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The Last Jedi - Actually Widely Hated?

It's not whether it's new or the same thing: it's all about execution. First, I don't think TLJ is anything new. it's basically Empire Strikes back again.. with a few surprises that are not as profound as they try to come off. Whether you stick to a formula or you do something new.. you gotta execute it. As far as how a movie does in terms of business.. that is mainly marketing. The cliffhanger ending of TFa and people wanting to hear Luke talk after 30 years.. while a creatively bankrupt gimmick, assured that TLJ would do well
 
JD said:
The problem is, more often then not, when they do try something new, it's a total flop, and so they put out the next franchise movie and it make s$1billion. If you have to choose between an almost guaranteed $1billion or a movie with a 50/50, or possibly even 75/25 chance of failure, your going to go with the fucking billion every time.
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Exactly.

Which is why Hollywood is such a by the numbers machine. It churns out movies intended to make money and it takes someone with a very particular combination of talent, influence and simple good fortune to make the exceptions to that rule work.

If you want an experimental piece of cinema, great, but don't expect to be able to judge it on the basis of sales.

SW is a franchise intended to make money and it's doing so. There are ups and downs in that but the end result is a massive turnover for blockbuster movies with big special effects and small artistic risks.

That's a corporate venture, as mainstream movie making has always been. There's a tendency to look back to some golden age of yore where art was a pure and unsullied activity but the simple truth is that time never existed.

I recently watched Nick Cave live and he took some questions from the audience. One guy asked how he felt about the commercialisation of music and Nick replied "What commercialisation?". The guy started to expound about how music "these days" is all done by the numbers and manufactured only to be told "No, it's always been that way. That's how the music industry works, but at least nowadays people can self publish".

That was telling for me because it was the direct opinion of someone who has not only been in the industry for many many years but is also perceived as being distinctly counter culture, someone who might well be expected to really know what he is talking about. The fact is entertainment has been a business since long before anyone posting here took breath.

Even Shakespeare had to sell tickets.
 
Flying Spaghetti Monster said:
It's not whether it's new or the same thing: it's all about execution. First, I don't think TLJ is anything new. it's basically Empire Strikes back again.. with a few surprises that are not as profound as they try to come off. Whether you stick to a formula or you do something new.. you gotta execute it. As far as how a movie does in terms of business.. that is mainly marketing. The cliffhanger ending of TFa and people wanting to hear Luke talk after 30 years.. while a creatively bankrupt gimmick, assured that TLJ would do well
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I wasn't talking about TLJ, I was just talking about franchise vs completely original movies.
 
Campe98 said:
Hehehe... Seriously, it does really amaze me that so many of the fanboyish conspiracy theory crap going on this days is based upon destroying something that has been successful.
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Campe98 said:
The Kelvin and CBSAA Trek(s) have made millions and brought in countless subscribers to their service, but its a "failure" because its not Prime and are always about to be "canceled." The individuals who have led these franchises are always about to be "fired."
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At least a little of that is probably that fans often claim they were not only not failures, not only successes, but unprecedented successes, much better than the older shows/films and they were the only things that could have succeeded so much, that they succeeded is proof of their quality and that another style would have failed.
 
suarezguy said:
At least a little of that is probably that fans often claim they were not only not failures, not only successes, but unprecedented successes, much better than the older shows/films and they were the only things that could have succeeded so much, that they succeeded is proof of their quality and that another style would have failed.
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Not an unfair point. I don’t think the CBSAA Trek is necessarily better than TOS or the majority of the earlier spinoffs. I do believe the 2009 is better than an overwhelming majority of the earlier Trek films. And I certainly find the OT better than the ST. Ultimately though, while the original Star Wars is the highest grosser when taking inflation into equation, the 2009 Kelvin movie holds that honor for the Trek films.

Regardless of all of that, other than the box office receipts that’s MY opinion. I don’t expect anyone to share it. I don’t try to convince anyone to come to my perspective. I certainly try very hard not to suggest people are wrong.

