9 Comments

Gonna agree to disagree, the way The Last Jedi deconstructed Star Wars was done very poorly. If you want a great deconstruction of Star Wars, play Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords. It makes everything The Last Jedi attempted look like bad fanfiction in comparison.

Further deconstructing the Skywalker saga in the 8th film, rather than across the entire final trilogy or ep 9, was just a terrible idea. To paraphrase a famous quote [Rian Johnson] was so preoccupied if he could, he didn't stop to think if he should.

Expand full comment

Love to see KOTOR 2 mentioned anywhere; it's my favourite video game ever.

Expand full comment

Excellent as usual. Hope Rian Johnson reads this someday.

Expand full comment
Feb 6, 2023Liked by coldhealing

This is perfect. You nailed it.

Expand full comment

Rian Johnson just seems to have a sneering contempt for his audience. This was much more pronounced in the truly terrible Glass Onion, the point of which was "you are stupid if you want a well made mystery." It's a shame too, because he is very talented. Brick is a fun movie, Looper is phenomenal, Knives Out is very watchable despite its failures as a mystery, etc.

It's not subverting expectations to slap the audience in the face and make them feel like rubes for giving a shit about the story.

Expand full comment
author

Knives Out and Glass Onion are not mysteries, they're social satires. You can read my Glass Onion review for more on this but I think you're pretty substantially missing the point of those films

Expand full comment

Glass Onion plays with the tropes of mystery movies to make the subtle point of "rich people bad." I don't think there was a point to it. Knives Out had fun commentary, but didn't completely throw out its mystery elements.

Semi-related: I can think of no worse way to start a movie than to remind your audience of the shrieking hysteria of 2020

Expand full comment

If all you take from Glass Onion is ‘rich people bad,’ then you have well and truly missed the point my friend. But hey, it’s hard to actually watch a movie on Netflix without scrolling your phone these days.

Also, in terms of reminders to “shrieking hysteria” what would you like film to do? Avoid any era or periods that ever had any collective trauma? I thought the way GO handled its depiction of covid/the pandemic was excellent, (excluding the unfortunate inclusion of AmongUs which has since become obsolete) especially in the way that certain people remained above restrictions (everyone being on the island) because, well, rich people bad.

Expand full comment

Ah, yes, I didn't like film so I must not have been paying attention.

And, yes, unless the COVID shit serves as part of the story, leave it out. I'd prefer not to be reminded of an era where everyone got caught up in a lame moral panic that was wholly out of proportion to the crisis at hand.

Expand full comment