THREAD FOR THOSE WHO HATED THE MOVIE

Awesome post, drop mic to standing O.

I don't think the people who love this film understand just how varied the dislike of TLJ is, or how people made conscious and unconscious decisions on how to deal with it in the aftermath. I don't think they understand how varied the fan base, both hard core all the way down to general audience is. LFL and Disney stick to a few theories, and fans expand slightly on those, but it goes so much deeper and splits in so many directions. Speaking from my own personal experience, the more I delve into TLJ, the more ways I find to dislike it, and by extension the ST, and I'm one of those who really tried to change my mind on it because I wanted so desperately to find the qualities those who love it do. My effort wasn't a waste, as it helped me understand and sympathize with those who loved it, but try as I may, I could never come around to agree, only understand.

I think the variety of ways of disliking TLJ is going to be the major hurtle for IX and the overall view of the ST once it's done. They've painted themselves into a box in so many ways, they literally can't get themselves out without losing fans (or at least I don't see how). A lot of people I talk to, they won't come back until there's a fire sale of KK on down, they simply have zero faith in the creators anymore.

I find the whole experience curious now. I've mostly detached myself from the stronger feelings I initially had, but I'm now more of an observer to the curious phenomenon as I'm seeing that only now some people who I knew to be fans are starting to talk about it. It's like it was a trauma that was so unspeakable they simply didn't want to mention it. Now that the season is reminding them of that experience, they seem to be wanting to open up. I know people who steadfastly stayed away from any news about TLJ since first seeing it last December. They simply wanted to forget it ever happened. It's weird, because I delved into all this for the past 12 months or so, while they took a different route. I've gotten over it, while they're just now facing the issue. I see my old self in them, it's like a second wave.

I find it so curious, because I wondered why so many people around me simply didn't want to talk SW or vent with me that I had to seek out an avenue online to process all of it. I know this is all anecdotal, but it has me wondering if we've minimized the brand damage. I wonder if maybe the attacks (counter attacks) on the "ists" or "isms" that came after TLJ internalized the hate for some. They didn't dare speak out or process all of this, out of fear they be lumped into those disreputables. It does however have me very curious to see how IX does. I'm curious to see how much of a bubble I'm sitting in, how greatly I'm insulated from the rest of mainstream, or my experience, though anecdotal is more or just as accurate and I should have never doubted my gut.

This may be a big reason why people have battled so hard on both sides, and the strange desire to convince the other side. It goes beyond SW in a way, it may change how we view the world, or how we perceive it. If IX comes out and gets 2 billion, I have to evaluate how much I've insulated myself. If it pulls in less then 800 million, maybe lovers fear they might have to face the reality that they've isolated themselves in a bubble and make evaluations of their own.

 

You make a great point about how one side or the other may have to evaluate their thoughts and opinions on these films. At first I thought I would only have to boycott solo to get my point across. Then people tried to find other reasons for the failure.

Now I have to not go see episode IX cause apparently the very vocal respectable fans whom expressed their displeasure of tlj aren’t really being taken seriously.

You’re definitely right though. If it makes 2 billion, I’ll just have to accept the fact that I’m in the minority and will have to suck it up. If it doesn’t do well like solo, it’ll be interesting to see how the other side reacts to it.

 

I don't know anyone who relishes the idea of having to eat crow. Having to re-evaluate how you view something that's important to you isn't easy. That alone for many would be more than enough incentive to fight so hard to maintain their perception, even to the point of attacking others. Our egos are fragile things, just when we think we have it in check, often that's when reality has a way to show us we still have lots to learn.

 

Life isn’t easy. Evaluating your thoughts and beliefs isn’t easy. But to not accept the facts that are in front of you is to live life in ignorance. I’m not afraid to ask questions if I don’t understand something. And I’m not afraid to admit defeat. I may not be happy with the results, but that shouldn’t stop me from accepting the truth.

But you’re 100% correct. Egos are fragile. People don’t like being proven wrong. But we won’t advance as a species if we don’t learn to accept the facts that we don’t agree with. That’s part of the problem society is facing right now. It’s easier to find like minded people to agree with than to learn to accept different opinions or facts that are true.

