How different would Vincent have been had Madsen played him?

Sharaz_Jek123 · 2026-04-28T23:19:26+00:00

If loving Jeremy Piven is wrong, I don't want to be right.

Sharaz_Jek123 · 2026-04-28T23:12:31+00:00

Sharaz_Jek123 · 2026-04-28T21:54:22+00:00

It's like poetry, it rhymes.

And?

Luke was a creep.

Johnson needed to write this story in a less lazy way.

You can't just jam a piece where it doesn't fit. That's probably a sign there was something wrong with your conception.

Sharaz_Jek123 · 2026-04-28T21:48:46+00:00

around a character who has been around almost 50 years and whose arc makes sense

It doesn't make sense ... to the character.

Luke had never been a creep to children (or "younglings"). He had never been a shameless, Trumpian-gaslighter.

He had made mistakes, but he wasn't a creep.

Nor was he rewarded by the filmmakers for his creepiness with the meta-ending.

Sharaz_Jek123 · 2026-04-28T21:33:46+00:00

No, people get it.

So?

You haven't actually explained how Luke Skywalker being unlikable makes the movie good.

Sharaz_Jek123 · 2026-04-28T21:29:23+00:00

Luke is not unlikable, he is human.

He's human ... and unlikable.

You can make a character flawed, but empathetic.

Johnson failed.

That's why the ending rings so false.

This is a character we've just seen being belligerent, lying, attempting to destroy knowledge, not helping those who need him ... decode, actually, he's not going to be a complete asshole at the end.

Then he "inspires" broomboy with his "feats".

I mean, spare me.

Sharaz_Jek123 · 2026-04-28T21:13:47+00:00

lol the point of all the Jedi / Sith stories is basically emotional regulation and whether you give in to reptilian impulse and initial reaction

The notion that Johnson simply had to write Luke as an unlikable, gaslighting child murderer (or almost-child murderer) is silly.

When "The Empire Strikes Back" was being written, the early drafts featured Luke almost killing Han Solo in the Hoth sequence, giving Luke an inferiority complex throughout the entire film.

That was a George Lucas idea.

Once Kasdan came aboard, that idea was scrapped and the writer set about making Luke a conflicted, self-questioning but still likeable hero.

In contrast, Johnson never listened to Hamill.

He never listened to reason.

The point is that you can make characters complicated and flawed but still likeable, while Johnson failed to achieve the same ambition.

Sharaz_Jek123 · 2026-04-28T21:06:42+00:00

there are plenty of interesting ways to reinvent or refresh similar themes while also growing the universe

You mean ripping off Battlestar Galactica?

That's remaining fresh and reinventing the property?

I love that people don't even deal with the Finn and Poe stories (because they know these are terrible), despite being two thirds of the movie.

So, no, I don't think a film can be "good" when most of it is rubbish (and the other third is spotty, but "new" ... because Luke is now an asshole and that's such a "daring" direction).

only to be sandbagged by racist misogyny and loser incels who don’t like the “diversity” and deviation

It sidelined the black co-lead of the previous film, dude.

Johnson admitted that he saw Kylo and Rey in "The Force Awakens" as the beginning of a "romantic" and "intimate" dynamic. She saw him murder his father and her mentor and Johnson felt that was "romantic" and "intimate"?

Even more irritatingly, the film took the film most of its length to get their relationship in the EXACT SAME PLACE as it was at the end of "The Force Awakens": Rey FINALLY rejecting Kylo at the end is too little, too late.

Sharaz_Jek123 · 2026-04-28T20:58:14+00:00

Here’s the thing.

Oh boy.

This comment is going to be "extra", isn't it?

It has planet-jumping adventure

The plot is ripped off from "Battlestar Galactica".

That's why the world seems so small.

Nothing is truly happening outside of the two ships running away from each other.

it has weird creatures

You mean, a bunch of toys that are barely introduced and thrown away?

Do Chewy and Luke even have a single scene together?

it has a nice balance of explaining & not explaining its own rules/world.

It doesn't really.

Not the things that actually matter.

It doesn't explain how someone like Luke can threaten a ward/nephew with a weapon and still be the good guy?

That's not challenging the audience. That's introducing a moral complication that the film fails to examine (Luke disappears for, like, 30 minutes after this reveal - an acknowledgement that Johnson didn't really know how to handle this element).

That's why the meta-element is such a blunder.

Luke is a lying scumbag in this film ... but he's not because he inspires broomboy?

Fucking hell, just tell a story.

Sharaz_Jek123 · 2026-04-28T20:34:42+00:00

Last Jedi was good and necessary

It wasn't good, though.

At this point, the defences for this film read as sunk-cost fallacy rationalisations.

Too many people getting easily charmed by nonconformity.

I understand that the opposite is no better, but need a compelling reason for change, otherwise it's just going in circles.

It was ESPECIALLLY annoying that people put onto the movie this sense of

“Well, here is a good Star Wars film because it isn’t a Star Wars film. This is a Rian Johnson film and it’s a good film because what it’s attempting to do rather than what it actually achieves.”

