Star Wars: The Last Jedi’s Hitchcock-style twist is its best moment

Maybe it’s easy to take for granted these days just how subversive Psycho was in 1960. Its first-act twist — Marion Crane, our ostensible hero, is brutally stabbed by an unseen killer while in the shower — is a radical gesture, proof that director Alfred Hitchcock didn’t give a damn about the audience’s expectations or even narrative convention.

Now, I’m not saying that Star Wars: The Last Jedi’s director, Rian Johnson, compares to Alfred Hitchcock. But Johnson makes a key choice in telling the story of The Last Jedi that’s striking in the same way that the shower scene in Psycho is. A key moment in the latest Star Wars film is just as disorienting, bucking the franchise’s deeply rooted convention to create The Last Jedi’s most tense, exciting and unforgettable moment.

Halfway through The Last Jedi’s very lengthy runtime, Kylo Ren presents Rey, his captive, to his master, Supreme Leader Snoke. Snoke’s an intimidating being, even more so than the unhinged Kylo Ren: He’s not human; he’s physically imposing; he’s the Supreme Leader, after all. Without her lightsaber and with just vengeful Kylo Ren alongside her, Rey looks pretty much doomed while facing down Snoke.

The scene feels familiar, like an homage to Empire Strikes Back: Rey will lose her first battle against the trilogy’s impossible villain. She’ll probably come out of this one with at least both hands, I thought to myself, holding my breath; but she won’t come out of it totally unscathed.

But then Johnson does something that, in hindsight, maybe isn’t all that surprising. Rey and Kylo Ren’s relationship has become a cornerstone of the new trilogy — they went through a lot together in The Force Awakens, finding something recognizable in each other. Even though he’s the one who’s offered Rey up to Snoke, Kylo Ren is not about to let his fellow Force-sensitive orphan (by choice or not) go this easily.

And then we get my absolute favorite shot in the film: With Kylo Ren and Rey in the foreground, and Snoke unfocused in the back, a well-placed lightsaber cuts Snoke right in half.

Johnson never refocuses the camera. He doesn’t immediately cut away to Snoke’s lifeless body, now divided in halfway. Instead, we stay with Rey — our hero — and Kylo Ren — who, we’ll soon find out, is our true villain — as the pair fights off a swath of Snoke’s royal guards. It’s a beautiful, seamless transition. My eyes were wide and unblinking with awe.

This is not The Last Jedi’s grand finale. Oh no; the film keeps going, and going, and going. Say what you will about how much longer it goes on for, but for me, the film’s true climax happens here. The villain I thought would last until Episode 9 was dead. Kylo Ren, Han Solo’s murderer, had saved Rey from an easy demise. The pair were now united in some unbreakable and unspoken way, even as the rest of the film makes sure to add more shades of gray into that bond.

Johnson rewrites the standard Star Wars trilogy setup in just a swift, beautifully shot scene. Rey gets another chance to prove herself, and Kylo Ren assumes his true position as the Supreme Leader. He’s a villain even more unpredictable than his grandfather, Darth Vader, and Rey is a hero whose odds are even more greatly stacked against her than her mentor and counterpart, Luke Skywalker.

Of course it had to be this way. But it took Rian Johnson shockingly twisting the knife, or turning on the lightsaber, halfway through the film to prove it.

The biggest twist was Rey leaving Kylo to take a well deserved nap, while many could have expected uncharacteristic but drastic measures like killing him, others might have sensibly assumed Rey would take him with her or at the very least his lightsaber but that's when Rian brilliantly subverts all expectations and decides Kylo should catch up some Zs and be well rested for an amazing future encounter where he might gain his first victory, maybe.

“I really like all the Warner Bros. movies,” Pratt said. “I think they’re really cool and I’m not a real tough critic on those movies. But one of the flaws might have been they were introducing too many characters in Suicide Squad. They spent 10 minutes telling us why should we care about these characters, rather than creating trilogies for each character and convincing us to care about the characters.”

