Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

It was OK. There were things I really loved and things that I was very meh about.

My overall feeling afterwards was not as positive as after seeing Rogue One, but a vast improvement over TFA, and more original.

Luke must be the most powerful Jedi ever. Ability to project himself across the galaxy via meditation. I imagine he is what Anakin could have become had he not fallen to the dark side and achieved his full potential as a Jedi. I also wish top tier force masters like Yoda and Sidious has been portrayed more like this in the prequels. Basically wizard level who would barely need light sabers, rather than a hyper frog and ninja grandpa ping ponging around the room. Gandalf had a sword but he didn’t usually need it.

I still stick to my guns that Anakin was never the One, despite what Lucas and others say. Luke was. Yoda even admits the prophecy may have been misread in episode three.

I like Kylo Ren a lot more in this one. The fight with Snoke’s guards was pretty sweet.

I’m not crazy about Snoke but I still want to know more of his origins. How did he become so powerful? Was he one of the Emperor’s inquisitors from the old days of the empire?

I had a feeling Luke would die but he got a very dignified death. He didn’t really die, he just transcended the physical plane

Also cool that Luke acknowledged the hubris of the Prequel era Jedi and their failings

Yes on Luke's death, Kylo, and Luke being portrayed the way the top tier should have been portrayed on my prequels. That was my first thought, really. This is what Yoda should have been like in action. (Although, a part of me is disappointed that we barely got to see the green saber again.)

I also really like the fact that the movie leaned heavily on the mysticism of the Force, rather than it merely being a set of superpowers (which is kind of another misstep of the prequels). I don't mind midichlorians nearly as much as I mind that. You rarely saw the Jedi do anything except leap around and move stuff with their mind, which hits diminishing returns after a point. I think there should have been at least one speech or montage in the prequels like the one we got during the movie.

While we're at it, I thought they nailed Yoda. Yoda is supposed to be kind of a troll. The prequels really didn't play up that aspect of his character that much, apart from "Lost a planet Obi-Wan has. How embarrassing."

And did you notice Rey brought her books onboard the Falcon? Yoda probably knew that.

I kind of wonder what Rey's lightsaber will be like now that Anakin's is destroyed. I hope she uses a double-bladed lightsaber, like Maul, since she's so fond of the staff.

 

[anticlimatic]

I realize Lucas was not involved but these movies are basically modern versions of old epic Poems and he said it was all about "rhyming" stanzas. You can only tell heroes journey stories so many ways and second acts in trilogies are going to be the most bleak, usually

Is this going to be a trilogy? For some crazy reason I had it in my head that this was going to be a never ending cash grab series of movies 'a la marvel universe.'

I feel like they're in too much of a rush to do away with the old and pave the way for the new. Everything happens at a millenials attention span- with zero build up or foreshadowing, and consequentially no resonating impact regarding it.

 

[Virtual ghost]

It is a perfect movie ... until you turn on your brain.


Maybe my memory is wrong but ...

1. Why is the dreadnought shooting at basically empty base when rebel cruisers are in sight ? You can finnish the base at any time once those are gone.

2. The dreadnought has a weak point ? (hasn't the darkside learned anything in the first 7 episodes ?)

3. Carpet bombining in space ? Ok it is just a move but is kinda lame if you think about it.

4. Why every time darkside attacks they don't launch all the TIE fighters before the fight ? But instead they get caught off guard every time.

5. The ships are staying out of fuel but they can take hits to shield for hours ? Unconvincing.

6. Snoke ? Perfectly wasted character. Even if they get him back through some magic that will look lame and it wouldn't really fit the story.

7. What was that whole thing about getting the codes in that casino ? Not to mention that the first order doesn't strike me as someone that needs weapon suppliers. Even if they don't have everthing they have the power to just take it. Or how exactly did those two get across the galaxy so quickly in order to get to the that casino if fuel was so low? They got arrested because of how they parked their shuttle !?

8. Btw how was first order started in the first place ?

9. Why didn't Joda show up earlier ? (or in previous episode)

10. Lea flying through space was just ridiculous even if this is SW movie.

11. Why was Finn prevented form crashing into that laser that should have penetrated the door of the base ? I know, she loves him but that was soooo unconvincing in my opinion, since they know each other for like what ? 24 hours ? If there was no Luke should basically doomed everyone with that move.

12. How did entire resistance escape on the Falcon in the end ? That means that they are all dead basically.

13. Why run towards that abandoned rebel base ? That should leave rebels surrounded and trapped on a single planet.

14. Do you really think that killing so many iconic characters for no real reason would be cool ?

15. Why is the top of rebeliion so secretive ? It isn't that they have some super plan ?

16. Why was there a complex map to Luke if he doesn't really want to be a part of this ?

Etc etc.


