It’s a slightly click-baity title, but as we’re still generating more content for our magazines, this one included, why not?
My Sci-fi unpopular opinion is that 2001: A Space Odyssey is nothing but pretentious, LSD fueled nonsense. I’ve tried watching it multiple times and each time I have absolutely no patience for the pointless little scenes which contain little to no depth or meaningful plot, all coalescing towards that 15 minute “journey” through space and series of hallucinations or whatever that are supposed to be deep, shake you to your foundations, and make you re-think the whole human condition.
But it doesn’t. Because it’s just pretentious, LSD fueled nonsense. Planet of the Apes was released in the same year and is, on every level, a better Sci-fi movie. It offers mystery, a consistent and engaging plot, relatable characters you actually care about, and asks a lot more questions about the world and our place in it.
I’ll even go one farther. TLJ is better than any other Disney SW movie, and it’s better than any prequel.
It does have pacing and focus issues, and the degree to which Rian Johnson ignored some of the techno-lore didn’t really serve him well in dealing with fans, but it’s better made than any prequel and is the only Disney era film trying to to do anything interesting.
I think it has a much more interesting thing to say than any of the other modern Star Wars movies, that’s for sure. Much as Iove many of the other Rian Johnson movies, though, I do feel he didn’t navigate the requirements of this one to get a fully rounded result.
He should have given up on the whole “Stagecoach in space” idea the moment he couldn’t find a way (or was told not to) keep the whole thing within the chase.
And they shouldn’t have deliberated the point of the trilogy by making movies at each other, but that’s not a problem with TLJ specifically, so I don’t count it against it. Hell, Empire directly contradicts Star Wars just as often and it’s also fine, mostly because Jedi sticks with those choices.
Nah, all of that is fine. It’s the part where it can’t keep the tension or weave all the characters into the same story effectively that kills it for me. Great outline, great concept, compromised execution, sadly.
Only you can’t make that point in public in most places because the disingenuous trolls will immediately derail the conversation towards stupid stuff like image projection or family legacies or force pulling in space or whatever. I feel even here we’re pushing by talking about it like normal people for this long.
Don’t agree about TLJ, the prequel trilogy is just too ridiculous not to love, but I agree about rogue one. It was dull in all regards, color palette, characterization, erso’s backstory and motivation…Im still confused by it’s popularity. But I guess a lot more people than I realized actually don’t like the Jedi. Which…then why watch star wars?