What are your thoughts on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (WARNING! SPOILERS DISCUSSED HERE!)

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What are your thoughts on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (WARNING! SPOILERS DISCUSSED HERE!)

Post by AlexHiro4 »

So....I saw the fan event premiere of The Last Jedi last Thursday night. A few days prior, on Monday December 11th, I made the mistake of lurking around on Reddit to try and find a minor leak. I found two MASSIVE leaks that everyone was griping about: Snoke dies and Luke dies. I though to myself, "Surely this is fake. I'm going to keep looking around these posts to find someone that can disprove these leaks". Not only did I get further confirmation that the leaks were true, but I also saw even more leaks.

With all that being said, it was still much different to see it unfold on the big screen than just reading the plot points online. Overall, I thought it was a well done movie, and I enjoyed it. I actually went the very next night to see it a second time, and I'm taking my Dad to see it on the 30th as a Christmas present to him. So yeah, I believe it's not the steaming pile of trash that many, many, MANY fans claim that it is. However, I also don't believe this movie is the second coming of Christ like the critics seem to think it is. In fact, I still think The Empire Strikes Back is the best movie in the Star Wars franchise.

The best way I can describe this movie is that it's a great movie with some questionable plot decisions, but even those questionable decisions were pulled off pretty well for what they were. With the exception of Leia turning into space Mary Poppins. That was truly stupid both in concept AND execution.

The other decisions I felt were questionable were the following:

1) Luke is cranky and not remotely the same Luke Skywalker we know and love for almost the ENTIRE movie. He becomes the old Luke basically at the end of the movie. I expected him to be a cranky codger for part of the movie, but I would have liked to see him be "awesome old-school Luke" for a longer period of time than what we got to see.

2) Snoke died before we got to see him truly be productive on-screen. We understand he's been this "big bad" off screen, but it would have been nice to see more of this before killing him off. I would have even been okay with him still dying in THIS movie had they done more with him in The Force Awakens and the first part of this movie. I'm not even talking about a backstory either. I came to grips a few months ago that Disney hates the prequels, even though that are cannon, and wants to emulate elements of the old trilogy. One of those elements is that the Emperor didn't have a backstory. He didn't even have a name at that point. He was just a big bad that was Vader's boss, and he didn't get a backstory until the prequels. However, in spite of a lack of backstory and only being in the entirety of Return of the Jedi (plus one hologram cameo in The Empire Strikes Back), the Emperor felt like a REALLY powerful threat, and it felt like he did a lot with his presence in the limited screen time he had. I never got that from Snoke. He was supposed to be insanely powerful, and potentially more ancient than the Sith themselves, but for me personally...I never felt that threat. Granted, his telekinesis through the force on screen was pretty insane. He tossed around Hux and Rey like rag dolls.

Anyway, before I get off point too much, his death was a waste of character potential. I really hope that Dave Filoni creates a new animated series that takes place between episodes 6 and 7 in order to address the rise of the first order, the rise of Snoke, and discuss is origins. Not to mention, we could see a non-geezerly, but not super-young, Luke, Leia, and Han.

3) The story arc with Rose and Finn was a complete waste, and it also undermined the pseudo-romantic chemistry that Rey and Finn had in The Force Awakens. It's as if Rian Johnson said, "Sorry J.J. Abrams..I don't like the idea of Rey and Finn together, so I'm going to force a new girl in the story for him. This way it can free me up to start some chemistry between Rey and Kylo, and then hint at future chemistry between Rey and Poe right before the ending credits". The arc itself was a waste of time because in the end, the mission was a complete failure, and if they had just stayed on the ship Admiral Holdo's plan would have worked.

4) I don't particularly care for how Luke died. Not necessarily THAT he died...just how. Straining himself but utilizing force projection and then fading into nothing was kind of...meh. Not to mention, knowing that it was just a force projection being shot at by all of those AT AT Walkers makes it less cool that he didn't have a scratch on him when the dust settled. How much cooler would it have been if he had physically been there and STILL not had a scratch on him?

