Rian Johnson: Which is why I made Rey’s parents nobodies because I like the idea of somebody coming from nothing and becoming a hero despite having no heroic past.
This is a pretty good round-up of the reasons Solo might be doing so (relatively) badly at the box office.
Plus any article that describes James Corden as “the Jar Jar Binks of humans” gets an automatic upvote from me.
My vote is on #4: The Last Jedi Killed Our Enthusiasm.
“the message of the film was: screw you for caring. If those mysteries had been resolved differently to how fans expected, that might have been fine — but it was deeper than that: It was saying that they didn’t matter.
As we saw when Luke casually tossed away his lightsaber, or when Snoke was handily disposed of… what Rian Johnson was saying was clear: “Hey! You know all of those mysteries that you care about? The ones we set up the previous film? The ones you’ve spent the last two years speculating about on forums? Yeah, none of it matters and you’re just a sad, lonely nerd”
So given this, would it be surprising if some viewers felt that they didn’t need to check in with the next one? If nothing matters, then why should they care about Han’s backstory?”
If you ask me #4 is the biggest reason. TLJ told us that they do not give a shit about fans in any way, shape or form. But Solo is a 110% fanservice movie, so much in it is going to leave the general audience either confused or they’ll miss the deeper implication of it because of their lack of knowledge. Heck even casual fans are confused about several things in it.
I partially agree with #5 the “the kids don’t care” theory. Not that kids don’t care about Star Wars but that they don’t care about Solo specifically. As I said this is a fan movie and it’s a movie for older fans. The movie forgot that it’s a franchise primarily aimed at kids and adolescents and it forgot that the movies aer for the general audience not its hardcore fans.
When you add these two together with TLJ’s “fuck you for caring and fuck you in general!” to Star Wars fans then it is no surprise that this movie is struggling financially. Scant months ago they told the primary audience for this movie that they don’t give a shit about them and now they really expect that same group to caught up money to see Solo?
Looks like Star Wars fans isn’t buying it.
TLJ is like a quilted comforter that you put it in the home washing machine, but it chokes your washing machine, so you have to drag it out still sopping wet and put it in a garbage bag because you mean to take it to the laundromat the next day, but you keep putting off the laundromat visit, so it gets disgusting and mildewed in the corner and you feel terrible because you know you should take it to the laundromat, but it smells so bad you don’t want to take it anywhere and every day you think about throwing it in the trash, but you don’t because that would be a waste… and it just sits there in a dark corner (of your mind)… arrrrgh
And I’m not even a Star Wars fan.
@solacekames, posts like this are why i love your blog
I’ll never get why people hate The Last Jedi
I don’t like it for the reasons that other people mentioned in this thread and because I feel like it butchered Poe and Finn’s characterization to prop up other characters.
This is a pretty good round-up of the reasons Solo might be doing so (relatively) badly at the box office.
Plus any article that describes James Corden as “the Jar Jar Binks of humans” gets an automatic upvote from me.
My vote is on #4: The Last Jedi Killed Our Enthusiasm.
“the message of the film was: screw you for caring. If those mysteries had been resolved differently to how fans expected, that might have been fine — but it was deeper than that: It was saying that they didn’t matter.
As we saw when Luke casually tossed away his lightsaber, or when Snoke was handily disposed of… what Rian Johnson was saying was clear: “Hey! You know all of those mysteries that you care about? The ones we set up the previous film? The ones you’ve spent the last two years speculating about on forums? Yeah, none of it matters and you’re just a sad, lonely nerd”
So given this, would it be surprising if some viewers felt that they didn’t need to check in with the next one? If nothing matters, then why should they care about Han’s backstory?”
If you ask me #4 is the biggest reason. TLJ told us that they do not give a shit about fans in any way, shape or form. But Solo is a 110% fanservice movie, so much in it is going to leave the general audience either confused or they’ll miss the deeper implication of it because of their lack of knowledge. Heck even casual fans are confused about several things in it.
I partially agree with #5 the “the kids don’t care” theory. Not that kids don’t care about Star Wars but that they don’t care about Solo specifically. As I said this is a fan movie and it’s a movie for older fans. The movie forgot that it’s a franchise primarily aimed at kids and adolescents and it forgot that the movies aer for the general audience not its hardcore fans.
When you add these two together with TLJ’s “fuck you for caring and fuck you in general!” to Star Wars fans then it is no surprise that this movie is struggling financially. Scant months ago they told the primary audience for this movie that they don’t give a shit about them and now they really expect that same group to caught up money to see Solo?
Looks like Star Wars fans isn’t buying it.
TLJ is like a quilted comforter that you put it in the home washing machine, but it chokes your washing machine, so you have to drag it out still sopping wet and put it in a garbage bag because you mean to take it to the laundromat the next day, but you keep putting off the laundromat visit, so it gets disgusting and mildewed in the corner and you feel terrible because you know you should take it to the laundromat, but it smells so bad you don’t want to take it anywhere and every day you think about throwing it in the trash, but you don’t because that would be a waste… and it just sits there in a dark corner (of your mind)… arrrrgh
And I’m not even a Star Wars fan.
@solacekames, posts like this are why i love your blog
I think one of the things that I can’t stand about RJ’s writing is that I feel like he’s making what he’s trying to do SO OBVIOUS. There’s no deftness or subtlety.
While watching TLJ I knew exactly what he wanted me to feel or think when it was happening. But I believe that if the writer knows what they’re doing, I should just feel or think that way instead of thinking “So the writer is clearly trying to make me feel bad for him… Ok the writer clearly wants me to like this character because they keep pushing them on me… Ok now I’m supposed to think this is funny… Now I’m supposed to be impressed….Ok now I’m clearly supposed to ruminate on the evils of wealth”.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I feel like he basically takes everything he wants the audience to think and feel and instead of gently guiding us to where he wants us to go, he basically pushes us…off a cliff
Excellent point! Well said. It is honestly the mark of a bad writer when they force an audience to feel something rather than lead them to feel something.
