Ask Slashdot: Thoughts On Star Wars: The Last Jedi One Week Later? [Spoilers] (independent.co.uk) 300
AmiMoJo writes: After what feels like an eternity of waiting, Star Wars: The Last Jedi has finally reached cinemas, scoring a whopping $450 million opening weekend worldwide. While reviews have been unanimously positive for Rian Johnson's blockbuster, there's been huge backlash online, many fans expressing disappointment. There's no better place to see the great divide between critics and fans than on Rotten Tomatoes, where the critical consensus scores 93% while audiences score The Last Jedi 56%. The Last Jedi is apparently worse than Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith. Conversely, critics say The Last Jedi equals A New Hope and The Force Awakens, only falling behind The Empire Strikes Back.
One problem with Rotten Tomatoes' audience score, along with IMDB, is there's no vetting process. Instead, we should look to the movie's CinemaScore, an America-based exit poll system that scientifically works out an audience score. The Force Awakens earned an A score, with 90% of all respondents being positive, the average score being 4.5. According to Deadline, non-Disney sources are saying the backlash has been primarily online "trolling." The publication also points to one Facebook page titled "Down With Disney's Treatment of Franchises and Fanboys" who are claiming to use bot accounts to target the film's score. SPOILERS: With Star Wars: The Last Jedi being released one week ago, we ask you to share your thoughts of the film now that you've had some time to watch and digest it. How did you like Daisy Ridley's performance? Do you think Kylo will try and turn Rey again as Supreme Leader? How will General Leia's future be dealt with now that Carrie Fisher has passed away last year?
One problem with Rotten Tomatoes' audience score, along with IMDB, is there's no vetting process. Instead, we should look to the movie's CinemaScore, an America-based exit poll system that scientifically works out an audience score. The Force Awakens earned an A score, with 90% of all respondents being positive, the average score being 4.5. According to Deadline, non-Disney sources are saying the backlash has been primarily online "trolling." The publication also points to one Facebook page titled "Down With Disney's Treatment of Franchises and Fanboys" who are claiming to use bot accounts to target the film's score. SPOILERS: With Star Wars: The Last Jedi being released one week ago, we ask you to share your thoughts of the film now that you've had some time to watch and digest it. How did you like Daisy Ridley's performance? Do you think Kylo will try and turn Rey again as Supreme Leader? How will General Leia's future be dealt with now that Carrie Fisher has passed away last year?
Was Okay (Score:5, Interesting)
It had corny pleb joke, a useless side plot, some entertaining space action, and cool CG.
I didn't like it enough to go out of my way to recommend it to just anyone, but I wouldn't take back watching it.
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I dont think it was a great film. But it was a good film, and I had lots fo fun.
The dialoge was a bit hammy, and they could have strupped a good 40 minutes out to really tighten the plot up, but I still had fun and so did my friends.
If the flaming car wreck that was the prequels didnt happen I'd be more critical. But compared to those, this is miles more entertaining and star-wars like, and anyone who claims otherwise is lying themselves
Hated it! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Hated it! (Score:5, Interesting)
The fans hate Disney's movie and they blame internet trolls. What a joke!
**spoilers**
The movie is getting a love it/hate it response, mostly based on the plot around Luke.
Luke in he original trilogy was a hero-turned-jedi that rose to the challenge, defeated his enemies, and faced certain death to save his father from the dark side of the force.
Luke in this movie is a coward and a quitter who contemplated murdering his own nephew in his sleep (because he was falling to the dark side).
For people who care about character motivation, this plot is a terrible insult to Luke. Luke simply deserved better.
Similar for Poe; formerly a loyal and masterfully skillful badass hero of the resistance, now a reckless loose cannon who commits mutiny and is ultimately responsible for the resistance being slaughtered.
If you like watching your heros turn out to be miserable failures as people, then it's a great movie. Well, provided you can overlook the other plot holes and characters acting in ways that contradict their character motivation, as well as the subtle undercurrent of man-shaming. But the special effects were great.
**more spoilers** (Score:5, Insightful)
"Subtle undercurrent of man-shaming" my ass! It couldn't possibly be more overt!
Every male character in the movie was a failure, and needed a woman to guide him with her superior wisdom (apart from General Ackbar, I guess, but he didn't last long enough to count).
Luke is a failure who has decided to run and hide and let the universe die, and he needs Rei to guide him back to the path of caring.
Poe is so toxically masculine that he just wants to blow everything up, and he needs a purple-haired woman to have a better plan (which she keeps a secret for no reason), to reprimand him, to forgive him and say she likes him as she nobly sacrifices herself to save the day where he failed. And, apparently, Poe is only interested in seeming like a hero whereas she is only interested in being a hero.
Fin is a coward who wants to flee under pretenses of protecting Rei, only to be stopped by Rose who gives him a better plan and re-ignites his courage. Later on he is so eager to seem like a hero that he is ready to get himself killed, and needs Rose to save him and explain to him that saving what we love is better than fighting what we hate.
Kylo is, of course, falling to the dark side and needs Rei to pull him back to the light. I guess we will see the rest of that in the next movie (or rather, some of you will, because I sure won't).
Snoke and general Hux have no women to guide them, so they are just pure evil until the end.
The take-away is clear: men are violent and selfish and foolish, whereas women are wise and loving and competent.
Re:**more spoilers** (Score:5, Interesting)
The take-away is clear: men are violent and selfish and foolish, whereas women are wise and loving and competent.