5) Captain Phasma is basically the new Boba Fett. She's way over-hyped by both Disney and the fans, and yet she does nothing of true significance on screen other than be useless and die. This is exactly how Boba Fett was movie-wise. He basically did nothing, fans somehow loved him, and then he died at the beginning of Return of the Jedi.

6) There was not a single true lightsaber duel in the entire movie. Rey and Kylo Ren teamed up and used their lightsabers to fight off the Praetorian guards after Snoke's death, but they never fought each other. When Luke "fought" Kylo at the end, he was just deceiving him with his force projection and his lightsaber itself was an illusion. He basically dodged the whole time and stalled for time in order for the resistance to escape. Once again, not an actual lightsaber duel, even though two lightsabers were ignited.

Now, with all these things being said, this is how I feel that each of these were at least pulled off somewhat well for what they were.

1) Luke may have been a cranky hermit most of the movie, but that opened the door for some other awesomeness. YODA. Yoda's force ghost shows up, harasses him a bit in his Yoda kind of way, and shows that even after Luke learning and growing for a lifetime....Yoda still has things to teach him. Aside from that, the out of character nature of Luke's personality throughout most of the film makes it all that more satisfying when we see him be his old self at the end.

2) While Snoke did die prematurely in my opinion, the WAY he died was really interesting. Granted, we all like to see a big sweaty "boss battle" every now and again, and truthfully...Kylo Ren is NOT strong enough to kill Snoke in a head to head battle. However, using trickery and deception was an interesting route to go. The whole time, Snoke was monologuing about Kylo Ren having "no conflict in him", "fully embracing the dark side", and finally "igniting the lightsaber into his greatest enemy". 100% of this was true. Yes, he had affection for Rey, but that didn't mean he was conflicted. He had truly embraced the dark side, no fuss...no muss...no conflict. And at that point, Snoke WAS his greatest enemy. So yeah, Kylo using the force to turn the Skywalker family lightsaber slowly towards Snoke and igniting it with the force...all while he was monologuing with his eyes closed....yeah, I kind of liked that. Would I have enjoyed a big sweaty "boss battle"? Sure. Was this cool too? Absolutely.

Oh, also, it was kind of necessary to get Snoke out of the way in this movie in order for them to not copy the old trilogy format of an Emperor/Vader scenario. Early in the movie when Kylo smashes his helmet, I think that's the point where he makes the conscious decision to stop trying to be Vader, always the apprentice but never a ruler, and start just being Kylo Ren, a ruler.

3) As far as Finn and Rose's story arc was concerned...as useless as it was, there were still some good elements. First, unlike a lot of fans, I enjoyed the personality of Rose's character. Second, if they REALLY feel the need for Finn to have a different love interest than Rey, at least he had good chemistry with Rose. Lastly, DJ the "mast codebreaker", had a very entertaining personality. I really hope he comes back in episode 9 and isn't a one hit wonder.

4) Luke's death. Yes, it sucked seeing him die, and it also sucked that it didn't even happen in person. I absolutely would have rather him been physically present for the battle. With that being said, force projection is a cool new ability to showcase that we'd never seen before. Also, it made him look pretty hardcore in a different type of way. Instead of showcasing skills of hardcore fighting on the battlefield, he showcased hardcore force-based skills through meditation. I mean seriously...he projected himself from across the galaxy. Wow.

5) There's not much to redeem about the Phasma situation other than the fact that her melee fight with Finn was actually pretty cool and well choreographed in my opinion.

6) The lack of true lightsaber duels was beyond disappointing. However, the fight with the Praetorian guards was really cool. Good choreography, high intensity, and the fact that the fight was taking place in the throne room was cool.

I'm sure there were other things I liked about the movie, and other things I disliked that I'm just not thinking of at the moment. Overall though, I do believe it's an enjoyable movie. Just not as amazing as the critics are saying it is.

