in 8 and 9. I have no problem with how Luke's character was written, and I'm not opposed across the board to the idea of killing Luke. I just would have like to see more of him in 9. By killing him, we're likely at best to get a bit of "ghost Luke" in 9.

Anyway, having said all that, that I think "The Last Jedi" is quite good and I don't particularly agree across the board with Hamill's complaints, I don't *for a second* believe that Mark Hamill is actually "happy" with Rian Johnson's decisions in making the film. If you track all of the interviews and press conferences before *and* after the film came out, it's pretty clear Hamill and Johnson have a weird half joking/half serious passive-aggressive thing going on. I think they are both professionals, and I believe Hamill did an *amazing* job in the film considering he disagreed with most everything he was doing.

I don't think Disney is holding Hamill's family hostage, and I don't even think they *forced* him (no pun intended) to not say anything. But I think it's *quite likely* that after a spate of increasingly adamant "I disagreed with everything Rian Johnson did, but I did the best job I could" sort of interviews, *someone* up the chain of command at least *very adamantly* asked Mark Hamill to walk it back.

I think it's pretty clear Hamill was bummed with Johnson's decisions, bummed nobody at Lucasfilm or Disney tried to really even placate him or offer some sort of compromise (for all of Johnson's warm, soothing proclamations that he had "many discussions" with Hamill, there's no evidence Johnson changed *anything* as a result of the discussions; it comes across as though Johnson basically allowed Hamill to complain as much as he wanted/needed, but then just went full steam ahead with his original plan), and bummed that Johnson's decisions largely cannot be easily "retconned" by Abrams in "IX" the way some of Johnson's other decisions might be able to.

So, I think "TLJ" is great, I disagree with almost all of the criticisms of it, but I also absolutely recognize that Rian Johnson, as polite and soothing and calming as he can be in terms of demeanor, made pretty epically final decisions about the Luke character. I like Johnson's work on the film, but I'm not a particularly big fan of his attitude that seems to imply the decision of killing off Luke was out of his hands, as if some screenplay-writing God from above forced Johnson to go that way.

 

I probably overstated when I said he was " happy". I think he now more fully understands the why's of Luke's arc and Johnson's overall vision once he saw the completed film. He was probably worried not only about the story but also whether or not he'd be able to pull it off and if it actually would work. While he no doubt wishes things were somewhat different, he's generally has been supportive of Johnson.

Now, did Disney ask him to walk things back a bit? Perhaps, but he himself started to walk back some of his criticism just prior to opening once he saw the final result, and he insists that no one at Disney or Lucasfilm asked him to censor himself, and I have no reason not to believe him.


He probably made the decision himself when he realized the zealot community of malcontents were taking his comments about his misgivings of Luke's arc in the movie as an indictment of Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson and the sequel trilogy and the movie in general. In fact he made it clear many times he absolutely loved the direction rest of the movie,he just had misgivings and worries about his role.

Of course the troll community took his comments way out of context and used it as ammo in their crusade to make the discussion around the last Jedi and Disney's control of Star Wars as toxic as possible and as proof the entire movie is garbage and anyone who likes it is also garbage and a shill for Disney.

 

I don't think any of the new films have been what Mark expected. I'm sure he wasn't super pleased that in Force Awakens he had no lines and about a minute of screen time. We know how he felt about the role of his character in Last Jedi. I completely understand and I'm sure I would feel the same way. In my view though, he was fantastic in Last Jedi and it made his character a real human with flaws and regret, not some 70 year old super jedi, but a real human who made mistakes along with way and tries to make amends at the end. In my opinion it makes the character of Luke so much more interesting and Mark did some fantastic acting, maybe the best in his career, to send the character off with. I took a few family members to see it who wanted nothing to do with star wars ever and they really enjoyed it, much of it to do with the complexity of Luke and the struggle within him.

 

I sorta see where you are coming from, but the real question that needs to be asked is what is the line between serving the story/ franchise and fan service? The problem there is that every fan is a bit different, so it's nearly impossible to guage the fans and try and hit all the points of what the fanbase wants, unless you start polling or focus grouping the fans and asking them what they want, and then take those answers and try and write scripts based on that. I don't know about you, but I have no wish to see movies made specifically to be fan pleasers every single time. That is a recipe for stagnation and boredom.

Honestly what they should have done was not have any of the OT human characters appear in this trilogy and have it pick up say, 100 years after Episode IV, after Leia Luke and Han had passed and Kylo or Rey are the great grandchildren of the Skywalkers. if you wanted carry over characters, the droids, Chewbacca, and some of the alien characters like Akbar or a few others , with maybe Mark and Carrie as force ghosts at the most, but then you'd still have people upset that the OT characters were sidelined.

I think we all wish we had gotten a second trilogy with Mark as the star and the OT characters front and center, but that ship has sailed and that's mostly George Lucas' fault. It is what it is.

the Last Jedi isn't perfect, it has it's problems, but I'm glad Rian Johnson didn't approach the OT characters as so sacred that you couldn't touch them and instead of trying to tick off every nostalgia box as JJ Abrams did, he had a specific vision and a story to tell. It pissed a lot of people off, but I'm sure having Vader revealed as Luke's dad when the previous movie told us otherwise pissed a lot of people off in 1980.

