okungnyo wrote: Is this all off the top of your head??

Batfan175 wrote:

okungnyo wrote: Is this all off the top of your head??

I had to look at my collection and decide which ones I would include in my answer. So it took some time but I managed to narrow it down to those I mentioned.

Vader182 wrote:

Cilogy wrote: Having said that, I know I'm in the minority on this - for whatever reason - but he's a boring and uninspiring director with no distinctive vision.

Revisiting with JJ, purely from a business perspective is great, but creatively I think it's actually worse than choosing an inexperienced director. Like, it seems Disney/Lucasfilm are actually kinda ... I don't know, scared? I guess?

Kennedy and co are rushing this and it's turning me off.

TFA has a lot of very distinctive choices, love or hate them.

Examples:

-medieval production design IE crossguard sabers, castles (maz), knights in shining armor (phasma)

-Kurosawa/Spielberg use of blocking and camera movement, combining several shots into one. Effect is sense of characters sharing drama together in uninterrupted moments. Similar in feeling to static shots of Lucas and Kershner keeping multicharacters in-frame but contemporary.

-Visual sparseness to an extreme. In some ways, more so than even A New Hope. Big use of wide open spaces with shrunken towns, cities, squadrons, battles. Jakku=few shacks. Mostly empty space. Resistance base= underground, tiny rooms. Starkiller= mostly empty mountains (exception is firing sequence). Battles have few ships vs a few ships.

^ interestingly, art book for TFA shows earlier designs had median between minimalist and maximalism. JJ kept going smaller and smaller.

-Han and Luke are unlikable cowards and shitty people. Not only did they abandon the galaxy when it's in peril, they helped facilitate the rise of The First Order through Kylo Ren. Han and Leia's shitty parenting and Luke's failure as a teacher caused the crisis Rey and Finn need to solve. So they fucking fled. This, by the way, is an absolute 180 from all expanded universe stories painting them as glorified heroes struggling to lead. Love or hate this choice, but it's nothing if not a "distinctive vision." It deliberately subverted what fans "wanted."

-The recursiveness, while safe and familiar (I get this resets Han to his start at ANH), also contrasts what's changed. IE the separation of Han in TFA to Han in ANH from swashbuckling scoundrel to absent husband, failed father, fleeing war hero, and now a lackluster smuggler. All layers of his persona and image have deteriorated away. (Almost) everything that made Han great is gone. (the medieval aesthetics communicate lost time/failed society/systems etc)

The sparseness of the worlds and the dark ages aesthetic relates to the hollow voids left behind by Han and Luke and Leia. The realization by the new heroes that Han and Luke suck is of disappointment and confusion. Not a coincidence that Rey's first big confrontation with Ren throws his fetishized Vader legacy back in his face. He'll never be able to BE Darth Vader in the same way that Han Solo can't be our old Han Solo and Luke Skywalker won't be our old Luke Skywalker. These pieces fit. You can hate these ideas, you can hate these puzzle pieces, but I still, and will always, fail to see how this is playing it safe. I think the fact it seems as safe as it does relates more to the success of those elements than it does the derivative Tie Fighters, X-Wings, or recursive story.


Kasdan and Abrams tried finding a balance between exploring new content and new ideas while using old visual ideas and story structures. For most people, including me, that balance was imperfect. How imperfect? Your mileage will vary. But Marvel Fast Food Happy Meal Number 7? Please. Not even close. This is full of directorial ideas, thematic ideas, story ideas. Ideas that are largely cohesive. Do I hope The Last Jedi and Episode IX continues exploring these ideas without the derivative veneer of the OT? Absofuckinglutely.

All I can say is watch TFA before TLJ with these things in mind and let me know if it changes how you feel about it.



-Vader