What are your thoughts on the movie guys? I'm interested to hear some other opinions.
Last edited by AlexHiro4 on Thu Jun 14, 2018 8:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What are your thoughts on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (WARNING! SPOILERS DISCUSSED HERE!)

Post by Sonic# »

Overall I really enjoyed the film. A test for whether a film sticks with me is whether I keep thinking about it. I did more than think about it: I have a 6000 word (and counting) document where I analyze what's going on with the film. It's mainly for my own benefit, but I'll post it if people are interested.

To quickly respond to two things you say, I have no issue with Leia pulling herself to the airlock with the Force. She's always been force sensitive. Being able to use it in a crisis situation as an adrenaline response before needing treatment for injuries felt appropriate to me. There was no umbrella.

Also, Luke being a grouch felt appropriate for someone suffering the trauma of knowing he had done extremely wrong and still working through it. His early scenes show feigned disinterest punctuated by signs of avoidance and defensiveness. The film developing that backstory with three different flashbacks (from Luke's, Kylo's, and Luke's perspective) was a technique that makes me think back to one of the best Star Trek: TNG episodes, A Matter of Perspective, where the problems of memory and perspective are core issues. It felt like a more mature version of approaching truth from "a certain point of view," wherein all sides react for understandable reasons (Kylo feels betrayed, Rey is outraged that Luke would hide the betrayal, and Luke feels the utter failure of having misread his student, momentarily turning to despair, and turning Kylo utterly against him while there was still hope otherwise).

I like the force training a lot. The message of failure being an opportunity for learning, reflection, and recovery really resonates with me. The film seemed to forestall easy answers, like who Rey's parents were, or the ability of some quick trigger-heroics to resolve a clear disparity in power between the Resistance and the First Order. Poe had to learn the potential destructiveness of insubordination, and Holdo demonstrated both good OpSec (keeping critical details of the plan hidden in case of a mole) and a capacity for self-sacrifice when it made sense to do so.

The Finn and Rose storyline could have been more tightly edited, but the core parts of it (showing the arms trade, demonstrating just how long-odds Poe's plan was) were effective to me.

I think the weakest point of the film is how it treads a line between being space opera (where technology goes underexplained because it's not the focus but merely an engine to get to the next plot point) and being materially or technologically-consistent sci-fi (where things conform to conventional physics). I sense a lot of people's disappointment or disbelief coming from extrapolations that treat Star Wars like a world consistent with ours, where suddenly all ships should be able to suicide-hyper-ram with equal effectiveness, where turbolaser shots can't arc over distance, or where a fleet should be able to microjump to reach the fleet. That kind of nitpickiness seems (a) holey (it makes too many assumptions about how Star Wars should work) and (b) doesn't interest me (I like Star Wars as space opera), but the larger Star Wars franchise has frequently explained just enough of what's going on in tech terms (fuel, energy, dimensions of capital ships) that I can see why fans captivated by those details would nitpick.
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Re: What are your thoughts on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (WARNING! SPOILERS DISCUSSED HERE!)

Post by Shiva Indis »

Ah, this topic was inevitable wasn't it?

My take is short. I haven't fully enjoyed previous Rian Johnson films I've seen and have the same criticism of this one: it's half a good movie.

The light side/dark side plotline I liked pretty much without reservation. It felt like a nice new permutation on what had come before with a satisfying plot arc. The Finn/Rose/Poe part, on the other hand, seemed to spin in circles like it was only there because the characters involved needed something to do.

I hope Benicio Del Toro's character returns, though.
Sonic# wrote:I have no issue with Leia pulling herself to the airlock with the Force. She's always been force sensitive.
I go back and forth on it. Her capacity for using the Force is not in doubt and the life-and-death nature of the situation is not in doubt either, but it is a big leap from the clairvoyance she usually displays to flying through outer space. Then comes the space opera vs. hard sci-fi snarl about how survivable should space be...