"This is Katana," he added with a wry smile. "She's got my back. She can cut all of you in half with one sword stroke just like mowing the lawn. I would advise not getting killed by her; her sword traps the souls of its victims."

I love how the conversation surrounding TLJ is revealing that a lot of critics know next to nothing about film.

Janet Leigh wasn't set up in a movie before Psycho as the bigger-picture villain, though

This would be a good twist if it wasn't executed in such a nonsensical way. Snoke punks out Rey and Kylo without even trying and can use the Force on a guy through a motherfucking hologram, but he gets killed because he wasn't paying attention? It would also help if Snoke's character made any sense. The Emperor worked because we were being introduced to the universe and we discover that Darth Vader, the roughest, toughest bastard in the galaxy, is his bitch. Plus, we had two and a half films to build towards a fantastic climax.

I certainly get the impression from reading their opinions that they don't even know anything about STAR WARS ITSELF, much less film. They say complete nonsense that makes it clear they haven't even seen the OT and at best have heard about it. Granted, I know a lot of people pretend they've seen film that they haven't, on this board included, but for critics to do that, people who get paid for this, it's just disgusting.

Unexpected event roughly halfway through the movie = "Hitchcock-style twist"

Allegra Frank
deputy news editor @polygon / anxious student / clean and rad and powerful

>KYM filename

No, a Psycho style twist would have been killing off Kylo Ren.

>female writer

checks out

That would have been infuriating because he's one of the best actors in the film.

and the best character.

>it's not disappointing and pointless, it's brilliant

Subverting expectations is not conducive to telling a good narrative. Hitchcock's twist in Psycho leaves the narrative structure intact while still surprising the audience. What was so surprising to the audience was that the big name star was killed off so early. That is a meta-assumption on the audience's part, not one based on the film's story, so when the twist happens it doesn't come at a cost to the film itself - it's a subversion of culture, not narrative.

The reason why the killing of Snoke is a bad twist is because there were certain narrative expectations set-up in TFA by JJ that implied Snoke was the big bad. The pay-off to this is that once Snoke is destroyed the heroes win. RJ has obliterated this expectation like promising to buy a kid an ice-cream, taking two years to do so then slapping it out of their hand before they get their pay-off. It isn't funny, it isn't clever, it is really fucking annoying - like masturbating and being interrupted before you climax.

You have fulfill some exceptions the audience has before you can start yanking the rug out from under them. If you'll notice NOTHING IN THJ plays out like you thought it would. Luke throwing away the lightsaber, Poe being reprimanded, the bitch Admiral not getting punished but in fact being praised, Luke and Kylo fighting but it turns out Luke is a hologram, Leia dying but not actually and Supermanning herself to safety - AND THERE'S FUCKING MORE WHERE THAT CAME FROM. THAT'S LIKE THIRTY ICE-CREAMS BOUGHT AND SLAPPED.

TL;DR, you are a fucking idiot.

Snoke dying is, in his role as a cardboard Emperor, not a twist at all. The whole scene was set up like the Throne Room scenes from RotJ. And we all remember when a Luke and a Vader enter an Emperor's chambers via a lift, Vader will betray the Emperor every time.
What could be counted as a spin on the original scene is that the lobster squad actually gets up and fights.

There's something about this article that really makes me wish for a meeting of minds with the author.

Literally the same thing happened to the Emperor. He wasn't pay attention when Vader made his move.

Largely because the actor playing him is so great.

>Subverting expectations is not conducive to telling a good narrative.

And it's really, REALLY not conducive to profits in a high-profile series.

If Snoke had been revealed to be Plagueis, Sup Forums would be rife with speculation about Episode IX, rather than everyone on the same page about how much Ep VIII sucks.

>movie goes to shit when it tries to rip off the OT
Maybe they should learn something from this?

Nah, let's just pander to the Boomer retards who voted for Trump.

Good try but the more memorable part of tha scene is Snoke clocking Rey in the head with a boomerang lightsaber.