Yeah, that did annoy me. It would've been great to see Rey buy into Kylo Ren's speech and join him, so the failure of the Jedi would've been complete. Likewise, Poe didn't have to be a gun-happy dumbass, nor did Holdo have to maintain secrecy around what she had intended. Also, Rose didn't need to exist as a character, and that entire sub-plot around her and Fin looking for some cryptologist was so fucking contrived it made it really hard to stay awake when they were on screen.
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And why didn't they spend the last bit of their fuel to do a short jump in hyperspace to the planet that has defenses and launch the transports from there, or land the damn fleet on the planet.
And the tracking through hyperspace plot. WTF? A rendezvous point is chosen not as the first jump, but as the final location as everyone goes off in different directions. Why do the ships only have enough for 2 jumps? Why was the jump all of them together instead of each going in a different direction to separate
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That argument only works if you ignore Finn taking on Phasma, ignore that Leia is the mother of the big bad and seems to have done little to turn him back to the light, and that Poe has some totally un-toxic character growth.
That's how characters work in movies. Luke starts out as a whining teenager who enjoys shooting small animals, and it takes three movies for him to fully resolve his tendency to rush in. Empire is basically about how he is impatient, resulting in the loss of his hand.
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Oh stop joining the troll crowd. Did you complain that other movies in the past treat women merely as background decorations, or that they always seem to need rescuing? Remember that the original Star Wars had a princess that could hold her own and wasn't the stereotypical damsel in distress so popular at the times.
If these things are what you focus on when watching a movie you need to lighten up.
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Did you complain that other movies in the past treat women merely as background decorations, or that they always seem to need rescuing?
Two wrongs don't make a right.
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I liked the plot with Luke, nothing wrong with it. Luke is not a 17 year old kid anymore.
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Doesn't it make sense that it could be a little hereditary too?
In the EU it was considered a hereditary talent. New people could learn it, but there were thousands of families that produced the best(light) and worst(darksiders) out of the EU timeline. In some families it was such an over-reaching ability that there were generational gifts bestowed on children who went for training, everything from items to enhance the force, to saber crystal heirlooms, and their own form of non-robe clothing when they became a knight so people could distinguish that they came from a
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Paul turned into a religious dictator against his will. He resisted that role fiercely but it is what people demanded of him, and furthermore his ability to see the future clearly showed him that any other path would lead to the destruction of the human race.
And it turned out to be too much for him to bear. He just couldn't become the tyrant that humanity needed to survive, so he passed the mantle to his son Leto, who became the tyrant and instituted the breeding program that produced humans possessed of
Re:Hated it! (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, this was by far the worst Star Wars to date.
What's perhaps most frustrating though is the apologists trying to excuse it's abysmal reviews - the summary highlights one example of that "Oh if we write off the raw data as trolling and instead vet aka fix the reviewers so that they're 90% positive then the reviews actually look positive!". No fucking shit. I'll stick to the real numbers though.
I read the BBC article about the controversy and for some god unknown reason they asked one of those female supremacist types from "Empire" whatever the fuck that is (I had to Google it) who theorised that people were just made uncomfortable by it because there weren't enough white males in it. Yes, that's right you dumb fuck, I'm uncomfortable because a film whose cast has historically been mostly filled with aliens and robots doesn't have enough white males in it.
Here's a better theory to all those, maybe the film really was just fucking shit? Maybe people found a fucking space ship flying through space for an hour entirely dull? Maybe the dialogues between Luke and Rey just weren't very interesting? Maybe the weird laugh Yoda did as he engaged in a god damn fucking book burning was just all too fucking weird and nonsensical? Maybe writing off a female ace like Tallie Lintra was an astounding waste of an opportunity to introduce a new interesting character to the starfighter side of things to rival Poe? Maybe the subtle jabs at the fanbase with lines from the likes of Kylo Ren as to how it's time to let go and make way for a generation were a little bit too obvious? Maybe Rose was one of the most boring new characters ever introduced into the Star Wars franchise? At least you could laugh at how bad Jar-Jar was, Rose was just a fucking dullard waste of space.
I'm not even easily disappointed, I'm one of those rare breeds that didn't actually mind Episodes 1 - 3, I loved the OT, and I thought Force Awakens and Rogue One was great. This was literally the first ever Star Wars film that I just didn't like, that I found just outright disappointing and a waste of time.
Hopefully Rian Johnson will never work on anymore Star Wars stuff, the fact is the film just didn't flow well, the casting and use of certain characters was abysmal, the story was full of random pointless bits and devoid of interesting useful bits that would've driven the story forward. It just wasn't a well directed film, and that's got nothing to do with problems with political correctness, or "online" trolling as the idiots are trying to deflect it as. It was just bad, Rian Johnson did an awful job, there's really no more to it than that.
FWIW I thought Rogue One was the best of the newest three films, closely followed by The Force Awakens, this new film just didn't come close to either and frankly I think the IMDB reviews are pretty much bang on and are exactly where I'd position this.
Rather than trying to pretend that the criticism of this film isn't real, Disney would do well to learn from the mistake, prevent Rian working on any future Star Wars work and work damn hard to make sure the next films live up to the same standard as Rogue One - they need to understand Star Wars is a beloved franchise and if they don't get it right people are going to call that out, and accept that the call outs when it's bad are legitimate and learn from them.
Re:Hated it! (Score:5, Insightful)
The OJ type slow moving space battle was the worst. Does the first order only have 3 destroyers? How about jumping a destroyer in front of the fleeing rebels or calling for reinforcements to attack from the opposite side? The whole battle was over 18 hours and no one disturbed either side the whole time.
