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#28. The Substandard on Star Wars
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Dudes Chatting — The Last Jedi teaser: This micro-episode is a reaction to the first The Last Jedi teaser trailer. Both JVL and Sonny are unimpressed: JVL argues the trailer is essentially a beat-for-beat re-run of the The Force Awakens teaser, offering no iconic new images and giving no sense of a story. Sonny's deeper concern is the character of Rey, whom he considers a "Mary Sue" — a character with no meaningful limitations or growth arc — and worries the sequel will repeat the structural problems of the previous film rather than building on them. The episode includes a warm aside in tribute to Carrie Fisher.
Full transcript
Guest00:00:00I only know one truth. It's time for the Jedi to end.
Vic00:00:26Hello, and welcome to another micro-episode of The Substandard, or should I say macro? I'm Victor Matus along with Jonathan V. Last and Sonny Bunch. Just a quick reminder that full episodes of TheSubstandard are available every Thursday at 11:00 a.m. and Substandard show notes are posted by Jonathan Last every Friday at weeklystandard.com. . We're talking about the new teaser trailer for The Last Jedi, which came out on Friday, and boy, wow, I was just blown away. You have to say away, Vic, otherwise it sounds weird. Oh, boy. It just looks so good, and I hope most of the movie will focus on Rey's training with Luke on that island. JVL, weren't you just blown away?
JVL00:01:20This thing looks so awful and so hideously bad, and it made me want to mash my face into the keyboard of my computer. Oh, look, they have the Journal of the Wills, if you're into that sort of thing. Oh, look, there's a Grey Jedi, if you're into that sort of thing. Oh, look, Kylo Ren now has a scar over his eye, just like old man Anakin did. And if you freeze frame it, I'm sure you guys have noticed this, if you go to YouTube, there are now dozens upon dozens of shot-for-shot deconstructions of this thing, and it is like nerds of the world no longer have any self-respect. Okay. JVL, let me just tell you to breathe. Just breathe. Now, what do you see? Sorry. Sonny, you were with me on this, yes?
Sonny00:02:08Yes, I'm totally with you on this. First off, let's acknowledge that the people on YouTube are all insane. I actually had to click on three different videos before I found the actual teaser trailer, because I was inundated with teaser trailer reaction videos. Mm-hmm. I don't know who the people are who watch these things. I don't know who the people are who listen to us, but I definitely don't know who the people are who listen to these dumb reaction videos where people are just making funny faces into the camera and/or breaking it down shot by shot and being like, "And now at second 38.2, you get to see 17 AT-ATs in the background." Those people are the worst, almost as bad as us. But the real problem with this trailer is that there's no actual iconic image. There's no actual iconic visual. If you remember the first trailer for The Force Awakens, and maybe it's not a fair comparison because they had a lot of built-up, pent-up nostalgia to play with, but in that trailer, you had the debut of Kylo Ren's cross-guard lightsaber. That awesome shot of him in the wooded forest with black on black and the red beam of light, and it was hot, is what it was. It was hot. And then you also had the great close to that trailer, which was the... The Millennium Falcon kind of bursting into the air and doing a big loop and coming at the TIE fighters with the John Williams score in the background, the kind of soaring audio and visual combination that has made the series great for so long. And in this, you have none of that. There isn't a single iconic image. There isn't a single iconic shot. The most interesting visual from this whole thing is the back of a woman's head.
JVL00:03:49It's worse than that because of... You sent this to me on Twitter yesterday, Sonny. The video, somebody has put together a video running side-by-side the Force Awakens teaser trailer with this one.
Sonny00:04:04Just to be clear, I'm sorry to interrupt. Sonny needs to interrupt for one second. Just to be clear, that is like a composite of several of the trailers. It's not a straight one-to-one Last Jedi Force Awakens comparison, but there's a lot of stuff from the Force Awakens trailer that's in that comparison.