This movie will keep the internet busy for years.
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Re: What are your thoughts on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (WARNING! SPOILERS DISCUSSED HERE!)

Post by Shinto-Cetra »

To start off, I'm a bit of a maverick as far as Star Wars fans go. I don't hate the prequels, I think III in particular was a pretty good movie (Ian McDiarmid as Palpatine=your argument is invalid.) Anyone who hates the SW prequels, I dare you to watch any of the Highlander sequels. You will learn a new definition to the word bad ("There can only be one!") I thought SW7 was technically good but nothing amazing, it was really predictable. Rogue One was rather great though, as were the sadly now non-canon KOTOR RPGs.

Now that that's taken care of, only this review stands in my way. I really enjoyed SW8. It plays with your expectations on many occasions. You think Kylo Ren is becoming good like Darth Vader? Sorry he's still Napolen Dyna-I mean truly evil. You think Rey's parents are important? Nope! How did Luke survive all those blasts? Cause he's already one with the force, and that's a force projection. Is the Porg Jar Jar 2.0? Nope, Chewie doesn't like it and said Porg gets virtually no screen time! You think Holdo is a coward? She's the bravest out of all of them!

I like how it makes fun of the villains. The scene where Hux is trolled by Poe-classic (between that and Luke's projection, Johnson is a master troll)! And lets not forget Snoke's "Take that ridiculous thing off!" line, which actually leads Kylo's character development to stop trying to be Darth Vader. The whole Canto Bight scenario did feel like a "side quest" but it touched on some important themes, eg animal cruelty, and the people who finance both sides in a war. I didn't mind the lack of Lightsaber vs Lightsaber duels, the Rey and Kylo vs the Praetorian guard scene made up for it. Also I am really glad Rey didn't turn to the dark side, cause the trailers made it look like she might. And that vision in the cave with Rey, that was very surreal. I liked Rey and Luke's (and later Yoda's) scenario a lot. Luke's old confrontation with Kylo adds more depth their characters. Also Leia floating through space is a bit of a stretch. Not totally unrealistic, but questionable.

I just hope IX doesn't go back to another rehash. Between Star Wars and Star Trek, Abrams isn't that original. Also with Kylo Ren and his erratic tantrums at the helm, the First Order is doomed.

edit: the "your argument is invalid" line was addressed the to legions of prequel haters in general, not anyone in particular here.
Last edited by Shinto-Cetra on Tue Jan 09, 2018 10:09 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: What are your thoughts on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (WARNING! SPOILERS DISCUSSED HERE!)

Post by GhaleonOne »

Shinto-Cetra wrote:Anyone who hates the SW prequels, I dare you to watch any of the Highlander sequels. You will learn a new definition to the word bad ("There can only be one!")
Sequel movies, yeah, but I'm a massive fan of the Highlander TV series.

But to go back to the topic at hand, I liked the movie. But I'm easy to please usually. I also enjoyed the prequels, especially III. Some of the acting may have been suspect, but I enjoyed them for what they were.

In regards to Luke, it sounds like a lot of fans are really upset that his character changed so much and felt he never would have turned his back on his nephew when he fell to the dark side. But people change a lot in 30 years or however long it's been. For better or worse or just different. I'm sure my 55 year old self will be different than my 25 year old self. I'm totally fine with the angle they went in for that direction. And honestly, the showdown with Kylo and Luke was pretty awesome. Plus, well, Yoda for fan service was nice! And done in a way that didn't seem forced into the movie for the sake of having Yoda in there.

What will be interesting is how they play out episode IX. So much changed from Episode VII to VIII. We go from a massive space battle of two powerful sides to basically a Millenium Falcon full of resistance fighters vs a Snoke-less First Order that's still powerful none-the-less.

I also hope they still answer some unanswered questions, whether in the next movie or in side stories (comics, cartoons, books, whatever). Who was Snoke, who was the old man on Jakku who had the map to Luke in the beginning of TFA and why did he have it? I'm hoping the next movie says more about who the Knights of the Ren are too (were they they Jedi's in training that left with Kylo when he turned on Luke?)
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Re: What are your thoughts on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (WARNING! SPOILERS DISCUSSED HERE!)

