Reality TV has become just as scripted as any other TV show. Gone are the days of throwing seven strangers in a house and watching them like lab rats. Now there has to be drama and controversy and networks are only too happy to create the circumstances for that themselves. For example, the American half of one of the old school "90 Day Fiance" couples despises his wife's BFF, and the feeling is totally mutual. The BFF actually tells the camera on the regular that he's actively rooting for their relationship to fail and will do his best to help that along. This storyline dates back two seasons, with the wife always trying to get them to hang out and then somehow being shocked when it becomes arguments and chaos between the two men. I have no doubt a lot of this is stirred up by TLC producers wanting the men in the same room, and the couple obliging because they know drama will keep them on the show. If two people loathe each other, they loathe each other and even the biggest idiot wouldn't keep trying to make fetch happen. 90 Day is becoming increasingly hard to believe because the line between created storyline and real life is as blurry as its ever been. That's what it was a pleasant surprise last season when one of the couples appeared to have pulled one over on the network. Supposedly, we were watching as they counted down to the 90th day where they would either get hitched or cut bait. But really, the foreign half of the equation, who was 26, had pestered his 40-something fiancee into going down to the courthouse and secretly marrying. She didn't even tell her two daughters about the marriage, and she certainly didn't tell cash cow TLC that she'd likely violated their agreement. Not surprisingly, things went south after the papers were signed and she kicked him out. When asked by a TLC producer if she believed he would be going back to his home country now that his fiance visa would be expired, she said he actually wouldn't have to do that because they were already hitched. From reaction alone, and the scenes that followed, I don't believe the producer on site knew anything about the marriage. That's one scam they probably didn't expect.
It seems as though TLC may be in the process of being scammed again, this time by a new couple. Rachel is a 30-something single mom from New Mexico, divorced from the father of her 7-year-old daughter and mother to an 8-month-old daughter. She's a little frumpy and kind of boring, which is perfect for Englander Jon, who is also in his thirties and a bit odd and frumpy. I had an off feeling about Jon before we even met him, way back during the previews of the season. Going into the season, Rachel and Jon had the most intriguing storyline, if only because of the sheer oddity of it. They met on a karaoke app that allows users to duet with each other and began talking outside the app. Somewhere in the midst of this flirting, Rachel allegedly hooked up with some local guy and got knocked up. When she told Jon about it, he didn't flinch and said they should get married and raise the baby as their own. Rachel's mom, who is her BFF, was apparently on board with the plan until Jon tried to obtain a U.S. visa to be present for the baby's birth and was denied because he has a number of convictions in England for fighting, one incident so serious that it's basically a felony. Mom put the brakes on after that, but Rachel was not fazed and even had Jon on video chat as she was giving birth (she would later send him a piece of the baby's umbilical cord via the mail...yeah). Now that the baby is old enough to travel, Rachel is going to England to meet Jon for the first time. So where is the scam, you ask? Well, there are a lot of clues that it may be the bulk of the relationship.
Two years ago, a GoFundMe account was set up by Rachel and Jon to "fund our fairytale". That is, they were asking for money to pay for her to go see him. Rumor has it they raised a couple thousand dollars, but yanked the campaign when they were cast on 90 Day. However, a second GFM account popped up four weeks ago when their season premiered and was taken down when people began to question what they were raising money for now. And that's when the tide of public opinion started to turn. That and the fact that we actually met Jon and he's...difficult to read. He played American football for years and I wonder if he doesn't have CTE or some other after effects from that. He has dead eyes that often look glazed over, he takes forever and a day to answer questions and everyone in his orbit, from his mom and sister to his mates, seem to be very worried about what he's gotten himself into. And not in a normal way, but in a way that says none of them believe he can handle being a father and husband. I'm sure this worry is partially fueled by the fact that he's dated "hundreds" of women and been faithful to none, but I get the sense there's more to it. Adding to suspicion of what stage the relationship is in is how their supposed first meeting went. Rachel and baby flew across the pond, only to get a text from Jon saying he couldn't meet them at the airport, so get on this train and I'll meet you there. Separately, we see the reason Jon can't make it because he's hungover. When he finally does meet Rachel at the train station, they're both dressed awfully meh for a first meeting with the supposed love of their lives; sweatshirts, not particularly well-groomed. I would think you'd at least run a brush through your hair before such a meeting. And their immediate interaction is so odd...not first time meeting kind of vibes. Jon lives with his mom in a small house and that's where Rachel and baby will be staying. Mom doesn't seem particularly thrilled by any of this, but she's cordial to the guests. Jon has set up an entire nursery in the house (he's also paid for the baby's American daycare since Rachel went back to work) that was not cheap. After about an hour with Rachel and a well-behaved baby, Jon has to excuse himself to take a break and have tea with his mom. He remarks over and over again how stressful this is and how easy he thought parenting would be. He goes to check on the baby before bed, wakes her and Rachel is in another room wondering if she should go assist this total stranger with her own child. It's all bizarre.
