Sneak Peek of the The Last Jedi Documentary “The Director and the Jedi”
On the eve of The Last Jedi‘s digital release, IMDB shows us more than 11 minutes of the behind the scenes documentary by Anthony Wonke.
One of the most anticipated features of the Blu-ray is definitely the making of The Last Jedi called “The Director and the Jedi”. It spans the entire production process including pre-production, first actor rehearsals, concept art, storyboard planning, and even some deleted scenes material culminating with the wrap party in London. Even George Lucas makes an appearance! Check it out right here:
Thanks IMDB for showing us this massive teaser.
Getting an insight into his thought process could give us an idea of where his trilogy might go. I still don’t hold the TLJ as the definitive answer to his process. Sure it’s an example, but it was his first try and picking up after someone else launched it.
We all know my most hated scene anyways and it wasn’t really plot related, but more universe related.
I don’t. What’s this scene?
Hyperkaze. I can’t get past it. Not the idea… the execution and result. Had it just collided with Snoke’s ship and done massive damage I’d be fine with the scene entirely! Think it’s cool even.
I’m doing my best not to turn this into another rant by me. I’ve gotten into this too many times before. So see it’s not really a knock on his storytelling. Just the basic understanding of how naval battles have been fought since the advent of hyperspace travel!
“Had it just collided with Snoke’s ship and done massive damage I’d be fine with the scene entirely!”
But, that is exactly what happened – Supremacy was simply too large to be destroyed. Unless you speak about the destruction of Star Destroyers around the Supremacy. The novelization explains that the speed and impact turned Raddus into plasma that continued to travel after the impact destroying everything in its path.
Don’t get this the wrong way, but the ‘advent of hyperspace travel’ made me laugh. You mean: ‘a part of fictional world building that continues to be explored and developed in-world as the fictional time passes’? 🙂
Right. When I say that I meant in the Star Wars universe. It’s important because the history of it’s naval conflicts clearly weren’t designed around such eventualities. Also having a book clean something up outside of the movie really shouldn’t be valid.
That said… it actually doesn’t clear anything up and still leaves me with all the same problems.Basically because of what we have already witnessed in all the canon media to date… makes the effectiveness of the attack a contradiction. It doesn’t make sense given what we’ve been shown so far. It basically up ends naval combat as we know it.
Something that just doesn’t make sense given how long ships have been hyperspace traveling in that universe.
Believe me… I’ve debated this until the cows came home. I’ve yet to see a valid counter argument. I don’t believe there is one other than “It looked cool.”
I simply don’t understand what is that you see as contradictory or a problem. The fact that we never seen it before on screen? But, we actually have – unsuccessful and unintended, but for all intentions and purposes almost the same scene. When X-wings try to jump to hyperspace in Rogue One, they are simply smashed by Vader’s ship. They are too small to make any kind of impact – on a Star Destroyer and Supremacy is a giant. Was Rebellion/Resistance ever in position to throw away a capital ship like Raddus before (because in the history of SW we follow them)? Would even the Empire use, say, a Star Destroyer like this? Against whom? A bunch of gnats?
Sigh… I’m dragged into this again. The Raddus’s size really shouldn’t matter. I know they’ve made the mass argument before, but it doesn’t add up. You could calculate based on it’s size how each other ship’s hyper jump may impact another ship. Given that the Raddus can take out 5 destroyers of equal size and tear off a third of Snoke’s ship. Then it stands to reason a blockade runner could at least take out a Star Destroyer’s command deck.
Which brings into question… why are the navies building such giant war vessels that can be rendered completely vulnerable by a well place hyper space attack? What advantage does the Empire or FO really have if such attacks are possible?
That’s the contradiction. Why has no military adapted to that design? Why isn’t hyperspace attacks a more relevant threat in any of the past scenarios?
If a blockade runner can at least take out a command deck. Why haven’t any naval power developed a hyperspace missile? Essentially a high density metal strapped with a hyper drive? Clearly if hyper drives are as readily available as car engines they can’t be that expensive. Especially small ones.
