The day after watching The Last Jedi in theaters people asked me and my wife how we liked it. There was an awkward pause as both of us simultaneously realized that we barely remembered anything from the movie—the only response we could give was that it was forgettable.
So, if "it's weird that I didn't remember it at all one day later" counts as something that sticks with me and changes me, then yeah, I guess so?
Nice observation. kind of off-topic for an article on literature, but I've been trying to put my finger on what's been so wrong with movies and TV lately, and I think you've nailed it: It's that there really aren't many that are memorable anymore. I've watched a bunch of new movies in the last few years, and more and more often, I sit there an hour later and think "I can't remember anything all that interesting happening in the movie." I mean, there was action and conflict, protagonists and antagonists, and I can tell you the movie's genre and describe a few of the characters. But the dialog was bland and mumbly, the cinematography was all gray and washed out, the setting was kind of standard for that sort of movie, there were no interesting character arcs or twists, and it all kind of played out exactly as you'd expect a movie like that to play out.
Willing to consider that maybe it's just old age and cognitive decline, but I feel something is just off about a lot of recent movies.
I dunno. Everything, Everywhere, All At Once was widely praised, and I saw it twice in theaters; and while I can remember a few key moments, I couldn't tell you the full plot from beginning to end. I still feel like I took something away from the experience of watching it (particularly the second time, with my mother). I'm beginning to think that there is an overemphasis on the breaking-down, atomizing, and overanalysis of fictional works. There's a place for that, of course, and such endeavors can bring you great insight. But maybe a work is an experience unto itself. You can take away something useful and meaningful from just being there and engaging with it as a viewer and reader as it streams through your sensory experience, and sitting with the emotions it brings afterwards. If that aspect of it didn't matter - wasn't of principal importance, even - wouldn't you be better off just saving time by reading Cliff's Notes/watching CinemaSins/a Youtube Essay, where the Important Parts are chopped up and fed to you in a most palatable manner?
In 2022, it seemed like every Asian American raved about how good the movie is, just like when Crazy Rich Asians came out in 2018. I believe I'm in the target demographic for Everything Everywhere All at Once.
I fell asleep halfway through the movie and I tried my best to stay awake, even after my friends woke me up. The most interesting parts of the movie existed in the real-world plot but the movie kept running away from it. Even then, all universes (real-world included) had cringe-worthy levels of cliché metanarrative. It was a chore to make it to the end.
It's even worse that any criticism of the movie was actively shut down and nothing negative about it could be found online. If you did find a shred of criticism, viewers either accused you of ignorance, unappreciative of art, or racism.
I liked the actors playing the parents. I thought Stephanie Hsu and Ke Huy Quan were good in the real-life scenes.
> If you did find a shred of criticism, viewers either accused you of ignorance, unappreciative of art, or racism.
To be fair, the first 2 out of those 3 things are the coming go-to accusations when it comes to making a “you didn’t like this and this is why you are wrong” point. For any kind of media.
The last one is situational, and depending on the movie could be swapped with something else. So I wouldn’t worry much about those accusations.
With that said, I haven’t watched Everything Everywhere All at Once myself yet (it is on my “very soon” list), but all of my friends (who all have very different tastes in movies) ended up liking it. So I am a bit optimistic about this one.
Which is a sad commentary on Asian Americans. There’s multiple, massive movie industries in Asia, which are dependent on non-Asians for nothing. You can go your whole life watching nothing but Indian, Chinese, Japanese, or Korean content.
Films from India, China, Japan, and Korea have almost nothing to do with "Asian AMERICANS". We don't generally consider films from Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, etc to have anything to do with "white Americans".
That said, movies are made by (a) people with the chutzpah to make them and (b) funding. You'd think if Asian American's want more movies about Asian American issues and/or staring Asian Americans, they have enough connections to get the funding to do it. No need to wait for permission from any other groups. Just do it!
> Films from India, China, Japan, and Korea have almost nothing to do with "Asian AMERICANS". We don't generally consider films from Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, etc to have anything to do with "white Americans".