Also, if you can destroy multiple enemy ships by going to light speed, why the heck did the rebels let 2 capital ships be shot to pieces and a good 2/3rds of the rebel shuttles shot down before they tried it?
It's clear that the movie didn't care how ridiculous the decisions the rebels made were as the rebels only purpose was to die slowly.
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Well the fact the size of the rebellion had diminished for no apparent reason to that point anyway was a bit fucking odd.
Where did they all go? did they all retire to casino land for blow and hookers funded off the back of all the scrap metal they sold after destroying star killer base?
In an entire galaxy there are only a thousand rebels and as you say only a handful of First Order forces? It sounds like the First Order/Rebellion battle is just a pointless side show that no one else in the rest of the galax
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I respect people's opinions on the film and if you hate TLJ that's fine by me.
But you are conveniently ignoring the CinemaScore exit polling (which is actually scientific, as opposed to the easily manipulated/gameable user reviews on places like RT).
Or are you asserting that CinemaScore is rigged?
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The thing is that this was by far the WORST Star Wars movie both when it comes to the addition to canon as well as storytelling devices. Previously, the Sith took decades to amass significant political power and to advance their plan. Now random Burny McScarface comes out of nowhere and kickstarts an empire with four separate superweapons all of which were designed by a five year old and still gets his ass kicked by acting like he didn't even know what had happened in the 50 years previous. Then there's the
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Don't forget to add how no one even has to train to be a Jedi any more... They just learn to meditate and *poof* Instant Jedi.
At least we now know that Anakin didn't kill the younglings, because according to "The Last Jedi" there's no way a trained sith could defeat an idiot with a lightsaber, let alone a little kid, and especially not a bunch of kids... Obi Wan must have just lied about the video.
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At least we now know that Anakin didn't kill the younglings, because according to "The Last Jedi" there's no way a trained sith could defeat an idiot with a lightsaber
You mean a trained sith who's been shot in the chest and is bleeding profusely was incapable of taking on a soldier who has been trained from birth?
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...and you have the WORST entry from a writing standpoint.
Both the dialogue and the story construction did suck. Hardly any memorable lines or character insights. Played out more like a series of TV episodes, rather than a single dramatic arc.
I blame the recent ego-driven auteur trend of directors writing their own films rather than using dedicated writers.
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Yes, yes, Jar Jar was a fucking moronic character. So what? The storyline from Ep 1 was still BETTER than TLJ. Not great, but certainly better.
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Like Lightning McQueen and Dusty Crophopper.
With the added bonus of better plot, dialogue, and character development.
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For what it's worth he only directed a mere 3 out of 62 episodes of Breaking Bad so hardly deserves any credit for that show, he was an irrelevance in the grand scheme of it.
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Episode 1 literally had fart jokes in it. Pee-yousa!
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Spot on. The jokes are also what ruined it for me. ... they outright changed certain characters!
Specifically, comedy inappropriately placed
Previous shows had their lighter moments, but they seemed to do a better job of it.
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Seems like they toned the jokes down compared to the original trilogy, especially 4 and 6. In 4 they made a bigger deal out of R2 falling over than of the Death Star blowing up an entire planet. In 6 you had the Ewoks... Even Empire had a lot of C3P0 comic relief.
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I too, grew up in the 1970's and watched all of the Star Wars movies...Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi
Timeframe confirmed by AC's use of "Star Wars" and not "A New Hope."
I didn't bother to see it (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I'm concerned, Star Wars ended after the original three movies.
If I wanted to see a cow being milked vigorously, I'd tour a local farm.
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If I wanted to see a cow being milked vigorously, I'd tour a local farm.
But now with the all-new Star Wars++ you can see Luke milk a cow vigorously for no additional charge!
same as it ever was ... (Score:4, Funny)
Never gonna change. Dysfunctional family needs therapy. Lots of explosions. Cute robots and critters (think: merchandising).
Money maker, cash cow, hard to see how they can change what's pretty much set in stone. Uh, I meant Carbonite.
Thank wikipedia (Score:5, Interesting)
Isn't it interesting the personal body guards serving an evil personified show such great loyalty to him even after he was dead?
It is three generations after Anakin was burnt completely except his head. And they were able to keep him alive. They can't to that to Snoke?
What is there that could burn with such nice orange and yellow hydro carbon flames in space ships?
How come the dreadnought class battle cruiser or whatever it is can be split into two but still there is breathable atmosphere for all?
Why do I get flash backs of Guns of Navarone like barrels and recoils? and why do spacecraft bank when they turn?
I was hoping for an ultimate plot twist like, Rey is the daughter of a long living space being being that is the "father" of Anakin with Shmi (and erased her memory after). Thus making Rey a step sister of Anakin and an aunt for Luke. No such luck. I don't believe Kylo. There is a story behind Rey's origins.
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I don't believe Kylo. There is a story behind Rey's origins.
Obviously. And Since Snoke was re-writing Kylo and Rey's minds at will from light-years away, there's no reason that the vision Kylo had wasn't a lie planted by Snoke.
Sometimes, it feels like the time between movies is to let the creators read all the fan theories, then pick the ones they like, use those, then drop hints that the others are true, as red herrings.
The movie, as a stand-alone movie, is absolutely unwatchable. The Empire, as the second, was very watchable as a standalone movie, even if some
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Suspense through stupidity (the admiral not telling Poe the plan, so he would almost get his friends killed), and the entire dead-end infiltration plotline seemed like, after the script was written, someone demanded a mini-Rogue One inserted into the middle.
So much this.