I don't believe this is the first time Rachel and Jon have met. In fact, I think the baby might actually belong to him. I'm all for a yours/mine/ours kinda family and kudos to the ladies and lads who step up and love their partner's children like their own, but I don't know of too many people who would do that in this particular situation. Going by the timeline Rachel and Jon have laid out, they were already in loving conversation for two years when Rachel got pregnant. So they're in love and she goes out and gets knocked up and he just says, "Oh well, that's okay"? It's especially weird considering the anger problem he appears to have, you don't get multiple fighting convictions if you have all your marbles. I find it hard to believe he'd have been happy go lucky about it if he feels the way he says he does. And who would want the umbilical cord of someone else's baby? It's said that while women immediately bond with the baby they're carrying, some men need it to be tangible before they do they same. He'd seen the baby via video chat, but never held her. Holding the umbilical cord is supposed to be the same thing, I guess? Then, there's the attire both wore to bed, which was more indicative of long-term couple than first night together. He had on a shirt and flannel PJ bottoms and she had on a dingy sweatshirt full of holes and PJ pants. I'm not saying they should get busy right away (remember, his mom is downstairs), or that she needs to be donning hooker heels and a bustier, but it's like neither of them put in any effort to their appearances at any point. Like they already "had" each other, if you will. Add to this the fact that both of them are strangely combative on social media, going for the jugular of anyone who even floats the thought that maybe they've not been truthful about their relationship timeline. If you know you're truth, and that's what you're presenting, you don't get that upset. You let people believe what they want. The last thing that seems to point to some kind of story fraud is they married in June of this year, which would be less than six months from when they first met, sometime during the 2017 holiday season. You can't start the K-1 process until you've met in person, and even then it takes some time to approve it. It usually takes longer when the person wanting to come over is a criminal. I think it's more likely they met well before last year and the baby is his, but they won't cop to it because they've applied to be on this show before. And they would know you have to be interesting to be chosen. And we all know neither of them is particularly interesting. But the story is. At this juncture, a story is all it seems to be.
Thursday, August 23, 2018
Friday, June 22, 2018
Life Loses Its Way
Two years ago on this very blog, I expressed my disappointment about "Jurassic World;" how I waited eight months for it and it was nothing but a rehash of the original film in the series, how I'd prefer they not make anymore if they were all gonna suck. Now, I can say that JW has grown on me. It's by no means Oscar material, but I think it's a solid ending to the film series. And after seeing the sequel to JW, methinks four movies is all there should've been. The latest entry in the JW series, whose name is so stupid and nonsensical that I'm not even gonna type it, is such a flop. Mind you, I didn't go in with high hopes because the first trailer was widely panned (and made no sense), and the later trailers all seemed to show way too much of the movie. It didn't make sense to me why we're supposedly trying to save the dinosaurs when there's nowhere to put them, and I didn't see the point of another genetic hybrid or the weaponizing of dinosaurs for the purpose of war. But I had the opportunity to see the movie, so I figured what the hell.