If an “Asian” American can’t relate to content from Asia, then they’re just a generic American. Which is fine. But then they should just watch other generic American content. It’s not like Swedish Americans are sitting around demanding more movies with Stellan Skarsgård.
Here’s a new way of thinking about it. “Asian American films” are generic American films. Some generic American films are about Italian-American crime families in New York, some are about Indigenous teenagers in Oklahoma, some are about detectives in Minneapolis. And some are about Chinese-American immigrants in Los Angeles county.
Generic American film audiences often get excited about films that tell stories they can easily identify with or that speak to their own life experiences, especially if those films are relatively rare.
In your ignorance, you accidentally captured the scenario that American Born “Asians” find themselves in. As second or third generation Americans, they aren’t quite homogenized enough to be Americans. Bonus points for racist attitudes. But as not born in China/India/etc, they are obviously soft decadent Americans.
It’s like saying the Godfather isn’t valid art because Fellini made movies in Italy. Different world.
The other obvious issue with respect to the PRC in particular is that you cannot export content that violates certain standards in China. Hollywood self-censors to keep the market broad. Other entities such as the NBA do as well.
> As second or third generation Americans, they aren’t quite homogenized enough to be Americans.
They are as homogenized as they choose to be. I enjoy M. Night Shyamalan‘s cameos, where there will be a random brown guy in a town full of white people and nobody will comment on it. Because that’s what life is like as an Asian in America 99% of the time.
> But as not born in China/India/etc, they are obviously soft decadent Americans.
But they are though. Which is why “Asian” American content is usually so awful to watch as an immigrant. So often it’s about rejecting Asian culture and values in favor of European ones, while complaining about people sometimes making fun of your school lunch or noticing that you look like your parents didn’t fight in the American Revolution. (I’m looking at you Mindy Kaling.)
> It’s like saying the Godfather isn’t valid art because Fellini made movies in Italy.
I’ve never met an Italian American that purports to have some special affinity for The Godfather. They don’t care whether Coppola was Italian nor do they care Brando wasn’t the least bit Italian. It would be silly for a second or third generation Italian American to hold out the distinctiveness of their identity the way you see similarly assimilated Asian Americans do.
The Godfather is famously popular with Italian Americans, to a degree that was newsworthy in 1972 and people still write think pieces about it today. My cousin on the Italian side of the family started a Godfather-themed sandwich shop in Saugus, where he was out-competed by the existing Goodfellas-themed sandwich shop in Saugus. Italian Americans love The Godfather like Irish Americans love the Dropkick Murphys.
Everyone’s different. My neighbor is Greek and 90, she doesn’t speak fluent English. Her kids and grandkids are still Greek to the core but are regular Americans too. Great people.
I’m a second generation Irish American. I grew up in a NYC neighborhood that was heavily Irish and Italian. My grandparents and parents were into Irish orgs. My grandparents were in a fraternal society for the county they were from, we had a lot of extended family within a few minutes of where we lived.
That affinity faded, for good and for bad. My uncle dating an Italian girl was mildly scandalous in the 80s. (“My son, getting married at St Anthony’s parish? Gasp!”) Thats not a thing for our generation.
We’re fortunate to live in a society where it’s ok to do you. Art is an expression of how we think and feel, and these expressions are a good thing. How awesome is it the the mass culture of Indians has evolved from some version of Apu from the Simpsons to some level of actual representation of the cultures of the subcontinent?
> We’re fortunate to live in a society where it’s ok to do you. Art is an expression of how we think and feel, and these expressions are a good thing
That sentiment is an example of white American individualism. It would be out of place in say India or China, but similar sentiment is widely embraced in “Asian” American identity and media. Oftentimes it will be in the form of conflict between whitewashed children and their Asian parents. Which highlights my point—it’s brown/yellow-face over white American culture. It’s a fabricated cultural identity worn as “pieces of flair.”
> That affinity faded, for good and for bad. My uncle dating an Italian girl was mildly scandalous in the 80s. (“My son, getting married at St Anthony’s parish? Gasp!”) Thats not a thing for our generation.
