The Last Jedi Thread (with Spoilers)

There are places in the original movies where you do kind of have to just go with it, sure. When Vader's ship is chasing Leia's to reclaim the Deathstar plans Vader sees that Leia's ship has jettisoned a life pod but because there are no life forms aboard, Vader dismisses that pod instead of sending a couple of tie fighters after that pod. That doesn't really jive but you make your peace with it and move on. For the most part though, the plots and characterizations were at least coherent. Last Jedi didn't do that. None of it's supporters have really explained how it did.

And the originals did have their share of Kitsch for sure, (the way Boba Fett died comes to mind) but they also had Gravitas and nobody was making jokes as dumb as Hux's 'Can You Hear Me Now' skit in the middle of the important moments. If you're going to do a hokey comedy bit from the bridge of a Dreadnought then why not just catch up to Leia's ship by jumping in to 'Ludicrous Speed'?

As one of the people railing against this movie, I'm not whining (Dude) that my childhood was ruined, I'm annoyed, I guess, that so many people would accept something so absolutely terribly crafted.

 

Having had some time to mull over the film, I can forgive some of the logical deficiencies in the film.

But no matter how I try to convince myself to like TLJ, or even just give it a second go in the cinema, the film just falters in many other aspects, compounded by terrible writing...

 

I accepted the idea of two capital-class ships locked in a slow pursuit, because it was grounded in what happened quite a bit in Napoleonic wars at sea. It was sometimes just true that you could move just fast enough to stay within sight of an enemy ship or slowly creep up over the course of a day. The ship in front would often resort to throwing guns and water overboard to get lighter and try to squeak out just a bit more speed. I can buy that these ships can only go so fast if they are not in hyperspace and that it becomes all about positioning, randomness, or other factors to decide a confrontation like this.

I did have the feeling while watching that there were one too many schemes or if-this-then-that situations. But ultimately I found the relationships between the characters completely believable, well-realized, and emotionally true. Those things mattered to me more than understanding how bombs are supposed to "fall" in zero gravity (their flux capacitors generate a local gravitational field that is attracted to the mass signature of large hard targets dummy ) or questions about how spaceships work.

 

Yeah, it's space opera and I'm usually more inclined than most to 'just go with it' and not get to hung up on technicalities. For instance, it makes almost No sense that the Millennium Falcon would be sitting there waiting for Rey to make her escape in Force Awakens or that Han Solo would show up almost immediately after ... but, yeah, OK. If it gets the movie off the ground then I'll go with it. (Although I'm pretty confident I could rough out a more coherent script in less time than it took to watch that movie)

But Last Jedi was just one scene after another after another that just were just so horribly written.

Leia in space
Poe's Mutiny instead of telling him the escape plan
The plan to escape on dozens of transports with some flimsy explanation that they don't get picked up in scanners now, by the same ships that can all of a sudden track through light speed.
Luke hiding from a fight and pissing on the Jedi
The death of Snoke,The death of Phasma, The death of Ackbar
A chase scene that ignores that the chaser can travel faster than light
Putting a Black guy and an Asian chick in jail for a parking violation before they botch their mission but not before they rescue some horse-cats while leaving kids to be apparently indentured
Space Monaco and the whole irrelevant Code Breaker plot line to begin with
Space Battles are no longer relevant in 'STAR WARS' (auto pilot some x wings, or whatever, in to star destroyers at light speed and you're good... just be sure to fill up first)
The force now works however you want it to (breathing in space, mirages projected across the galaxy, post mortem lightning wielding, conversations in full view of each other via mind-bonding)
Apparently nobody was guiding Rey to be so awesome in Force Awakens, she just figured out stuff like mind control on the fly
Attempts at humour like BB-8 driving an At-At, Hux's 'Can You Hear Me Now', Chewie and the Porgs, BB-8 as a slot machine
Snoke deliberately and explicitly putting a dumbass in charge of his armada
Luke and Leia who's father had found redemption after decades as the fiercest villain in the galaxy, writing off Leia's Son
The Resistance/Rebellion gets X-Wings from arms dealers now?
Nobody saying 'I have a bad feeling about this' (at least not in English)




And this is without starting to talk about the quality of movie they Could have made but didn't...

 

Well I don't see how the argument of "this film was good as the originals" can hold. If I had never watched any star wars movie, and watched the TLJ, I would be inclined to never watch another star wars movie again. Not because its a star wars movie, but its just a terrible movie in general. I seriously cannot see how it got a 93 on rotten tomatoes at launch. Disney must be lacing the critics wallets with cash because it was a really shoddily put together movie.


I think the New Hope and Empire Strikes Back are far superior movies. I actually had a very negative reaction to TFA and everyone was wondering why. TLJ was infinitely worse than TFA in all aspects.

Look the prequels are shitty writing and directing, but the overarching storyline was clear........it was a space opera with huge space battles, light saber duels, and at least trying to make the characters feel human.

I seriously think no one should give Rian Johnson another movie to write or direct, because he seriously has no talent. Its hard to write so poorly, just to try to be novel and unexpected.

I usually like it when they hire a new asian character, but Rose was seriously irking and someone that would come out of a show from the disney channel. Cringe. They should had her die and her sister to take her place LOL.

 

I Love Return of The Jedi. The space battle at the end as Luke and Vader square off in front of the Emporer while Leia and Han are doing their thing... I Loved it.

 

That's probably way too harsh.

Rian Johnson has done some pretty good work in the past. Looper was a pretty good film, and Rogue One was perhaps my favorite Star Wars movie to date.

Pretty sure every director / filmmaker / scriptwriter has their off-days. I think that the process of putting together a film is extremely complex, with many moving parts and stakeholders involved, that it's not possible to isolate a single piece of work which we don't fancy, and use it as a stick to bash him/her with.