 

It's funny, but back in July I was on this very thread, and I admitted that my reactions to TLJ were: first viewing, unsettled. Second viewing (after reading the glowing reviews): something is wrong with me. The film is obviously good (everyone said so), so I started using head cannon to make it so. Then in the Spring, after discussing it with a friend or three, and realizing no one I knew liked the film, I rewatched it on iTunes and had to agree, the film is garbage. Then, and I forget who it was, essentially called me an idiot for giving in to the anti TLJ crowd.

Since when has it been bad to reevaluate our thoughts and opinions? I do it all the time. But by now I realize the film is bad and the writer/director knows NOTHING of the Star Wars universe. The creative people at LFL have driven this train off the tracks.

It's funny, but one of my high school students just mentioned TLJ and that she thinks it sucks. It's has ruined Star Wars for her, and she isn't excited about IX, nor did she go see Solo, mostly because of the mess that is VIII. I also don't know how they can fix this, or if they can. Even if IX is as good as it could possibly be, how good is that? They ruined the story of Luke. Leia will be dead. Han is dead.

 

I was writing in the "Is Ben redeemable?" thread in EpIX and was struck with a realization. I really don't like TLJ because it's so unnecessary. I know a lot of people have stated this in the past, but it just struck me how much. We have all we need to know about Rey and Kylo, the two main characters, to go into EpIX. Even with the cliffhanger, they could have started TLJ instead with a time jump with Luke either dead off screen or as the wise old man on the mountain type. Start right where EpIX is now, and yet not have the subversions, the expansion on canon that isn't necessary, but likely or at least potentially even problematic. Luke could have been in a similar state to Yoda in the OT, too old to go off to war.

Nothing that happened in TLJ will have any greater effect on the heroes than what had happened in TFA. By EpIX, the Resistance's numbers will be back up. Any desperations on the Resistance's part from the events of TLJ could have just as easily been because of the destruction of the planets in TFA.

They could have kept some elements of TLJ in another, alternative, ep VIII, like Snoke's death, if they deemed it necessary. Most of the story of TLJ is throwaway and repetition from TFA. It moves the story forward by inches, which makes it feel like one episode in a series of 12 episodes that comprises of 6 seasons. Then it introduces additions to canon that was never necessary, that deflects from the compelling aspects of the human story instead of propping it up.

 

Right? Like what's the point of that film? Heck, what is the point of the ST anyway? They reset the entire SW GFFA to the same point, essentially, it was at in IV. Then you add this smoking pile of poo to the mix and it just seems so worthless. An overt money grab. No overarching story, except whatever they happen to come up with on the fly. No reason for the ST to exist.

1. The space chase that wasn't a real chase. WTF is that all about?
2. Canto Bight.... Horribly done. Supposedly they need to find the one man in the galaxy who can do what they need, and then, in the end, any old crook will do???? Idiocy.
3. Oh, but I know, it was all worth it, cause Rose Tico told us so. Except that it wasn't cause the dumbest looking aliens ever, aka the fathiers (which is the dumbest name ever) will be captured and put right back where they were. But hey, it was all worth it.

Okay, I'll stop. I just needed a moment to rant. And to think this writer/director might be doing ANOTHER three films for Star Wars???? God help us.

 

Great, you've found one mildly-divergent creative choice in what is an otherwise suffocatingly-derivitive and woefully-uncreative trilogy of movies. And more importantly, given the immense polarization surrounding the characterization of Luke, often being cited as the reason most people hate this film (not me, mind you, my problems largely start and end with that personification of human excrement that is Kylo Ren), I think it's safe to say that it wasn't a risk that wholly paid off.

It doesn't matter how risky a decision is, it's how the execution of that risk is handled. George Lucas took an immense risk ending the PT with a dark, depressing chapter where the good guys lose and the villains assume dominance over everything...but his execution of that risk worked, and ROTS ended up being viewed as not only the best of the PT films, but even the best SW film period for some fans.