Because they’re not meaningfully Irish or Italian at this point. If there were real cultural differences, then there would be conflict.
> How awesome is it the the mass culture of Indians has evolved from some version of Apu from the Simpsons to some level of actual representation of the cultures of the subcontinent?
To the contrary, it’s a farce. The “representation” of Indians in media these days is mostly just brown people acting like white people. Apu is much more realistic.
This is making a sweeping assumption that Americans are a homogenised society, which they are anything but given it's mostly composed of Nth generation immigrants.
I agree, it is a sad commentary on Asian Americans. I have had the same opinion for years, so I'm glad to see someone else write it. Aggrandized uncritical positive reception and raving about the newest Asian American movie reeks of media representation desperation.
Pan-Asianism is a very weird phenomenon to me that seems common in the USA outside of California (very popular in Midwest and East Coast). Asian Americans have an "Asian American identity" that, while I understand why it exists due to how average Americans treat Asian Americans, I find very odd because it conflates a huge range and their happiness basically hinges on what white Americans think. Part of donning this "Asian American" identity reduces the ability to appreciate massive, wholly-contained independent Asian film industries.
I enjoy watching Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean films, but so far, when I watch an "Asian American" film, I end up rolling my eyes hard. Films centering around "Asian American"-specific issues are not fun to watch. They feel cringy because they exhaust their main points within minutes on-screen.
I'm glad pan-Asianism isn't as big in the Bay Area simply because coalescence isn't as necessary when respective Asian populations become sufficiently large.
Seems an unpopular opinion but I thought EEAAO was pretty daft and I'm surprised at the reception it received and all the Oscars it won.
Now don't get me wrong, it's a fun flick and I'm genuinely glad for the three actors that won an Oscar (bless 'em), but it seemed like fan service from a waning institution trying to generate goodwill more than cinematic mastery from anyone involved.
The film is slightly better than a super bowl Pepsi commercial. There was nothing in this film that was any better than recent Marvel films, and none of them deserve awards for basic stories, basic dialogue and a lot of flashing lights and "multiverse".
We all love googly eyes, but that's not enough to carry a film.
Agreed, EEAAO feels like a movie written by a 22 year old after they watched The Matrix and read some Camus, and somehow made each influence more derivative.
I most certainly do not, if it’s bad it’s bad. If a movie tries to do something stupid and succeeds, it has just succeeded at doing something stupid. Being successfully stupid is not something to be proud of or celebrated.
There's been a tremendous amount of media produced in the decades since recording film became simple. While the amount of trash produced may have changed one way or the other, the trash gets forgotten. It's easy to look back on a time where an iconic series was produced, say MASH, but forget Mobile One was of the same era.
I find the same to be true regardless of topic, the cars or tools of decades past that have survived often have great reputations, because they were built to survive. Those that weren't, have been forgotten.
Most media is forgettable and always has been. If anything has changed it's that we're consuming more of it, and it takes more for any given thing to stand out enough for it be something special, while more of what we consume isn't the peak of whats on offer.
There's also less shared context. E.g. I firmly believe that a lot of our memories of a lot of the media we've consumed in the past is down to conversations about it reinforcing it as much as the initial memory.
I remember every line from Lord of the Rings now because so many memes were made of it.
But then you have e.g. Avatar where at best you remember "I see you" and... nothing else, besides high level things like blue aliens and jungles, because there's no memes. That was the weird thing about Avatar, one of the highest grossing films of all time, but nobody talks about it.
I share your experience and would like to make an unsolicited recommendation of a recent movie that's stuck with me more than anything else I've seen in the last few years: First Reformed. Give it a shot!
When people ask me about The Rise of Skywalker I tell them it was fucking awesome. It had:
- mecha-zombie palpatine
- a daft-punk sniper lady
- a crazy sith-goth-senate
- lightsaber fight on some craggy rocks in the water
- a big bad spaceship (I think)
All you need to really appreciate the genius of the film is to day-drink 2/3 a bottle of single malt then nurse a double of black label during the movie to keep the buzz going.
