The Wicker Cat

I guess my loathing came as Avatar was style over substance and Avatar fandom’s overreaction to it.  I remember the Avatar fans losing it when the movie didn’t win an Oscar for best picture (that was a hilarious liveblog of io9 days past).

Yes, thank you. I just don’t understand why so many people want to ignore the huge problems of TFA. The whole trilogy was fucked up from the very beginning.

The reviews are actually making me rethink seeing this at all. TLJ wasn’t perfect, but it set up some interesting things:

Palpatine’s return seems like a transparent ploy to get around Snoke’s death in the previous film. And it returns us to a cipher-like big bad when the weird mixture of attraction and revulsion between Rey and Kylo Ren is the most compelling thing this new trilogy has going for it.

Very good point about the structural problems stemming from TFA. I fully understand why people don’t like TLJ (I do like it, warts and all), but you gotta admit that Rian Johnson was handed one HELL of a wonky story to launch off of. Characters are scattered to the winds, entire planetary systems have already been…

They could’ve made Kylo the big bad. From killing Han, then Snoke, it would’ve been reasonable to make him the next evil. Instead, Abrams is going back to the well.

Dear J. J. Abrams,

Why would you expect anything more from JJ? This movie is literally going to be a bunch of callbacks and pleasing the fanboys with some “cool stuff.” They gave up making an interesting movie when they caved to the negative reaction of TLJ.

Star Wars is supposed to be an amalgamation of the things we loved as a kid, that sparked our imaginations and helped us understand some pretty basic yet essential principles of being a good human. For Lucas, it was westerns and Flash Gordon, as well as some more sophisticated, later in life influence from Kurosawa.…

The Bad Guy is the Knights of Ren and the entire Dark Side of the Force. Relying on a new emperor or Snoke or whatever evil being has to be “behind” Kylo Ren is just rehashing old story and is a lazy crutch. 

I 100% agree with you here. Having just rewatched TFA and TLJ this weekend, I can definitively say that it is in the top 4 of best Star Wars movies. Rian Johnson did such a phenomenal job of writing every single character and developing them. Rey and Kylo were much more fleshed out and interesting characters than in…

I’D ALSO LIKE TO QUICKLY NOTE THAT I’VE NOT SEEN RISE OF SKYWALKER

J.J. Abrams is a hack. Rian Johnson may have made some bad choices and pissed some people off but at least he has his own point of view and takes risks.  J.J. just wants to please each and every person who watches one of his films.

Then you may have missed the point of Luke’s scenes with the Resistance, they’re talk about broadcasts, and his heading out - alone - with a Laser Sword - to face a bunch of Gorilla AT-ATs. Then the scenes after are about kids across the galaxy talking up the story they heard from those broadcasts, hyping themselves…

It’s what I saw. They kept going back (again and again) to the role of Luke being Mythic, and his resistance to accept that role. In the end, he does, in grand dramatic fashion specifically to be the “Spark” to light a resistance. That’s exactly what I saw in TLJ.

Can we start a petition for Rian Johnson to make a “proper” Episode IX due to our exceeding fanboy displeasure and disappointment with this movie?

Emperor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid), the Sith Lord at the center of the previous two trilogies, is back

Why?

You’re not gonna believe this. He killed 16 Czechoslovakians! The guy was an interior decorator.