HUMOR What type of humor will be in TLJ?

I think it'll be mixed in to balance the serious/darkness.

 

I'd like the same kind of humor as in TFA, but just a little less..

 

The humor of TFA was good, even though it was a little bit too much. Less is more. TLJ should have humor like the OT, especially ANH and TESB. I think this movie will be pretty serious and dark. This seriousness/darkness will be lightened up by well dosed humor though.

 

Agree ..

 

<--this (Rian even said as much in one of the Celebration panels)

 

i don't feel this tonal shift the way other people do.
i honestly see no difference between Poe making fun of Ren in TFA and then making fun of Hux in TLJ.

in fact, it seems far more out of place and inappropriate to the circumstances in TFA.
and the "your mama" joke may strike people poorly, but if you know anything about Hux's life from the EU, you know it's a dig at that more than anything else.
fair enough, we shouldn't have to know that to get, it, but i consider it an easter egg, not required reading.

the point is Hux is a mess post Starkiller (look at him!) and Poe tramples all over him.
why should this surprise anyone or set the wrong tone?
Hux is still the same person at the start. Poe is still the same person at the start.
both characters grow in interesting ways by the end of the film:

Poe realizes this is not a game to be "won", that he has to take his leadership seriously.
Hux realizes his arrogance is folly; Snoke is dead and now he has a manbrat to deal with--that final look he gives Ren: you know he intends to deal with him.​

p.s. sorry, i copied your response to the other thread and posted it here because we were veering off topic.

 

I don’t think it’s a matter of propriety for Poe and his brand of humor, but that of Hux and the larger circumstance itself. Poe, in TFA, was caught. He made some snarky remarks when confronted, but a crucial element of the plot wasn’t entirely dependent on it though. In TLJ, the fate of the Resistance (and thereby the whole galaxy) rested on Poe being able to bait Hux specifically into a crank call.

For me, that’s a drastic stress on suspension-of-disbelief, straight away, and largely for the sake of humor. Personally, I got over it pretty quick, but I understand if some didn’t. If they let that dictate their experience throughout the film. “What exactly should I be taking seriously here?”

How so? Please explain.

The ‘yo mama’ bit seemed well in-line with the already silly premise to me. Like the cherry on top. I get the additional context, but I very seriously doubt that was meant as any sort of Easter egg for the extended canon readers though.

It’s a matter of verisimilitude and incredulity. It’s a ridiculous premise that Hux would have cared at all to hear Poe’s response to his tirade. That he’d bother to ensure comms were working right. “I can hear you. Can you hear me?” That was absurd and clearly played for laughs. Then we have Poe zooming around making simple work of surface canons and easily avoiding enemy fighters while BB comically plugs holes and mashes his head into the electrical panel.

These sequences communicate the tone and stakes to the audience: this is what they should expect with regard to the rest of the film. Then, in a dramatic reversal, you have mass death, Paige’s self-sacrifice and Leia’s pained countenance in helplessly observing the senseless loss of life of people she chose to lead. That’s a total 180 degree change. That’s an abrupt tonal shift and a lot to have to adjust to in a short amount of time. The movie continues this juxtaposition throughout hard cutting between irreverent and sincere moments.

You evidently didn’t have a problem with any of this. Personally, I didn’t really either. But I entirely understand why some people would. That it would color how they perceived the movie in general. Does that make sense?

 

maybe? i guess i can see how Poe wanting to create a distraction is the objective of the phone call and that Hux falling for it is what makes this feel silly to people, and i do agree that it doesn't seem like Hux would play into this--he's so put together in TFA. but again i feel like the point is to show that he's not so well put together (and in fact the cracks show in TFA if you look close enough). losing Starkiller really took him down a peg and i see a man fighting to regain control with a lot of blustering (and consequently making matters worse). but we know Hux likes the sound of his own voice and making a big display of crushing the Resistance, so i just don't think it's that out of character, especially if he's off his feed (as it were).

precisely because he's been captured and he's in the hands of someone with "magical" powers who can eviscerate him from across the room. but he plays troll bait with his life, which doesn't strike me as very smart. i think there was a pretty healthy discussion post-TFA whether Poe knows it's Ben under there and if the two had some past knowledge of each other and that's why Poe knows he can push his buttons that way, but so far the EU has nixed that idea, which, for me make Poe very brave perhaps, but also very stupid. at least toying with Hux he's in a ship and has a chance of getting away with his objective as opposed to staring down a teed-off Force user and dozens of Stormtroopers right in his face.

i say that's actually quite brilliant. but i can see how other people don't know what to do with this emotionally.

it does make sense and i do agree that the ground beneath our feet is constantly shifting in TLJ (which unsettles people).

what surprises me, i guess (to try to articulate it more clearly), is that people respond as though this isn't 100% deliberate. we are supposed to be unsettled, we shouldn't feel comfortable, the humor should be somewhat shocking or feel misplaced, that the characters are acting precisely as they were set up to act. we're seeing the cracks in their foundations/their folly/their disregard.

and i've heard a lot of people describe all this as slapstick, which i don't think is entirely accurate. slapstick is a kind of exaggerated physical comedy (like Rey taking out the caretaker's wagon--that's about as close to straight up slapstick as TLJ gets--and intentionally so). much of the rest of it is comedy of incongruity and garden variety sight gags. and frankly there's not that much of it and it's needed to alleviate some of the darkness and tension in this film. so i guess when i hear people specifically cite this as the ruination of the movie (or Luke deliberately grossing Rey out with green milk, which is the other oft-cited example), i just don't really understand how a couple of gags colors one's entire perspective to such an extreme degree. if we can roll our eyes and get past Chewbacca literally doing Johnny Weismuller's Tarzan call in ROTJ, none of this seems all that bad by comparison.