Stylistically, the thing that bugged me was nearly every line was delivered like it was supposed to be the big quote everyone was going to be repeating the next day. Not everything can be, "Search your feelings. You know it to be true."
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1) Burns are fatal from fluid loss and infection. But I grant you that, according to the books, Darth Maul survived essentially the same injury that Snoke received, and fell down a mine shaft to boot. But the guards aren't medics, how are they supposed to know that he can be saved if they get him to a med bay? Either way, they have to deal with Kylo and Rey first regardless of what the first aid options are.
2) Oxygen? I think the occupants need that. Also, all the starship engines run on some kind of fuel t
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Buddy, it's Star Wars. It was always full of holes.
How did a stone age Ewok tribe defeat the Empire? Why did the Empire put its vital shield generator there and not properly defend it anyway? Why can't the Storm Troopers hit anything? Why give droids such silly personalities? Why does the Empire love ground assaults when it can just bombard stuff from orbit?
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Isn't it interesting the personal body guards serving an evil personified show such great loyalty to him even after he was dead?
People fight to the death on both sides in a war, even in the face of hopeless odds. This is a things that happens. Or maybe it's because of your next point:
It is three generations after Anakin was burnt completely except his head. And they were able to keep him alive. They can't to that to Snoke?
Perhaps they didn't consider Snoke as dead enough and were trying to kill Kylo and Rey
The movie was fine, but full of problems. (Score:5, Interesting)
The movie was fine, but full of problems that detract from the story. The best review I've read discussing those problems is 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi': The Full Shapiro Review [dailywire.com] (spoilers). The review also discusses good parts and things that work toward the bottom, but that list is way shorter than the list of problems.
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peak sci fi navel gazing (Score:3)
I'm just going to go ahead and not participate in this. Thanks anyhow.
Ship jumping to hyperspace as a weapon? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why didn't they use the Rebel Cruiser as a weapon the moment they abandoned it? (or as they abandoned it and save Adm. Holdo)
This probably ruins the entire Star Wars universe/canon as far as space combat..
Where are the hyperspace missiles? If a ship the size of the millenium Falcon can go lightspeed, a similar sized hyperspace missile is unstoppable:
" Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star.." - Han Solo
See also: https://www.theringer.com/2017/12/20/16800970/vice-admiral-holdo-maneuver-the-last-jedi
-ahb
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That was one of the first things I said after watching it. If you can destroy anything with a hyperspace jump, why the fuck isn't this the standard tactic? Jump an asteroid into the death star and call it a day.
There were lots of stupid plot decisions in the movie, but this was the biggest one.
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It's actually cannon in SW that ships have an artificial gravity well projector that will pull a ship out of hyperspace if they're going to collide. Hodo rammed them at light speed, not hyperspace. Likely the only reason it had an effect was because her ship was big enough that the mass of it cracked through the battle-cruiser's shields, where a lighter missile would bounce off or be disintegrated by the deflectors.
Or, you can remember that it's a movie and they don't have to explain a damn thing to you s
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As they said, they were using the cruiser as a decoy to pull the imperial ships away so they wouldn't notice the shuttles and wouldn't have if the hacker didn't clue them in... but how did he know? Its not like those characters were clued in, so you've got me. The plan was for the cruiser to jump as far as they knew. Also Rey teleporting from the imperial ship battle onto the Millennium Falcon somehow... and her going onto that ship in the first place - wtf!? Even if she thought she could turn Kylo Ren, pre
Mark Hamill is right (Score:5, Insightful)
have read reviews that say how great it is because how original it's. I disagree: the old Expanded Universe had more originality.
And those who criticize hardcore fans don't get it. The fans could accept that Luke&Co are no longer the main characters. The problem is that this movie doesn't offer closure. It desecrates the characters. It's what I call "genius complex".
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And those who criticize hardcore fans don't get it. The fans could accept that Luke&Co are no longer the main characters.
No.. no they can't. It's hardcore fans who seem to be unable to accept that Rey doesn't come from some deep mysterious Force bloodline, that the script wasn't just "Luke destroys everything, goes home." and are the most butthurt that this movie wasn't just 2 hours of fan service. Casual fans have been pretty positive because they don't *care* if something is cannon or if it adheres to some made up physics model that says ships do bank turns in space but space bombers are wildly out of bounds.
Critical success, but is it Star Wars? (Score:5, Interesting)
This movie did a lot of things right, and I'm going to watch it again, but there are many things that make me question whether it should have been made as a Star Wars movie.
Visually it's great. It looks like a Star Wars movie, and speaking as a fan I'm glad they used so many practical effects instead of computer generated effects.
Plot-wise it is a bit of a roller-coaster ride. Ups and downs. Some funny moments.
But when you think about the overall story and what is going on, it's bleak and depressing, far beyond what is tonally appropriate for Star Wars.
Spoilers follow. This whole topic is spoilery anyway.
People didn't like how The Empire Strikes Back ended on a "down" note. Oh my gosh, this movie was at least a thousand times bleaker. Apparently after the big success of blowing up the second Death Star and the death of the Emperor, the Rebellion spent the next 40 years or so losing and losing and losing. The Rebellion starts the movie with one capital ship, a medical ship and some sort of freighter or something; and only a few dozen X-Wing fighters. Then they take horrific losses and end the movie with literally a couple of dozen surviving members on board a battered old freighter. The only senior figure left in the Rebellion is Leia. They have no resources, and no allies (the allies they thought they had did not come when they were needed the most).