The best part of JW2 is the beginning. Literally everything after that is terrible. And not even, "Maybe it will grow on me in the future" terrible, but genuinely terrible. Claire is now working to save the dinosaurs and Owen is building a cabin by a lake and they're no longer a couple (not that anyone saw that lasting, or really cared, anyway). Dr. Ian Malcolm has a very brief cameo while testifying before congress about how the dinosaurs should be allowed to go extinct via the volcano eruption on Isla Sorna because they never should've been brought back in the first place. (By the way, the entirety of Jeff Goldblum's cameo has already been shown in trailers, so don't get excited if he's why you wanna see it.). Claire, who I took to be career-obsessed but not stupid in the first movie, is summoned to a mega mansion in California by a flunky of John Hammond's supposed former partner, Lockwood, (who we've never heard of before, but who helped pioneer the tech that brought the dinosaurs back and then inexplicably went away before the tech was actually applied and money made), who tells her they would like her to go back to Isla Sorna to help rescue the dinosaurs. Or rather, they would like her to recruit Owen and go get Blue, his last living raptor. Somehow, she doesn't catch on that they're only after this specific dinosaur and, of course, they omit whey they want it - because they want to use it to make more war dinosaurs. So Claire and Owen (and Claire's mofo annoying and unnecessary sidekick) go and dinosaurs randomly attack them a handful of times before they capture Blue and InGen's people leave Claire and company to die in the volcanic eruption. But they all manage to get off the island, which is soon fully destroyed along with the remaining dinosaurs InGen left behind (the scenes where the dinos die off pluck at the heartstrings). The so-called heroes follow the InGen caravan to the States and the mansion where the flunky is holding an auction for the various species of dinosaurs, and this is where we meet something called an Indoraptor, that is part Indominus Rex and part, you guessed it, Raptor. It is created specifically for war and trained to follow a laser beam to its intended target and attack when a certain sound is omitted from the beam. However, our old friend Dr. Wu claims this is a prototype that is not yet ready to be sold because it needs a "mother"...which is supposed to be Blue...which makes zero sense if you're creating a killing machine, but okay. Still, the flunky is all about the Benjamins, baby and so when the Indoraptor is shown and bidding shoots through the roof, he decides to go ahead and sell it and just "make more". Also, all of this; the recovery of the dinosaurs, the creation of a new hybrid, the auction, is unknown to Lockwood...even though it takes place in his mansion (which is big, but not that big). Needless to say, the Indoraptor gets loose and goes on a killing spree and, surprise surprise, Blue saves the day and sends it to its death. In the process, gas tanks in the hold carrying the dinosaurs begins to leak out and Claire comes within inches of hitting a button to let the dinosaurs breathe, which would also unleash them on the wider world. Owen brings her back from the brink and she thinks better of it - only to have Lockwood's "granddaughter" (who is actually a clone of his daughter who died in some accident) hit the button and let them out because, "they're alive like me". And with that, we truly enter Jurassic World and set up the third (and mercifully last) movie in the series. I will say the images of the dinosaurs in the modern world at the end are intriguing, but don't waste time staying for the post-credit scene cuz it's really not worth it. Which is also how the movie itself could be described.
I have so many questions...first, how high/old/senile is Steven Spielberg to have given the okay to the hot mess? This is not a dinosaur movie, it's a horror movie that just happens to include dinosaurs. And while I know that he explored the possibility of using human/dinosaur hybrids and creating dinosaurs for war applications back before the second "Jurassic Park" movie, there's a reason he never pursued that avenue. InGen saw in JW that, as they themselves stated, dinosaurs loyalty cannot be bought, they run with their own kind. It took all of five seconds for them to flip on humans and go with the I-Rex's flow. You cannot use wild animals in war, they are unpredictable. And yet, InGen goes ahead and creates another hybrid, knowing what the first one did and knowing full well they cannot control them. And then they say they need Blue to mother it and teach it empathy, which makes no fucking sense at all. Why would you want something with the sole purpose of killing your enemies to have empathy?? It just seemed like some way to link why they needed Blue to the main story. Yes, money talks but if a company in the real world was as stupid as InGen continues to be, they'd already be bankrupt. I also don't understand why they seemingly have kept to master copies of their hybrids. They had to go back to Sorna to get a bone from the dead I-Rex in order to use its DNA? Really? People back up their home computers more than InGen apparently does. And speaking of Blue, there are some sweet training videos in this movie that show her development and why she's special that I couldn't help but think belonged in the first movie. It would better explain why she was the Beta and why she continuously chose Owen over the I-Rex. Another gripe is how this motherfucker in the mansion is so damn oblivious to what's happening in his house. Yes, he's ill and doesn't get around much but I'd have to think a caravan of whining dinosaurs pulling into your basement would be noticeable in some way. For him to know absolutely nothing about anything is ridiculous. As far as the little girl and her being a clone...meh. I'd always assumed InGen had experimented with this in some way since they were cloning dinosaurs and the animals they fed to them (goats, sharks, etc.). That the girl is a clone is the one thing not shown in the trailers and I assume it's supposed to be the big twist in the movie, but it just falls flat. We're not shown why or when she was cloned, all we know is that the original version of her appears to have made it to adulthood before being killed. And the girl is not really that likable so you don't really care what happens to her, or what her origin is. But it does piss you off when she unleashes dinosaurs on the world for the hell of it.