 

Or 3PO's head on a droid trooper...or Super Battle Droids slipping around and melting on burning oil in ROTS, or 3PO being dragged....all the time, lol

 

one of the interesting things about this particular thread is that you can see people saying that they think TLJ should tone down the humor compared to TFA (these were pre-TLJ predictions/preferences) . TLJ didn't tone down the humor; i think it was pretty much on par with TFA. so maybe that doesn't sit right with people as well.

 

I absolutely agree that the exchange isn’t contradictory to either’s characterization or role in the story. The issue is with the excessiveness of the scene. We, the audience, figure out what Poe’s doing pretty quick. The officers standing around Hux seem to pick up on it fairly quick too. So now he’s the dumbest person in the room and that’s part of the gag.

It’s a good sketch taken by itself, but it doesn’t wholly ring true to how he’d honestly react if this premise wasn’t compelling him to. If this was a minor aspect of the movie, that would be one thing, but absolutely everything in the film from that point forward relies on it playing out this way.

But that’s his personality. He reacts to stressful situations with humor. I’m the same way, so I could relate. He just saw Lor get cut down by this guy for no reason. Odds are he was next. Whether he cracked wise or peed his pants, it wouldn’t change the situation. It had no relevance to the story other than establishing his character. That’s the difference.

The only gripe I remember about this at the time was whether Poe’s humor seemed “too modern”. As if the movie wasn’t made for a 2015 audience or something.

I agree, but I think it’s also the probable genesis of the pervasive attitude of people calling Rian Johnson a “troll”. That he treated the material as a joke and was openly mocking Star Wars and its fans. There’s so much subtext and nuance and every “joke” has relevance to the themes and direction of the story and meta implications beyond, but that’s not how it played to a lot of people. They took it at face value, which was inevitable.

Slapstick is just shorthand for any broad physical comedy that results in compromised or embarrassing situations. Finn, walking around in that leaky bag, for instance, is slapstick. Rey, getting leaf whacked on the hand by Luke, is slapstick. Hux, being slammed to the ground by Snoke after acting nonchalant, is slapstick. That porg, getting slammed into the Falcon’s window, is slapstick. There’s actually quite a bit. I’m not saying that’s good or bad, but there’s certainly no shortage.

People are really precious about things like this. Too much, in my opinion, but they feel how they feel. If they think a certain level of respect isn't being paid to this thing they revere, then they’ll be offended and that’s all they’ll see beyond the point of offense. If it’s Lucas, the all-powerful creator, playing around, that’s one thing. But if you’re some hired hand, you better not get too tricky. Just color in the numbered boxes, smart guy.

 

i honestly don't think i agree with this, but again, i can see how people would take it that way. you just made the exact reverse excuse for Poe:

except there is no difference. bombing the Dreadnaught backfired on Poe. sure they took the ship out, but Poe lost his whole crew in the process and was demoted for it. so the "success" of the mission riding on his roping Hux into a phone prank is both larger and lesser than all the weight people imbue it. i could just as easily argue that it's just Hux's personality to absolutely need to have the appearance of the upper hand without necessarily the experience to think through below the surface. we've endlessly tossed around his ridiculous coat and those absurd shoulder pads. Hux is all about the bluff. he just plays a poor game of it in this instance because he's desperately overconfident (again, it says something important about him as a character that we ought to be paying attention to because it's going to come back around).

we purchase the privilege of experiencing it, but we don't own it and can't control it (never have, never will). some people have a problem with that concept. : o p

 

I’m talking about his delay tactic with Hux and only that. That ploy succeeded in spectacular fashion. “You did it, Poe. Now get your squad back here so we can get out of this place.” It allowed the transports to evacuate D'Qar and determined what happened in the story from that moment forward. An SNL sketch decided the fate of the galaxy. You presented it as no different than Poe’s snide asides to Kylo which don’t impact the story in any meaningful way. I don’t see the correlation there.

Poe is certainly someone brazen enough to try something like that. Hux is certainly someone narcissistic enough to fall for it. The setup is fine. It’s when it lingers beyond the point of believability, for the sake of humor and plot alone ,that it becomes tonally dissonant. That it’s so vital to the overall story then underscores this.

Anyway, this is way beyond the point I was wanting to dissect that scene. I really don’t have a problem with it, but I don’t think the criticisms are totally baseless either. I get why it rubbed some people the wrong way.

Yeah. I love Star Wars, but I don’t LOOOOOVE Star Wars. Maybe that makes me less of a fan (or not a real one at all), but I’m honestly not concerned in the slightest what direction any of these new filmmakers take the property. Nothing can undo what I love about it. Nothing can ruin it. There’s only plus, no minus, because only I get to decide how I feel about it. That’s not everyone else’s experience though and that’s OK too

Oh well, enough of that.

 

this is exactly 100% how i feel about it too. : D