Last month I finally got around to watching Hasbro's Transformers: Prime Wars trilogy on YouTube. There were three series to correspond with the toy series: Combiner Wars, Titans Return, and Power of the Primes. The first series had 8 episodes but the other two had 10 episodes, each roughly 6 minutes so they were about 50-60 minutes total.
Anyway, in Combiner Wars new Autobot leader Rodimus Prime gets an arm ripped off by the combiner Devastator. In Titans Return then he decides to give back the Autobot Matrix of Leadership and just be plain old Hot Rod again. But in Power of the Primes he's given the "Matrix of Chaos" by Overlord and turns into the evil Rodimus Unicronus--or whatever. Basically an agent of Unicron who kills the dinobot Sludge, combiner Victorion, and some others.
This actually corresponded to the 80s Transformers cartoon. In the 1986 Transformers: the Movie, young Autobot Hot Rod rescues the Autobot Matrix of Leadership from the evil Galvatron, hurls Galvatron into space, and then opens the Matrix to destroy Unicron. He was a total badass.
But then in the following cartoon series he became this whiny wimp with no confidence. He was always bitching that he couldn't measure up to Optimus Prime and wasn't worthy of the Matrix. Whine, whine, whine. At one point he lets the Decepticon Scourge take the Matrix from him and in another he gives it without any hesitation to a zombie Optimus Prime.
The end result was this character who was so awesome in the movie became reviled and ridiculed. And so Hasbro brought back Optimus Prime to retake the Matrix.
Finally rewatching The Last Jedi about this same time, it occurred to me that Rian Johnson made the same mistake with Luke Skywalker that the Transformers writers made with Rodimus: they took a badass character and turned him into a whiny, cowardly wuss. The same way viewers of Transformers: the Movie didn't want to watch Rodimus whining and whinging, fans of the original Star Wars didn't want to hear Luke Skywalker whining that he came to an island to die and the Jedi should die and whine, whine, whine. I screwed up once so let the whole damned galaxy die--including my sister and friends.
If you're reading and not skimming--or just reading the description or first paragraph or two--then you might say, Well it was a story of redemption! Uh-huh. So basically the son of Darth Vader, who personally witnessed the horrors unleashed by the dark side until he saved his father from that dark side, loses his nephew to the dark side...and runs away to an island to hide. Leaving his sister, friends, and countless innocents to the mercy of that evil. Though he of all people should know that turning to the dark side isn't forever. His own father killed probably millions of innocents and yet was able to turn. But, nope, Ben Solo turned and he's never coming back. No way. It's not even a believable redemption story! At least Rodimus could claim being young and inexperienced; Luke damn well knew better because he fucking lived it!
And what is Luke's redemption? He beams a Force ghost across the galaxy to buy the leftovers of the Resistance time to escape. Then he dies from too much Force. Which is a thing, I guess. It'd be like a soldier deserts his unit and then later when they're cornered he remotely flies a drone in to give them a distraction to escape by and then dies of a heart attack. Really inspiring stuff. Give him the Medal of Honor!
Anyway, the point is if Rian Johnson had watched those Transformers cartoons, he'd have realized that people don't want their heroes reduced to simpering cowards. Fuck "redemption." That's for villains. Or those who were somewhat in-between like Han Solo. Not heroes, especially heroes who should know better.
If you want to throw how much money the movie made into my face, fuck that. Money isn't a barometer of quality. Look how much money those Fast & Furious movies have made. lol
2 comments:
The funny thing about The Last Jedi was that recently, I heard that Russian trolls had banded together to give The Last Jedi terrible press and the studio was blaming this (in part) for why the movie was received so terribly by fans. I paused when I had read that because here's the thing: I think the Russian trolls were right. So I'm not sure the argument holds. The Last Jedi was not a good movie.
On Facebook someone said they never sa2 anyone complain about anything besides too many women and SJWs. Apparently he or she never read my blog. Russian propaganda is right but for the wrong reasons.
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