 

This. If you REALLY want those adventures, they're there in Legends book form. I spent a long, long time as a kid plowing through my collection of those stories, getting to the end, feeling kinda sad about it, and starting all over with Truce at Bakura. Yes, they've been "officially" overturned by Lucasfilm, but seeing as we don't have a whole lot of information about the first couple decades after ROTJ, I figure there's plenty there that's fair game.

 

I had long made peace with the fact Luke Skywalker's on screen adventures ended in 1983 and once Episode III came out in 2005, I was ok with the reality there would not be anymore Star Wars movies. So, I look at all of the new movies as just a bonus. I had my Star Wars and enjoyed them and will always have a lot of fondness for all six of those movies, flaws and all.

Im enjoying the new stuff for what it is and not for what I wanted it to be since I was 13 years old. If it gets to the point im no longer enjoying the Star Wars content that Lucasfilm puts out, Ill just walk away. No need to complain or rail against it or scream " SJW! Not muh Star Wars!" The old movies are there and there own thing. If a future Star Wars movie is a dud, doesn't change the fact there are other older Star Wars movies that are classics I can revisit if I ever wish to go back to a galaxy far far away.

 

Of course one can't please everyone ( although the OT managed quite well in this regard), but it seems that Rian Jones was obsessed with the idea to do exactly the opposite - to not meet any of the traditional fans hopes, dreams and expectations, even if this could result sometimes as a nonsense. He said it himself, that during the writing he made the most important plot decisions based on the circulating fan theories, reading as much of them as possible, determined to not use any of them. This is a bit strange approach, IMO - instead of having your own clear concept, without even reading any fan theories, to check most of them, and to base your story on dismissal rather than on original creative process.

 

But how would it been creative if Rian simply just confirmed everyone's theories?

I don't think he approached it from the stand point of trying to just reject any fan expectations with malace or bad intent. I think his intentions were to actually surprise people and not give them what they expected. He wanted to genuinely surprise people in the same way George and Larry Kasdan did in 1980 when they turned the saga on its ear with EMPIRE. One could argue he wasn't as effective, but he certainly wasn't setting out to ruin fans lives or hurt them. He was telling a story, take it or leave it.

Remember, we have the benefit of hindsight in terms of the OT. Who would have expected that after the very upbeat and straight forward space fairy tale that was Episode IV that we'd have a sequel that not only had our heroes lose spectacularly, but then have the narrative rug pulled out from under us with the Revelation Anakin wasn't killed by Vader, he WAS Vader.

I can imagine as with the Last Jedi, there were a lot of fans who left the theater going " WTF was that? " Or feeling unsure about where things were going to go. Yeah, now we know it all worked out with a satisfactory conclusion in Jedi and Empire is now seen as the Pinnacle of Star Wars, but I can guarantee there were people who felt like Empire " ruined" the story of and there were likely some wishing Empire was more like the original movie. The box office dropped quite a bit from Episode IV to V after all which tells us that there was a significant portion of the fanbase that had to be won back in Jedi, and they did as Jedi did better than Empire.

I suspect that people will look back in 30 years and depending on how Episode IX turns out, it will determine whether VIII is a classic in the series or a true misfire. Time will tell. It's too early to say for sure how the Last Jedi will be judged.

 

I guess that's my biggest complaint about the current Skywalker trilogy - there's no overall story arc for the three films, no clear vision. It's as if Disney wants to grab as much cash as quickly as they can so they rush through the process making a jumble of the story line.

At least George Lucas had somewhat of a vision for all nine movies. I loved Force Awakens but then the story just went off the track for no other reason then to make sure future movies wouldn't dwell on the past - what?!! Of course they will why deny it.

TLJ is an okay movie but not one that I feel like watching again. I like the Luke scenes but the fun of the Rey and Finn relationship was MIA in such a bizarre way. I liked the newer characters in the Force Awakens they were wasted in TLJ.

And I'm probably getting too old anyway but TLJ seems to be an end point for me. Unless something really great happens with 9 I won't even bother watching it. I'm not really that curious to see what happens to the new characters anymore. It all feels like advertising now and not films - to me anyway.

 

Of course, I don't think that Johnson is some evil person who wanted to ruin the franchise and to offend the fans. I agree that his intention was to surprise everyone. But I just think that such approach is equally bad as if trying to please everyone. As an author one must have more substantial and mature vision, IMO.

 

You'd be surprised how many of the last Jedi critics are under the delusion that Johnson intentially " ruined" Star Wars in order to troll the fanbase. These people can easily be spotted by their use of " Ruin Johnson" whenever they mention his name.

Like I said before elsewhere, the movie would have benefited from Johnson having someone working with him to kind of rein him in places and someone with a bit of distance to help with execution. I think the actual story arcs and general ideas are solid and most of the execution works. But when it doesn't ( Leia Poppins, the way Luke tosses the saber and the sea cow milking scene) it really sticks out like a sore thumb. It doesn't ruin the movie for me but I can objectively stand back in those cases and see the issues and acknowledge them.

