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Cake day: June 10th, 2023

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  • There are a lot of things I really love about TLJ and overall it gets a lot of unnecessary hate, and usually a lot of the arguments are not well constructed beyond “I didn’t like it”. The main three gripes I hear about it are: a) Finn’s side story was unnecessary (which, sure - maybe. I could see both sides of that argument so won’t fight about it) b) Luke was nerfed from his Legends persona (arguably, was a fantastic decision) c) the immediate death of some characters.

    Legends Luke’s power is stupid and god-like. At one point he walks on the surface of a black hole, which is absolute trash fan fiction. Legends makes a very poorly/quickly trained Jedi into a Master and the absolute strongest being in the universe, who is so powerful that he basically isn’t human anymore. It makes for a very boring character, similar to Superman. TLJ makes Luke into a believable character, considering his background and what’s happened to him since we last saw him. 30 years is a long time and he’s seen some shit - all without a lot of the proper Jedi training that other Jedi received since they were children.

    As for the deaths of Phasma and Snoke: who cares? The main reason for them to be around was to be monoliths for Finn and Kylo Ren to overcome. They weren’t interesting characters otherwise and we find out why Snoke wasn’t developed further in the next movie. Also, Kylo Ren should be the focus of a movie in the Skywalker saga, not the newbie Snoke. Removing him was a good choice. Finn’s monolith being removed gives him an opportunity to move to a new phase in the next movie, which was then not utilized by JJ. Furthermore, Phasma was supposed to be the next Boba Fett: just a marketable character who was pretty boring in the original trilogy but looked cool so his action figure sold well. TLJ does a very sensible thing overall: It takes unnecessary characters and writes them out of an already overcrowded character list.

    TLJ also examined what went wrong with The Force Awakens and fixes it: namely that TFA is so safe that it leans into a boring rehash of ANH. TLJ at least had the guts to do something different and take the franchise in another direction, one SW sorely still needs thanks to JJ and Disney’s refusal to do something different. So much of SW in the last 2 decades has been incredibly safe - except TLJ. It really goes to show how little originality and small vision JJ Abrams and Disney have as creatives that they couldn’t figure out how to handle TRoS, which is arguably the absolute worst SW film - and outperforming AotC in that regard is truly impressive.

    Last point, the last 20 or so minutes of TLJ really understands the origin of SW: Japanese samurai/ronin sword duels. It’s also visually beautiful.

    TLDR: SW fans go brr, hate everything anyway.











  • we’re all bored with the same product over and over again.

    Obviously with the success of the franchise I am in the minority with this belief, but from a critical standpoint 80% of the MCU films are “okay” and just popcorn flicks. There’s nothing wrong with that, but now that has caught up with the viewers and Disney.

    Infinity War was special because the good guys actually lost and that alone shook things up for once. Endgame was special because it was the culmination of 10 years of filmmaking and a downright spectacle. Once you drill in beyond those, there are only a few standouts: Winter Soldier, Civil War, Iron Man 1 and Age of Ultron are all standouts in my opinion due to their themes: “what really defines the good guys?”

    There are a few others I enjoyed but they had problems: In Homecoming, Feige really screwed up a lot about what makes Peter Parker likeable. Ragnarok was fun but in retrospect it is dragged down in quality by the major screw ups of its successor and its refusal to take much seriously. The misfits of GotG were fun too but ultimately its success really messed up the tone of the entire franchise. None of those 3 really jump out as memorable long-term, either - just fun. The rest are forgettable and almost cookie cutter copies of each other.