This is so bleak and depressing that it's painful to think about. But at least we get Luke training Rey as a Jedi, right? Oh no; Luke is bitter, and instead of learning from what happened and moving on, he spent decades in self-imposed exile; he said, in so many words, that he went to that planet to die. And in fact he didn't give Rey any useful training. He promised three lessons, and gave two, and they were great lessons if her big problem was that she was stuck-up and had an inflated sense of her own importance; her actual problem was that she was truly gifted in the Force yet had no idea what to do or how to use the Force, in short that she needed good training.
Then there is the whole Finn and Rose sub-plot where they try to get a codebreaker. Their efforts are worse than useless. The codebreaker somehow figured out that the rebels were sneaking away and tipped off the First Order. (I really don't know how a codebreaker could figure this out; Finn couldn't have told him because Finn didn't know either.) The rebel plan to sneak away was working until the codebreaker tipped off the bad guys, so something like 90% of the surviving rebels died because of that codebreaker guy.
And why did they take the risk of the whole codebreaker thing? Because the Vice Admiral didn't tell Poe that she actually had a plan, and she went out of her way to let him think she had no plan and everyone was going to die. Was this to "teach him a lesson"? Makes no sense, and that lesson came at a horrific cost.
I hope that the writers have a plan already for Episode IX. The story is at such a low point that it will take a truly amazing plan to have the Rebellion come roaring back and defeat the bad guys.
Now, I'll briefly talk about stuff I liked.
I really enjoyed the bit at the beginning where Poe was all alone in an X-Wing in front of the First Order ships. Some people say all the comedy fell flat, but the bit where he was stalling for time by pretending he wasn't hearing anything was IMHO laugh-out-loud funny.
I think that one of the stupidest George Lucas ideas from the prequels is being redeemed. (Not midichlorians... that bit of stupidity is irredeemable.) There was this prophecy of "the one who will bring balance to the Force" and that whole thing went nowhere in the prequels. Well, maybe Rey is about to bring balance to the Force. She isn't afraid of the Dark Side and the Dark Side doesn't seem to be pushing her to do evil things... and Yoda seems to think she will do better without the historical teachings of the Jedi. Maybe she will be able to embra
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Then there is the whole Finn and Rose sub-plot where they try to get a codebreaker. Their efforts are worse than useless. The codebreaker somehow figured out that the rebels were sneaking away and tipped off the First Order. (I really don't know how a codebreaker could figure this out; Finn couldn't have told him because Finn didn't know either.) The rebel plan to sneak away was working until the codebreaker tipped off the bad guys, so something like 90% of the surviving rebels died because of that codebreaker guy.
When you see it again, you will notice that as Finn and Rose are flying away on their mission, they get a call from Poe who tells them that the Vice Admiral is evacuating the ship sending off the pods, it's clear that the code breaker hears this as they pan to a shot of him.
And why did they take the risk of the whole codebreaker thing? Because the Vice Admiral didn't tell Poe that she actually had a plan, and she went out of her way to let him think she had no plan and everyone was going to die. Was this to "teach him a lesson"? Makes no sense, and that lesson came at a horrific cost.
Her opinion of him was that he was a reckless fly boy who was off the handle and would have probably rejected the plan, I think she was banking on the fact that we would at least fall in line with authority and not do what he did, I feel
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When you see it again, you will notice that as Finn and Rose are flying away on their mission, they get a call from Poe
Ah, right. Thank you for this.
Star Wars has always been a soap opera in space, the writing/plot has never been really great
The first two movies had a satisfying plot and good-enough writing. The prequels showed how special effects and imagination aren't enough to salvage a movie with a really terrible script.
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Perhaps the remaining Rebels could hole-up on a small planet or moon ... yes, a moon ... preferably covered in dense foliage. They could embrace the local population of cute-but-intelligent bipedal mammals (call them The Ursidae ...) Then with primitive local resources they could defeat a vastly superior Imperial force to expose a weakness in the Empire's latest doomsday
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Well, maybe Rey is about to bring balance to the Force. She isn't afraid of the Dark Side and the Dark Side doesn't seem to be pushing her to do evil things... and Yoda seems to think she will do better without the historical teachings of the Jedi.
Or maybe Rey stole the Jedi books and put them on the Falcon before she left and Yoda subsequently set the "Jedi tree" on fire.
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Spot on I agree.
Except you missed something critical - Rey did get the historical teachings, and Yoda burned the tree before Luke could get in and see they were missing. At the very end of the show you see somebody pull open a drawer in the millenium falcon and the books are there.
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This is so bleak and depressing that it's painful to think about. But at least we get Luke training Rey as a Jedi, right? Oh no; Luke is bitter, and instead of learning from what happened and moving on, he spent decades in self-imposed exile; he said, in so many words, that he went to that planet to die. And in fact he didn't give Rey any useful training. He promised three lessons, and gave two, and they were great lessons if her big problem was that she was stuck-up and had an inflated sense of her own importance; her actual problem was that she was truly gifted in the Force yet had no idea what to do or how to use the Force, in short that she needed good training.
Luke never claimed he was going to train Rey to be a Jedi. He specifically said he was going to give her three lessons to show why the Jedi should die. The Jedi order itself was flawed, it's constant push for purity in the light side was it's downfall. Pull the Force towards the light, the dark will only grow stronger to match.
Because the Vice Admiral didn't tell Poe that she actually had a plan, and she went out of her way to let him think she had no plan and everyone was going to die. Was this to "teach him a lesson"? Makes no sense, and that lesson came at a horrific cost.
Generals and Admirals don't have to tell the people under them a thing. That's part of the chain of command. Poe got people killed because of his own recklessness, not the Admira
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Luke never claimed he was going to train Rey to be a Jedi.