 

Hehe..Ruin Johnson, that's a good one.. Well, there's always some very extreme fans, same like in sports, I believe. I don't think that they have to be taken very seriously, and I don't think that they represent the majority of fans that doesn't like this movie.
Only time will tell if Johnson "ruined" or did some damage on the franchise, but even if he did, I can't see how and why this could be intentional.

 

The way I look at it is this...If Star Wars can survive the horrendous Holiday Special, Ewoks,Jar Jar Binks, Midichlorians, and ruminations about Teen Vader's dislike of Sand and creepily stalking Natalie Portman,it can survive one slightly disappointing movie. Star Wars will outlive us all .

 

My review of Episode 8 (I saw it without hearing any spoilers beyond vague grumblings about parentage or seeing a trailer):

It was very good. I had no issues with the story or its depiction of beloved characters, unlike apparently a lot of people. It’s a long movie but I was engaged throughout and so the length was not an issue. I didn’t feel ‘Oh no, not another whole new action scene!’ I can see how some people might consider it to be baggy and slow and dragged out with too much stuff but I thought it was all interesting material and it all earned its place (including the narrative dead end of the mission to turn off the tracker). In my opinion it’s the second best Star Wars movie, behind only the 1977 original. I enjoyed it a lot.

Very good

 

It's interesting that many of the "casuals" in the real world that I've talked to ( I work in retail so I talk with customers a lot) that has seen it either really liked it or unoquivocally loved it, while many of the hardest of the hard core star wars fans in my life either thought it " meh" or just good enough.

I've yet spoken to anyone in person that absolutely hated it. The only place I've found any real intense dislike of the movie has been online, Which in of itself is an echo chamber.

That's not to say of course it's as well received as The Force Awakens. I remember literally everyone I talked to during that time raving about it and loving it, both casuals and Star Wars fans. I honestly don't remember a bad word about it until I went online, where you'd swear you were seeing people discuss a totally different movie.

 

I'm sorry you feel that way. I feel differently. I am grateful that there is closure now for our beloved OT characters. There is no longer any risk of them becoming "eternal" characters like James Bond, Batman, Superman or Wonder Woman, forever locked in their 30s or 40s and always fighting the good fight against similarly eternal foes for 50-plus years or whatever. Instead, Han, Luke and Leia continue to evolve after ROTJ. They age, suffer setbacks, grow disillusioned, mourn, ultimately reconnect with and reaffirm their past, and, yes, they die. Their story is but a sliver of time in the vast Star Wars universe, and I feel that it's taken some courage on the part of the filmmakers to understand and tackle that notion head on rather than simply following the "quick and easy path" of giving the audience what they think they want.

 

That's the Crux of it. I'm all for occasional fan service but if we get to the point where the fan service starts to drive the narrative and be the goal ( I.e. not take risks, play it safe and sate the fans and do everything in your power to try not to upset them and give them exactly what the fans say they want) then it's a recipe for eventually stagnating and rendering it irrelevant.

Yeah, I'm sure if Rian Johnson just read the fan forums and wrote a script where Luke is some superhuman badass wrecking fleets of First Order ships with gestures, where we find out Snoke is Darth Plageous and Rey is revealed as a Kenobi somehow, the hard core lore watchers may not have spammed youtube with endless hate rants and they may have gone to the theater 12 times to see it bringing the box office totals higher, but it would have locked the series into being fan wanking for the sake of it. That would work out for awhile but that doesn't help the future of the series. This shift had to happen eventually.

I have a few issues with the execution as I've stated here before, but the general direction is where this needs to go if it's to be something viable and something that can expand.

After all, if George Lucas and Larry Kasdan had just given fans of a new hope exactly what they expected and just done another simple adventure fairy tale with Empire, I honestly don't think we'd still be talking about Star Wars now. It would have still been popular then,.but it would be more like Close Encounters and Jaws are looked at now. Which is an important piece of late 70s cinema but largely frozen in time.

 

That’s almost exactly the opposite of my experience! Everyone I know with whom I’ve talked about it thought it was okay at best to terrible at worst.

Like you, TFA was much better received by my personal acquaintances.

 

Finally sat down and finished the film. Just a long movie with not a lot to say. I struggled to connect with any of the characters. That was Luke? That's the feisty Leia? No, those were just much older actors attempting to reprise roles from 40 years ago and - yup they're old now and boring. And apparently they have new powers now because The Force is now an all encompassing Deus Ex Machina. Leia flying through space was laughable and Luke zapping out of existence was another wtf moment.

The Finn subplot was God-awful and had literally zero effect on the already paper thin plot. Think about what Finn and whats-her-face achieved. Nothing. They failed and - oh wait - none of what they were trying to do mattered anyway. They sure did make a 2 hour film 2 and a half hours long though, so yay?

I could go on but frankly I'm not invested enough to care. This was a bad film.

 

Precisely.

 

Same as what happened to Obi Wan though.