Mike86

Regarding the 3PO scene, I would probably give Johnson the benefit of a doubt if that was the only thing he did. The fact is though that's one thing amongst many others in which it seems like he wanted to go out of his way to give the middle finger to fans.

Jay G.

If he was "going out of his way to give the middle finger to fans," why did he listen to Hamill and have Luke wink at C3PO in the final film? I mean, even if he was just humoring Mark on the set, he could've still kept it out in the edit, all while giggling maniacally and wringing his hands going, "yes, excellent, this will surely piss off the fans."

RJ made a film you didn't like, fine, but you're not the only Star Wars fan. Plenty of Star Wars fans like the film, myself included. You can criticize the film if you want, but saying stuff like "RJ hates Star Wars fans" is just exposing your myopic viewpoint that seems unable to comprehend that different people like different things, and that you don't speak for all fans.

coli

It's a pattern with all of the OT characters in TLJ & TFA, that is why it's not a nitpick:

-Yoda acts like crazy/sarcastic Yoda in TLJ, yet he only acted like that in ESB BEFORE Luke knew who he was. He was testing him, but than he shows up in TLJ and starts acting like the ESB Yoda from the beginning?

-As I stated earlier that Chewy and Luke have very little dialogue together in TLJ, yet they've been friends for 30 years. Rian Johnson essentially has Chewy sit on the island like an Uber Driver.

-R2 is in shutdown mode for 90% of TFA, which never made any sense.

-Of course Leia flying is one of dumbest things in the ST (but I will not blame Rian Johnson for that) as from what I read, Kathleen Kennedy recommended this (from the documentary).

-God only knows what they will do with Lando in Episode 9!

All of the OT characters are either 'out of character' in the ST, or they interact like they rarely knew each other in these movies. The Luke wink to C3PO is just another example, that is why I brought it up.

Mike86

Real opinion on why he changed that and left it in. He probably figured it was such a small win to let Hamill have after destroying Luke's character that he went with it. It doesn't change the other stuff he did in which he went out of his way to be disrespectful to the fans. A wink from Luke to 3PO doesn't change the narrative of his film, but having to have had Hamill point that out, yeah it seems like it was something he probably conciously did. Anyone who has a history with these films shouldn't have needed that pointed out.

stvn1974

I recently watched all four Disney Star Wars films and I still love Rogue One and Solo and hate The Last Jedi but I have started to sour on The Force Awakens quite a bit. Most of what Abrams came up with when it comes to the OT characters is pretty bad and then Rian Johnson outdid him.

Mike86

See I have very mixed feelings on The Force Awakens. I mostly enjoy a lot of it still but I've soured on it a bit. I think Han had a good final film to wrap up his character. His death didn't bother me, nor did the fact that he and Leia weren't together. I think those two characters were handled fairly well. Leia was underwritten but overall they got a decent treatment.

I would have liked to have seen Han, Leia, and Luke reunite is the biggest thing I'd change. What makes that film hard to stomach now is knowing how bad the follow-up is. I'm still going to give IX a shot and hope for the best, but realistically this movie broke a lot of what I anticipated from the sequels.

Jay G.

You don't think Yoda was maybe testing Luke in TLJ scene? Maybe being a bit antagonistic and sarcastic because Luke was acting so defiant?

Maybe Chewy stayed back because he knew Luke was wracked with guilt, and Rey needed space to try and draw Luke back. Luke had abandoned all his friends for years to live as a hermit; he didn't seem in the mood to, what, drink beers around a campfire?

RJ isn't involved in either of these, so they're not indicative of a "pattern" on his part.

Leia using The Force seems like something in character for her, as we know she's Force sensitive from the OT, and Luke likely would've trained her some. The problem, if one has a problem with the scene, is with the execution of that idea of her using The Force.

It seems lie you think that to be consistent with their characters, they can't have changed at all in the 30 years between films.

coli

Characters can change, as they changed from ANH to ROTJ. I stated that the OT characters interacting (or lack there of) in the ST felt kind of strange or just felt off. The Chewy/Luke lack of interaction in TLJ was the most obvious to me, or even Chewy's who role in the ST (after Han died) as he is literally an Uber Driver.

That was actually one of the better scenes in TLJ, and Rian Johnson chose to delete it!

Testing what? He was acting like crazy Yoda in ESB because Luke didn't know who he was. The second Luke realizes that Yoda is this little green guy, he speaks in a serious tone the rest of the movie. Again, it's a fundamental misunderstanding of the character by Rian Johnson.

I will grant you the execution is the huge problem with this. But I think they could set something up earlier with Leia using the Force (in a small way as maybe using the Jedi Mind Trick or something) and than the payoff could have been something big like this scene so it doesn't come out of left field.

Jay G.

Literally an Uber driver? Where was the Uber logo? The phones running the app? How many stars did Rey give him?

Sorry, misuse of "literally" is a pet peeve of mine.

So Yoda can only ever have one "true" mood, speak in only one tone? There's actually slight hint of mischievous Yoda in RotJ, when he says “when 900 years old, you reach, look as good, you will not," but he is basically dying in that scene. I actually like the idea that Yoda has a fun side, and he maybe wasn't entirely acting at the beginning of ESB.

Was really the problem with the scene for you that Leia using the Force came "out of left field"? Who would she have done a Jedi Mind Trick on? When? Why? Create a specific example scene of what you think could've improved it, without damaging pacing or seeming unnecessary.

Draven

Mistakes in movies happen all the time - the time slate at the beginning of Spider-man: Homecoming was completely incorrect and hundreds of people who know the MCU world forward and back saw that before it went out.