I never said he did. I was saying that it would have pleased the fans if he had. And, now that I think about it, he did kind of give her one single small lesson: he told her to reach out and breathe. (Then he freaked out at how strong she was, and that was the end of that.)
By the way: the trailer was cut in a way that made me expect to see scenes of Luke training Rey. All the light sabre stuff in the trailer was her training herself without any h
Watchable but not good (Score:2)
(mostly spoiler free)
That is the best way I can put it. It does okay-ish for watching it. It's pretty, and some cool things happen. There are a few WTF worthy moments (Leia), the humor is out of place, and there's one lenghty disgression from the main action that could have been avoided.
The main problems come out on further thinking.
The main problem is: I can see what it tries to do, and it fails badly at it. For instance, a theme running through the entire movie is failure. Everybody screws up. There are t
I can't be arsed (Score:2)
I'm not opposed to them doing their own thing, but if you're going to the writing needs to be much better. In the first movie they shoe-horned in a lightsabre battle that was just dumb. An untra
How did Rey get on the Falcon? (Score:3)
That sure felt like a huge continuity gap, did they cut a scene?
Overall I thought the production values were first-rate, but the plot and script were mediocre and predictable. (And don't get me started about bad physics or bad tactics - I had to suspend A Lot of belief.)
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I wondered the same damn thing. They should have removed the entire "Rose & Finn's Excellent Adventure" sequence and added five to ten minutes of Rey fighting her way off the dreadnought. The movie would have been tighter and shorter and benefited from a new scene that advanced the plot.
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You know that would fit in with the rest of the film.
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As long as she didn't have to crawl through the Jeffries Tube, I guess that makes sense.
This isn't the Jedi Master you were looking for (Score:3)
1st viewing I had a fun time. It was a pop corn flick moment. So I'll say that for it. Didn't hate every second of seeing it. I'll still own this movie on blue ray I'm sure.
That being said - what a sad waste of potential on the story line of the character we all loved so much for those of us growing up in the 70s, 80s. I get that they wanted to kill the character off, ok. I can live with that - but make it glorious. He should have gone down doing something visually stunning. Saving the rebels by pulling a star ship out of orbit with the force. Or thrashing the whole ground attack crew with the force. And certainly shouldn't have been played as a grump old man, without the force, in depressed isolation. He was always a beacon of hope and should have stayed that way. We were robbed of seeing Luke the Jedi Master.
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Luke the Jedi Master would have been another CGI Yoda fight. What they did made sense, older Jedi use trickery and cunning instead of fighting.
And I thought that his ending was pretty dramatic.
Fun film (Score:4, Insightful)
Been watching Star Wars for about 30 years. That said, it was a fun film despite the jokes, which I thought was a bit overboard. Anyway, I have come to accept there's nothing truly groundbreaking from them anymore so I just switch the old brain off and sit back and watch the film. Why am I so content with that? Because I have nothing to gain or lose from these films not being a stakeholder. It doesn't fix or ruin my childhood and I don't have a void to fill in my life with it.
Good movie, but Luke == Flynn in Tron Legacy (Score:2)
Best part of the movie: You weren't sure who was good or bad throughout. My favorite scene was going to light speed to cut Snoke's ship in half was made that much better because the vice-admiral turned out being good after all. Close 2nd: Snoke getting Darth Mauled. Yeah, Snoke was a wasted character, but wow what a cool way to send him out.
Good or bad point in the movie (divisive): There was a Rogue One like "graying" of the black and white, good vs. evil Star Wars universe. Having the bomber close her eye
Re:Good movie, but Luke == Flynn in Tron Legacy (Score:5, Interesting)
I liked some of what they did, but so much of the movie was just a series of straight-up 'take that's' at TFA and the prequels. Rey's parents? Nobodies. Luke's lightsaber? Tossed away, then broken for no good reason. From a certain point of view? Ben and Luke's different perceptions of that fateful night. Poe is a swashbuckling derring-doer and gets his whole squad killed? Fuck you, Star Wars is swashbuckling space opera, it's SUPPOSED to work like that.
My main problem with the Luke story is that it erased all of his growth from ESB and ROTJ, and turned him right back into a whiney little bitch who wanted to go to Tosche Station and pick up some power converters. They could have had him being an inscrutable old master who went into seclusion to discover where he went wrong, and figure out where to go from there, but instead, he was just running away and hiding. He should have been training Rey like an old kung-fu master, or like Yoda. Yoda's force ghost should have shown up and been like 'That bad, was I? So silly, my training techniques were?'
Having Luke's final interaction with Leia and Ben be nothing but an illusion robbed it of EVERYTHING. Luke should have shown up on the planet in person, kissed Leia, apologized for Ben, then strode out and called Ben out. The AT-ATs and what not should have been wiped away with a wave of the hand when they tried to interfere. Luke should have absolutely CLOWNED Ben, then simply turned off his lightsaber, said something like 'You see? Even though I'm far more powerful than you, I still failed. Strength alone is never enough' and Obi-Wan'd out. Rey should have been left on the Falcon, at the end, looking across all of the old Jedi texts, and one new one, written by Luke Skywalker. She should have been the inheritor of his new understanding, the one to actually put it into practice.