That risk paid off. Writing Luke out of character for no other reason than to service painfully-thin and thoroughly-underwritten characters like Rey and Kylo did not.

Hey, I'm currently reading NJO for the first time as well (I'm on Agents of Chaos, at the moment), so I'll definitely take part in that conversation. Especially because I want to see Darth_Wardawg's reaction to everything for the first time.

I appreciate the compliments immensely. Thank you.

I don't even have to delve deep to find ways to dislike TLJ or TFA. The most I have to do is line them up narratively to the past six films, and their merit completely falls apart. Just imagining someone marathoning all three trilogies back to back in chronological order is enough to make me face-palm my skull into oblivion; the amount of counterproductive narrative choices, the complete lack of in-universe progression that's so blatantly obvious in the ST makes it feel so disconnected from the previous films---especially with how needlessly-dervitive and unoriginal it is. That aspect completely severs in-universe continuity between the films, because there's no canonical explanation for the EXACT repeat of previous storybeats without it feeling phony or some kind of superficial attempt to dance around the real-world production reason for it, that being Disney/LFL's shameless urge to pander to nostalgia. It's such a colossal roadbump in the Star Wars fiction, sticking out like a sore thumb.

It's to the point where I can't even be mad at it to the levels many others are, because I can't even trick myself into thinking these movies are canon successors to Episodes 1-6. I just can't. The rules, progression, myth-building and continuity of the previous films literally STOP at these films in the timeline, to where they don't even feel legitimate---they feel more like low-budget, made-for-TV exploitative knock-offs like Transmorphers or Revengers: Age of Steel or Atlantic Rim. They don't feel legitimate or in-line with the previous films at all.

And that's why I don't have a hard time picking the Expanded Universe over them. The EU just feels more legitimate and better thought-out than these hollow products being pawned off as Star Wars films.

I don't think I'm quite at that point just yet, although with the recent shortage of quality of supplementary material from the Nu-Canon, I'm certainly getting there. I'm of the belief that good Star Wars stories and products can be made in spite of the creative and business decisions marring the films, that good things do exist in the Nu-Canon. They're like droplets of water in the midst of a creative, sun-razed desert mesa, but they exist: things like Star Wars: Rebels, Timothy Zahn's new Thrawn novels, and Charles Soule's Vader comics are the three that come to mind. And like all good Star Wars products, I show my approval by supporting them. I bought all four seasons of Rebels on Blu-Ray, bought the Kanan and Vader comics, but the Rebels: A New Dawn and both Thrawn novels, because they were good products that felt like competent effort and creativity was put into them.

But it's 2018 now. Rebels is over, Zahn will be releasing his last Thrawn book soon, and Charles Soule has left the Vader comics behind. My reasons for investing even mildly into upcoming Star Wars products has diminished entirely, and the only thing on the horizon appears to be more mediocre episodes of Resistance, more one-shot novels, more terrible games from EA, more abhorrent films, and TV Shows that are at the mercy of the whimsical incompetence of the LFL Story Group.

The actual direction of the mainline series is unsalvagable at this point, but I always have hope that even if 99% of the current franchise and canon sucks the concrete off an LA sidewalk, at least a few halfway-decent products or stories may worm their way through.

It's a sad and woefully-pathetic stance to have on what is my favorite franchise, and a mentality I would've never harbored regarding Star Wars even ten years ago, but it's the last stage of investment that I'm currently inhabiting.

You see, I'd move on from the discussion of the ST and home in solely on the state of the current franchise media canon, but the constant crooning of the small uprising of TLJ-fanatics characterizing the stance about people like me are precisely what bring me back to the discussion.

Everytime the pro-TLJ crowd accuses dissenters of hating TLJ because it "didn't live up to their theories", I write a miniature essay on how I didn't have a single theory walking out of TFA. Everytime they accuse dissenters of hating Rey or Rose because they're women, I remind them that my favorite EU character is Mara Jade, the empowered female assassin who regularly defecates on Luke Skywalker, verbally and through combat, until they eventually make peace with each other. Everytime they make the claim that "blind nostalgia" and "overly-attaching oneself to the OT" tainted dissenters' views on TLJ, I remind them that I'm a fan of more PT-era and EU-centric storylines than they've probably read in their lives, and that my biggest problem with these films is how they're pandering to OT nostalgia.