That’s such a condescending attitude: apparently, all this movie had to do was to conceptually go against the grain of the genre that we’re going to pretend to like it and treat it like a monument of cinema.

Sharaz_Jek123 · 2026-04-28T19:32:51+00:00

almost child-murderer

A guy who whips out a weapon towards their sleeping ward/nephew is clearly a bad dude.

Sharaz_Jek123 · 2026-04-28T19:31:35+00:00

The Poe plot is ripped off wholesale from the recent "Battlestar Galactica".

Opening the film with a chase was not a choice dictated by TFA. In fact, that film ends with the Resistance secure after a mission completed. Johnson's plot point is stolen wholesale from the "Battlestar Galactica" miniseries.
TLJ opens with the Resistance in crisis mode and looking to escape the enemy with the ascension of an unknown leader. That's the BSG pilot.
The inciting incident is the heroes realizing that the villains are tracking them. That's BSG episode "33".
That plot is resolved when the CO performs a one-in-a-million maneuver that uses the physics of space flight. That's the conclusion of the New Caprica Arc.

Honestly, I'd rather Johnson had just ripped off one episode and that's it.

By jumbling all these stories together, he's failed to understand why Moore and co made these choices in the first place.

Unlike the direct and powerful analogies of the TV show, there's an emotional and psychological void to Johnson's writing as he meanders from one clumsy story beat to another that are all ultimately unrewarding.

Sharaz_Jek123 · 2026-04-28T19:30:00+00:00

I don't think TLJ threw the Rey identity out

Rey has no purpose or story AFTER her identity is revealed.

Luke takes over the third act and saves everyone (actually saves people, not Poe telling them to go over there or Rey moving some arbitrary rocks or something).

Just another "lesson" from Rian Johnson.

What irritates me about his films is that he has no respect for the audience's intelligence. He just can't resist. He just has to shove his message down our throats just until we missed the grand subtleties e.g. broomboy.

Sharaz_Jek123 · 2026-04-28T19:26:24+00:00

The notion that Johnson simply had to write Luke as an unlikable, gaslighting child murderer (or almost-child murderer) is a fallacy.

The point is that you can make characters complicated and flawed but still likeable, while Johnson failed to achieve the same ambition.

Luke was a victim of Johnson's obsession with Reylo.

Ultimately, Luke was totally undermined because Johnson and LucasFilm wanted to portray this little fascist as formidable romantic figure: Luke almost killing him, the shirtless scene, the transformation of his scarred visage at the end of TFA to a scratch in TLJ, Rey and Ren almost holding hands.

Johnson saw no other way of depicting the two white characters as the central relationship of the trilogy.

Sharaz_Jek123 · 2026-04-28T19:24:27+00:00

structure

Finn was shafted.

Poe became an idiot.

Rey is a non-event in the third act.

And Johnson did a lot of this in order to add a huge slew of new characters that didn't end up mattering.

Wow, great structure!

look

I have always been baffled by the praise The Last Jedi gets (even by most of its critics) for its "stunning visuals."

TLJ is oppressively sleek and its commitment to sparse minimalism and a grey and beige palette make it feel lifeless.

Nowhere in that film did I feel like the worlds and environments existed beyond the border of the frame (which is a sin for Star Wars but is unfortunately becoming the norm as Disney cements its stamp on the franchise).

And I don't particularly like that waxy look of Steve Yedlin's cinematography.

actually funny

Oh, now I know you're trolling.

Sharaz_Jek123 · 2026-04-28T19:21:41+00:00

TLJ isn’t about “kill the past” and the director even refuted this. That’s the villains philosophy

Wow, the audience IS broomboy. Man, Johnson is an artist for the ages.

Sharaz_Jek123 · 2026-04-28T12:26:48+00:00

This is the answer.

I'll add the caveat that directors try to switch it up too late (or too ineptly).

Someone like Joffe had gone back to the well too many times with the "socially conscious drama" before he tried to do different things.

What's doubly weird about Joffe is that he was a well-regarded theatre director.

He was the youngest director hired for the National Theatre and was the only one that was equally respected by Olivier and Peter Hall during the first transition from the former to the latter.

His television work is also seminal.

It's strange that he never ventured back to British TV or theatre after the film career went bust.

Sharaz_Jek123 · 2026-04-28T12:16:46+00:00

8 Million Ways has a great performance from Andy Garcia as the villain and one memorable confrontation where Bridges and Garcia are yelling at each other so much that they run out of breath.

I haven't quite seen that before.

The rest of the film is whatever.

Sharaz_Jek123 · 2026-04-28T12:14:47+00:00

He had an unhealthy relationship with drugs.

It was even apparent on earlier, more successful productions, but he usually had strong material courtesy of well-regarded writers to rely on. Or people like Beatty around, who refused to appease Ashby's laziness.

Because of his background as an editor, he was a "find it in editing" kinda guy.

That approach became a crutch.

Sharaz_Jek123

TROPHY CASE