Solo: Thoughts on a Troubled Production

I have been pretty apprehensive of the next movie in Disney’s reinvented Star Wars franchise. When we first got the news that there was going to be a spin-off movie every other year between the main “epsiodes”, I was pretty stoked.

In my mind, I was imagining all of these old stories that I’d read in the old expanded universe getting made into feature movies. I was thinking of things like a Thrawn movie, a Darth Bane movie, the story of Revan and the Old Republic or maybe even a movie about Galen Marek. Oh, how optimistic I was. Those characters aren’t going to get their own movies, nobody even knows who most of them are.

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The Last Jedi: My Thoughts on: Luke Skywalker & The Force

This part is mostly going to be a lot of me rambling about my views on the greater Star Wars franchise. And how my interpretation of the direction of the series is chapped by this movie and the decades of Expanded Universe that came before it.

I feel that this new trilogy is aiming to smash down these traditions and rebuild the series into something its own. Something I initially didn’t think I wanted, but after some time to digest the latest movie in the franchise, a big mix-up is probably exactly what the series needs.

Star Wars might be the biggest property Disney have in there hands right now, so I’d hope that they continue to get strong directors in and produce movies of the quality the first three have been. Not only that, I hope that they continue to have the foresight to know that they need to shake things up in order to stop the series getting stale.

Over-reliance on tradition and tropes that worked in the past doesn’t make for memorable or interesting stories. It’s why a lot of modern movies that are just belated sequels or remakes always seem so forgettable in comparison to their original counterparts. This part is going to focus on Luke Skywalker’s role in the new trilogy and my thoughts on how Disney aim to change the nature of the force and being a “Jedi”.

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The Last Jedi: My Thoughts on: Rey & Kylo Ren

Last time I wrote, I spoke about how good Poe Dameron’s character development in The Last Jedi was, how it jumped my expectations of what was going to happen in Disney’s revived version of the Star Wars universe. I also spoke about Finn, but let’s be honest, Poe was the real star of that show.

This time I’m moving onto two character’s whose relationship was the most fascinating thing about the new movie to me. They’re another example of how Disney really threw me for a loop and produced something totally different than I would have ever predicted, especially after being embedded in tradition and reoccurring themes for so long thanks to the old Expanded Universe.

In this post I’m going to be talking about Rey and Kylo Ren/Ben Solo and how they’ve changed from when they first showed up in The Force Awakens and how events end in The Last Jedi. They’re two characters I had wildly different feelings about after the first movie and really had to sit down and digest them after walking out of the cinema.

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The Last Jedi: My Thoughts on: Poe & Finn

As per usual, I didn’t get around to seeing Star Wars: The Last Jedi for a week or so later than everyone else around me. So, once again, I was subject to everyone else’s opinion before I could formulate my own. I was more surpised than anyone to hear such a range of views on this movie after the first one being hype on toast.

When I eventually did get around to seeing the movie, I agree that it might be the most decisive Star Wars film that I’ve seen. While Rogue One felt like a much darker take on the material than I was ever expecting to see from the series, especially under the Disney umbrella, it was a refreshing move away from what felt like a very safe entry with The Force Awakens.

After seeing The Last Jedi, I agree that there is a lot to digest. So much so that I felt it prudent to split this post up into multiple parts, because otherwise this would end up a million years long. This first part will be focusing on Poe Dameron and Finn’s contributions to the series thus far. I’ll be talking about the events of The Last Jedi in depth in case you couldn’t guess that. Continue reading “The Last Jedi: My Thoughts on: Poe & Finn” →

Best movies of 2017: #5 – #1

Final list for a while I think. Which is kind of sad because looking at my analytics from last year, the most popular thing on this blog by far is also the only list I’ve written on it outside of these “of the year” posts. It’s real clickbaity too, not that it was my intention when I wrote it. Oh well, It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever written so I can’t be too salty about it. It’s just just feel like a good structure for a post when you actually want to put a coherent thought forward. But then again, being a capable writer is irrelevant if you want to get paid for doing it on the internet for the most part.

Going forward with this part of the list I’ll probably get into spoilers in these entries. Don’t know if I mentioned that in the last one, probably important to know. But that’d be implied in a post like this surely.

This is my top five movies of 2017:

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