>It's too much like the OT
>It's not enough like the OT
Make up your mind. Also remember that Empire made 40% less money than New Hope and had very mixed reviews(often considered the weakest of the OT until recent memory).

I loved that. Well deserved bop on the bonce.

What the fuck do you mean make up my mind? I am consistently complaining that the movies need to stop reusing story beats from the OT. The whole RotJ knockoff scene was the weakest part of TLJ.

I agree that people are often retarded and films that were poorly received on release sometimes become well regarded after years. People are like "Ha ha how dare you compare this Star Wars movie to The Shining the absolute state and other memes" when back when The Shining came out people were saying "Ha ha how dare you compare The Shining to Psycho."

That's the point. But, too late for that by now. Should have been killed off by Han Solo in the first movie.

Not the same thing. Vader was beaten (hand cut off) and the emperor was busy killing Luke so he was distracted. But Snoke? He was just bragging how can he know the intentions of Kylo and got killed by him, it was kinda pathetic.
>but snoke was busy holding rey with his force
Literally seconds earlier when he pulls ger to his throne he can feel that Rey wants to grab the lightsaber
I also want to say how disappointing was that there was no fucking lighsaber battle in a star wars film.

I just watched the movie and thought it was just trying too hard to subvert expectations, and because of that a lot of scenes end up falling flat, as if they had no payoff whatsoever.

Yes. Goddam, I was thinking about, and starting to write a reply about how Norman Bates is the main character and gets fleshed out (not killed), but then I suppose you get defenders saying 'Snoke's not a main character', when he was clearly supposed to be - not in the way Janet Leigh was 'supposed to'.
It's as if one of the primary points of the story is to make TFA less significant, and that's not clever, it's fucking stupid.

People are going to ask about the scene and people will reply
> Snoke dying? Nope Boomerang Lightsaber.
> Kylo asking Rey to join? Nope Boomerang Lightsaber.
> Rey parents? Nope Boomerang Lightsaber.

Your mom joke
Titty Milk
Leia supahman
Purple Bitch flash spaceship ramming
Cya Kiddo *dies*

>Literally seconds earlier when he pulls ger to his throne he can feel that Rey wants to grab the lightsaber

Playing Devil's advocate here, there was a delay to his reaction. The saber almost reached her before he managed to deviate its course. That's why he made it fly like a boomerang.

He was reading Kylo's mind and narrating his actions. Kylo was both turning his own lightsaber as Snoke was narrating and turning Rey's lightsaber. Snoke was mid orgasm with how awesome he was when Kylo turned on Rey's lightsaber.

I guess if they wanted to make it so that nobody has any idea WHAT to expect from IX then they've succeeded.

Why does she have purple hair again? Is star wars anime now?

You're actually right. I remember the poorly placed attempts at humour, but the actual plot-driving scenes are slipping away from me. Terrifiying.
That said, I would have laughed at several of the jokes IF they were in any other movie BUT a Star Wars movie. Somehow I still think they take themselves mostly seriously with one or two designated jester/sarcasm characters, like the droids and Han.

What did people think was gonna happen in Return of the Jedi? At the end of Empire, Luke is missing a hand, Vader is Luke's father, and Han Solo is frozen in carbonite in the possession of a bounty hunter.

She's a rebel. Purple hair is the new punk, except the opposite of that.

Yeah but that doesn't want to make me see it. I can't even talk about what I think will happen because now, all the balls are up in the air. The only thing we know is that the FO is superpowerful and the newly refounded Rebels are down to 20 guys and a handful of sympathisers.

>undermine the development Kylo Ren and devalue the fall of Luke Skywalker by treating the being who shaped their lives like a fucking loser

Sure, he's not the real villain of the series. But if we don't know who he is, we can't know how significant his actions are. Unless Luke just got pranked by some b-tier Sith wannabe.

