-Leaving to go search for some dude on another planet and not finding him
-Ships fleeing the empire getting blown up until they remember oh yeah, we can kamikaze people now with one person and one ship instead of doing that like, 3 ships ago
-Luke shows up out of nowhere on salt planet and nobody asks questions until it turns out its his force ghost
-Bringing back shiny imperial captain for her to die in kind of an anti climax
Don't get me wrong, it had good set piece moments like the duo fighting the imperial guard, Kylo confronting Luke and such, but it had more plot holes and continuity issues then the prequels
I show people the duel from The Deluge from time to time and people sometimes react by saying it looks like "fake fighting" because we've been trained by media to see fighting as this thing where everyone gives up their intentions via body language. The evil king raises his sword above his head in dramatic fashion etc. Telegraphing your plans to your opponent rarely helps you out.
haaaaard disagree, the mechanics of martial arts are secondary to the mechanics of putting together a scene---the one in question effectively conveying character development, foreshadowing , excellent costume design and motif.
also its literally 2 minutes and just rewatching it to make my point i only noticed 1 blatant mistake by ridley (but like, she shown to be a not great fighter the whole series so idk)
i don't get your point about weapon-on-weapon contact, they do hit weapons, just less than in the prequel fights. the sparks that come off from it are part of the 'fight confetti' (something that unbelieveably doesn't have a tvtropes page). and the guards specifically don't have lightsabers so they'd use a variety of techniques and raise fewer nitpicks from people who'd say 'why don't they hit them' everytime a protagonist parries one guy's sword.
the scene was not there to subvert anyone's expectations (except the merking of big head at the beginning), its just a group fight and, as the nitpick video points out, choreographed by a guy whose done a lot of hand to hand, less sword duelling. and they were a good choice, because its communicated in the story that Kylo is a crude fighter & Rey is woefully underprepared. the scene therefore takes more from brawling than prequel lightstick dancing and is better for it.
i don't know how much of that video you endorse but holy shit, a child made that. why wasn't it like the prequels--idk maybe they didn't want to waste 20 minutes doing bright twirls with unsufferable and undeveloped characters? maybe you can communicate more in a fight than 'this is how this guy lost this limb', 'this is why this guy isn't in another movie', 'we can sell a bunch of toys from this shit'? the best duels in Star Wars are the first three, and they are a) 90% about the mental states of the fighters b) advance character arcs c) more visually compelling than impressively choreographed.
prequel shit was filler spectacle and just as ridiculous from a martial arts perspective. MF actually praised prequel fights and turned around to criticise useless spinning in the TLJ fight.
im coming off dismissive because i hate the prequels and the sequels (johnson just made the better of those and doesnt deserve some of the criticism he get)
gotta get that in because i can deal with being disaggreed with but not being perceived to fanboy over a guy whos made exactly one overall banger in Knives Out
Kylo Ren is one of the greatest movie villains of all time. Monolithic evil is one thing, but a petulant, wangsty teen with unchecked power is a threat to which we can all relate.
I think your critiques are valid (except for the whole "Snoke dies immediately" thing, I loved that). The hyperspace kamikaze thing especially bothered me- there are such huge world building implications of that which the writers didn't seem to realize. Like, if this is possible, it should be the dominant military tactic. Like they should have missiles that are basically just hyperdrives and not bother with turbolasers at all.
But really, most of those critiques didn't bother me enough to really impact my enjoyment of the movie. I'm so starved for Star Wars media that is willing to critique the Jedi even just a little bit that when I get a work where that's a main theme, I jump on it- KOTOR2 is my favorite piece of Star Wars media, which you could probably guess. Otherwise, I have to settle for, at best, extremely heavy implications that, half the time, I'm not sure the writer even intended to be present, like in Clone Wars (and I love some parts of Clone Wars, don't get me wrong). Star Wars as a universe is so stale when the Jedi are just heros and so much more interesting when in the hands of people who realize how fucked they are.
That's also why I find the awful, awful, extremely terrible execution of the prequels so frustrating, because I'm pretty sure that was supposed to be a big part of the point, like the Jedi were sowing the seeds of their own destruction. But those movies were so bad that even I can't overlook it.
I think a big part of my personal lack of enjoyment of the sequels is that, during the prequels, I just decided to appreciate the spectacle, which was fantastic (since as you note and I agree the prequels' execution was really slipshod). And it was one of the things they did decently, the ludicrous set piece moments
The sequels tried to be more about world building and narrative experience rather than over the top fight sequences, which was and still is a bit jarring to me; it doesn't help that each movie felt like it was trying to be something completely different from the others due to different directors and production staff wanting to do their own things
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My man has periodic psychological disorders I never even knew about
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please let's get Star Wars some help or some therapy or something, he's my favorite celebrity, i loved him in that one movie
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Episode VIII was good though
Ehhhhh....
