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Fight Scene Autopsy: The Last Jedi Throne Room

#Phonepunk#

Banned


this is a really fascinating frame by frame breakdown of this fight. this guy is all about medieval lore, combat, etc. and goes through the historical uses of sword combat and how this movie is a bunch of flashy nonsense.

i did not realize just how sloppy it is until i saw this. the timing is horrible and the choreography makes no sense a lot of times. there are moments where there is a clear opening and the guards simply wait in place. or run away. multiple times the guards just take a step back or act like they got hurt and flinch away. it's silly.

the scene where Rey is holding her lightsaber vertically and the guard is pulling her in is hilarious. he shows that all you would have to do to escape is put your sword in a horizontal "block" position. later on she does a move where she drops a lighstaber and has her arm wrapped around a guard's which makes no sense at all aside from Rian thought it looked cool.

there is a scene where a guard straight up loses a weapon. the guy with the twin daggers, who has that "badass" intro, one of his daggers disappears during the fight! and it isn't that he threw it away during battle, they literally shot him holding it away from Rey and CGI'd it out. they probably did this because the guard had the dagger aimed directly at Rey's stomach and instead of killing her like would happen in a real fight, he moved the dagger away from her, where they caught it in post, and CGI'd it out. hilarious. maybe her force powers are far beyond anything we've expected?

call it nitpicky, but if the entire thrust of the scene is supposed to be "Look at how badass this fight is" then yeah might as well pick it apart. people crap on the OT fights but at least they were realistic and had deeper levels than just looking flashy. George Lucas always had story elements in his fights, they were never just for show. this one pretty much is and it's a sloppy executed, flashy mess. no parts of the OT fights feel so obviously fake or showy. there is no part in the OT where Vader's lightsaber just disappears in the middle of a fight.
 
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Gargus

Banned
So the movie is about space jedi, monsters, speed of light ships, an evil empire, a multi species rebellion, all set in a universe that doesn't exist and you decide to talk about how unrealistic a battle is with light sabers?
 

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
While interesting you could do this with pretty much any fight scene especially any with more than two people.
Vader's lightsaber may not disappear but Obiwans does become just a stick for a split second.
 
So the movie is about space jedi, monsters, speed of light ships, an evil empire, a multi species rebellion, all set in a universe that doesn't exist and you decide to talk about how unrealistic a battle is with light sabers?

Uh, yeah. Fantasy elements do not give an excuse for shit to not make sense. Worlds should have an internal logic to them.
 

Dr.Guru of Peru

played the long game
Meh, you could do this for every single movie fight scene ever. These things are not meant to be played in slow motion and analysed, but I guess Star Wars manlets are a persistent bunch.
 

JimiNutz

Banned
Meh, you could do this for every single movie fight scene ever. These things are not meant to be played in slow motion and analysed, but I guess Star Wars manlets are a persistent bunch.

I get your point but it's not necessarily true. There is a series on YouTube where a stuntman analysis fight scenes and some are definitely more 'realistic' or at least make more logical sense, when they are choreographed well.
 

Ulysses 31

Member
Meh, you could do this for every single movie fight scene ever. These things are not meant to be played in slow motion and analysed, but I guess Star Wars manlets are a persistent bunch.
How many other movies have disappearing weapons that allows the protagonist to survive? :ROFLMAO:

Sure you could point out flaws in many other movies but TLJ just has so many sloppy mistakes that it deserves to be made fun off, especially considering how much money went into that production.
 

Ulysses 31

Member
So the movie is about space jedi, monsters, speed of light ships, an evil empire, a multi species rebellion, all set in a universe that doesn't exist and you decide to talk about how unrealistic a battle is with light sabers?
Dude, there's many videos that go into the idiotic plot and world building of the TLJ and even TFA, this video's about that specific scene or are you expecting a video that covers 95% of all the flaws with TLJ because that's gonna be a long ass video.
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
These things are not meant to be played in slow motion and analysed
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film is a visual medium. if a film fails to convey the characters are realistically in danger, it lowers the thrill. if i am seeing these guards running away, even if it is to the peripheral of my focus, it is registering in my mind. i am not blind. i am seeing everything in the frame that this movie is showing me. these things make the enemy look weaker and weaker, which just underlines how BS the whole "This how awesome this fight is!"moment. it also underlines how BS "Rey and Kylo are badass fighters" when they are fighting people who are running away from them and throwing their weapons away. LOL Vader never did anything that silly. if you can't see the difference you are lacking in vision.

the thing is, when you show the enemies being so bad at their jobs, it makes the whole thing feel fake. we know what we are seeing is bullshit, that they should have re-done a few of these takes, that the actor is too early and the guards end up waiting for them, you can see the hesitation. film is about convincing people that a series of images is true. whether this succeeds or fails is subjective, but for me, this fails on a basic film level. the enemies are not convincing and thus not threatening and thus the scene is like kids playing in a rubber room w no consequences. them idiotically fighting over their dad's lightsaber afterwards only drove this point further. these are just selfish kids fighting over their parents toys.

