Fenrir said:
Subverting expectations was more important than making a consistent ****ing movie I guess.
This is what the video really nailed for me. Johnson seemingly never stopped to ask WHY he wanted to "subvert expectations." It sounds cool, I guess, but really, what was the point? I totally get wanting to do something different or unexpected, but the responsibility that comes with that is that your changes have to be insanely
smart and
warranted. Rather, I'd almost go so far as to say that subverting expectations should never be the goal. Subverted expectations should be the BY PRODUCT of an angle or an idea that you came up with that is just too good not to use. Subverted expectations should then come organically from
that. Instead, Johnson basically started from a point of saying "I want to subvert expectations" and then reverse engineered the story around that empty desire because... it sounds like a cool thing to do? Who knows.
What's funny is that the end result didn't really look or feel all that different from TFA. TLJ came across as the most boring possible follow-up in a lot of ways. I remember reading a tweet when the first TLJ trailer dropped where someone said that it looked like TLJ had been made from TFA deleted scenes. I of course blew that off in the moment, but it rings so true now. When all was said and done, the "subverted expectations" resulted in the antithesis of progress, both in story and in look and tone.
Echoing the post I had a couple weeks ago where I talked about TLJ basically being an exercise in stagnation, it all makes even more sense now. Because what we inherently
expected was for things to
happen. And what Johnson doesn't seem to understand is that what fans want on the most primal level isn't just for Rey to be related to Han or whoever, or for Luke to take on an army all by himself, it's that those desires, as misguided as they might have been, inherently meant
progress. They meant an advancement of plot. But with Johnson choosing to put "subverted expectations" above all else, he instead subverted
forward movement.
As Plinkett so expertly pointed out...
-
Empire gave us a wise Jedi leader teaching our hero valuable lessons. / TLJ gave us a disgruntled "Jedi leader" teaching our hero lessons of nothingness.
-
Empire gave us an epic Luke/Vader duel. / TLJ gave us a fake, literally hallow duel.
-
Empire gave us "Luke, I am your father!" / TLJ gave us "You're a nobody."
... and so on. Again, I get not wanting to be a carbon copy of
Empire, and I applaud the efforts to purposefully veer away from that. But somehow still sticking with
Empire's basic format, and just doing the opposite of what it did, wasn't even close to the right move either. It's why we got the limp-d*ck of a movie we got.
Empire was PROGRESS in every sense of the word. And because, at its core, TLJ was the "subverted exception" of that progress, we're in the situation we are now.
At the very least, I know when we see Abrams' first trailer for
Episode IX, there's going to be that sense of "Wow, what is
that?!" "Who is
that guy?!" "Where
are they?!" As good as TLJ looked in the trailers, I never really got that sense of "Whoa, I didn't expect
that." It all looked the same, felt the same, and none of the new locations looked all that different or interesting, which is such a weird result for something that was trying so hard to "subvert expectations." Which goes back to my original point. That's where TRYING to subvert expectations will get you. Just a make a movie that oozes ADVENTURE and PROGRESS, both in terms of story and character, and no matter how unexpected it all is, we'll go along for the ride. If your (potentially brilliant) plan for the story happens to "subvert expectations," great. But if not, who cares? I don't watch movies to have my expectations subverted. Many times I WANT the premise to deliver on my expectations, just in a WAY I hadn't considered before. It's a fine line, but there's a difference.
