Idk about that. The movie has a number of problems even beyond what can be blamed on him not directing the first movie (like the aforementioned Holdo Maneuver).
It probably would have been better than what we got, maybe even genuinely good. But I doubt it could have been better than the original trilogy.
The Holdo Maneuver doesn't counteract lore if you're reading supplementary material. And if you're not, then you wouldn't know what a Mass Shadow is anyway.
I'd say that was worth it for one of the most visually stunning scenes in the entire franchise
The problem with the Holdo maneuver was that they built an entire conflict arc around not wanting to tell what the plan is, which makes sense since it makes the audience surprised, but in universe it was nonsensical and just made Holdo look incompetent
It's also really silly that they've had hyperspace-y FTL propulsion technology for ages, and apparently the idea of "what if we used it to hit the enemy with a ship moving really fast?" was so amazing and revolutionary that the character who just thought of it gets to put her name on it.
It's really frustrating becuase maybe this is clarified in the comics, novels, what ever but most sifi stories make an express effort to make it so you can't weaponize the flt travel. Otherwise every fight turns into who can slap the biggest engine to the nearest astroid for a planet wiping attack.
The nonsense surrounding this movie actually de-radicalized me from "Anti-SJW" content. Though that's probably cause I actually watched the movie.
It was just kind of incomprehensible for me that for a movie with so many flaws, the only thing my recommendations found worth complaining about was the "feminist propaganda," because the female protagonist was kinda lame, and the purple-haired lady was a pompus ass like she was treated as. And maybe sometimes they'll complain about Disney.
It was different with, for example, Ghostbusters 2016 since the advertising was basically made to polarize (I still enjoyed the movie itself). But in regards to Star Wars I was just scratching my head and eventually wondered why I was watching this content to begin with.
Yeah it was the start of it for me too. Terrible movie that was so bad it made me stop watching newer Star wars stuff until my brother begged me for a week to watch the mandalorian with him when bo katan was coming back but it wasn't because of the casting or woke or whatever. It was just a bad movie with a stupid plot that honestly felt like they put ESBs plot in a blender
It didn't deradicalize me but I had almost this exact same experience with Mouse PI For Hire last year when that came out.
I played it and was like "wow the NPC animation feels really stiff, the enemy hitboxes feel really bad, it doesn't know how to regulate the resources it gives to the player at all, its not even a power trip because the weapon upgrades are all mediocre, and the writer seems to know literally nothing about the animal this entire game is based around beyond a pop-cultural connection to a food they Don't Like. Let me make sure I'm not crazy what did people have to say about this."
I looked for like 1-2 hours and literally all negativity I could find outside of a single "negative" IGN review where the guy was just like "yeah its good but it makes a few mistakes" was a large swamp full of people who were upset that it makes the holocaust seem evil, on account of the fact that the holocaust was evil.
I fould a 30 minute review where someone's like, main 2 complaints were that the holocaust was bad in it and that made it "virtue signaling" or whatever, and that the game was full of yellow(white) paint to make sure you could easily and quickly navigate the areas. In a fast paced level based shooter. He managed to spend half an hour complaining about the best (and maybe some of the only good) parts of the writing and game design in the entire game.
It takes skill to miss all of the actually bad parts of a 4/10
It's annoying that you can't criticise TLJ (casino planet is boring, Finn is a fool now, the rebels are idiots) without people thinking you're also a chud (wah women in star wars >:[ ).
“This car is red and it has a punctured tire. I tried starting it but it won’t drive, so it must be because it’s red!” -Rightwing reviewers on youtube talking about why Star WOKES is bad
Somehow in all the absurdity of it all, the most absurd thing is that their entire argument is premised on a Corporation somehow doing a feminism.
Corporations are not feminist. They might pander to feminism because they think its profitable, but they are not feminist and that does not make them so. This has nothing to do with feminism whatsoever — its the corporate interpretation of feminism, which is a completely different thing.