It doesn’t make sense. It basically can’t make sense. I’m not saying a ship traveling at super speeds wouldn’t be that deadly. Just that naval design up to that point clearly didn’t design itself to deal with it. Typically we’re given the idea hyperspace has been around for a thousand years. Holdo was the only one in all those centuries of war that came up with the idea to desperately attack their enemies in such a fashion?
Do you see my problem?
Why didn’t the Death Star just come out of hyperspace at the right spot to blast Yavin IV into oblivion before the Rebels could react, instead of having to go around the planet for 45 minutes?
Because movies. Excitement. Drama. Suspend your disbelief and just enjoy.
You could make excuses. Plausible ones. The Empire doesn’t track the solar systems movement for every system? So when they jumped they had no idea if the moon would be right there or on the other side. What about hyperspace lanes? Perhaps it needed to follow a specific path? Since the FO didn’t jump in front of the Resistance fleeing… perhaps micro jumps aren’t a thing? Though that’s another contradiction as Finn and Rose jumped easily too and from that “chase.”
Perhaps neither the Empire/FO or Resistance/Rebels don’t want to sacrifice a capital ship to kamikaze an enemy ship? Especially from the Rebel/Resistance perspective, since their always the underdogs, thus don’t have massive expendable fleets to just go sacrificing a few capital ships. There are plausible reasons as to why we don’t see that maneuver more often. But I understand your line of thinking, and I respect your opinion. My Uncle analyzes everything to such an extreme level it often makes watching films with him unbearable. Last night we watched Blade Runner 2049 and he just shot hole after hole into the damn thing to the point that I got up and left the room because it killed the movie for me. But that’s just how he likes to watch movies. He analyzes them on a deeper level than I do, and I respect that. It just drives me nuts sometimes.
Yeah… I’m um. A bit of a problem. It’s only on things I really love. I dissect a little too much sometimes.It’s really unfair to put Star Wars through that much scrutiny. I admit that. I can check my brain at the door and enjoy nonsense like the Fast and the Furious (Dom just survived going 80 MPH into a windshield?) yet here I am debating hyperspace jumps lol.
Lol. That’s just way you watch films. There’s nothing wrong with that. I go pretty deep into certain things too. I have a copy of the Haynes Death Star and Millennium Falcon manual on my shelf. Read them front to back. Nobody needs that much insight lol
It’s only because as a (presumably) long term fan it is dear to you and you want it to match your idea of what SW should be as much as possible. That’s your prerogative as a fan and it’s not a crime.
I am not one of those who especially dislikes Last Jedi, but as someone who is also a long term Star Trek fan a good comparison would be how I feel about Star Trek Discovery. I personally think it lacks the heart and intellect of past Trek that set Trek apart from everything else. A lot don’t agree with me, but for me it’s an essential element to what makes good Trek. So I can understand if you are invested in an aspect of something that makes SW work for you. But, as I am coming to learn, it can be a minority opinion.
Well thank you all for hearing my rants out. This has been rather pleasant. I actually feel good after this. lol… Always nice to have a good discussion where we don’t attack one another.
It’s a rarity on this site anymore.
It’s great, isn’t it? Beats yelling at one another, right?
This discussion will be the nerdiest thing I’ll read all day. I loved it.
Quite. I mean it’s just fantasy entertainment.
Star Trek, especially in the eighties to naughties era, went to huge lengths to tie itself to science and make things as scientific as possible. Yet still, ships fly as if space is two dimensional and where science doesn’t provide an answer you have things like the Heisenberg compensators in the transporters, an entirely invented piece of equipment that “compensates” for what science can’t resolve. In contrast SW hasn’t even come remotely close to even doing that and is pretty much a blank slate when it comes to the science of things so I don’t get the idea that there are rules to follow.
“Why didn’t the Death Star just come out of hyperspace at the right spot to blast Yavin IV into oblivion before the Rebels could react, instead of having to go around the planet for 45 minutes?”
Waiting on a short story in the next anthology about a guy named Bill, and how he screwed up the calculation for the jump.
Damn it, Bill. You had one job.