JVL00:04:20The same thing. Running to a ship that explodes. Quick, we've got to go to a different ship. The Millennium Falcon. The Millennium Falcon banking to the right. The same direction, even. Water shots, same thing. People running toward the camera, same thing. Characters being shot from behind, same thing.
Vic00:04:36Yeah! JVL, does this mean that it's, I mean, the message, the takeaway from that is that it's what? That this is intentional, it's derivative, or they're just mailing it in?
JVL00:04:44It's derivative. It's a derivative work. And, you know, look at this. First of all...
Sonny00:04:50It's a derivation of a derivation.
JVL00:04:52It's a derivation of something that is already itself derivative. And part of this, I think, I think I've made this case to you guys, I think The Force Awakens has not aged well. I think the audiences have, now that they've had a little bit of distance to it, come to resent it a little bit. And, look, this movie will make all of the money. It doesn't matter whether it is good or bad or terrible, but people... We will see it multiple times. At some point, you abuse your audience to the point where they may give you their money, but they don't love you for it. You know, you become like the audience for the Transformers movies. And, look, we're not there. We're probably not even close to there. You can't see there from here, but that's the direction we're going in. So let's take the least interesting character from The Force Awakens and just, you know, situate an entire trailer around her.
Sonny00:05:47Which is who, JVL, who is the least interesting character from The Force Awakens?
JVL00:05:51Mary, Mary Sue Ray is the least interesting character. And, you know, here she is trying, so Luke is now teaching her to lift little pebbles with the Force after, something which, by the way, we never saw, either young Anakin Skywalker or young Luke Skywalker never exhibited before they were trained any abilities with the Force. But Ray is so good and so powerful, like John Cena before her, that she can just do everything without even knowing that the things exist. She doesn't even know there is a thing called the Jedi Mind Trick, but she can do it.
Vic00:06:24JVL, let me ask you this.
JVL00:06:25Do you know what her midichlorian count is? It's in the Star Wars Battlefront video game universe. She's at a 9.9. She's like the, you know, the Madden make-your-own-player that you pimp out all the way to, you know, 99 strength, 99 speed.
Vic00:06:41Well, that explains the lifting of pebbles.
JVL00:06:43So I want to know, like, what does she have to learn from Luke Skywalker? She's more powerful. She should go over there and Force choke him to death and throw his tiny half-robotic body into the sea.
Sonny00:06:54We should. We should say, we should note, for the record, that the only interesting thing about this trailer, JBL, is that it does seem that, I'm sure this is a head fake from the filmmakers, but it does seem like Luke Skywalker has come around to the wickedness of the Jedi.
JVL00:07:13He totally does, which, by the way, is kind of extended universe canon, not the expanded universe, the expanded universe doesn't exist anymore, but it used to be, that's why we had the Grey Jedi, and a rejection of the old Jedi, who were themselves corrupted by politics, and Luke was going to start his, look, I mean, that's what I read somewhere on the internet, I don't know anything about it, I never read any of those books. Because that's his voice at the end, right, that the Jedi must lose. And you know what, I wrote this piece five years ago, for like the federal, I wrote that the Jedi are bad, and they're corrupt, and all this, yeah, so it's nice to know that once again, I am in Lucas' head. Okay, so what about the... The excitement of... Lucasfilm's head. Lucasfilm's head. Lucasfilm's, yeah.
Vic00:07:59The trailer, the images of, you mentioned those books, the books of the wills, is that what that is, J. Bill? The journal of the wills. Journal, pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. And of the symbol on the ground, this is like the search for the Jedi Dead Sea Scrolls, that's what this movie's going to be about? I don't know. If you could only see his eyes. Sonny, I mean, what are we looking at here, is it, or is this like, you know, it's, you know, it's Yoda trading Luke, Empire Strikes Back all over again, except for now it's Luke trading Rey, right? This is what we're talking about, Sonny?
Sonny00:08:31Right. Yeah, I mean, that seems to be kind of what they're going for, but like J. Bill said, really, what does he have to teach her? I mean, like, the idea that he would, like, carry her around, or be carried around on her back while she, you know, island hops or whatever.