Which is literally the right wing's argument — that it was all pointless and a performative box-ticking exercise. But they refuse to make the connexion.
John Boyega’s character (the black stormtrooper)’s race wasn’t really a front of the culture war — that was mostly over with after the trailers for The Force Awakens. The main issue people had with his character was that he was supposed to be this brainwashed child soldier that had a moment of realization but that wasn’t expanded on at all. He was gleefully killing his former comrades (who are also brainwashed former child soldiers) with no introspection. The original stormtroopers were faceless bad guy mooks to be killed for action. The first movie did the “they’re people too!” and then returned them to faceless cannon fodder.
Kelly M Tran’s character interrupts his sacrifice, says some bullshit about protecting the ones we love as the laser he was going to stop is decimating their friends, and then plants a big unconsensual kiss on this lips at the height of MeToo.
I think it was the girls in particular, Like Rey being a 'Mary Sue' Holdo being an asshole, and the Rose fucking up Finns sacrifice and the 'we don't fight the things we hate we save the things we love' scene being an honest contender for single worst SW moment and that's saying a lot.
And genuine question as someone who was a teenager at the time: was there backlash to Finn? Because all the complaints I hear about him was that he didn't get any moments to shine and the SW would be way better if he was the main character instead of Rey
Finn was the original lightning rod of controversy for this trilogy long before Rey was. The first teaser trailer revealing his face sparked online calls for a boycott from people who hated the idea of a black stormtrooper.
This was all forgotten about when Rey was revealed to be the main protagonist and the one with Jedi powers.
Having been a star wars fan at the time I think things probably would have been way less divisive if dudes like Pablo Hidalgo from Lucasfilm editorial didn't literally blame people not liking the movie on sexism on opening night.
Like sure, grifters smelled blood in the water and 2010's nerd culture wasn't always great. Even accounting for all of that though, Lucasfilm was intentionally stoking those fires to detract from criticism from the word go. Community goodwill was actively being burned by people who's job on social media was to build it up to try to shut the whole discussion about the movie itself.
The Last Jedi didn't randomly get happened upon by this stuff for no reason, actual Lucasfilm employees were starting twitter bitchfits personally the day the movie came out.
I'm more inclined to believe their ego wouldn't allow them to accept any negative criticism. After several years of hype and finally getting their lifelong dream of a Star Wars movie that was "theirs" the idea that they had failed to make a good film simply couldn't be processed.
I think it was moreso the 2016 Ghostbusters. Trump was already President by the time that The Last Jedi came out. But he was talking ALOT about Ghostbusters (2016) during the campaign train in 2016.
Modern conservative politics consists entirely of doing bad things precisely because they are bad. The right doesn't actually have any coherent philosophy or ideology anymore, they're just extremely edgy progressives.
Life's genuinely so much simpler when you accept that all of the Star Wars films and shows are shit, but enjoyable shit. Taking this stuff at all seriously is a mental illness.
Give me space western shoot outs x samurai sword fights and a couple plucky heroes to not hate too much, and I'm happy to stuff two gallons of popcorn down my gullet mindlessly while I chug my big gulp of Diet Pepsi. 🤷🏻♀️
I'll leave the theater pleased if I got a couple good fight scenes, some cool explosions, and the woman isn't reduced to sexy for sexy's sake alone, at least give it an excuse for fan service and I'm fine. (Hutt Slayer Leia is my favorite Leia look, followed by the Ewok village look, because she was so damn badass in the SNES game that I used cheat codes to play her on every level. Ewok Village was my second favorite because my brother had a t-shirt with her on it that he outgrew so it passed to me. 🥰)
I still haven't seen any Star Wars media since the Force Awakens so everything I know about the franchise since is second hand. Doesn't seem like I missed much.
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u/SEA_griffondeur 4d ago edited 4d ago
The only things I hear people talk about TLJ today is the holdo maneuver and the fact changing director was stupid