Post by Alunissage »

I basically agree with Sonic and G1. I liked it.

It's kind of amusing how pretty much every thing that goes wrong is because Poe was trying to be a standard male hero and Screwed Everything Up. And costing many many lives. Honestly, I don't know why Holdo didn't just airlock him for that. The most annoying moment to me was Holdo and Leia agreeing that they like him. Oh, that little rascal, boys being boys, getting nearly the entire group killed off. :roll:

It would also have been nice if the kid with the broom at the end hadn't been yet another human boy. We know nonhumans can use the Force, after all. I also found the pacing to be kind of whiplashy. Like, we know the Resistance has hours to deal with their crisis while we watch Rey clearly spending days at the end of nowhere.

The moment that stuck with me for hours and days afterward was actually Leia's self-rescue. In large part because of her theme playing. It's always been a beautiful, painfully powerful piece, and I used to listen frequently to a CD of some John Williams movie music when I was a teenager, so it's very much imprinted in my brain. And, of course, there's the extra poignancy of knowing it was Fisher's last appearance.

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Re: What are your thoughts on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (WARNING! SPOILERS DISCUSSED HERE!)

Post by Sonic# »

Alunissage wrote:Honestly, I don't know why Holdo didn't just airlock him for that.
That would feel more new-era Battlestar Galactica than Star Wars, though I guess we already had a renegade fleet fleeing some Cylon-equivalents. To say the least, if this were a TV series I'd expect the repercussions of Poe's actions to echo into later episodes.

It would also have been nice if the kid with the broom at the end hadn't been yet another human boy. We know nonhumans can use the Force, after all.
That occurred to me too. It feels like Star Wars as a series treats its other species primarily as a form of world-building. The Cantina scene, the Jawa sandcrawler, and the Tusken Raiders are all obstacles, enablers, or flavor in any given scene. Chewie and Nien Nunb (from Return of the Jedi) act as co-pilots and sidekicks to Han/Rey and Lando, respectively. Jar Jar is unfortunate comic relief showing the other side or native inhabitants of Naboo. The alien Jedi are side-characters who are unceremoniously cut down in Revenge of the Sith.

I'd like to see Star Wars try to make any of the anthropomorphic-but-not-human people in this world a perspective-character.
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Re: What are your thoughts on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (WARNING! SPOILERS DISCUSSED HERE!)

Post by GhaleonOne »

Sonic# wrote:That occurred to me too. It feels like Star Wars as a series treats its other species primarily as a form of world-building. The Cantina scene, the Jawa sandcrawler, and the Tusken Raiders are all obstacles, enablers, or flavor in any given scene. Chewie and Nien Nunb (from Return of the Jedi) act as co-pilots and sidekicks to Han/Rey and Lando, respectively. Jar Jar is unfortunate comic relief showing the other side or native inhabitants of Naboo. The alien Jedi are side-characters who are unceremoniously cut down in Revenge of the Sith.

I'd like to see Star Wars try to make any of the anthropomorphic-but-not-human people in this world a perspective-character.
Well, there is Yoda. I know he's never been the main character of any of the movies, but he's probably the most powerful of all the Jedi, along with playing a pretty significant role in most of the movies.
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Re: What are your thoughts on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (WARNING! SPOILERS DISCUSSED HERE!)

Post by Sonic# »

^ lol, okay, Yoda's a good counterpoint there. In Episode 5 Luke describes looking for a "great warrior" - he rejects Yoda not because he's green or alien but because he's small. I'll have to think about that.
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Re: What are your thoughts on Star Wars: The Last Jedi (WARNING! SPOILERS DISCUSSED HERE!)

Post by Aaron »

One of the worst star wars films. My 5 year old didn't even like it and he liked the force awakens

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