While I think a movie about the dinosaurs being out in the wild could be interesting, I'm not inclined to believe what this creative team comes up with will be good. And really, any mofo with a shotgun could take down a Raptor who's running down their street, so how much movie could there be there? I still think JW1 was the perfect ending to the series. The whole concept was Hammond wanting to create a fully functional park for the public, which is what JW1 made happen. And, predictably, it ended the way we all thought it would. And now, there aren't even islands to go back to because they destroyed the original island and the other one was pillaged for any remaining dinosaurs and then marked as restricted. Fortunately, that probably means there's only one movie left to make and then the whole series is done. And I'm rooting for "Jurassic World: Extinction" - with the humans being the ones to go extinct.
The best part of JW2 is the beginning. Literally everything after that is terrible. And not even, "Maybe it will grow on me in the future" terrible, but genuinely terrible. Claire is now working to save the dinosaurs and Owen is building a cabin by a lake and they're no longer a couple (not that anyone saw that lasting, or really cared, anyway). Dr. Ian Malcolm has a very brief cameo while testifying before congress about how the dinosaurs should be allowed to go extinct via the volcano eruption on Isla Sorna because they never should've been brought back in the first place. (By the way, the entirety of Jeff Goldblum's cameo has already been shown in trailers, so don't get excited if he's why you wanna see it.). Claire, who I took to be career-obsessed but not stupid in the first movie, is summoned to a mega mansion in California by a flunky of John Hammond's supposed former partner, Lockwood, (who we've never heard of before, but who helped pioneer the tech that brought the dinosaurs back and then inexplicably went away before the tech was actually applied and money made), who tells her they would like her to go back to Isla Sorna to help rescue the dinosaurs. Or rather, they would like her to recruit Owen and go get Blue, his last living raptor. Somehow, she doesn't catch on that they're only after this specific dinosaur and, of course, they omit whey they want it - because they want to use it to make more war dinosaurs. So Claire and Owen (and Claire's mofo annoying and unnecessary sidekick) go and dinosaurs randomly attack them a handful of times before they capture Blue and InGen's people leave Claire and company to die in the volcanic eruption. But they all manage to get off the island, which is soon fully destroyed along with the remaining dinosaurs InGen left behind (the scenes where the dinos die off pluck at the heartstrings). The so-called heroes follow the InGen caravan to the States and the mansion where the flunky is holding an auction for the various species of dinosaurs, and this is where we meet something called an Indoraptor, that is part Indominus Rex and part, you guessed it, Raptor. It is created specifically for war and trained to follow a laser beam to its intended target and attack when a certain sound is omitted from the beam. However, our old friend Dr. Wu claims this is a prototype that is not yet ready to be sold because it needs a "mother"...which is supposed to be Blue...which makes zero sense if you're creating a killing machine, but okay. Still, the flunky is all about the Benjamins, baby and so when the Indoraptor is shown and bidding shoots through the roof, he decides to go ahead and sell it and just "make more". Also, all of this; the recovery of the dinosaurs, the creation of a new hybrid, the auction, is unknown to Lockwood...even though it takes place in his mansion (which is big, but not that big). Needless to say, the Indoraptor gets loose and goes on a killing spree and, surprise surprise, Blue saves the day and sends it to its death. In the process, gas tanks in the hold carrying the dinosaurs begins to leak out and Claire comes within inches of hitting a button to let the dinosaurs breathe, which would also unleash them on the wider world. Owen brings her back from the brink and she thinks better of it - only to have Lockwood's "granddaughter" (who is actually a clone of his daughter who died in some accident) hit the button and let them out because, "they're alive like me". And with that, we truly enter Jurassic World and set up the third (and mercifully last) movie in the series. I will say the images of the dinosaurs in the modern world at the end are intriguing, but don't waste time staying for the post-credit scene cuz it's really not worth it. Which is also how the movie itself could be described.
