I had a dream last night in which I watched the entirety of The Last Jedi (the upcoming Star Wars film) and it was terrible! KLS suggested I blog this since it’s so vivid in my mind, so here we go.
I was watching the film in a church with a large crowd. A gigantic screen had been hung over the altar and we were filling the pews and everyone was excited. It seemed to be launch day so no one had any knowledge of the film in advance. The church may have been my childhood church, St Marys of Charlestown.
The film opened in some sort of meeting between a few SW characters (Poe Dameron, Han Solo, Lando) and a bunch of DC superheroes. They were in some giant computer room talking to the computer. I forget details here, but I do remember Clark Kent (holding an umbrella like the 7th doctor) was the prominent character.
The film then cut to a lengthy sequence (easily over an hour) where a group of heroes went on a mission to a rocky desert planet to find a software upgrade for C-3PO so he could wield a lightsaber. This was in fact the main plot of the film: 3PO was for some reason the chosen combatant to fight the ‘bad guy’ but had to be prepared. The First Order was in the film, but the specific villians such as Snoke or Kylo Ren weren’t. Instead those roles were filled by DC heroes (not villians) including Silver Surfer and Aquaman.
During this desert sequence the film progressively became more stylized until it ultimately became a full-blown cel animated movie in the stule of 1980s Hanna Barbara cartoons. The group of heroes by now included Kent, Solo, Lando, some girl (not Rey), Garazeb (from Rebels, who was tiny and looked like Yoda) and a few others I forget. They were fighting off crab monsters and giant worms to get to some shrine in which they found the upgrade for 3PO as well as armour that they bolted on to him which made him strongly resemble the robot Maximillian from Black Hole.
It was bad. Really bad. I was grief stricken at how awful it was and at this point I exited the church to look up comments online. Almost everyone had the same reaction I did (horror) but a few praised the frequent Coen Brothers references (none of which I caught) or the fact the director had projected the animated portion onto a mirror then filmed the mirror to make it more ‘dreamlike’. Meanwhile I was disappointed like I had never been, but returned and kept watching.
I recall the film used licensed music (including Tainted Love by Soft Cell and some classical piece I can’t recall) and the characters broke the 4th wall more than once. CGI battle scenes were heavily obscured by fog (to minimize the workload?) and the sets became increasingly minimal as the film progressed. It also eventually returned to live action as well, with elements introduced during the animated sequence being retained. For instance while they (Clark actually) piloted the Millennium Falcon to the desert planet, they left it there and instead departed in a ship that was nothing more than a giant hollow metal cube with a tiny control pedestal rising from the middle of the floor. There were no windows or exterior or interior detail at all. When the film returned to live action, this ship still existed as a set.
Anyway the finale was in a city that resembled the Gold Coast with the exception of the buildings being closer to the ocean. The actual final battle was C-3PO vs Aquaman with 3PO using a lightsaber. Aquaman was 80s-era in his classic outfit, and he fought by throwing big balls of water at the heavily armored 3PO.
While this was the end of the film, it didn’t in any way seem like the end of the story. There was some subplot involving Luke (who was briefly in it) and Poe Dameron and involved flashbacks of Poe flying in the attack against the first Death Star and apparently being some very old friend of Luke. There was also another subplot involving a planet that had stopped spinning because of the Silver Surfer but that’s all muddy in my memory.
Anyway it was a real nightmare dream. When I awoke I was momentarily confused and upset before realizing it had just been a dream at which point the relief was real 🙂
Let’s all come back and re-read this in six months and see just how close to guessing the actual plot of the film I ended up being?