The strawmanning never ends, and thus, my involvement in the conversation never ends. The utter lack of any other interesting Star Wars news or promising future products has something to do with my repeated involvement with the conversation as well, to be honest.

I think people wanting to speak out against TFA during its release in 2015 withheld their opinions because of the mainstream media outright worshipping the film and decrying anyone who felt the least bit antagonistic towards it. Having frequented the Force.Net during this period, I can speak from personal experience when I say that you could not say a negative thing about that film in the two years leading up to Episode 8. Then TLJ came out, and there was enough polarizing reception for those that held their silence to finally break it---and I imagine, because of being forced to contain their emotions for so long, they probably saw it as an opportunity to release their anger and vitriol towards the new trilogy, maybe in less constructive ways than necessary. But by that same token, I see plenty of people presenting perfectly-rational and constructive criticisms against the ST, only to be shouted down and downvoted to oblivion on places like TheForce.Net, Star Wars Reddit, or StarWarsSpeculation Reddit, all with the finesse and maturity of screaming 8-year-olds on Xbox Live.

I, however, never held such a silence. I called TFA for what it was all the way back on release, and continued to hold my opinion on multiple forums and in real life, in spite of being called "not a true fan", a "nerd who can't leave the past behind", "not giving the trilogy a chance to improve and answer the questions TFA raised", and a bunch of other labels that have aged laughably in retrospect following TLJ's release.

The only difference now is that I have people in hordes that agree with me, which is something I never would've expected back in 2015, when ST-Dissenters like myself were ostracized as the Lepers of the Star Wars community.

 

And now we have even more evidence of the ineptitude of Kathleen Kennedy. I saw a story a couple of days back about LFL was going to submit it for "Best Original Score" but missed the deadline. How the heck is this possible? How???? I just can't believe the lack of leadership over there right now. KK really should have been fired back in June.

 

I should ask you the same.

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It is a blunder reaching a level that completely boggles the mind.

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Whuh huh? What flight simulator?

Oh wait, you're going outside the movie and grabbing EU lore to talk about how good the movies are. Yeah, the fact that you have to rely on the EU to praise the character development in the movies speaks volumes.

 

AMEN BROTHER!!! I don't get this defense of KK that states, she produced X film, so she shouldn't be criticized. Sure she did. But she was working with Steven Flippin Spielberg. I could have gotten a production credit on those films and they'd have done just as well.

She might deserve respect for what she has done in the past, but the reality is she has screwed the pooch with the greatest IP in history. Just the fact she's out there saying "Star Wars needs strong women" in it and "The force is female" shows her level of not only incompetence but her outright lack of understanding when it comes to Star Wars and the characters in the GFFA.

If someone doubts she's incompetent, just look at Solo and the newest Solo debacle. Not turning in a film on time for an award is absolutely beyond belief. The fact she has hired and fired more directors than I can count in just a few short years is crazy insane. I could go on but I doubt we need to rehash her idiocy when it comes to how she has handled LFL in the last 5 years.

 

It will do better than Solo, being a main episodic movie, but it will continue the overall downward trend and I do not expect it to do better than E8.

It saddens me to see the mind blowing excitement and anticipation for Avengers. Don't get me wrong, I love the Marvel movies... but what saddens me is how that used to be us....

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I honestly thought it was an Onion-type parody article when I first heard it. Like "oh, ha ha, Solo won't win the Academy Award for Best Picture now (as if it would even have been considered in the first place)".... then I had the realization that this wasn't a parody news article and that this really happened and now Solo won't even be considered for a category which it should have been considered for....

 

Get used to that. It seems everywhere I go, people have to mine into the novels or minutia in the film (like the fact that Rey likes the color green) in order to do the writers' job for them and add layers to these characters.