I have so many questions...first, how high/old/senile is Steven Spielberg to have given the okay to the hot mess? This is not a dinosaur movie, it's a horror movie that just happens to include dinosaurs. And while I know that he explored the possibility of using human/dinosaur hybrids and creating dinosaurs for war applications back before the second "Jurassic Park" movie, there's a reason he never pursued that avenue. InGen saw in JW that, as they themselves stated, dinosaurs loyalty cannot be bought, they run with their own kind. It took all of five seconds for them to flip on humans and go with the I-Rex's flow. You cannot use wild animals in war, they are unpredictable. And yet, InGen goes ahead and creates another hybrid, knowing what the first one did and knowing full well they cannot control them. And then they say they need Blue to mother it and teach it empathy, which makes no fucking sense at all. Why would you want something with the sole purpose of killing your enemies to have empathy?? It just seemed like some way to link why they needed Blue to the main story. Yes, money talks but if a company in the real world was as stupid as InGen continues to be, they'd already be bankrupt. I also don't understand why they seemingly have kept to master copies of their hybrids. They had to go back to Sorna to get a bone from the dead I-Rex in order to use its DNA? Really? People back up their home computers more than InGen apparently does. And speaking of Blue, there are some sweet training videos in this movie that show her development and why she's special that I couldn't help but think belonged in the first movie. It would better explain why she was the Beta and why she continuously chose Owen over the I-Rex. Another gripe is how this motherfucker in the mansion is so damn oblivious to what's happening in his house. Yes, he's ill and doesn't get around much but I'd have to think a caravan of whining dinosaurs pulling into your basement would be noticeable in some way. For him to know absolutely nothing about anything is ridiculous. As far as the little girl and her being a clone...meh. I'd always assumed InGen had experimented with this in some way since they were cloning dinosaurs and the animals they fed to them (goats, sharks, etc.). That the girl is a clone is the one thing not shown in the trailers and I assume it's supposed to be the big twist in the movie, but it just falls flat. We're not shown why or when she was cloned, all we know is that the original version of her appears to have made it to adulthood before being killed. And the girl is not really that likable so you don't really care what happens to her, or what her origin is. But it does piss you off when she unleashes dinosaurs on the world for the hell of it.
While I think a movie about the dinosaurs being out in the wild could be interesting, I'm not inclined to believe what this creative team comes up with will be good. And really, any mofo with a shotgun could take down a Raptor who's running down their street, so how much movie could there be there? I still think JW1 was the perfect ending to the series. The whole concept was Hammond wanting to create a fully functional park for the public, which is what JW1 made happen. And, predictably, it ended the way we all thought it would. And now, there aren't even islands to go back to because they destroyed the original island and the other one was pillaged for any remaining dinosaurs and then marked as restricted. Fortunately, that probably means there's only one movie left to make and then the whole series is done. And I'm rooting for "Jurassic World: Extinction" - with the humans being the ones to go extinct.
Monday, April 2, 2018
The Last Flop
I was late to the, "Star Wars" party in my youth. My mom loved the original trilogy and always wanted the three of us to watch it. My brother did but wasn't blown away. The sister and I didn't get into it until the prequels came out, but I've still never loved the first three movies. Still, I do consider myself a fan of the franchise and was excited when I heard they were adding to it a few years ago. I loved, and I mean loved, "The Force Awakens". I saw it three times in the span of a month and thought just about every minute was perfection. It respected the old while bringing in a bunch of new. My one gripe was that Kylo Ren's casting was not done very well. He doesn't resemble Han or Leia or anyone else in the Skywalker clan. The movie is full of attractive people and then there's him. He didn't really fit the role. But I looked past it since I knew he would be a integral part of all three movies. Like many others, I waited two years for the next installment of the franchise and debated with friends and family over who Rey might be related to. I was rooting for her to somehow be a Skywalker, being that all of the movies are the saga of that family. That was the only thing that made sense to me, otherwise Kylo is the last of the Skywalker bloodline and...well, I'm not crazy about that.
When the final trailer of, "The Last Jedi" premiered, it was an event in our household. We watched in multiple times the night it was released and discussed what certain scenes and the story might be about. And then the movie came out last December and reviews were mixed. It wasn't the, "That was amazing" reaction that the first movie almost universally received. But I figured it's the second half of a trilogy and those tend to lag. And then I saw it. And I didn't know how to feel. But I didn't have the desire to watch it in the theater a second time, so there was that. I didn't watch it again until this weekend on DVD and now I'm starting to sort out how I feel about it.