What was really wrong with The Last Jedi (Score:2)
The biggest problem that I see with the Last Jedi (and The Force Awakens) are the disparagement of Luke, Han and Leia. Most die hard Star Wars fans have read at least some of the Star Wars books, which show Luke, Leia and Han continuing to be involved with the New Republic that's formed after the Empire falls and Luke going on to become the father of a new Jedi order and a master as great as any that came before him. In The Force Awakens we are aghast that Han basically went back to being a no account smugg
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First just because you haven't read the books doesn't make them obscure, the most successful group of books to continue the story of Luke, Leia and Han were a trilogy of three books by Tim Zahn (Heir to the Empire, Dark Force Rising and The Last Command) all three books were New York Times best sellers. And they were among the first books published that continued the story and didn't just flesh out the back story of the characters.
The fact that the people continuing the franchise probably haven't read the b
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you ignored most of what I wrote. The books are obscure relative to the film because the vast Vast majority of people watching the films haven't read the books.
And the fans I know including myself like the new films.
RT scores don't say HOW good a movie is well.. (Score:2)
On the 93% on Rotten Tomatoes vs. the much lower "audience liked it" score, the latter is usually the better indicator of the likability of a movie for the average moviegoer. While it is good at pointing out stinkers and is easy for everyone to understand (the anti-BCS college football formula), the RT percentage/score is not good at telling you exactly HOW good a "fresh" movie is because there's no nuance to it. It's fresh or rotten - that's it; There's no how fresh the movie is: Is it a perfectly fresh to
Movie IX ... (Score:2)
Chewy should've chewed on the roasted critter (Score:2)
He should've taken a huge-ass bite out of the roasted bird/thing, and then barked something at the live ones like, "If you don't get your Jar Jar Bird asses out of this movie, you're next."
The little animal(s) - especially the one in the Falcon towards the end - were the most annoying part of the movie; They didn't fit the tone of the movie at all, IMO.
I liked it (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm going with the critics.
When we saw episode VII, we knew that the hopeful situation after Episode VI had fizzled. The Republic was once again threatened by the First Order, much like it was by the Empire. The new Jedi Order was a disaster, producing Kylo Ren and apparently not much else. The characters from the first movie (with the exception of Chewbacca) had been hurt by the intervening events, sometimes hurt badly. There are some new, upbeat characters (Rey, Finn, Poe) who resemble the original trilogy characters. That's the situation going into Episode VIII.
We see how badly Luke was hurt by what had happened. He's not acting like the Luke of the original trilogy, and there's darn good reasons why. He wants the Jedi Order destroyed. We see that the heroes can screw up, too, rather than having everything work out. Kylo Ren acts decisively when he can, and tries to subvert Rey, despite often looking like he really doesn't know what he's doing. This is Star Wars with more real characters. They have flaws. They often screw up. They keep going. The logic isn't all there, but that's Star Wars as a whole, not just Episodes VII and VIII.
We've got the visuals we'd expect from Star Wars. The story is bleak, but Leia claims they have everything they need to start a rebellion. We'll see how that goes in Episode IX. Finn and Rose have inspired some discontent and hope on the casino planet.
Terrible waste of time and money (Score:2)
I can't believe I'm saying it but the 1st and 3rd prequel may have been better than this. This one was just so tedious. There was no story telling, no character development, no plot to speak of. My son said it was like a bad video game campaign. Go here, blow up this gun, escape from these guys, go there get this thing. No epic story. Oh Chewie flew the MF through some hard to navigate thing that caused the pursuing tie fighters to crash because they're not as maneuverable again. Also the first order is so
Luke is right: It's time for the jedi to end... (Score:2)
It's entertainment (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a movie, get the fuck over yourself. I enjoyed it. Any Star Wars movie can be eviscerated by the plot holes. For fucks sake the death star could simply navigated to the correct position to destroy Yavin IV instead of waiting 30 minutes for it to be in range.
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It's a derivative of a lot of stories before it, with just a different backdrop that was new and unique.
Good music and ... (Score:2)
The property destruction at the casino city did not move the plot on.
The Skywalker plot sold movies and endured the past movies to generations of fans.
A Rey, Rose and Finn want to replace all that with a very average plot?
Snoke adds nothing creative or interesting.
It was awful. (Score:2)
The main story arc was stupid and terrible.. and resulted in the slowest chase in movie history because they were low on gas!?
The secondary plotline was completely irrelevant to everything and everyone. Hating on rich people at a casino and then beating people over the head with heavy handed and incredibly simplistic morality before riding a pack of animals around and trashing the place!?
Most of the characters are two-dimensional and had no development whatsoever.
Annnnd they wasted Luke Skywalker's last app
Overall plus, but lots of factors.... (Score:2)
Liked it, will see it again and buy it. On track. Not as fresh as 7 or Rogue, but these are the middle innings.
A few missteps and this could have been a dud. I blame Disney for everything out of band for Star Wars.
I’ll get this out of the way now: Whoever wrote the “towel” line needs to go stand in a corner until they are very, very sorry for what they did. That line was the skunk at the garden party. That’s a Poe line, not a Rey line.
OK - stop casting characters qua retail ite
Poorly written. (Score:2)
It was just a bad movie. Far too much comedy for the serious subject matter, plot holes, illogical motives, deus ex machina (laser battering ram?).
I get that in this day and age, people aren't used to seeing well made movies. So some can look passed the obvious flaws. But Star Wars has finally been Disney-fied. Blan, safe, and monolithic.
Star Wars is dead, long live Star Wars.
loved it (Score:2)
There are a lot of vocal people who didn't like the movie, that's ok.
I really liked it. I go for Space Cowboy Wizards, and that's what we got. If you're just now realizing that Star Wars lacks realism and internal consistency in physical, moral, or metaphysical laws, I don't know what to tell you.
Maybe you're just figuring out that Star Wars is a vehicle for subtle counter culture messaging.