Yeah, but people often don't remember or aren't moved by classics as well. The response is usually to lament their lack of attention span, or tell them that they didn't get it.
It ends up becoming an example of The Emperor's New clothes, where it's been decided ahead of time that if a layman disagrees, it's merely a sign of ignorance.
I think it's that people often aren't presented classics in the right context. I LOVED Moby Dick, but it's because I played Dishonored and wanted more of the whaling theme.
But if I had to read it for school? I would have hated it.
A lot of very good books are ruined by throwing them at kids who aren't in the same mindset that the author is targeting. Meanwhile great literature for children gets ignored because adults don't respect it.
I actually think if someone has a deep understanding of a classic, they have a good idea who would enjoy it and who wouldn't. For just about everything else, we accept that different people have different tastes, and just because something can be great to one group of people doesn't mean that it's going to be great for another. I can guess which people I know would like a movie like Jaws, and which wouldn't.
If you really understand a piece of media, understand what the author is trying to accomplish, what choices are being made narratively and stylistically, what narrative tradition the author is consciously or unconsciously following, etc., then you should have a pretty good idea of who this work would appeal to and who it wouldn't appeal to.
If someone comes away from a classic with the mindset "everyone should like this if they're smart enough/presented with it in the right way", it suggests they have a very shallow understanding of the classic.
Everyone has their own blinders. And not every movie is for everyone.
Shouldn't really expect that a movie (or a book, or a scroll) from 50 years ago or 5000 miles away is speaking to the modern local audience. The world is diverse and it changes.
And meanwhile my wife and I have three Iliad translations on our shelf, which come down regularly as part of everyday conversation. If you last read it as a teenager it would be worth trying again—Emily Wilson's is very accessible!
I was a giant Star Wars fan as a kid—watched them on vhs so many times I could re-play the trilogy in my head, every line, every cut, every musical cue; games, comics, way too many novels (seriously, in hindsight any is too many, even the “good” ones were bad—yes, even those). Toys. That crappy CCG. All of it.
Lapsed after AOTC, but, still, quite a fan. I definitely don’t hate Star Wars.
I’d rank The Last Jedi as the 3rd best Star Wars movie and my 4th favorite. I was very surprised at the Internet reaction to it—came out of the theater like “oh wow, that was kinda almost good, people will be so happy!” LOL.
You may have appreciated an attempt at something different, as I might have, but it didn’t land.
Luke was an “older brother” to me; seeing him changed from the epitome of hope to a milk-drinking murderer was repugnant—a betrayal. Not just bad but insulting too. The “Yoda” impersonator insults the Jedi books. Hamill said as much before he was shut up.
I can't judge the sequels, I don't like them very well myself. But, 20 years ago the prequels came out, and at the time people were like "wtf is this?"
But now, 20 years later the movies are still very much in people's minds, they get memed, their actors make (re)appearances in contemporary Star Wars related productions etc. So they must've done something right?
Original trilogy was not Shakespeare either but a lot of fun.
The prequels were simply bad, but not insulting like the sequels. They’re adjacent to the top three franchise of history so many people saw them. Memes tend to make fun of them, from memory.
I think the mistake is that after the original trilogy most fans just seem to want "more of the same" because they don't see the original trilogy as three separate films but rather "a thing". Spoilers from here on out.
The Last Jedi made perfect sense for what it was meant to be in the context of its trilogy. Yes, it had many faults but that is hardly a new thing for a Star Wars movie (except enough time has passed since the prequels that the kind of people complaining TLJ was "too woke" are more than likely to find reasons to argue that the prequels were actually great because they're comfortable handwaving their many weaknesses).
