I know Charlie Chaplin. You, Rian Johnson, are not Charlie Chaplin.
So now we can randomly put what people consider are N*zi parodies in movies that we otherwise consider serious, let this character still have a serious position and let him slap a black man who’s in his knees bc then suddenly he’s not a parody anymore, huh? This is what RJ and also TLJ stans don’t get: this isn’t a parody, this movie is meant to take itself and its universe seriously to a certain degree. If you do half serious and half weird meta commentary on society you end up with this garbage. But then I’d also like to know how playing most things related to Finn for laughs fits into this? Should we at this day and age ridicule black men?
Depending on the count Finn had equal screen time as Rey or more in TFA, so the reduction was entirely in TLJ. And a sizeable number of TLJ stans don’t think Finn was a protagonist in the first place–I’ve heard him compared to Qui-Gon Jinn or Mace Windu–so to them that’s just the way things should be.
The mentor who died in one movie or the only black Jedi they know.
Finn’s screentime was reduced by about 20 minutes compared to TFA…
In TFA Finn and Rey were miles above everyone else in screentime, and storywise clearly were the co-protagonists, with Finn actually actively starting the entire story …
TLJ retconed that. For that alone the movie is awful. (Not to mention there was more Finn material filmed, important material in fact that RJ cut for unknown reasons *cough*)
The entire Kylo show btw doesn’t result from Kylo having gained significant screentime.. his screentime stayed pretty much the same compared to TFA but Finn in particular and also Rey lost a lot of theirs. This explains the shift of the focus, together with the fact they Rey’s storyline is mostly about poor Ben and not herself, and Finn’s is literally filler material.
Finn has approximately 7 deleted scenes, 8 if you count whatever scene this flight suit came from. What I find weird though is how Finn’s cut scenes aren’t short things the film can do without like Kylo staring out a window, they’re actual character driven scenes.
It also strikes me as odd Finn is the only character to have an entire alternant scene! Which makes me think that this version of Finn’s confrontation with Finn is from an entirely different character arc.
tbh I’ve had a particular horror vision in my head for a while… and this vision says that John expected a totally different film in terms of Finn’s arc. That even more things that we don’t know about were filmed and then scrapped as soon as Johnson was in the cutting room … Like RJ couldn’t get away with minimizing Finn’s role to this degree while filming but then once this was over, he could wield the scissors and rearrange everything until it fit more to his original idea, ie. Finn as the comic relief who doesn’t do that much. And then John saw the movie and realised what was done to his arc and couldn’t do anything about it.
Maybe. Could be possible. No one just has that many deleted scenes. Also put in mind that Finn in his flight suit-
Has a different haircut than the rest of the movie and this footage was taken during principal photography. Now I’m not sure if everyone knows this, but hair doesn’t grow overnight, especially hairstyles like that. Us african folks ain’t a chia pet. John woudnt just show up to set with a different cut. He would have to of cleared this look. That means John potentially has an entirely different group of scenes that were changed in re-shoots.
Yes! It makes no sense for him to turn up to filming with a completely different haircut! Look at how early he started growing out his hair for IX even before we knew that’s what it was for! Training for TLJ started shortly after the end of the TFA promotion, so why on earth should he get a haircut during this period if it wasn’t for the movie?
Also wasn’t Rose’s background story initial in the movie and they then reshot the scene and left it out?
Also this is John during the promotion of the Force Awakens. Different haircut, particularly visible bc it’s longer and the line in his hair is on the other side, unless the footage from TLJ shooting is mirrored for some reason but I don’t know why that should be the case.
Usually when people get that type of haircut, the line is on both sides for balance.
I really don’t know why anything happened. I just know that there had to of been some changes, even JJ admits that he changed parts of the TFA script because he didn’t like them or the implications.
Timeline-wise, one of the first things to get leaked about tlj was the filming of John and Kelly “getting flirty” on what we now know to be a Falthier and that photo was released in March of 2016 iirc. It’s my opinion that the casino plot on Canto Bight was Rians top priority for Finn.
My tin foil hat is on, but I don’t think rian ever had many alternative ideas for Finn. I don’t know who is responsible for coming up with Finns arc on the supremacy, or for the plot involving Finn fighting alongside Paige, but it is unlikely to have come from Rian himself. I don’t even think Rian was present while shooting the Finn vs Phasma duel—I have to double check this, but I believe the secondary director was there filming that. And we have bts footage of Rian observing daisy and Adam training, but nothing of John.
Yeah I’ve looked in BTS and there’s not jack of Johnson, and I mean even the throne room scene is more about Kylo then Rey.
Johnson just wants to be Kylo.
