Im appealing to your best judgement here, and i know i can convince you even if that means that you won't like Magnolia anymore.
Luke's binary sunset scene doesn't mean anything on its own; it acquires meaning if you first portray him as someone unhappy in his situation because he cant express his potential. He loves uncle Ben and aunt Beru, and as they are killed he is sad but the anchor that held him on Tatooine has been severed.
Magnolia has a similar arc with Cruise's character, but in reverse. He is at his potential but his father being on his deathbed means he must face normality. Or you could argue that having a relationship with is father *is* his potential.
But New Hope doesn't end at the binary sunset scene. It uses it to estabilish the character motivations which lead him to the action of rescuing Leia from the Death Star (story).
Magnolia just ends.
All of Magnolia's characters are experiencing strong emotions but at no point is explained how this is pertinent to the viewer.
To yet again use the best story ever put to film, going backwards you got the death star exploding. This means Victory and you must cheer.
As a viewer this would be boring if you had 2 hours of space fights and then Blue 4 exploads the bad guy.
But in New Hope the bad guy is exploaded by a Hero, and you love Hero.
Hero is relatable. Hero is a normal guy, in fact, Hero is YOU. NH is really the story of Zin and how he Wins(tm) by Expload(tm) the Badguy(tm).
How is he relatable, you say?
And so on. Now, Magnolia clearly isn't Star Wars. But all successful film establishes a relationship between the protagonist and the viewer, from the most basic "will i kill the dragon / rescue the princess / steal the money" to the more refined and adult such as "will i find love / can i fix this relationship / is there a meaning to life".
We can see that Magnolia firmly sets itself in the latter camp, but never seeks to provide answers.
Who am i, in this film? What is the film trying to tell me?
Magnolia doesn't answer these questions. And this is bad, because these answers are what people watch films for.
The world is divided in two kinds of people; those who watch football and come home saying "we won", and a much smaller percentage that comes home and says "they won". PTA decided that with this film, he was going to cater to the latter.
Magnolia has a strong voyeuristic aspect to itself, it goes deep into the personal, emotional space of its characters, but never gives the viewer a solid reason why we need to be watching.
I flat out do not like drama. I reject negative emotions unless these have a reason to exist, which if you think about it, is a lot more common than you'd initially expect.
The death of a beloved character is a plot device for Revenge or other plot device. Loss or humiliation can be used for a Determined character arc. Unfulfillment, craving, a special calling all serve as basis for character motivation.
But no matter how deep in emotional shit a character is, the unbreakable rule of cinema is that THE PROTAGONIST DOES SOMETHING THAT YOU DO NOT DO, be it escaping from an attack of killer birds, saving the arc of the covenant from nazis, rescuing a girl from a life of prostitution, or even commit an unspeakable crime.
Either that, or you must finding something extraordinarily mundane that *everyone* does, like Make Friends and Stand Up For Yourself. But not every film can be Stand By Me.
These are things that get people nodding at the screen and say either "oh yeah i do that" or "oh yeah i would totally do that".
So you see where my beef is with Magnolia: the film structure.
Now, i think the rain of frogs is actually cool and i appreciate that PTA did his best to try to streer the train instead of going for a total wreck. And it fits to have a deus ex machina since the film is written as a collection of theater piece extracts. I just don't think it's successful.
I won't say "it could have been better" because Magnolia is exactly what it set itself out to be - a film with the key element removed and replaced with more film fragments. But PTA is frightfully close to merde d'artiste territory here - a work of art that isn't meant to be consumed, a painting that isnt meant to be seen, music that is not to be heard.
Musically it reminds me of Pierrot Lunaire; if you see the score for that thing, it's a masterpiece of complex chromaticisms, but if you hear it, it's torture.
And like an absurdly complicated nouvelle cuisine dish of flowers and reduction of creamed parsnips, im asking the chef if he's going to remember what every human's eating needs, but the chef ignores me,caught up in his quest for extreme art.
Paul Thomas Anderson gave me a lot of food, but he forgot to feed me.