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  1. #31
    Chad Jar Jar Pinsir's Avatar
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    It was because it set up a world with the same stakes as the OT; ultimately you are going to tell a story about overthrowing an evil empire. I do think the story line could have been salvaged though, the ending that RLM suggested for TLJ would have been a great idea to explore.
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  2. #32
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    Quote Originally Posted by godisawesome View Post
    But it also had FINN, by far the most in depth character of the Sequel Trilogy with the most original story elements, and easily the best male lead the ST saw...
    Imo he was also not a great character, and how he is written just doesn't match his back ground.
    I mean he was basically raised like a clone trooper but he is not really acting like that (and the clone wars tv show had a lot of clone characters so we know how these guys act).

  3. #33
    Ultimate Member ChrisIII's Avatar
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    Finn apparently hadn't faced real combat (He refers to the Jakku village as his "first" battle) and had been doing sanitation on Starkiller and Supremacy.
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  4. #34
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    Quote Originally Posted by godisawesome View Post
    The way I see it, TFA definitely had some limitatations that it out on the Seauel Trilogy and on TLJ... but in order for TFA to be considered a greater problem than TLJ, TLJ would have had to either fix some flaws or uncover some new strengths to use in its place. It didn’t. TLJ introduced far more liabilities than had been there before, in part because it aggravated and succumbed parts of the story to TFA’s worst possible outcomes, and in part because it dropped a few of TFA’s undeniable strengths or failed to follow up on them.

    TFA was undoubtedly conventional in a lot of ways. It made sure that the overall external conflict of the ST would be a retread of the OT’s war, and left the door *open* for the only Skywalker grandkid to be a mass murdering fascist who added nothing new to Star Wars by himself, and left the door *open* to Luke being unrecognizable or wasted.

    But it also had FINN, by far the most in depth character of the Sequel Trilogy with the most original story elements, and easily the best male lead the ST saw...

    It had Rey at her best, when she was written in an intriguing way and had some potential for struggle going forward against Kylo (since they *did* make sure the story had explanation for him losing that fight), not to mention the only film of the three where she reacts to Kylo in a human way - she sees a monster, she calls him a monster, she treats him as a monster.

    TLJ is the film that made it so there was no hope for the Skywalkers, because it rejected Rey Skywalker as too predictable, and was blinded to the fact that Kylo wa sinadequate to be the only member of the family in his generation. TLJ is the one that went with the worst possible scenario for Luke’s story in terms of why he was gone, abandoning any option for Luke investigating the Force, or being made Rey’s real trainer and pseudo-paternal figure. TLJ was the film that doubled down on the repetitive nature of the main war, even trying to rename the Resistance the Rebellion, and made the somewhat professional and competent First Order from TFA a collection of idiot Saturday morning cartoons villains.

    It was TLJ that shoved Finn and all its own POC character is to a badly plotted and pointless sideplot where theynfailed for not following the instructions of their white commander, and did so while studiously ignoring Finn’s total progress in TFA and regressing him back a half-step so he could learn the same lesson.
    Finn was crapped on after TFA. His story line alone should have made this better versus what we got.
    Rey probably should have been with Leia and we find out why because Leia sensed the force in her.

    TLJ should have been about Finn & Rey looking for Luke and training while Leia, Poe and other classic folks took on the Empire with Finn/Rey arriving to help. Let Finn plant that seed of rebellion into a female Stormtrooper or Cap Plasma or whoever.

    The last film sums up everything including Lando's daughter being said female stormtrooper.

  5. #35
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    Quote Originally Posted by the illustrious mr. kenway View Post
    Honestly i thought the Last Jedi was a better Rey film while the Force Awakens was a better Finn film.

    The Last Jedi did a better job exploring her baggage with them versus FA where it felt too vague to connect with for me personally. I didn't need her to be a Kenobi or Palpatine etc (i know she was revealed to be) but i would've preferred some specific information like with Jyn or Ezra's.
    I can kind of get the idea about her identity crisis being handled better in TLJ than in TFA...

    ...But I literally can’t make myself watch TLJ again because of the cancerous and utterly inhuman way that Rey’s scenes with Kylo (save her first one where shot at him) play out.

    No one who’s been tortured, suffered a personal violation like the mind probe (with all its clear sexual assault imagery in the scene), had one friend murdered and another maimed, and all by the same bluntly murderous and self-obsessed fascist belonging to a genocidal organization, is then going to turn around within a few days and think they can save that person or give a damn about them as a person.