>"Princess, we will find Han. I promise."
>Luke will either turn his father back to the light side or defeat him
>Vader will continue to attempt to make him "a powerful ally" for the Emperor, but actually plotting to overthrow him with his son.
>Luke has to return to Dagobah to complete his training, as he promised
>What is the "other hope" Yoda mentioned to Obi-Wan?

There are clear leads into the sequel. Something TLJ doesn't have. Just the vague promise that hope's not dead with Broom Boi.

Why didn't they use that imagination for their starwars?

what set the tone of the movie for me was Poe making those jokes and then killing all his friends on a suicide run.

after that i felt all humor so out of place that ruined the movie for me.

>This thread again

There is not Hitchock/Psycho like twist in The Last Jedi.

Shitty writing is not a "twist".

Being bad at your job is not a brave subversion of tropes.

>What's that? Your food is cold and the meat is clearly spoiled? WELL YOU WERE EXPECTING GOOD FOOD WHEN YOU CAME HERE - HOW BRAVE IS IT OF ME TO SERVE YOU FOUL GARBAGE!?

For this to work, we would have had to have had Snoke set up as the central character of the series, or at least this film.

Then halfway in he is killed and a new central cahracter and entirely different story takes over.

This writer doesn't sound like they've even watched Psycho.

Even just looking at it from a story POV, removed from the cultural tropes - You go into Psycho and you are watching a thriller about a woman stealing from her boss and running away to meet her lover.

At the halfway point she meets a strange hotel clerk and has (relative to the film) an enormously long conversation scene with him. We learn a lot about him, but technically he's still an incidental character. Then the murder happens and the entire film shifts focus to this new character and it becomes entirely about him and this new story.

The book just focuses on Norman, largely. Hitchcock fleshed it all out, not just for the novelty value of the twist, but because he wanted Norman's shocking secret to be just that - a shocking secret. A normal guy who has a weird, unknown villainy. You have all of the Janet Leigh stuff to misdirect you from what the film will really be about.

The comparison with Snoke obviously makes no sense. Snoke was set up as a villain in the first movie in this trilogy. He wasn't even replaced by a new villain that takes the movie in an unexpected direction. He just died and without explaining his importance to the story or giving any context for his existence.

This was a twist in as much as Bobba Fett falling in a sand hole was a twist.

how hitchcockian

Pissing me off is the point? Why?

>Cya Kiddo *dies*
This line makes it so strange that he died. I really am starting to believe the conspiracy theory that they told him he wasn't going to die, because it felt like he planned to come back in the next one.

...And it's not just the Rebels who have no hope...TFA has a fucking emo man-child at its head, now.

This movie is like getting a frozen microwave meal for Christmas Dinner.

I'm glad people finally agree that Rogue One was pretty good. Only took a year.

The results finally came in.

Episode IX will end with Rey pregnant and Kylo being the daddy.

But finn.

dont worry the "force" will make it so they are both rey's baby daddies

>having to use the word Hitchcock-style to hype up your shitty anticlimax
wewlad

They're really going all out now.

>its subversion goyim so it must be good!
>t. jew

>the lobster squad
kek

pathetic retarded writer self insert

>Admiral Gender Studies is a pansexual and likes astrology.
Of course she does. Jesus tittyfucking Christ.

>""""""""""news"""""""""" articles now exist to tell plebs why they should purchase tickets to see Lame Nerd Cash In Flick Holiday Season 2017

literally ads

It's bad, but that's more due to Disney's meddling. Garth's vision would have actually been really cool and lent some much-needed weight to the conflict of the OT.

It's like a "why you don't hire female writers" checklist

Rey getting SHITTED would be the final nail in the coffin of Star Wars. I kind of want it to happen just to see everyone collectively throw the franchise in the garbage.

>It's like a "why you don't hire female writers" checklist
I would hire one if she wasn't some kind of SJW shitbag. That's rare, though.

>SHITTED
You realize Finn is black, not Indian.

Sheev??