There are plenty on both sides of the coin who simply want to be right. They don’t care that it’s ultimately their opinion and others have the right to their own.
 
Kor said:
I found it interesting that professional film critics, who are able to maintain a greater level of professional detachment and objectivity and analyze TLJ as a cinematic work on its own merits, had views such as this.
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And then there's the viewpoint of the unwashed masses, who may have seen things differently.
 
suarezguy said:
At least a little of that is probably that fans often claim they were not only not failures, not only successes, but unprecedented successes, much better than the older shows/films and they were the only things that could have succeeded so much, that they succeeded is proof of their quality and that another style would have failed.
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Who is saying that? I may disagree on TLJ being hated but I would not call it "unprecedented" or "much better," other than the PT, which it definitely is. Same with TOS vs. DSC. TOS was unprecedented in terms of staying power and cultural awareness. I love DSC and what it added to the lore but that's in addition to not taking away from.
 
Kor said:
The review in The Atlantic said that TLJ "trades a little too much on nostalgia," and that it "rel[ies] on familiar tropes a bit more than it should." The reviewer wanted the movie to take more chances than it actually did. Nevertheless, he felt that TLJ is "arguably the best the franchise has offered since Empire." (source)

I found it interesting that professional film critics, who are able to maintain a greater level of professional detachment and objectivity and analyze TLJ as a cinematic work on its own merits, had views such as this.

Kor
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The difficulty, of course, being how we define "objectivity" in a subjective profession.
 
When Episode 9 comes out, will that become the new subject of hate, or is Episode 8 going to be the black sheep of this trilogy for the foreseeable future? I have a feelin' JJ is going to make some references and inclusions to TLJ in TROS that soften the choices made in TLJ by contrast and provides a different perspective.
 
ALF said:
When Episode 9 comes out, will that become the new subject of hate, or is Episode 8 going to be the black sheep of this trilogy for the foreseeable future? I have a feelin' JJ is going to make some references and inclusions to TLJ in TROS that soften the choices made in TLJ by contrast and provides a different perspective.
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Depends on if it's any good. TFA didn't get this level of hate.
 
although there are some decent scenes and performances in SOME of Force Awakens (Rey's best moment in both films is the look on her face as she accepts the portions from Plutt the first time wee her go there.. that says "strong female character" to us before they reminded us how much of abland Mary Sue she was) the script for TFA was a huge problem. it just suckled. It failed to either build an interesting post ROTJ world or at least lay down tracks that the following twenty films could continue.. i mean STarkiller base is evidence of that. Did Iron Man go to a big superweapon right away? No, but it laid track, set a tone and voice for the MCU that continued to pay off on the 20th film TLJ had nothing to do but just be ESB with some subversions in it, that's it It was out of creative gas before the title crawl finished its run
 
Yes but a new hope was different.. it was a pulp sci fi adaptation. "destroy an entire planet" was a as bold and lept of the screen just like the effects did.. it was something so --40's about it. It also gave the first film a real goal. you can be 90 years old not able to hear the film and you can follow the opening crawl to the last frame of the film because of the weapon. and I can even make the case that Palpatine's trap in Jedi using the same weapon to bring the rebel fleet out of hiding made perfect sense and yet still was stretching creatively. lucas knew he needed to hit the ground running with ANH, he didn't know if he would make another film, and while he anted to save the weapon for the last part of the trilogy, he made the right choice. Cut Disney bought the franchise, Disney were planning on films every year, they KNEW they had a golden franchise, they could actually lay track for future stories, build their own characters and world develop it.. but they didn't. Going after a map cannot sustain a whole movie.. they needed something for the characters to blow up, and they could not think of anything else. CONTEXT is everything
 
going after a map is not a movie plot, it's barely a video game plot. It would not have been able sustain two hours. so about almost an hour in, they introduce Starkiller base... something for Han and Rey and the rebels to blow up. There is just not enough narrative traction to go with "oh it's a map"
 
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