Most fans expected "another Star Wars adventure" following the common formula seen in so much Star Wars media: a chosen one finding their hidden power and overcoming obstacles to come out on top at the end with maybe a hint at a greater evil to be defeated the next time around. But that's not the story of a second movie in a Star Wars trilogy, that's the story of any episode in an episodic TV show. Trilogies have narrative arcs. And the second movie in a Star Wars trilogy is where The Empire Strikes Back, the mentor dies to give way to the underprepared hero, evil triumphs and all hope seems lost.
The movie did that. Luke Skywalker stalled the big bad long enough to give the unprepared Rey a chance to escape as he sacrificed himself the same way Obi Wan stalled Vader before allowing himself to be struck down. The rebels were decimated and forced to flee and regroup. All of this was very much beat-by-beat what The Empire Strikes Back did before.
But it was also a new movie in a new trilogy and it had to carry the universe forward rather than merely rehash what had been done before. The first trilogy had given many the idea that Jedi powers were entirely tied to bloodline, like a royal claim to the throne. The second had expanded on this with literal blood tests for Jedi powers, showing the Jedi to take kids with the right blood results out of their families to raise them under their watch and then demonstrating the futility and pointlessness of this approach as Anakin single-handedly murders all the younglings and wipes out most of the Jedis. It also showed the Jedi system as being contradictory and too obsessed with regulations while being not only incapable to defend its own but also mostly disinterested in preventing the rise of the Empire by eschewing politics.
The third trilogy allowed a fresh take on the Jedis: Luke's attempt to recreate the system that had allowed his father to become Darth Vader failed again by bringing forth Kylo Ren, his own fear of failure ruining any chance to save Kylo Ren from turning to the Dark Side. Meanwhile Rey, like Anakin a complete nobody with no noteworthy lineage, turned out to be uniquely talented with the force, punching above her weight even when confronted with the "classically trained" (but lacking serious guidance now completely undisciplined) Kylo Ren at least long enough to survive the outmatched encounter in the first movie.
The second movie of the new trilogy did what had to be done: Luke realizes the folly of trying to adhere strictly to the sacred texts and destroys them. Yes, this was not strictly necessary but the act was primarily symbolic as we hadn't directly seen much of them before: as Luke had to learn and Yoda tried to teach him before, being a Jedi was not about learning from books and only doing the right thing but about failure and confronting your fears and weaknesses not to simply defeat them but to learn from them. This is why Anakin fell for the dark side and why Luke failed to save Kylo Ren: rather than learn to acknowledge his fear and to see failure as an opportunity for growth, the fear had corrupted them. This is also why the ending scene with random kids using the force mattered: yes, it was very much on the nose but the point was that the force does not spring from the Jedi's sacred texts, the force comes from within and becoming a Jedi means growing as a person, not just getting better at using the force.
But that would have meant allowing Star Wars to evolve and that's not what many fans wanted, especially not when they were so deeply afraid of "politics" entering their allegory for a communist rebellion defeating the overwhelming American empire - err, sorry, I meant very serious apolitical sci-fi franchise. After all, they were already being forced into uncomfortable conversations about rooting for the genocidal ethnostate (not an ethnostate! they stopped using clones some time in the original trilogy but also it's woke identity politics that the storm trooper defector had to be played by a Black guy) wearing the sci-fi equivalent of Waffen-SS uniforms (there we go again calling everyone you don't like a nazi).
If you paid attention, the original trilogy was always more about the triumph of compassion over brute force and of friendship overcoming what a lone individual can not. Luke being potentially the most powerful force user would have meant nothing if he wouldn't have had Uncle Ben and Yoda helping him master his potential, his friends give him the emotional strength to continue and the rebels (and Ewoks) give him the opportunity to challenge Vader - and then Anakin's suffocated love for his own child winning against the Emperor's conditioning and allowing him to save Luke and defeat the Emperor.
And then Skywalker came out and threw all of that away in order to give us more slop and even bring back the Emperor so we could have a big fight scene with Kylo Ren randomly deciding to switch sides. Even if you disliked TLJ for the blue-haired girlboss blueballing our fighter hero or the Asian chick getting too much screentime or Luke being a pacifist or the gambling planet being a socialist soapbox or whatever complaint about politics you want to level at it, I challenge you to defend Rise of the Skywalker as a dignified Star Wars sequel rather than a hurriedly strewn together fan service shlock fest that completely flies in the face of both the trilogy and the larger narrative and thematic arcs altogether.