This should have been obvious from the way she was rubbing her hands all over Leia's in the movie. You just know they had hot lesbian sex when they were younger.

It's called SHITTED because nigger dicks look like logs of shit. Also the girls look constipated.

lel leia left han solo for a lesbian relationship is now canon

Who else could it be?

I don't know. Leia is supposedly a pansexual straight woman (humanoid males) in the books.
>LEIA LIKES TRAPS!

imagine comparing the cinematic equivalent of a Happy Meal to Hitchcock

Well, that's possible too but canon is that they knew each other back on Alderaan so they probably kissed each other long before Leia kissed Luke and Han.

>pansexual straight
You don't know what pansexual means, do you?

I do. Claudia Gray fucked up the meaning. If Leia was purely straight, she'd like human men.

She likes humanoid men.

Nah, Leia has sex with whatever she feels like. FACT.

It's either that or the editors missed it in post.

because a lot of critics don't know shit about film. there's no critic school or certification process for becoming a critic.

>because a lot of critics don't know shit about film.
This. The overwhelming majority of TLJ reviews ignored the enormous plot holes.
>Bark like a seal, you bastards!

Hitchcockesqe, you might say.

>it's a plot hole if I don't understand it!
Dunning Kruger effect in action, folks.

This is totally fucking ridiculous. I cannot believe what the fuck I'm reading here and shit like this makes me so angry. I mean the holidays are on now and everyone will be very busy with this. And Bungie still won't fix the Warlock glitch that is fucking the game up for everyone. This is fucking lazy as shit and those master cucks must be too busy sucking nigger dicks to fix the game. Fuck this.

Even comparing Snoke’s death to Sheev’s hurts the former. From a narrative standpoint, Anakin killing Sheev served as his final redemption act that brought him back from the dark side, as well as a symbolic final defeat of the Empire by the demise of his leader and figurehead.

What purpose did Snoke’s death serve in nuWars narrative? Kylo is now the bad guy, which ultimately means we wasted a movie and a half on a big bad guy who has no backstory, did next to nothing, and whose death is ultimately as pointless as his life to the story.

Best post in the thread.

>which ultimately means we wasted a movie and a half on a big bad guy who has no backstory, did next to nothing, and whose death is ultimately as pointless as his life to the story.

Did we waste time on Snoke? He was barely in TFA and only there because JJ felt an Emperor analogue was required

Abrams is Jewish, he doesn't feel anything.

>MFW I forgot about Sheev.

That has been canon since Shadows of the Empire.

Sheev "The Jedi I deceive" Palpatine?
Sheev "Give the light side no reprieve" Palpatine?
Sheev "Outta the window Windu heaved" Palpatine?
Sheev "Deception do I weave" Palpatine?
Sheev "Lightning up my sleeve" Palpatine?

>Leia liking Xizor
What?

Yeah okay, Faleen pheromones, and she kneed him in the groin. But it was close.

...

There's got to be a better example of this in the EU than Xizor.

This. Snoke knew what was happeneing. He was just too arrogant to even consider the possibility that Kylo's "real enemy" could have been him.

It's not complicated, and I'm honestly kind of surprised so many people seem to have missed that.

Because people aren't used to things that require even a tiny amount of thought to understand.

Although, isn't it kind of weird that Kylo has such control over his thoughts that he can think specific thoughts without revealing that he's thinking of Snoke? Like if I were in that position a picture of Snoke would be floating in my head as I thought the words "true enemy." How did this guy with such perfect mental control still manage to lose to Rey?

I'm just gonna leave this here.

I thought you photoshopped that picture. But it's real.
Women are a meme

The way I interpreted it, Snoke wasn't literally reading Kylo's mind, just his feelings. Every time something like this has been described in Star Wars before, it's always a character talking about "searching you feelings" or something like that. Kylo probably realized at that moment that he didn't want to follow Snoke anymore and that he wanted to kill him. He would have felt that Snoke is his true enemy, and that's what Snoke picked up on, without realizing he was the enemy.