Considering nothing
If what @reys–speeder says is true, and @themandalorianwolf provides at least partial confirmation, it may explain something I noticed about the TLJ novelization (link): The Finn-Phasma duel is very different in a number of small details from the version in the novelization. At the time I thought this might simply be the nature of action scenes, but then I read the throne room scene and no jarring discrepancies jumped out at me, at least none that I could spot from memory alone. If Johnson didn’t film and possibly didn’t even write the Finn duel that may explain the extra “drift” from the script.
Also, the second unit director generally doesn’t film scenes with the primary cast but rather films background characters and large-scale battles. The duel was a pivotal scene for Finn that featured him prominently. If it’s true that Johnson left the scene to the second unit he was treating Finn as effectively a background character and not a part of the main cast.
@lj-writes @reys–speeder @thelastjedicritical
After watching more BTS I noticed something odd about the scene. Rian Johnson is present during the scene direction, but isn’t present for actual bts of filming, which is confusing.
I can’t find anything on him when they’re filming. Though he could be somewhere else watching a monitoring, though considering Johnson is always shown watching and/or giggling.
Now call me a tinfoil hat wearing nut, but my personal theory is that Johnson was there for the filming of alternate version of the Finn vs Phasma fight, which I believe is honestly the original version. I think the one that was kept in the movie was the re-shot version.
I came to this conclusion because in this video Christie, Tran, Boyega, and Johnson talk about the Finn vs Phasma fight like it’s the deleted version that has an actual confrontation behind it and dialogue that sounds scripted, while the one left in the movie sounds like improve from John and Christie.
Also
When watching the version in the movie, there is a glaring continuity problem after Holdo does her suicide run. Phasma and her troopers transport to the other side of the hanger, but in the scene before they had been right next to Finn and Rose ready to execute them.
Compare that to the alternate version that was deleted that actually matches the continuity.
I can’t honestly pretend to know if Johnson was there for both shoots, but I do believe Johnson wasn’t there for the version version shown in the movie.
I saw this because almost everyone who watches both scenes say that the alternate scene feels like it should have been in the movie and matches continuity, while the movie version feels tacked on and like a filler fight to give Finn something to do.
You know, if we’re going to be getting canon Finnrey I’m almost relieved they’ll spend most of 8 apart and the bulk of their interactions will be in 9, now that JJ is coming back. Nothing Rian has said gave me confidence that he’d treat the relationship right. I’d much rather have JJ, who gave us the interactions that imploded our hearts, wrap things up.
I think it’s extremely insulting to be anti-rian johnson when the movie hasn’t even come out yet! Talk about premature labelling…
If you were disappointed by the Resistance mutiny plot in Star Wars: The Last Jedi I highly recommend you check out Crimson Tide, a 1995 movie which I may or may not have seen 18 times starring Denzel Washington and Gene Hackman. Other than the incongruity of Washington playing a character named “Ronald” it is so much more interesting a military drama than TLJ.
For one thing, Crimson Tide takes care to establish the fundamental worldview differences between Hackman’s Captain Ramsey and Washington’s Commander Hunter, even though the two meet and talk for the first time under an incredibly urgent national security situation. Ramsey is Navy salt through and through, an effective and seasoned sailor who only knows the military and orders. Hunter is educated, erudite, philosophical, and sees the bigger picture in world events.
See how the mirrors behind Ramsey catch his senior staff so that their reflections are watching Hunter along with Ramsey. All the senior staff know each other well and are highly loyal to Ramsey, while Hunter as Ramsey’s new second-in-command is comparatively unknown other than having his friend Blond Aragorn on board with him. Ramsey and his senior officers want to see what kind of person Hunter is, whether he was the right choice in this extremely high-stakes mission. This underlying distrust will have important implications later on.
And just in case we missed the point, the movie drives Ramsey and Hunter’s contrasts home again in a later scene where Ramsey is a raging asshole and Hunter just barely manages to hold onto his temper. Blond Aragorn then explains their contrasting worldviews to Hunter and the audience yet again.
It’s a little heavy-handed but it’s Hollywood, we’re not looking for subtlety here, and it’s one of the movie’s strengths that it errs on the side of clarity over cleverness every time. You can agree or disagree with the movie’s developments but no one who actually watched it could ever say, “errr, what was that about?”
