Rian Johnson's Comedy in TLJ

I'm tempted to hand out a lot of Kirks. Wasn't that thread about The humor in TLJ?
As for me a lot of it worked.

 

I think part of it is, that styles of humor change.
The General Hugs thing is very much a more modern sense of humor. Comedies of the 70s are wildly different than comedies of now.
The humor has to match the time the movie is made in, unless it's a period piece IMO.

Trying to strike things that will satisfy "Star Wars humor" and "make a twelve year old laugh" is not easy and it was one of the places the scripts of the PT struggled the most.

 

Humor styles change. But you can be modern without breaking from the necessary earnestness of Star Wars.

For me, the big problems with the humor don't have anything to do with 70's humor vs modern humor. The big problems are:

1) Humor that doesn't flow from the story, but that influences and shapes the story (i.e., Poe telling jokes to distract the villain)
2) Humor that goes beyond making a character look silly and makes the whole world of the story look silly (i.e., to accept the General Hugs bit, you need to accept that this is a world where somebody can act silly and distract an entire armada. In the first minutes of TLJ, you're asked to view the world in this way--as something that's not entirely serious).

Even though the original trilogy has lots of humor, the humor never violates earnest tone of the movie. It's never just silly. But in TLJ, it feels like the movie itself is winking at you and saying "let's not take this too seriously." And that happens when the humor comes from outside the plot rather than from inside the plot. When the humor comes from gag angles like the "spaceship is a clothes-iron" thing, or when the jokes actually shape the plot in a way that forces you to embrace the situation as less-than-serious (again, General Hugs).

As Chris Taylor writes, lots of silly things can happen in Star Wars, but it's always presented in complete earnestness. Lots of silly things happen in both the originals and the prequels. But if silly things happen, and the movie itself treats the world as silly rather than earnest--that breaks Star Wars.

 

"General Hugs" was probably the only thing that is downright awful. It wasn't funny, took away from the scene IMO. The humour in other parts didn't land very well, but wasn't downright ridiculous like the whole your mother part.

 

This this this. In the original trilogy, the villains are never reduced to buffoons. I tried to think about what is the funniest moment of the OT involving a Imperial? It was tough to come up with terribly many examples. "Apology accepted, Captain Needa" was a great line which elicits an evil little laugh from me every time I hear it, but does not devolve into pure silliness. In a similar vein, the look on Admiral Piett's face at the end of ESB when the Falcon gets away. Those moments of humor come from the heightened tension of the situation, not from villains behaving like jackasses.

This is well said.

--- Double Post Merged, Jul 2, 2018, Original Post Date: Jul 2, 2018 ---

Well Star Wars is a period piece. It is set a long time ago. Taking modern day cell phone humor and putting it into E8 was epic fail.

 

for you.

i still think this was totally in-character for Poe ~ and no different from him mocking Kylo Ren in TFA (which he did repeatedly).
Ren just didn't take the bait whereas Hux did.

in a movie in which failure is a major theme, the villains fail too.
that's actually kind of amazing and it totally works for me.

 

Eh, I wonder if The Battle of Endor was to on the nose for people seeing it in theaters. Given its political undertone of the Vietnam War.

 

Threepio in the droid factory. Too-Gon with his face palmed.

Threepio in the arena. Too-Gon with his face palmed.

Earnest? Maybe to a toddler.

 

I honestly can't believe that we're still talking about TLJ's comedy being too "on the nose"...






Come on guys, you didn't like the humor in TLJ, and that's fine. It's definitely different than stuff in the OT.

But at least, like, it was actual jokes? Instead of whatever happened in the above?

 

I guess we will just disagree.
I don't see it that simply because that's how Poe is and that's how THIS trilogy is painted, humor wise.
It's different yes but it appears to resonate more with younger fans. That's what matters.

 

Yet somehow they become funny when you post them in this context.

 

It's all about comedic timing.

In this case, about a nineteen year pause inbetween the joke and the punchline.

"Leave 'em wanting more," they always told me.

 

Well, no... not really. It's not.

Is it just cell phone humour though? Seems to me it's any kind of 'communications technology' humour, which could apply to any era which has communications technology.

 

In general the poll option "it was alright, some jokes didn't land, but nothing unforgivable" pretty much sums up what I think about it. Some jokes feel forced and/or out of place, but it doesn't bother me too much. Not that the humour didn't resonate with me at all - there was some good stuff. And it's also not like I roll on the floor laughing during other Star Wars films.

Perhaps comedy isn't Rian's strength. I mean, I like his personal sense of humour, I think he's a funny guy, but jokes in his movies aren't that hilarious. The closest thing to comedy he's ever done is The Brothers Bloom and, although it's a very interesting movie, I wasn't really amused by the humour. Oh well, I guess he can still fine-tune his comedy in the future.

 

Although the Poe/Hux scene wasn't one of them, like a lot of people I did think some of the humour felt a little bit added on. Then in an interview with Rian I saw (or read) where he talked about the humour of the film, I found it interesting when it turned out that's exactly what he did. Once he'd written the script, he went through it looking for places where he could add humour.

I'm sure he said he did that with help from Carrie Fisher as well (although I could be confusing that with something else), so it might be we shouldn't be just calling it Rian Johnson's comedy.

 

Wrong quote there friend

I guess it's all a bit subjective. For me, a world where villains are successfully distracted by mom jokes doesn't feel like Star Wars. Even in the prequels, with Jar Jar and the droid factory and all that, the world of the movie stays intact.

 

The Poe/Hux phone call scene was the single worst piece of "humor" in all of Star Wars, that includes the dumb things in TPM like Jar Jar stepping in poop, the fart, and him getting kicked in the nuts.

The only humor that I actually found funny was when Luke was messing with Rey as she meditated and that was more Daisy Ridley and Mark Hamill than it was the actual "joke."

I think the biggest casualty of the "humor" was Hux, he became an absolute joke in TLJ and there is no reason to buy him as a threat anymore.

Edit: I'd also like to add how dumb the Finn leaking bacta suit was. Incredibly dumb visual gag at the expense of a good character.

 

I just think he has a very specific sense of humor.
He's like Shane Black-lite in that regard.

 

oh! sorry about that! not even sure how that happened. i fixed it. : o p

as to villains distracted by mom jokes: eh. i honestly don't get why people make such a big deal over this.
but then maybe i always saw Hux as someone who was going to lose the cheese off his cr@cker eventually, so this feels like a perfectly normal progression to me.

 

Yeah, that's how I feel.

I know a lot of people thought Hux was some force to be reckoned with in TFA for some reason (likely for his intense Nazi speech, which was pretty well acted) but I always thought it was clear that

1) The guy's absolutely nuts
and
2) He's clearly not even a competitor for Kylo

Now, 2 could change (and I think the blindside after lessening his threat would make it all the better) but Hux was never a Tarkin or Thrawn. If anything, he was a manbaby version of Krennic. Taking in mind that he was raised in the budding First Order as a sort of child soldier Full Metal Jacket drill sergeant, I think that the juxtposition between showing his weird altered state of mind and Poe's more normal one was actually kind of interesting.