Maybe it's funny for Yoda to scrounge for cookies in Luke's pack while making odd grunting noises, but you don't want
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I really liked it. I go for Space Cowboy Wizards, and that's what we got. If you're just now realizing that Star Wars lacks realism and internal consistency in physical, moral, or metaphysical laws, I don't know what to tell you.
Ha! Me too.
I enjoyed the film a great deal and I'm goig to go see it again maybe a few times before it's off. then buy it.
It wasn't perfect. and I also like picking things apart. For example...
I didn't like the Rose character. Or the Casino plot theme: it didn't fit in in a variety
Culture Wars! (Score:2)
The whole saga is the one of the best examples of the cultural war that is plaguing the western civilization since the collapse of the Wall.
Original trilogy - classic archetypal story; just an exciting, well executed variation of it set in space. Good actors, unseen special effects, groundbreaking musical score, super cool baddies, etc. Great stuff! Bonus - Lucas not directing 5 and 6 (and the one he did he was pressured, uncertain and disbelieved even by the cast, let alone the studio - art born out of cri
franchise foresight (Score:3)
I basically knew where this was going—at the franchise level—the moment Rey had the telepathic dream sequence after first touching Luke's light saber (the whole point of which was to be profoundly pointless and thereby encourage mass Stockholm-syndrome cud chewing) and I haven't given a shit about the rest of that movie, about this movie, or about the next movie ever since, though I do find it amusing to check in on how others are reacting to the Disney Matrix.
Almost every big movie these days is a pastiche of three or more genres (sometimes obviously so, other times mildly concealed).
I was watching the commentary track for Russian Ark [wikipedia.org] last night, and at one point the cameraman panics and tells the guy beside him "I can't do it", because he's got such a bad groin spasm that he worries he'll become crippled permanently. (The entire movie is a single 90-minute take, with a very heavy Steadicam.) But then he sees the 300 actors in period costumes all in perfect position through the next door and he gets a shot of adrenaline and heroically makes it to minute 84. Cut! This breaks a tension so thick that 1000 actors and 1000 assembled extras almost begin to cry.
Well, that lightsaber dream sequence was the screenwriting team confessing "we can't do it"—noooooo!—about finding a principled way to combine all the necessary genres together in the mandatory Disney stew pot.
Fuck it, we'll use telepathy.
A conversation with Martin Amis [livemint.com] — 2 December 2016
Does writing get any easier?
Fuck no, not onerous at all, not after The Great Force Vending Machine in the Sky pukes out, faster than light, lady-in-waiting telepathic midichlorians (of course, this minor capability would have barely figured in the outcome until movie number eight).
Not that great (Score:2)
Re:It sucked! (Score:4, Informative)
The modern fencing sabre bears little resemblance to the cavalry sabre, having a thin, 88 cm (35 in) long straight blade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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"The modern fencing sabre bears little resemblance to the cavalry sabre, having a thin, 88 cm (35 in) long straight blade."
Modern fencing sabre? Do you hear yourself? These are sports items, used to deliver electricity to a adversary costume, not slicing weapons.
Re:It sucked! (Score:4, Informative)
Uh... because a fictional 'light sabre' is any less disconnected from old cavalry swords??
Sabers are swords (Score:5, Interesting)
Just like the rest of these children's movies for stupid kids who don't know shit, especially not physics. Advertisement for action figures for children, it should be forbidden or at least called what it is.
Hell they didn't even get the name for the stupid light_sabers_ right? Sabers are _curved_, that's what differentiates them from a sword.
Firstly, sabers are swords just like a Ferrari is a car. Secondly, while the saber started out as a curved bladed adopted by Europeans through contact with the Ottomans, by the 19th and early 20th century sabers became progressively more straight bladed. The US Model 1913 Cavalry saber for example, had a completely straight blade as did many other contemporary sabers. but you are right in that the 'light saber' has nothing in common with any kind of saber. If the lightsaber is anything it's a kind of 'laser shikomizue' or something (one of the few straight bladed Japanese swords I can think of other than a Shinobigatana). Kylo Ren's weapon is more of a 'laser longsword' and he uses it a bit like one too. That was kind of interesting to watch because the 'light sabers' in Star Wars are used in a somewhat 'katana-esque' manner and it is always fun to see Talhoffer and Liechtenauer's ideas clash with the Japanese mindset. Mind you it's way more fun to watch at a HEMA event where the Longswordsman and the Katanna fanboy are both purists and both of them actually know precisely what they are doing.
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+1 for mentioning HEMA. It's a great sport and my brother is very good at it. Is it European only?
I haven't been doing HEMA long but there is a lively community in the US, Canada and down to S-America judging by the people I ran into at the last newbie course I attended. Japanese fencing does not really come under HEMA since it is European only but many people who go to these events come there from Kendo or from Olympic saber fencing like I did but it is still fun to mix things up and see what happens, like Rapier vs. Katana or Walpurgis sword and buckler vs. Katana (or even arming sword and full sized
Re:We need a better ratings system for movies (Score:4, Interesting)
The only reviewers whose opinion matters are those who have similar tastes to yours. That's the whole point -- to give you an idea if you, personally, would enjoy the movie or not.
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I think nobody really cares about that movie anymore.
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What we got was social justice before storytelling
What? Where? Define where you saw this please?
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The JJ version.
So, in other words, the version of Star Trek that is essentially Star Wars?
Don't worry, this is /. (Score:2)
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It was a great Star Wars. Better than the awful prequel trilogy. It was certainly better than Return of the Jedi.