Therefore, when circumstances pit Hunter and Ramsey against each other the conflict is about something meaningful, not “um why can’t you just talk to each other like grown-ass professionals.” Ramsey, for all his faults, doesn’t hide his plan from Hunter for no reason like a spiteful ninny. Hunter and Ramsey are both eminently clear to each other and the entire ship about exactly what they mean to do. This makes the conflict more meaningful, in addition to simply making real-world sense. I mean, how are you going to execute your plan if your crew doesn’t know it? No, the conflict isn’t over some stupid miscommunication. Rather it is over Hunter and Ramsey’s fundamental and strenuous disagreement over their core values, a disagreement that has implications not only for their mission but the fate of the world.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Rian Johnson did see this film and, being a moron, did his best to make a sci-fi version of it.
I suspect this was a case of bad ripoff, too. I mean I kept thinking of CT but assumed it was because I am such a humongous fan of the movie, but then Cinema Sins said TLJ’s third act was obviously copied from CT and I felt validated. This is a recurring pattern with Liondick, he copies things that look cool but doesn’t understand what made them good in the first place.
I mean on the one hand yeah, but on the other hand could anyone imagine that TLJ could turn out so bad? I blame Lucasfilm 100%.
On the other hand, Johnson is a bitch with the shit film history, two movies, with the same white dude. No offense to Joseph Gordon Levitt who is an amazing actor.
JJ Abrams is a credible director, with a long career and finally has full creative control. At worst it will be like TFA, good. At best, it will be better than TFA, which would be great.
I don’t understand why KK picked this asshole in the first place and gave him such absolute creative control. She was responsible for controlling the quality of the movies and keeping up the integrity of the franchise, and it looks like she completely failed at that with TLJ and Solo. I don’t get it.
“In my mind, he walks in there knowing basically that he is going to betray Snoke but he (Kylo) doesn’t know yet exactly what the mechanism is and what his opportunity is going to be. But he’s gone in there with the intent of, whether it’s now or whether it’s later or whenever it is, when he brings Rey in there, he’s had that connection (Force bond) with her and what he says in the elevator… from that, in my head I thought, Okay, he knows he’s going to do this but he doesn’t know how yet and when he sees that opportunity with that lightsaber next to him and sees Snoke distracted and realizes he can give this an attempt, he goes for it.“
The novel/comic goes as far to say that Kylo wanted Snoke dead since their first scene together in TLJ when Kylo realizes that Han was right and Snoke was just using him. Kylo even imagines as he’s smashing his mask that he was smashing Snoke’s face.
BTW Kylo has got to have more masks than that, because he left his mask on the Bridge he killed Han on in TFA. So either Johnson forgot that or Kylo has a whole closet of masks
And unrelated, but Johnson said that he had Kylo kill off Snoke so that there would be no Vader-Palpatine dynamic, which for that I’m thankful for. It was the one thing I hated about Snoke.
So the reylow line that bEn KilLeD sNOkE fOR reY TRuE lUrVE!!!11 is yet another baseless headcanon shot down by their own god? 😂
Almost every quote Reylows get from JJ or Ruin, or honestly any source, is edited to make it seem like their ship is valid.
Johnson and the novel confirm:
Kylo and Rey’s Force Bond was made by Snoke
Kylo figures out that he must have been behind it sometime after he failed to use force persuasion in her.
When they touched hands, Rey saw what Snoke wanted her to see.
Kylo called Rey nothing and the bit about her parents was a manipulative tactic to break her resolve down like it was on Luke’s island.
Rey ended the force bond on Crait.
This isn’t even a fan speculation. It’s confirmed facts by round head himself.
She comes across as this really weird mix of excited and pessimistic. Her mercurial mood swings are actually terrifying combined with her penchant for berating people or being casually violent. You never know where you stand with her and you can actually see Finn, who has lifelong practice at this, adapting himself to avoid being hurt. It’s why his character development doesn’t ring true to me and his whole story in TLJ takes on very dark undertones.
Supposedly this was done because Rose wasn’t originally supposed to be with Finn. Originally Johnson was going to have Finn already in a established member of the resistance, hence all those behind the scenes footage of him in a flight suit and the scrapped opening of Paig dying in his arms and leaving a bloody handprint on his heart as a callback to the bloody handprint Slip left on Finn’s helmet in TFA. Johnson then cut this footage and many haven’t been able to figure out why or where it went. Finn then was originally going to go find the master code breaker with Poe, but Johnson thought that their dialogue was interchangeable and that there was no conflict in their story, so he put in Rose, a character he said he based off a nerdy girl he knew in school that really didn’t feel like she would belong in a Star Wars movie, and put her with Finn to be a conflict in his character arc.
So there you have it. That is the backstory of the Fuckery of Finn’s arc, minus all his scenes getting deleted because Johnson thought that Finn didn’t need a full character arc, and the audience would just figure it out themselves.
If your first reason for why J.J. Abrams was chosen as the Episode IX director is basically “he has time on his hands,” then your “analysis” is probably shit and not worth reading.