JVL00:08:46Mark Hamill is six feet shorter than Daisy. That's actually true. So that would work out.
Sonny00:08:51That would work out. So, I mean, I, you know, who knows, who knows what, what. I'm sure we'll learn all sorts of interesting and neat things. I guess it's probably all going to be about her parentage, right? You know, Luke's going to try and keep it from her for the whole movie, and then at the end, because it rhymes, it echoes, we're going to, we're going to get the, we're going to get the reveal that she is the daughter of somebody we know already, right? Yeah. I assume that's what's going to happen.
Vic00:09:17Am I allowed to guess? Are we allowed to take guesses here? Yeah, go ahead. Because she will be, she cannot possibly be the daughter, but I would say, hmm, granddaughter, or something, of Ben Kenobi, yeah? Sure, why not? Yeah, sure. A Kenobi? That's what I hear. She's a Kenobi.
Sonny00:09:32I hope she's Jar Jar's kid.
JVL00:09:33It's going to be great. No, no, she's going to get, Luke is going to take her into a cave, and she'll fight Snoke, and then she'll kill Snoke and see herself in his head, and then she'll leave early to go rescue the Black Storm Trooper, who, by the way, I defy you to remember that character's name. What is John Boyega's actual character name? It's Finn. All right, fine, you're cheating. And then maybe she'll get her hand shot off by Captain Phasma.
Vic00:09:53Okay, so speaking of- Speaking of Finn, I found it very disconcerting in the trailer that when we see him, he's still in the coma. I just hope that the droids who were taking care of him are not the same ones who took care of Padme when she died giving childbirth.
JVL00:10:06Yeah, you know, you can travel light speed and multiple, but they haven't solved death and childbirth. No, that's exactly right. They should have been super malpractice, those droids.
Sonny00:10:13They haven't even figured out how to show people that they're having twins. They don't even have ultrasounds. No, that's the one thing they forgot was ultrasound.
JVL00:10:21So can we talk corporation stuff here for a minute? For a moment, boys. Go for it, please. Because as Max Landis was tweeting out over the weekend, it is interesting that as a corporate move, this does nothing except announce to people, hey, there is a Star Wars movie. This is a Star Wars movie. We're going to give you a Star Wars movie in December. Star Wars. That's all this got. They literally could just have the title card and in theaters December and it accomplishes all the same. Goals in terms of audience motivation. And what does that say? I mean, do you think they are taking their audience for granted? Do you think they are trying to be deliberately opaque because they have a really interesting story to tell and they just want to surprise us this time? Yeah. What do you think about that, Sonny?
Sonny00:11:09Well, I did see some people making fun of Max Landis on Twitter for this. No one makes fun of Max Landis on Twitter. For saying, you know, oh, the teaser trailer is just a tease. Oh, you're a professional screenwriter. Don't you know what's going on here? And, of course, all of these people wish. They would pray to God every day that they could have Max Landis' job. So, you know, it's kind of funny. Look, I'm of two minds on this. On the one hand, I do appreciate not giving away too much. But on the other hand, I do think you actually have to give them something. And, again, it doesn't even have to be something from the story. You don't have to, like, you know, what are we now? Eight months out? Nine months out? You don't have to, like, give us the beat for beat moves of what's going to happen in the plot. I don't need to know, you know, who Daisy Ridley is shacking up with at the end of the film. But I do need something interesting. Again, just something interesting and evocative visually. And there's none of that here. There's that one shot of, like, the X-Wings on the ground. The red soil. Like, red stuff behind them. Like, that's kind of neat, I guess. But, you know, there really just isn't an iconic – there's nothing to get excited about. Excited about from this trailer, unless you're already a total – unless you're already totally on board and totally sold and you're the sort of person who thinks that The Force Awakens was really, really great. And there are people like that. There are people who obsessively watch this dumb movie that is a fan fiction mashup of all of the previous Star Wars films and are like, no, this is actually good because, you see, it's got the lady Jedi in it and she's real great. And then there's the other stuff. And Han dies and I was sad. And, oh, my God. I mean, that's like the level of criticism that you see aimed at this movie from the real true believer fans. You know, when the greatest image or the most interesting image in this film is, you know, basically cribbed from the closing shot of Batman versus Superman, Dawn of Justice, the little pebbles rising off the ground. And Lord knows every filmmaker should copy the greats like Zack Snyder. But when that's your most interesting. Interesting visual image, you're in a real world of hurt.