I remember sitting in the theater watching TLJ for the first time and waiting for the big reveal of Rey's parentage. And I remember being underwhelmed when it was some random people we don't know or care about. It doesn't even take up five minutes of movie time to find it all out. It's just, "Oh, they were drunks who sold you, come join the Dark Side.". While I understand the director saying the point of the movie as a whole is that anyone can wield The Force, I take issue with the amount of red herrings in the first film. There were many, many moments in the first one with knowing glances from main characters and nods to the fact that Rey was someone important. The set up was that we'd get an, "I am your father" type moment at the end, a payoff that was worth it. It turns out she is someone important in that she's strong with The Force and will bring balance to it, but there was a whole lot of setting up to a moment that amounted to nothing. I assume since we all already cared about her and knew she was serving up some Force, we were supposed to not really care about where she came from. But it comes off as lazy writing to me. It feels like the director just wanted to get that whole thing outta the way and move on to other stories he wanted to tell in the film. In hindsight, a large part of my dislike for the movie comes from the fact that there were two years of set up and speculation for what became zero payoff. I was genuinely sad she didn't tie into the Skywalkers. I think that was a mistake.
Rose...*sigh*...I liked Rose from the minute she came on screen. I like the character in general, but I don't like she was used. The side mission with Finn didn't work for me. I thought the chase sequence was way too long and didn't care for the cameo by Jennifer Aniston's latest ex-husband. It felt forced, like he was friends with the director and wanted to be in it and so they put him in it. I think this whole storyline could've been avoided if they'd used Maz Kanata as the codebreaker, rather than having her only briefly in the movie. And what the hell was that kiss at the end of the movie? I had so much secondhand embarrassment from that that I cringe just thinking about it. There were no romance vibes at all between them all movie and then she randomly kisses him? That scene played like a fanboy who gets no action and wants to see some on screen. I didn't understand it, nor do I feel it had a place in the movie. I fast-forwarded past the whole Canto Bight thing (and the kiss).
I know a lot of people had problems with the mighty Luke Skywalker being so defeated throughout the movie. But I found the old (or young) Luke to still be in there. He still had his humor and he still had his naivety when it came to thinking that if he just sat on the sidelines, all of the conflict would go away. It was very young Skywalker to think that if he stopped training anyone in the use of The Force, he could make the decision that the Jedi were gone for good. The one thing I did not like was the way that he used The Force to intervene at the end of the movie. I was hoping he and Leia would be reunited, especially knowing that they couldn't be in Episode 9 because of Carrie Fisher's passing. They didn't truly reunite, he just did a fly by while using The Force. And I feel like Luke deserved a better death than he got. An actual showdown with the nephew that turned to the Dark Side, not some faux fight. It would've been better for both he and Kylo. Instead, it's just going to fuel Kylo's hate because his uncle was more powerful than he's likely to ever be Force-wise. And he never has to face anyone else in his family to give in to the darkness. Teacher and student never got to finally settle up. Other than that, I didn't have any trouble with who we found Luke to be on that island. Time and battles do a lot to a person over the course of many years. When we last saw him, he was partying with Ewoks and believed the worst to be over once he turned Vader and found his sister. He was too young to realize that, as Snoke said, when one side rises, the other will rise to meet it.
Speaking of Snoke, I was not upset that we didn't get into his backstory. It doesn't matter who he was or where he came from, or how he rose to power. The point was that dark will always rise to meet light and when a Skywalker in involved, hope springs eternal that they can be turned. Hell, the patriarch of the family was the biggest baddie in the galaxy for eons. In the original trilogy, we didn't know who The Emperor was or where he came from, nor how we rose to power. Once we found out his backstory in the prequels, I don't think it really added much to the narrative. Politics are politics and he used them to manipulate his way to the top. Politics aren't exactly a thrilling thing to watch in a galaxy a long time ago and far, far away. While I absolutely loved the scene where Snoke dies and the battle between Kylo, Rey and the guards, I found it a bit hard to believe that Snoke didn't anticipate Kylo would be his end. Clearly, he'd done his homework on the Skywalker clan, so how did he not realize Vader had planned to off the Emperor several times over the years to take power for himself? How did he not consider that Kylo might be a little more like his grandfather than anyone realized? He had doubts about Kylo's ability to fully embrace the Dark Side, even killing his own father wasn't good enough for Snoke to buy into him. Kylo realizing just how powerful his bloodline was should've been the last thing Snoke wanted, because it's also the key to him realizing he doesn't need a master. In fact, he can be a master himself with someone like Rey in the fold, even just the possibility of her turning was enough for him to say, "Fuck it," and turn on Snoke.