Not only did he already have an agreement with Paramount, they actually accommodated him so he can work on SW and another studio can’t come snap him up. That’s how busy and in demand he is, that he had to rearrange his entire work schedule and his preexisting agreement with a major studio–a change it agreed to because it wants him so badly–in order to do IX.
Readily available? Fuck outta here. J.J. didn’t come back because he had nothing better to do, he came back because he badly wanted to. And likely, I suspect, because he was begged to.
Bob Iger was banging on JJ’s door with Boyega and Ridley waiting in the backseat of his whip throwing puppy dog eyes at JJ.
🤢 Johnson apologist
So basically Iger is the Rey to JJ’s Luke, while John and Daisy are sharing Chewie’s fur suit and broke the door down? Makes sense to me.
Okay but this just really underlines how desperate some people at Disney/LFL were to have JJ back. Also they must really have offered JJ something substantial to return when he initially said he didn’t want to. And I doubt it is just money, he could get that easier and with less risk elsewhere.
Paramount had every right to keep JJ to the contract he’d signed yet chose to accommodate him on this? Yeah I know Disney is a freaking mastodon, but Paramount isn’t exactly a small time indie company is it? Sounds like JJ is a guy who can pretty much name his projects and conditions as he pleases.
Finally, did this person take a single look at JJ’s IMDB profile and the huge number of projects he’s been involved in since TFA premiered and till now? Like, the man has been the opposite of idle.
@lj-writes Funny how, on the other hand, we barely hear from RJ’s projects 🤔🤔🤔🤔
If your first reason for why J.J. Abrams was chosen as the Episode IX director is basically “he has time on his hands,” then your “analysis” is probably shit and not worth reading.
Not only did he already have an agreement with Paramount, they actually accommodated him so he can work on SW and another studio can’t come snap him up. That’s how busy and in demand he is, that he had to rearrange his entire work schedule and his preexisting agreement with a major studio–a change it agreed to because it wants him so badly–in order to do IX.
Readily available? Fuck outta here. J.J. didn’t come back because he had nothing better to do, he came back because he badly wanted to. And likely, I suspect, because he was begged to.
Bob Iger was banging on JJ’s door with Boyega and Ridley waiting in the backseat of his whip throwing puppy dog eyes at JJ.
🤢 Johnson apologist
So basically Iger is the Rey to JJ’s Luke, while John and Daisy are sharing Chewie’s fur suit and broke the door down? Makes sense to me.
Okay but this just really underlines how desperate some people at Disney/LFL were to have JJ back. Also they must really have offered JJ something substantial to return when he initially said he didn’t want to. And I doubt it is just money, he could get that easier and with less risk elsewhere.
Paramount had every right to keep JJ to the contract he’d signed yet chose to accommodate him on this? Yeah I know Disney is a freaking mastodon, but Paramount isn’t exactly a small time indie company is it? Sounds like JJ is a guy who can pretty much name his projects and conditions as he pleases.
Finally, did this person take a single look at JJ’s IMDB profile and the huge number of projects he’s been involved in since TFA premiered and till now? Like, the man has been the opposite of idle.
I am nearly positive that JJ’s agreement with Paramount came with a penalty clause in case of breach of contract. Either Paramount agreed to waive it because they preferred to modify the agreement rather than have JJ pay it and walk, or Disney/LF agreed to pay the penalty (or whatever portion of it, since JJ wasn’t in full breach) to Paramount so JJ can work on IX. And that’s on top of whatever they’re paying for JJ’s work. Both Paramount and the Mouse want JJ, bad.
I was actually going to leave out the IMDB profile comparisons because a lot of JJ’s credits since 2016 are as executive director, which can mean anything from “I lent the project my big important name without doing anything” to “I did everything that wasn’t anyone else’s job.” With him I’m guessing it was somewhere in between, like bringing money into the projects plus differing levels of creative work. But even assuming he only put in work into half the listed projects, the comparison between him and RJ is hilarious or sad depending on how you look at it. They’re not even in the same playing field.
This is RJ between TLJ and… actually he has nothing after TLJ other than the untitled first movie in the trilogy that has no release date yet, so I decided to be generous and went back 10 years.
And yeah, these are director credits as opposed to producer credits and maybe it is too soon for RJ to be working again or something, except JJ’s been working nonstop after TFA and has a video game that he was creative director for coming out in 2019 in addition to EpIX. RJ doesn’t have anything going on since TLJ, not as a producer, not as a writer or anything else that I can find. But, you know, I bet he’s beat and needs his rest unlike that slacker JJ.
L.J.'s Obsessions 