No, I am sorry. I am not trying to devalue your opinion, I just don’t get it. Have US ships or airplanes essentially changed since WWII (in addition to natural development over time), just because kamikaze existed and suicide attacks were possible? Not really. Are our own vehicles created for every freak possibility? I don’t think so. Earth was hit by giant meteors in the past wiping out the entire species. The probability says we will be hit again. And yet no one invested in a giant shield to protect us. It just doesn’t make sense for the Empire or FO to invest into looooong shot possibility that someone would use a ship like this. And who’s to say this was never used before in a galaxy this huge? But, this is the same galaxy where the Jedi were forgotten within a generation after existing for thousands of year.
I don’t know, maybe I am just to lenient or I simply see GFFA differently. This was one of my favorite scenes in all the Star Wars. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I admit I’m way too analytical about this. It’s silly to be this deep into it. I’m sure Rian’s eyes would glaze over if I started on my rant lol.
For me… it doesn’t make sense given our understanding of the SW universe. That said… I don’t expect them to ever do it again as it does undermine Star Wars battles as we know it. We came to see ships blast one another. Not hyperspace at extreme ranges in single shots.
For the record… I love ramming! I love the idea behind the scene. I just would have tempered how devastating it was. To me blowing off a third of Snoke’s ship and stopping the attack on the fleeing Rebels was perfect.
I think “our understanding” is more your perspective on it.
Well I look at it like this. Every universe… even one’s that are fictional have rules. Breaking them or upsetting them can kind of ruin it. I felt this broke some rules.
Those rules have never really been set out.
I made a comment below about how on Star Trek they went to great lengths to fit as much as they could into existing science and scientific conjecture, but even then you had things like ships fighting two dimensionally despite there being no gravity in space. That was over 800 plus hours of Star Trek.
There comes a point where artistic licence and entertainment has to be balanced against believability and for the most part I don’t see people complain about the rules or science of that scene because if you’re going to complain about the rules of space flight then you also have to ask why the ships all fight two dimensionally.
Well if we’re going the movie magic route. You got me there. No sense for me going into other explanations. I like rules… but if we’re shirking them for effect. I can’t stop that. I just don’t have to like it!
What can you do? It’s the scene I had the most issue with! I tried to convey my reasons for it. I get that it doesn’t mean that much to pretty much everyone else lol.
It’s a last resort, dude. You can’t waste resources like that willy nilly.
Well, not to get too mired in this discussion – but here’s how I kinda look at it. In all the previous Star Wars films, we never saw a “hyperkaze” attack. Maybe that’s because the sides that we saw fighting (the Empire and the Rebellion in the OT, the Republic and the Separatists in the PT) valued their capital ships and their military personnel too much (although the Empire might be questionable in regards to that, since they seemed to send a fair amount of TIE pilots to their doom without bothering to provide their ships with any kind of shields). It makes sense to me that the Rebellion never would have done it. They were a rag-tag fleet and probably placed enormous value on every single capital warship they had and didn’t want to sacrifice any of them if there were other options – along with sacrificing members of their crews. In real world history, the Japanese employed kamikaze tactics against the Allied forces, but it wasn’t something we did to them in return. Our culture was different, and we valued our planes, ships, and soldiers too much. Maybe Holdo’s decision really was a desperate, last-ditch effort to save what was left of the Resistance. She probably knew that if she didn’t at least try it, EVERYONE in the Resistance would likely die – so there was really nothing left to lose. No reason or even ability to “retreat and fight another day” – it wasn’t an option.
As I explained below to Musashi. It doesn’t add up. I know were talking about fictional navies, but at the same time we previously didn’t have this contradiction before. The were clearly built to be large weapons platforms to engage enemies at mid ranges. We all know Lucas wanted to recreate World War 2 in space. So they are a mix of dated ideologies. It’s the future, but we still duke it out at mostly point blank range.
I’m not saying modern understanding of space and that the attack itself doesn’t make sense in reality. It doesn’t make sense in Star War’s reality. Basically it was too modern of a concept to be introduced (at least at it’s current effectiveness) to make sense in the SW universe.