Sorry for ranting. I'll now step off my soap box again.
It's a false dichotomy that a movie has to be a "fresh take" or a rehash, with nothing in between or combination. Nihil sub sōle novum.
And different/unexpected != good, not by a long shot.
Simply, if core characters are changed to their opposites it fails to be the same story any longer. Change the name to "Space Opera" and no one would have cared.
I misspoke earlier when I implied agenda before, which while heavy-handed, wasn't what made me really angry. As mentioned elsewhere in thread it was the betrayal of Luke and Yoda.
(Also, the Empire was always modeled after fascist Nazi Germany, even down to the black, white, red colors, and storm-trooper terminology.)
If you want to see a progressive film made by grownups, watch "Brokeback Mountain", not this disrespectful pile of garbage.
> Also, the Empire was always modeled after fascist Nazi Germany, even down to the black, white, red colors, and storm-trooper terminology.
Yes but it was also explicitly an allegory for the US in the Vietnam War. George Lucas stated as much in an interview.
> betrayal of Luke and Yoda
I'm still not sure what you see as betrayal. You seem upset with the decision to torch the sacred texts and I admit that was at least a bit heavy handed for what it was trying to do but it's hardly a betrayal. Disney had already wiped out the Extended Universe with the first movie so that can't be what colors your perception at this point.
There's nothing in the other two trilogies to suggest that Yoda would be deeply invested in the Jedi texts. If anything, his most important lesson for Luke is that he is afraid to fall for the Dark Side. TLJ simply revisits this fear as something he didn't fully overcome and that led to Ben's transformation into Kylo Ren. It doesn't portray Ben in a sympathetic light here either, he was already a flawed student and burdened by his own insecurities and shortcomings so Luke merely gave him an excuse to choose the Dark Side - and we're shown conflicting retellings of those events anyway with both retellings being clearly motivated and unreliable.
TFA set up Luke to have failed because there was clearly no big Jedi Academy in his hermitage and if he trained new Jedi before he must have had some reason to have stopped. TLJ gave him a motivation to retreat: his fear had never left him and by losing his nephew and best friend's son to the Dark Side over it, he chose to retreat to avoid causing more harm.
TLJ also gave Luke a full redemption arc. The destruction of the sacred texts symbolically throws off the shackles of dogma that he upheld in his training of new Jedi but that ultimately turned out to be inadequate to overcome his and Ben's own flaws. This establishes that Rey's Jedi training will be different and have to be a strengthening of her character rather than her discipline or abilities. Luke then sacrifices himself not only to help her and the other rebels escape but also to overcome Kylo Ren not with superior power but with compassion and intellect. He plays Kylo Ren's fury and desire for revenge like a fiddle and demonstrates its futility and impotence.
The prequel trilogy overindulged in the "pew pew lasers and swordfights" aspect of the setting the original trilogy provided, TLJ went back to the characters and the meaning behind their actions. It's kinda ironic you keep saying TLJ betrayed the characters because for all I can see it's the first new movie that takes the characters seriously and goes more than just skin deep.
You’re over analyzing the movie. It’s not nearly as profound or well thought out as you imply.
The sequel trilogy folks even admitted that they winged it and didn’t consult each other, on purpose. Resulting in a conflicted mess.
The direct take is that the epitome of hope character—who never gave up on anyone—is changed to an angry milk-drinking murderer who’s main plot point is giving up on family. In the most condescending way, at that.
The author didn’t understand or respect the character. Hamill agreed.
That you are not editing posts down to make a coherent point is perhaps a clue why you don’t appreciate ‘economy of story.’ But you should:
“perfection is attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away” –Exupéry
So, if "it's weird that I didn't remember it at all one day later" counts as something that sticks with me and changes me, then yeah, I guess so?