people go on and on about RJ defying fan service but this entire scene coasts by on nothing but. when you actually look at what is happening, it is silly, cartoon style idiocy. it is 100% fan service, this scene, with Reylo working together to defeat super tough guards that are all red in front of a burning backdrop. there is nothing of value for the story or anything that comes of it. they don't team up. they don't take down the FO. nothing changes. it's pure tease, it is there for fans to post gifs from online. it's a scene lifted from ROTJ and rebooted into a Blu Ray commercial that looks good on HD tvs.

the thing is, the lightsaber fights usually had a story to them. Obi Wan and Vader's has this cautious confrontation to it. Luke vs Vader in ESB takes places in a number of environments, including various force powers, and a dismemberment. this is a fully static "COOL FIGHT" in a single location where the bad guys are all red shirt randoms who die and nobody ever uses the force and everything is staged to first and foremost "LOOK COOL". but the fighting is actually crap. at least Lucas was ripping off the classic adventure swordmen, these guys are just faking cartoons. it adds to an overall feeling that they don't really care, since the details aren't that important to them. what matters is the animated gifs you can get out of this. it is there to hype the visual, it is superficial pandering, nothing more.
 
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kunonabi

Member
Meh, you could do this for every single movie fight scene ever. These things are not meant to be played in slow motion and analysed, but I guess Star Wars manlets are a persistent bunch.

I noticed most of these problems when I saw it in the theatre. It was such an obviously flawed scene that I was shocked that mostly everyone else was calling it the best thing ever.
 

#Phonepunk#

Banned
3d5cly.gif


dagger guy gets a few funny shots. the guard kicks Rey and she lands on the ground face first and they don't attack or do anything for over 4 seconds. instead they stand there and slowly walk forward while letting her get up and wildly swing twice at nothing.

3d5cvb.gif


from the look of things this guard slices her in the belly with that dagger he has in his left hand, and she shrieks out in pain on the soundtrack, but the dagger soon vanishes, thanks to CGI, and he just hangs that arm off to the side waiting for her to kill him. this hold they get locked into at the end here, it is baffling.
I noticed most of these problems when I saw it in the theatre. It was such an obviously flawed scene that I was shocked that mostly everyone else was calling it the best thing ever.
it is fan service for the shippers and also very pretty look at all the fire and shiny red suits. teasing Reylo is probably the most fan service thing the ST could have done tbh. this scene was his insurance for the rest of the film.
 
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s34ab

Banned
I remember seeing shitty cam-rip-gifs of the fight scenes the day after it came out and laughing about how horrible the choreography was.
I noticed most of these problems when I saw it in the theatre. It was such an obviously flawed scene that I was shocked that mostly everyone else was calling it the best thing ever.
That was mind boggling. People were praising things like this and it made me wonder if I had fallen into a parallel universe or something.
 

plushyp

Member
3d5cly.gif


dagger guy gets a few funny shots. the guard kicks Rey and she lands on the ground face first and they don't attack or do anything for over 4 seconds. instead they stand there and slowly walk forward while letting her get up and wildly swing twice at nothing.
At this point I fully expect Rian Johnson to justify it by saying that Rey is swatting flies here with her lightsaber.
 
It is one of those scenes that on first blush, due to so much going on, it looks okay, but even at the time I felt things were off. On closer inspection, it totally falls apart, and not even in the usual Hollywood fight scene ways, in ways that clearly show whoever was in charge of the scene was half assing it. It feels an awful lot like the scene was terribly rushed and they couldn't get the proper choreography complete and practice in.
 

drganon

Member
I didnt like the fact that the main guys were in red and fighting against a red back drop, which made it hard to follow the action. That's on top of not caring about anyone involved so the outcome was meaningless to me.
 

Pagusas

Elden Member
I think it’s aesthetically sloppy as well, lack of proper reflections, bad looking fire, and just an ugly color pallet overall.
 

poppabk

Cheeks Spread for Digital Only Future
I noticed most of these problems when I saw it in the theatre. It was such an obviously flawed scene that I was shocked that mostly everyone else was calling it the best thing ever.
The Raid gets massive plaudits for it's coreography, but for example the Mad Dog fight scene at the end, there are multiple instances of one of the two brothers standing around groggy until the instant the other brother goes down when they instantly go from groggy to perfectly alert. Still a great fight scene. We all understand or should understand that a fight scene with multiple combatants can only look cool if you take some liberties. The difference is, if you hated the movie up to that point you are less likely to give it leeway.
 

Romulus

Member
This is fight scenes is better and its a fan reimagining. Blows my mind a big budget movie like TLJ falls short on so many levels.

 
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