I did like some parts of TLJ. I liked the humor, particularly between Luke and Rey. I loved that BB-8 was a badass. I thought the play between Kylo and Rey was well done in that you were never quite sure which one was going to turn, and then neither of them did. I kind of like the concept of anyone can be a Jedi, though it flies in the face of everything we've been told in the past by the franchise. And I don't think anyone we saw in the movie, ie. the kids at the end, are going to be old enough to factor into Episode 9 in any way. I'm not nearly as excited for the next chapter as I was for this one. I've heard TLJ didn't undergo many rewrites and was basically the same script the director began with and I think that was a mistake. It usually isn't a good thing when a script doesn't change from development to release. TLJ kinda watches like that and maybe it would have benefited from a few more looksees in a different light. I also don't think it was the best idea to hire three different directors for three movies (which will now only be two because the director of Episode 9 was fired). J.J. Abrams did a fantastic job with TFA and I think he would've done great with TLJ. I don't know if even he can make much of Episode 9 with the clusterfuck of circumstances he's been given from TLJ. I'm half-hoping he erases some of what was done in the last one. And I'm sad that we won't get to see mother and son reunited, as was apparently planned. But at this point, I think it would be redundant for Kylo to turn toward the light. He's too angry, to drunk on his new power. Plus, if Luke is really dead, he has nothing more to fight for, except wiping out the small section of the Resistance that remains. If he turns, it will mimic Vader's storyline too closely. And we know Rey won't turn because she's already resisted it twice (why he thought she'd turn because she's the daughter of two drunks, I don't understand but okay). "The Last Jedi" had a lot to live up to after, "The Force Awakens" set the bar. Fortunately for Episode 9, the bar is pretty low. Let's hope that produces a better movie.
When the final trailer of, "The Last Jedi" premiered, it was an event in our household. We watched in multiple times the night it was released and discussed what certain scenes and the story might be about. And then the movie came out last December and reviews were mixed. It wasn't the, "That was amazing" reaction that the first movie almost universally received. But I figured it's the second half of a trilogy and those tend to lag. And then I saw it. And I didn't know how to feel. But I didn't have the desire to watch it in the theater a second time, so there was that. I didn't watch it again until this weekend on DVD and now I'm starting to sort out how I feel about it.
I remember sitting in the theater watching TLJ for the first time and waiting for the big reveal of Rey's parentage. And I remember being underwhelmed when it was some random people we don't know or care about. It doesn't even take up five minutes of movie time to find it all out. It's just, "Oh, they were drunks who sold you, come join the Dark Side.". While I understand the director saying the point of the movie as a whole is that anyone can wield The Force, I take issue with the amount of red herrings in the first film. There were many, many moments in the first one with knowing glances from main characters and nods to the fact that Rey was someone important. The set up was that we'd get an, "I am your father" type moment at the end, a payoff that was worth it. It turns out she is someone important in that she's strong with The Force and will bring balance to it, but there was a whole lot of setting up to a moment that amounted to nothing. I assume since we all already cared about her and knew she was serving up some Force, we were supposed to not really care about where she came from. But it comes off as lazy writing to me. It feels like the director just wanted to get that whole thing outta the way and move on to other stories he wanted to tell in the film. In hindsight, a large part of my dislike for the movie comes from the fact that there were two years of set up and speculation for what became zero payoff. I was genuinely sad she didn't tie into the Skywalkers. I think that was a mistake.
Rose...*sigh*...I liked Rose from the minute she came on screen. I like the character in general, but I don't like she was used. The side mission with Finn didn't work for me. I thought the chase sequence was way too long and didn't care for the cameo by Jennifer Aniston's latest ex-husband. It felt forced, like he was friends with the director and wanted to be in it and so they put him in it. I think this whole storyline could've been avoided if they'd used Maz Kanata as the codebreaker, rather than having her only briefly in the movie. And what the hell was that kiss at the end of the movie? I had so much secondhand embarrassment from that that I cringe just thinking about it. There were no romance vibes at all between them all movie and then she randomly kisses him? That scene played like a fanboy who gets no action and wants to see some on screen. I didn't understand it, nor do I feel it had a place in the movie. I fast-forwarded past the whole Canto Bight thing (and the kiss).