JVL00:13:28Victorino. Yes, JVL. When your kids would like to watch a Star Wars movie, what do they reach for on the shelf?
Vic00:13:35Of your VHS tapes. A Rogue One on DVD. Rogue One. And I guess because Rogue One. That's it. It's just Rogue One. That's it. Rogue One. When my son, who is nine, saw the teaser trailer after it's over, he said, wait, wait a minute. Wait a minute. That's it? That's it. That's it.
Sonny00:13:55That's a good response. That's the appropriate response.
JVL00:13:58Because again, it doesn't actually tease. There is nothing in this. You look at this, and is there anything in this that makes you wish you could see it tomorrow? No. Because I didn't. I mean, what a teaser trailer should do is, if you don't know the property, it should interest you in the property, and if you do know the property, it should excite you enough to say, I wish I could see this tomorrow, and they've clearly decided that there is no universe of potential. There are no potential audiences which doesn't know and isn't interested in about Star Wars, so they don't need to expand their reach or expand their potential audience. Yeah, go ahead, Sonny. Here's a question.
Sonny00:14:35Can I ask one question, JBL? Do you think that's actually true? I mean, I think it might actually be true, right? Like, is there another property in the United States? And it's very interesting to look at the split on the Star Wars movies, international versus domestic. Like, for instance, Fast and the Furious this weekend made something like $450 million around the world. Save it. It's going to, but only $100 million here in the States. And if you look at the splits on The Force Awakens, they're much closer to 50-50. But that being said, it made almost a billion dollars domestically. Made almost a billion dollars domestically, and that's 50% more than the next closest movie. So, I mean, if you're trying to think of a franchise that is as close to universally recognized as possible in the United States, don't you think Star Wars is basically it?
JVL00:15:24Yes. No, I would absolutely grant that. But that doesn't mean that they actually are universal. I mean, there still is a class of people who just have not warmed to Star Wars yet.
Sonny00:15:34Who are these garbage people? Can we send them to Gitmo?
Vic00:15:37I'm actually quite disappointed learning that Lando Calrissian will not be a character in these movies. You saw that, right? Billy Dee Williams is not in it. I didn't. Yeah. And that's a shame, because he would have been a great sort of foster father figure. I would have loved to have Billy Dee. Absolutely.
Sonny00:15:54Lando, will the character of Lando be in the young Han Solo movie? Do we know yet? I don't know.
JVL00:15:58I don't know. I know we've bagged on this, and I want to say one good thing about Star Wars. You guys saw the Carrie Fisher tribute from the Star Wars celebration. Did you cry? Because I'm not ashamed to say. She was so adorable. She's great. Oh. She's smart and funny and sassy. And you know what? Princess Leia is the strongest of strong female leads, which is a term which I hate. But she was not written to be a strong female lead. She was just written as a great character, and Carrie Fisher inhabits her in a way that's so genuinely tough and awesome and just great. It's impossible to imagine anybody else portraying and inhabiting that character, and she was awesome.
Vic00:16:42If you ever get a chance to see, I guess it was on HBO, that documentary of Carrie Fisher and her mother, you really need to see that. It's sort of a Debbie Reynolds. It just says a lot about how difficult and weird it is to grow up in a Hollywood family. It's weird, and it's hard to just make it out alive, I think. There's just general weirdness, but it's a really great documentary. Sonny, JVL, do you have any other thoughts? I'm out. No, I have no more thoughts on this two minutes of footage. I only know one truth. It's time for this micro-episode to end. JVL? Sure, it's fine.
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