 

Rogue One wasn't Rian Johnson, though. That was Gareth Edwards who I would Love to see do more Starwars (without Vader making a pun or CGI Leia/Tarkin). I won't buy another ticket to a Rian Johnson directed Starwars movie. The Russo Brothers would be awesome, or maybe Favreau possibly, or others I'm sure I would pay to see... but Rian Johnson I won't pay to see.

 

Honestly, does that argument really hold up since you have seen the other Star Wars movies? After I saw TLJ, my first thought was "why did people hate this?" I understood it with TFA, but TLJ had a lot going for it. Some of the best fight scenes and amazing use of the force in the series (as far as the movies go,) a major plotpoint that was more in line with the lore of Jedi (Rey's parents being nobodies...the force doesn't usually care about parental lineage or anything. It just wants balanced, whether that be Anakin fulfilling his prophecy by eliminating the Jedi ORder down to a couple of members, or turning back to the light and killing Sidious.) The Skywalkers (including the Solos) were an exception being that Anakin was literally born of the force. Kylo ended up actually becoming a good character.

I'm not saying there wasn't shit that bugged the hell out of me. Snoke's death, while I understand why they did it [him and Luke were relics and the theme was killing the old to make way for the new,] was dumb in context. Sure, it was cool had Kylo tricked him into thinking he was going to turn his blade on Rey by making his emotions say a general "He's going to strike down his enemy!" but it had no build-up other than the 10 minutes prior to that. And the casino scene? Didn't really need that. Hell, Finn was irrelevant to the entire plot. He didn't need to be there. The plot had to make up a reason to include him.

But then there's Luke. Luke's death was perfectly fine to me. He overexerted himself in the force and became one with it. The same thing most Jedi Masters before him in the movie series have done. The issue is...well, Luke is not the kind of man to strike down a family member. Even if he feels the darkness inside of them, he would never consider killing a family member. That made Mark Hammil's dissatisfaction with how Luke was betrayed make a whole lot more sense.

But honestly, I found it a good movie all-in-all. I didn't find problems with how they killed the first order's fleet (as it made sense at the time...they wouldn't have ever used that tactic with a large ship because they didn't have any.) I didn't find problems with Rey's skill in the force (because, quite honestly, her only feats were beating a conflicted and severely injured Kylo [remember, he got hit by a goddamn bowgun] after using her anger, resisting his mind probing that was implied he never used on a Jedi but Snoke successfully pulled off once she had a little bit of training, and lifting an pile of large rocks. She didn't really do anything else but be good at combat (which she was already good at before TFA.) She hasn't used the force on even the same level as Luke in RoJ.

I don't know. I just feel like, no matter what Disney did, Star Wars fans wouldn't have been happy. I would say that it doesn't 100% deserve that 93%, but it sure as hell is close to it.

 

Would this be a good time to mention that the kid they chose to play young Han in the new Solo movie coming out next December was so bad that they sent him to acting classes halfway through filming?


They should just cut him out entirely and have it be Young Lando.

 

One small point, without launching into an explanation of why the haters are objectively wrong...

I think the ultimate fate of how this movie is perceived depends entirely on the Episode IX. This is a bridge film. An inflection point.

Some of the scenes that people hate now may very well be leading up to something awesome in the next one where they end up making a lot more sense in retrospect.

And, of course, it could go the completely opposite way where you look back and think they were just spinning their wheels.

People kind of hated Empire when it first came out as well. It's only in retrospect that it suddenly became the favorite of many.

 

@BillOhio brought the receipts. I have to respect it even though I think many of these can be justified and didn't bother me.

This was definitely a weird Star Wars movie. To quote Luke: "This is not going to go the way you think."

 

Disney is really about the rise of the Porg Empire.

I've been reading the Expanded Porg Universe books and Rose becomes a Princess of Porgs later on. There will probably be an animated musical adaptation of the gritty original.

https://nerdist.com/star-wars-the-last-jedi-kelly-marie-tran-porg-costume/

I've already started writing Rose/Chewbacca fanfiction

 

Stronger than it ever was with Lucas.

There has ever only been 1 really great Star Wars film, episode 5. 4 was good but not great, but it was the only one Lucas made that was better than dog poop. 6 was nice smelling dog poop. The fights at the end and Vader and Luke squaring off redeemed it somewhat. The only redeeming qualities of 1-3 is Lucas casting Liam and Ewan.

7 was decent. RO was decent. 8 was decent. Which oddly makes Disney's run the best track record star wars has ever had. For better or worse.

TLJ was a solid 7.5/10 for me. It was 8 but repeated viewing doesn't hold up as well.

I honestly don't think JJ has the talent to right the ship in 9. I expect a beautiful but shallow experience.

 

LOL unfortunately, he's dead, so it doesn't matter what they do with his character. Just gotta rake in that cash

 

The Plot Lines and premises didn't make sense. Isn't that enough?

Then the awful 'humor', the lack of being true to the original trilogy, the forced 'Social Conscious/Awareness'.


I didn't see the use of the force as awesome. The Force is The Force. Letting Rian Johnson just arbitrarily decide that 'the force can do this now, the force can do that now' didn't work for me as awesome, it just seemed like awful writing.

 

Hux went from Nazi-like general to buffoon in TLJ. They probably decided in a board meeting "Hmm, where do we add some Disney family-friendly humour to this movie? That guy seems joyless, lets pick him". Also, that Kylo Ren scene has become an internet meme. Only thing redeeming about this movie is that it looked nice (except Leia in space, which is both terrible writing and cinematography), which is more than I can say for Justice League, but kinda what you'd expect from Disney budget.