All this back and forth on TLJ boils down to the fact that if Johnson didn't make the movie a certain fan wanted, then that fan will rake him over the coals for every little flaw and inconsistency. While in something like the OT, you have Leia kissing her brother to make Han jealous and then George Lucas gets out there and claims he planned out 9 films. No he fucking didn't Luke and Leia are not supposed to be related in ESB. No amount of fanwanking or Lucas bullshit can make sense of that. These things are still MOVIES and stuff gets missed or left out or unnoticed.

Dan

You and me both, man. You and me both.

Mike86

coli

Everyone has always talked about the Luke/Leia kiss being awkward, as I remember the whole crowd letting out an 'ewwwwwwww' at the SE back in 1997. Yes Lucas has always BS'd saying that he had it all planned out, but we know he was making the films as he went simply because he didn't know if the next film would even happen for financing reasons. When he made ESB in 1980, he was self-financing it himself so if the movie bombed, there was no Part 3. That is much different than the PT and ST where they know they are making 3 movies and have time to make an outline, or an overall arc. It's still amazing the OT narrative actually works when Lucas was making it up on the fly, and the PT and ST don't work as well when they had ample time to plan it out.

Jay G.

That's projection on your part.How much is "ample time"? Disney announced the deal to buy Lucasfilm end of October, 2012, and immediately announced plans for the ST, with the new film out May 2015. So that's only 2 1/2 years to get the first film out, JJ came on in January 2013, and then Michael Arndt worked on his drafts for 10 months before Abrams and Kasdan took over, finishing in January 2014. So it took a year just to write one script. At this point the film was pushed back to December 2015. Meanwhile, Rogue One was started up in May 2014, so a studio that previously did a movie every few years was dealing with two concurrent productions. RJ was hired in June 2014. Filming on TFA had just started in May.

Disney rushed these films out. They had just paid billions for the property and wanted to start releasing films and associated merch as soon as possible.

Kal-El

I loved the movie so that interview didn't really rile up any of my feathers. And like the other poster said in the IX thread, what matters is that it DID end up on screen. Because even if he did give Mark that one extra take, he could have just as easily cut it in editing.

My 2 cents. You may resume your regularly scheduled programming.

Mike86

Hokeyboy

"Lucas NEVER had a plan! Except for the mountain of pre-production evidence and script rewrites which showed that he did!"

Jay G.

Lucas's plan, or lack thereof, is well documented in the interviews he's done, interviews with others, different drafts of the screenplays, and various books and other materials that have been released over the years. It's pretty easy to see that his sequel plans were very loose at the beginning (12 anthology episodes?), and it's only after RotJ did he start claiming he had it all planned out. You just have to know where to look, and want to look.
The Secret History of Star WarsAka, "don't bother to show you're right, because I'll just assume I'm right regardless of evidence."

Jay G.

Are you talking about the OT? What preproduction elements or scripts for Star Wars showed that he had any inkling of the story twists and arc of the next two films?

Jay G.

I mean, everyone knows that Splinter of the Mind's Eye was written as a potential story for the second movie, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splint...e_Mind%27s_Eye

Mike86

brayzie

So that's why they come across that way in the bonus features. Makes sense.

You need to provide examples of that.

I thought that was stupid too, but that wasn't to give a middle finger to fans.
1) We had 3 crappy prequel films of Yoda acting wise. So maybe they wanted something different that WOULDN'T remind people of the PT.
2) ESB is the gold standard, and bringing back "crazy/wild eyed Yoda" reminds older fans of the OT, even if it doesn't make sense.

Again, I didn't like it, but I think those are the reasons.

I think it was more that he didn't view Chewy as important. Honestly, I didn't even notice it.
A mistake. Definitely, but I don't think it was done intentionally.

To give BB-8 the spotlight.
And again, we had 3 prequel films of R2 having the spotlight, flying around, lighting people on fire. From a commercial point of view, I think they just wanted to give audiences a break from that character, who now has a strong association to the awful prequels, as well as the OT.

lol

So WHY do you think Johnson went out of his way to disrespect the fans? He seems like a relatively nice guy, and a big nerd.
Is he on record as growing up hating Star Wars or something?

Good point.
Sometimes we don't realize just how difficult it is to create a workable story, translate it into a screenplay, then go into production and wrap everything up by the deadline.
Fans like us MIGHT have a better grasp on how characters might act, since we've had all this time since childhood to think about it, creating our own stories in our heads. But when it comes down to also making the story relevant to modern audiences, and creating story elements that surprise fans and non-fans a like, that's something else entirely different. It's a professional art as well as a business.
I thought it was bullshit how they teased the fans like Luke, Han, and Leia will be back, and then we get 10 seconds of Luke at the very ending of TFA.
But that's what got people in seats for TLJ.
Then I was pissed that we didn't get to see the Knights of Ren in TLJ.
But that is what's going to get me to see the next one.
It's smart on their part.

There's a lot of different factors that screenwriters and directors have to take into account, and while I agree with a lot of the criticisms of the new films, I don't believe at all, that the intention of Johnson or anyone else involved in these films is to disrespect the fans or give them the middle finger.

Draven

The idea that Rian Johnson intentionally gave a "middle finger" to fans is ridiculous. He just didn't do things that some fans wanted him to do. That doesn't mean he was intentionally attacking fans. Talk about a high horse

DaveyJoe

Is there any evidence that supports this?

Jay G.

I'm not the one that said, basically, "don't bother to show you're right, I won't believe you."

I can concede I'm wrong, if presented with the evidence I'm wrong. Which is why I asked Hokeyboy for an example of the "mountain " of evidence he claimed. So go ahead, prove me wrong, provide some evidence.