-Leia getting killed off but oh wait, not dead
-Reveal of big bad and dead within like 5 minutes
-Leaving to go search for some dude on another planet and not finding him
-Ships fleeing the empire getting blown up until they remember oh yeah, we can kamikaze people now with one person and one ship instead of doing that like, 3 ships ago
-Luke shows up out of nowhere on salt planet and nobody asks questions until it turns out its his force ghost
-Bringing back shiny imperial captain for her to die in kind of an anti climax
Don't get me wrong, it had good set piece moments like the duo fighting the imperial guard, Kylo confronting Luke and such, but it had more plot holes and continuity issues then the prequels
It is the best out of the sequel trilogy tho
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I show people the duel from The Deluge from time to time and people sometimes react by saying it looks like "fake fighting" because we've been trained by media to see fighting as this thing where everyone gives up their intentions via body language. The evil king raises his sword above his head in dramatic fashion etc. Telegraphing your plans to your opponent rarely helps you out.
Yeah but I think it's more 'saber fighting' then happens in the entire rest of the trilogy sadly, which is why it was noteworthy to me
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haaaaard disagree, the mechanics of martial arts are secondary to the mechanics of putting together a scene---the one in question effectively conveying character development, foreshadowing , excellent costume design and motif.
also its literally 2 minutes and just rewatching it to make my point i only noticed 1 blatant mistake by ridley (but like, she shown to be a not great fighter the whole series so idk)
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i don't get your point about weapon-on-weapon contact, they do hit weapons, just less than in the prequel fights. the sparks that come off from it are part of the 'fight confetti' (something that unbelieveably doesn't have a tvtropes page). and the guards specifically don't have lightsabers so they'd use a variety of techniques and raise fewer nitpicks from people who'd say 'why don't they hit them' everytime a protagonist parries one guy's sword.
the scene was not there to subvert anyone's expectations (except the merking of big head at the beginning), its just a group fight and, as the nitpick video points out, choreographed by a guy whose done a lot of hand to hand, less sword duelling. and they were a good choice, because its communicated in the story that Kylo is a crude fighter & Rey is woefully underprepared. the scene therefore takes more from brawling than prequel lightstick dancing and is better for it.
i don't know how much of that video you endorse but holy shit, a child made that. why wasn't it like the prequels--idk maybe they didn't want to waste 20 minutes doing bright twirls with unsufferable and undeveloped characters? maybe you can communicate more in a fight than 'this is how this guy lost this limb', 'this is why this guy isn't in another movie', 'we can sell a bunch of toys from this shit'? the best duels in Star Wars are the first three, and they are a) 90% about the mental states of the fighters b) advance character arcs c) more visually compelling than impressively choreographed.
prequel shit was filler spectacle and just as ridiculous from a martial arts perspective. MF actually praised prequel fights and turned around to criticise useless spinning in the TLJ fight.
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im coming off dismissive because i hate the prequels and the sequels (johnson just made the better of those and doesnt deserve some of the criticism he get)
gotta get that in because i can deal with being disaggreed with but not being perceived to fanboy over a guy whos made exactly one overall banger in Knives Out
It felt like it was giving a middle finger to hardcore fans at several points. As a recovered hardcore fan, this pleased me.
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This was the best part of the movie. We've already seen Palpatine in the last two trilogies, we don't need a clone of his character in this one too.
Your other points are all valid. The central plot was bad, the casino planet plot was bad, but the Rey/Kylo/Luke stuff was great.
Kylo Ren is one of the greatest movie villains of all time. Monolithic evil is one thing, but a petulant, wangsty teen with unchecked power is a threat to which we can all relate.
I think your critiques are valid (except for the whole "Snoke dies immediately" thing, I loved that). The hyperspace kamikaze thing especially bothered me- there are such huge world building implications of that which the writers didn't seem to realize. Like, if this is possible, it should be the dominant military tactic. Like they should have missiles that are basically just hyperdrives and not bother with turbolasers at all.
But really, most of those critiques didn't bother me enough to really impact my enjoyment of the movie. I'm so starved for Star Wars media that is willing to critique the Jedi even just a little bit that when I get a work where that's a main theme, I jump on it- KOTOR2 is my favorite piece of Star Wars media, which you could probably guess. Otherwise, I have to settle for, at best, extremely heavy implications that, half the time, I'm not sure the writer even intended to be present, like in Clone Wars (and I love some parts of Clone Wars, don't get me wrong). Star Wars as a universe is so stale when the Jedi are just heros and so much more interesting when in the hands of people who realize how fucked they are.
That's also why I find the awful, awful, extremely terrible execution of the prequels so frustrating, because I'm pretty sure that was supposed to be a big part of the point, like the Jedi were sowing the seeds of their own destruction. But those movies were so bad that even I can't overlook it.
That's fair, I do know a lot of people liked it.
I think a big part of my personal lack of enjoyment of the sequels is that, during the prequels, I just decided to appreciate the spectacle, which was fantastic (since as you note and I agree the prequels' execution was really slipshod). And it was one of the things they did decently, the ludicrous set piece moments
The sequels tried to be more about world building and narrative experience rather than over the top fight sequences, which was and still is a bit jarring to me; it doesn't help that each movie felt like it was trying to be something completely different from the others due to different directors and production staff wanting to do their own things
:bait:
Yes. But also, it's my real opinion