    Especially if the only new information gleaned about Kylo basically just confirms they’re a school shooter, and the supposed sympathetic moment is so botched that it accidentally seems to confirm that it may actually have been better if Kylo had been killed in his sleep.

    Period.

    (Please note: I know that Rian Johnson and no intention of making his scene vulnerable to that interpretation, but he also clearly didn’t value any of Kylo’s victims enough to realize their implications on the story, and there’s a reason why LFL is now having Charles Soule desperately try and change all the circumstances at the school.)

    Again, the identity crisis argument saying TLJ is better than TFA does make sense... but I still have to argue that the way Rian Johnson handled it, while more in depth and at a slower pace and greater focus, was ultimately useless in the long run, and a bad waste of the character’s time in the second movie. Overall, Rey ends TLJ roughly where she was at the end of TFA, even in her identity issue. Thats’ the problem of going with Rey Random as the “reveal” in the last act of the second movie out of three: Rian Johnson didn’t actually grow or create a new character paradigm for Rey in TLJ, or even just mature her much at all - he was basically just arguing she should start doing that... when she had one film left.

    That incidentally, is why she has such an over-the-top, stuffed full, yet still unoriginal story in TROS: Abrams is trying to do two films’ work in one.

    Her identity crisis story kind of works, but honestly, it only really works when viewed in a standalone fashion, where the character isn’t headed towards another climax of some kind in a third movie - because if the goal is to just make astaemtnet with the character, the way Johnson did it in TLJ works, but it’s a horrible “rising action” for her in a Trilogy because it kind of insists she has to start over.

    The smarter way to handle the Random idea would have been to get it out fo the way early, and then actually build Rey’s character from that point in the rest of the film. Though, to also be blunt, if the goal is to use Rey Random to move the audience past the Skywalkers, than we can’t be wasting time I’ve pretneding that a character as objectively evil as Kylo seems redeemable, or treat him in any special way because of his heritage - of Rey is moving us past the Skywalkers, than Kylo must serve as evidence why that’s a good thing.

    Even if that’s depressing as hell for the Skywalker family. And even if that just bluntly points out how genuinely shallow he is as a character.

    Quote Originally Posted by Aahz View Post
    Imo he was also not a great character, and how he is written just doesn't match his back ground.
    I mean he was basically raised like a clone trooper but he is not really acting like that (and the clone wars tv show had a lot of clone characters so we know how these guys act).
    I get that argument as well... but even if I have to concede that point (which I don’t, but I can hypothetically here)... that still doesn’t keep him from being the most developed and evolved character in the ST, orthe oe with the freshest character concept and the greatest original potential.

    I mean, what’s his competition? Rey? The character LFL couldn’t decide the the,e or storyline for until the last film, where in spite of rejecting a Skywalker heritage for her, she still just ends up undergoing a poor man’s copy of Luke’s story? Kylo? The Diet Darth Vader so coddled by the story they forgot to actually develop him beyond the bare concept, who’s only saving graces are a good actor and one film where the character is treated like the scum he is?

    I mean, if we’re going to argue Finn doesn’t reach his real potential for his concept, his competition is still so weak that the only real character I’d say can stand over him is maybe Luke - the guy shackled with the pretentious art film story that ultimately doesn’t contribute much to the central conflict of the ST.

    And I’d have to say that Boyega still gets a hell of a lot,of drama out of Finn’s scenes on Jakku in the village, even when fully armored, and out of his confession scene to Rey, and his final defiant stand against Kylo on Starkiller Base.

    All three of those show a nameless, faceless mook becoming a genuine if flawed human being before finally becoming a hero willing to gamble it all to do the right thing and screaming defiance at certain death for the sake of a friend.

    TFA *did* deliver drama for the character. If that was insufficient for the character concept in someone’s eyes, that’s understadmbale. It’s still more genuine and believable then pretending that Adam Driver’s lip wobble game adds any aspects to Kylo of any depth, or that Rey’s schizophrenic story ever gets going until then he last film.
    Like action, adventure, rogues, and outlaws? Like anti-heroes, femme fatales, mysteries and thrillers?

    I wrote a book with them. Outlaw’s Shadow: A Sherwood Noir. Robin Hood’s evil counterpart, Guy of Gisbourne, is the main character. Feel free to give it a look: https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asi...E2PKBNJFH76GQP

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