I know a lot of people had problems with the mighty Luke Skywalker being so defeated throughout the movie. But I found the old (or young) Luke to still be in there. He still had his humor and he still had his naivety when it came to thinking that if he just sat on the sidelines, all of the conflict would go away. It was very young Skywalker to think that if he stopped training anyone in the use of The Force, he could make the decision that the Jedi were gone for good. The one thing I did not like was the way that he used The Force to intervene at the end of the movie. I was hoping he and Leia would be reunited, especially knowing that they couldn't be in Episode 9 because of Carrie Fisher's passing. They didn't truly reunite, he just did a fly by while using The Force. And I feel like Luke deserved a better death than he got. An actual showdown with the nephew that turned to the Dark Side, not some faux fight. It would've been better for both he and Kylo. Instead, it's just going to fuel Kylo's hate because his uncle was more powerful than he's likely to ever be Force-wise. And he never has to face anyone else in his family to give in to the darkness. Teacher and student never got to finally settle up. Other than that, I didn't have any trouble with who we found Luke to be on that island. Time and battles do a lot to a person over the course of many years. When we last saw him, he was partying with Ewoks and believed the worst to be over once he turned Vader and found his sister. He was too young to realize that, as Snoke said, when one side rises, the other will rise to meet it.
Speaking of Snoke, I was not upset that we didn't get into his backstory. It doesn't matter who he was or where he came from, or how he rose to power. The point was that dark will always rise to meet light and when a Skywalker in involved, hope springs eternal that they can be turned. Hell, the patriarch of the family was the biggest baddie in the galaxy for eons. In the original trilogy, we didn't know who The Emperor was or where he came from, nor how we rose to power. Once we found out his backstory in the prequels, I don't think it really added much to the narrative. Politics are politics and he used them to manipulate his way to the top. Politics aren't exactly a thrilling thing to watch in a galaxy a long time ago and far, far away. While I absolutely loved the scene where Snoke dies and the battle between Kylo, Rey and the guards, I found it a bit hard to believe that Snoke didn't anticipate Kylo would be his end. Clearly, he'd done his homework on the Skywalker clan, so how did he not realize Vader had planned to off the Emperor several times over the years to take power for himself? How did he not consider that Kylo might be a little more like his grandfather than anyone realized? He had doubts about Kylo's ability to fully embrace the Dark Side, even killing his own father wasn't good enough for Snoke to buy into him. Kylo realizing just how powerful his bloodline was should've been the last thing Snoke wanted, because it's also the key to him realizing he doesn't need a master. In fact, he can be a master himself with someone like Rey in the fold, even just the possibility of her turning was enough for him to say, "Fuck it," and turn on Snoke.
I did like some parts of TLJ. I liked the humor, particularly between Luke and Rey. I loved that BB-8 was a badass. I thought the play between Kylo and Rey was well done in that you were never quite sure which one was going to turn, and then neither of them did. I kind of like the concept of anyone can be a Jedi, though it flies in the face of everything we've been told in the past by the franchise. And I don't think anyone we saw in the movie, ie. the kids at the end, are going to be old enough to factor into Episode 9 in any way. I'm not nearly as excited for the next chapter as I was for this one. I've heard TLJ didn't undergo many rewrites and was basically the same script the director began with and I think that was a mistake. It usually isn't a good thing when a script doesn't change from development to release. TLJ kinda watches like that and maybe it would have benefited from a few more looksees in a different light. I also don't think it was the best idea to hire three different directors for three movies (which will now only be two because the director of Episode 9 was fired). J.J. Abrams did a fantastic job with TFA and I think he would've done great with TLJ. I don't know if even he can make much of Episode 9 with the clusterfuck of circumstances he's been given from TLJ. I'm half-hoping he erases some of what was done in the last one. And I'm sad that we won't get to see mother and son reunited, as was apparently planned. But at this point, I think it would be redundant for Kylo to turn toward the light. He's too angry, to drunk on his new power. Plus, if Luke is really dead, he has nothing more to fight for, except wiping out the small section of the Resistance that remains. If he turns, it will mimic Vader's storyline too closely. And we know Rey won't turn because she's already resisted it twice (why he thought she'd turn because she's the daughter of two drunks, I don't understand but okay). "The Last Jedi" had a lot to live up to after, "The Force Awakens" set the bar. Fortunately for Episode 9, the bar is pretty low. Let's hope that produces a better movie.
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