Had it simply be a one for one loss. It’d balance out and make all of your arguments make sense. It’s too costly. However with the way it played out… you’d be a fool not to do it! 5.5 enemy battleships destroyed for a single loss? Especially when the odds are stacked against you. If Holdo can solo launch a cruiser… a droid could probably fling a blockade runner. Manufacturing a bunch of barebones ships designed to hyperspace attack the empire’s might… seems like a forgone conclusion.
Especially since ramming and desperate attacks have been already established. That’s why this new edition… is at odds with the rest of Star Wars history and naval doctrine.
Well, I guess we’ll never know for sure what the boundaries of this “fantasy” science really are. Maybe in Hux’s hubris and complete (over)confidence in the imminent destruction of the Resistance, he allowed his fleet to “break protocol” and bunch too closely together, making them vulnerable to the attack that Holdo carried out (which might be a type of attack that is VERY uncommon). Maybe she identified this weakness and capitalized on it, obviously before it dawned on Hux and he – in a state of panic – ordered everyone to “destroy that ship!” All just speculation, I know, but to me it has at least some shred of plausibility. To me there were bigger problems in the movie than this (cough…Super Mario Leia flying through the vacuum of space….cough).
well, look at it this way. There has been Kamikaze pilots in our real universe. Their attacks were highly efficient in WWII. BUT did it change naval combat?
I mean, did Americans adapt this tactics for the Korean war or the Vietnam war?
You could argue “well, a single fighter ship doesn’t do this much damage, so it actually won’t matter”. Who is to say that you couldn’t take a big ship and ram it into a plane carrier on sea?
Plus, you need to find somebody to steer something into another thing first and sacrifice himself. Terrorists nowadays do that and it’s highly effective. But these guys are crazy, brainwashed and desperate.
My point is, it’s not that easy to find someone steering himself into a target, unless you brainwash him, and I don’t think that’s what the Rebels/Resistance is about. And looking at our own world, these tactics haven’t had the impact on warfare as one may assume from looking at it from the outside. So I think Star Wars combat is all good 🙂
The book didn’t have to clean it up. LFL knows more about hyperspace than you do and if they say it works, good enough for me.
I disagree with that. Lucasfilm can make up whatever they want as it’s their property. That said… it can be a poor decision. I still find it to be a contradiction, but as others have stressed to me… it really shouldn’t matter all that much. Let it go and enjoy the movie. I doubt they’ll be as flagrant in the future. They just wanted that one moment to really stand out… and it did.
You can not like it, but to say it is impossible…eh. Like you said, they decide the rules.
“Just the basic understanding of how naval battles have been fought since the advent of hyperspace travel!”
I must’ve missed this one in history class….
Dig in and read below. Clearly I meant within the SW universe, but yes I could have been clearer.
Yeah, I was just being facetious! 😉
pretty much the universally most beloved scene is your most hated scene. I guess tastes diver 😉
There is a great film/ (or filmslash? – I don’t know. – Google it.) podcast where the hosts interview Johnson for nearly two hours. It’s a fantastic discussion which really gets into Rian’s head.
Send in the trolls
exactly my thought! XD
Looks brilliant. I really hope the SXSW website is correct and this documentary is 135 minutes long.
That would be great. I would love a feature length “making of.” We haven’t had one of those since TPM DVD.
I think it is actually one hour and 35 minutes, but I could be wrong.
It should be retitled “How to literally split a fan base”
…or “How to bring the cry-baby out of every Star Wars fan”
“How to move the franchise forward even though some of them are still stuck in the past”
The PT has already did that.
I thought the PT brought most people together for their collective hate for it.
Yeah. TLJ is certainly divisive, but folks that were adults when the PT was rolling out remember most people not caring much for those movies. A few liked them, some thought they were okay, and it seems like most folks outright hated them.
I would have to imagine that Lucasfilm would prefer to have a fanbase passionately split over a film than have a series of films that folks largely shrugged their shoulders at before moving on.
That is a fair point and interesting point. You’d rather have people talking about something even if it’s not in a good way then not talking about it at all.
The documentary could actually be better than the film!