Thank you and yes! And it honestly kind of pisses me off when I can tell that a writer is very clearly trying to manipulate my feelings a certain way. I mean all writers obviously do that, but I shouldn’t be aware of it. The writing should be good enough to immerse me in the story so I don’t notice that the writer is clearly trying to get a certain reaction out of me.
But RJ’s writing was so hamfisted that I could never get fully in the story. And I think a large part of that was that there were times where he was clearly using his new characters as his kind of proxies. I cant get into a story when I keep feeling like the writer is stepping in and talking to me or the audience directly.
I mean it really was just all about RJ and what he wanted to tell us, the audience, or get us to feel. He didn’t create the new characters the way he did because it made sense to the story or who they would be as people or because it was necessary. He did it because he wanted his own mouthpieces. In other words, it wasn’t about the characters or the story and what the audience might actually want. It was about him.
So much this. It infuriated me how often he had characters say the subtext – which is, you know, the exact opposite of how subtext is supposed to function . The most egregious example is Rose’s awful “not fighting the things we hate but saving the things we love speech’.
And the absolute worst thing is that the subtext they were saying wasn’t *actually* the subtext, however much RJ might have intended it to be. He kept telling us what he was trying to do, as if he thought we were too stupid to understand it on our own, and then failing to even do it.
Take Rose and her ‘saving what we love’ speech – all well and good, except that’s precisely what Finn was already trying to do in their very first scene together, and she tasered and then lectured him about it.
And as for failure being the best teacher, what does anyone in the movie actually learn from their failures? Is Luke’s failure with Kylo Ren meant to teach him to withdraw from the world? To re-engage with it? To take Rey on as a student or to reject her?
I mean, I guess Rey’s failure to turn Kylo Ren to the Light does teach her she needs to fight him – ie fight the thing she hates. Like Rose’s subtext tells us not to. And since that’s what she was already doing in TFA anyway it seems like a supremely pointless lesson.
The movie is a hot mess textually and subtextually.
I think one of the things that I can’t stand about RJ’s writing is that I feel like he’s making what he’s trying to do SO OBVIOUS. There’s no deftness or subtlety.
While watching TLJ I knew exactly what he wanted me to feel or think when it was happening. But I believe that if the writer knows what they’re doing, I should just feel or think that way instead of thinking “So the writer is clearly trying to make me feel bad for him… Ok the writer clearly wants me to like this character because they keep pushing them on me… Ok now I’m supposed to think this is funny… Now I’m supposed to be impressed….Ok now I’m clearly supposed to ruminate on the evils of wealth”.
I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I feel like he basically takes everything he wants the audience to think and feel and instead of gently guiding us to where he wants us to go, he basically pushes us…off a cliff
Excellent point! Well said. It is honestly the mark of a bad writer when they force an audience to feel something rather than lead them to feel something.
Thank you and yes! And it honestly kind of pisses me off when I can tell that a writer is very clearly trying to manipulate my feelings a certain way. I mean all writers obviously do that, but I shouldn’t be aware of it. The writing should be good enough to immerse me in the story so I don’t notice that the writer is clearly trying to get a certain reaction out of me.
But RJ’s writing was so hamfisted that I could never get fully in the story. And I think a large part of that was that there were times where he was clearly using his new characters as his kind of proxies. I cant get into a story when I keep feeling like the writer is stepping in and talking to me or the audience directly.
I mean it really was just all about RJ and what he wanted to tell us, the audience, or get us to feel. He didn’t create the new characters the way he did because it made sense to the story or who they would be as people or because it was necessary. He did it because he wanted his own mouthpieces. In other words, it wasn’t about the characters or the story and what the audience might actually want. It was about him.
I still love Rey and Finn and Poe, despite it all. I still love what they were at their core in The Force Awakens, what they could have been, and what they were supposed to be.
The Character Assassination of Luke Skywalker by the Coward Rian Johnson
Poe Dameron is Stupid Because I need Him to Be by the Coward Rian Johnson
Kylo Ren is is the Co-Protagonist Because Reasons by the Coward Rian Johnson
Rey Is Suddenly a Naïve, Bland, Unsympathetic Plot Device In a Feeble Attempt to Make The Audience Feel Sorry for Poor Kylo Ren Who Has Done Nothing Wrong In His Life, Ever by the Coward Rian Johnson
The Wasted Potential of Finn’s Character Arc by the Coward Rian Johnson
Rose is argumentative with Finn for no reason throughout their storyline because I can’t tell a story without ~~conflict~~ by the Coward Rian Johnson.
If I have to see one more god forsaken think piece on why Finn Rose or Poe are shitty characters, that doesn’t actively dissect why it’s the SHITTY INCONSISTENT WRITING that made their appearances in TLJ fucking awful and hard to watch, and not the actors or their actual established characters I’m going to fucking Wreck Something.
If your criticism about the last jedi is about their characters being terrible and it’s not about how ITS BECAUSE THEY WERE SIDELINED AND TURNED INTO PLOT DEVICES then fun fact. Ur uh, probably not thinking abt the root of the problem.
Be quiet, you intolerable clickbait thots and just use some actual critical thinking skills for once.
Disney please give us just 2 hours of Chewbacca fucking slaughtering first order stormtroopers bc they killed his puppy instead of the Han Solo movie
Chewbacca wasn’t even that angry in TLJ like he busted Luke’s door in and??? That was it??? He got more pissed at some porgs than he did at the space neo nazis. @rian johnson you’re a liar and a fucker
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