I didn't have to do that with Luke, Han, Leia, Obi-Wan or Anakin. Everything necessary and crucial to their characters were in the film, and were developed exhaustively and competently. The same cannot be said about the walking caricatures inhabiting the ST films.

 

No, they are annoyed with people going too far and bashing Star Wars.. which is against the rules of this site.

Too far.

many of you are going too far with this animosity

 

Right???? I was just saying to some students of mine on Monday that I'm more excited about the new Avengers film than I am about Star Wars, and I NEVER EVER EVER expected that would be the case. It's shocking to me. And saddening.

As @Darth_Nobunaga has stated elsewhere, I'll continue to mine the old EU for quality. I've even started purchasing old Dark Horse comics to get my fix. KK will eventually be gone and hopefully Dave Filoni will take over and fix this mess. Until then, I'll just wait it out.

 

What would be a recent example of that in this thread?

I mean, ^that sensation you're describing with the Avengers is the way I've felt about Star Wars since 2015, so this is by no means a revelation for me. And you're right, that should never be the case.

On a side note, if you want any recommendations for Dark Horse comics, I can happily recommend a few, depending on your interests. Let me tell you, when Dark Horse was pumping out comic arcs in the 90's and 2000's, they were untouchable. The sleep-inducing stuff that Marvel's putting out at the moment doesn't come anywhere close to the best comics of that time.

 

Exactly! At no point ever should I feel blah about a Star Wars film. I have a freakin dark side sleeve of tattoos on my right arm and I'm about to start working on a light side sleeve on the left, so yeah, I'm a huge fan!

As for Dark Horse, definitely! I got the six shot series with Ki Adi Mundi recently which I plan on reading this weekend. Send me some recommendations. I'll tell you I'm a huge fan of Jedi/Sith and I love dark stories.

So far I do like the Charles Soule Vader series, but it does feel like something is missing from it, and I can't put my fingers on it. I was think of checking out Doctor Aphra, but I've not pulled the trigger.

 

I'm surprised I am coming back into this thread to further beat this horse, but alas, I am gonna do it.

In the end, the biggest problem was Rian Johnson's disconnect from the fan base. This was not about you, Rian, this was about us. And you didn't get that, and you have been ROASTED for it ever since. This is not a franchise to do this with. He simply did not have his finger on the pulse of what fans wanted/were hoping for. It's not to say that he can't make bold decisions at times, certainly not, but my god, did he decided NOT to deliver in so many ways the fans were hoping for. I mean what was he expecting the reaction to be?

Flat out, you can't have mountains of fan theory and then give no theory/explanation (Snoke). You can't have a fan based STARVING for the image of Luke Skywalker back on screen and then depict something they simply cannot digest (and never will). The tone, the plot. Geez...

He had some good ideas, there was some smart direction, and there were some rewarding scenes, but, BUT, overshadowed by his missteps. And the biggest one of all was with Luke. He simply HAD to get that right, or close to it, and he didn't. I mean for god sakes, you think he would have taken some of that feedback Mark Hamill was giving him regarding the Luke character which he knows better than anyone. The fanbase, which he understands very well attending the conventions, and used that, fused it into Luke's story. But no...

What a shame!!

 

The Soule series is neat, but ultimately inconsequential. It adds some layers to Darth Vader, but it's not exactly new or unpredictable information. It doesn't really amount to a large-scale story or impactful arc.

In regards to Dark Horse, if you're more inclined towards Jedi/Sith stories, these are the series I recommend:

• Tales of the Jedi - A series focusing on a generation of Jedi characters from thousands of years prior to the PT era, showcasing one of the very first wars between Sith and Jedi in galactic history
• Star Wars: Republic - A series that starts out focusing on PT-era Jedi Quinlan Vos, but then extends into the Clone Wars and focuses on brutal and taxing battles undertaken by various members of the Jedi Order (this series predates the TCW show, so it's actually a bit grittier in places)
• Knights of the Old Republic - A story about a Jedi Padawan during the days of KOTOR who's framed for the murder of his fellow Padawans, and is being hunted by a horde of merciless, lawful-evil members of the Jedi Council. Think Harrison Ford in The Fugitive, but in the Star Wars universe
• Dawn of the Jedi - The very last of the Dark Horse comics before the canon purge of 2014 by Disney, with the series detailing the exact origins of the Jedi Order, going to the wildest and earliest days of the Star Wars galaxy, and focusing on the characters who would be the arbiters of Jedi wisdom for all time.
• Star Wars Legacy - Viewed as the "final story" of the Star Wars universe, this series is about the last of the Jedi scrambling to repel against the New Sith Empire that has enveloped the galaxy, with the main protagonist being the last surviving descendant of Luke Skywalker. I recommend reading this series only after you've read to the end of Luke Skywalker's generation in the EU novel timeline, as this comic series is the chronological next step after Fate of the Jedi.

Also, since you're reading NJO at the moment, after you've gotten four books into the series, I highly recommend the comic series Star Wars: Invasion. It's a short series, but a great visual feast and the only instance we get to see the Yuuzhan Vong War depicted in an actual comic.

I don't even think it's a matter of Rian Johnson not listening to the fans. He made a lot of risky decisions and was attempting to tell some kind of darker, more philosophical story with TLJ, roping in Luke Skywalker to be a more sophisticated, world-weary sort of Jedi Master. He wanted Kylo Ren to be a victim of circumstance like Anakin, instead of a pure villain.

On paper, these are good ideas. The issue is that he didn't execute a single one of these ideas well. The motivations and reasoning behind Depressed Luke were laughable, horribly-written, and inconsistent. The forced drama in Kylo Ren's characterization is the kind of weapons-grade cringe you see on Fanfiction or Wattpad, with his motivations for turning to the Dark Side making even less sense than in TFA, which is impressive given how shallow and superficial Kylo was in that film. The narrative glue holding the script together was flimsy and unreliable, and thus every other risk Rian took caved in on itself---because Luke's characterization was poor and unfounded, the drama around him withers and dies. Because Kylo's motives and origins are fanfic-tier garbage, removing Snoke to embolden Kylo doesn't pay off, and only serves to piss off the people who want to know more about Snoke...not draw them closer to Kylo as Rian clearly intended with Snoke's death.

And these are just a few ways that Rian's ideas end up emerging from his mind and existing as pure rot in the story. He, just like J.J., wanted mountainous heaps of drama and relevance, but wasn't willing to do the narrative work to get there. He wanted the scenes before the story, and TLJ's lop-sided, amateurish execution is completely evident of that.

 

I stayed out of here for a bit, but I find it soothing to vent, so welcome back dude.

I think you hit on an important point. RJ made it all about him. What he wants/wanted. As @Darth_Nobunaga has pointed out, the Force Awakens was a lazily written film, to put lightly. But, at the end of the day, it did pose questions and then, simply because he didn't want to answer them, he just did his own thing. How idiotic is that? I get it, TFA was, at best, problematic. But to simply ignore it in the way RJ did, is, in my mind, insane.

I think RJ is a good director of actors. I would love to have had someone like him directing the PT with Lucas providing the overarching story while someone else wrote the dialogue. That would have been cool. But I keep saying it, and I mean it, the PT is fantastic compared to the ST.

You know, what gets me is I keep hearing about how the fan base has "always" been divided. "Empire divided the fans." "ROTJ divided the fans." I was 10 when Empire came back and I don't remember any division. My friends and I loved it. We loved the Battle of Hoth, the fight between Vader and Luke. We argued endlessly about whether or not Vader was lying. Yoda was just awesome.

As for ROTJ, we loved it, except, in my case, for the death of Vader. Yeah, later on we disliked the Ewoks, but in 1983 I didn't care. I don't remember my friends caring. We loved the scene where Palpatine shows up on Death Star II. We loved the biker chase! The final duel, the flight through the superstructure of the Death Star... This narrative is not one which I remember.

Now the PT... yeah, that was divisive, but everyone still attended. It still FELT like Star Wars, and built on the universe/world. The ST... and TLJ for me, it just misses the mark big time.