I really hope this is all just bad memory on my part.
So if you don't turn your brain on and don't take a look at the whole movie as a closed whole ... it is great. (but I guess that the crew didn't have the attention span for that)

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

Some people are saying “it’s better when you watch it again” which is a red flag. People tried to say the same thing about episode one

 

[Beorn]

Ohhhhhh...

This is why Luke dies

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

LOL, people hate this movie for the dumbest reasons.

 

[Beorn]

Ohhhhhh...

This is why Luke dies

This might also be why Mark didn't have much of an acting career after beyond just being typecast and limits to his acting ability. Be able to go along to get along is kind of important in hollywood unless you reach a certain level.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

This might also be why Mark didn't have much of an acting career after beyond just being typecast and limits to his acting ability. Be able to go along to get along is kind of important in hollywood unless you reach a certain level.

He seems like he'd be easier to get along with than Harrison Ford, just from watching interviews.

 

[Riva]

Liked the movie. Enjoyed it.

But:-

- Where does it go from the death of Snoke? Snoke is was a great character. They just wasted him. Action/thriller/sci-fantasy etc needs a good villain for the movie to be good. Who is going to replace Snoke? Don't tell me it's Kylo. Urghhh..

- The cliffhanger wasn't enough to make people wonder. The rebels running away from the Empire isn't good enough to keep people interested. All trilogies have good cliffhangers. The force awakens had a few - who is Rey, who are her parents, who is Snoke, is he a from a force sensitive race that is there to restore the dark side etc. This movie had one.

I am a bit worried as to where it's going to go from here.

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

I read this weird article about how the polarization about this movie reflects something about the disappointment of becoming an adult and (of course, the election of Trump). Which was weird, because I saw this movie as more optimistic and triumphant than the last two movies.

 

[Beorn]

"It's finally here! The cinematic equivalent of Homer Simpson's makeup shotgun."

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

What was the deal with the admiral’s purple hair?

 

[Cellmold]

The good news for those that didn't like the film is that the Mr. Plinkett review is going to be awesome. It will probably be as long as the movie.

Even better for people like me who don't really like Star Wars. Although I'm still curious about seeing the movie.

 

[Mal12345]

Okay, I'm back from watching The Last Jedi.

I liked it. But I definitely don't feel the same excitement as I did when the first Star Wars (A New Hope) trailer appeared on TV in 1977. I didn't know at the time that I wanted to see a dashing hero rescuing a beautiful princess until I saw it. I had only been exposed to boring, ambiguous heroes such as Logan 3, whose primary cause was to save his own existence after the omnipotent computer cheated him out of his few remaining years of life by reprogramming his crystal.

There are too many competing voices to be heard, voices that say "I like it," "I hated it," "I loved it," but who don't understand what it is they are liking/hating/loving.

 

[Tomb1]

It sucked that the characters kept overstating the plot. Maybe that's a PG-13 device....but it's like you punching somebody in the face and saying "I am about to punch a person in the face. I am now punching a person in the face. I just punched a person in the face." Like duh....the characters are constantly telling what they showed rather than just showing. Still, there's a few surprises here and there. Even putting aside the hallmark card moments and merchandise one-liners like "bring it on chrome dome", I didn't get one central protagonist hero. I mean, yeah, you've got the last jedi. But it was like a community of good guys/girls all working towards a common purpose but none of them really stole the show as the central hero imo but each had their own equally signficant subplot. At one point it kept cutting between three or four different subplots for a good while. It was more like a fusion of supporting stock roles rather than a plot designed to let the Last Jedi steal the show...the plot was designed more to let the Last Jedi steal the show in a follow-up movie.

Overall, I thought it was a disaster of an idea. And Mark Hamill is washed up, like even too washed up to play a washed up Luke, not a role for him anymore like a once great fighter well past the point of his prime. Just give him a five or ten minute cameo and be done with it. What a freak show. That said, I loved Snoke...Snoke is a true throwback to the Star Wars, Empire, Jedi trilogy and a memorable villain.

Out of the movies I saw in 2017, the best was John Wick 2, and then Three Billboards in Ebbing, Missouri, and then Logan imo. Last Jedi falls somewhere into the middle for me. The Dark Tower and Blade Runner 2049 very bottom.

 

[Mal12345]

It's interesting that those who saw this movie report things like "no character development." It makes me wonder if these people really did see it.

 

[Galena]

I always end up seeing these three times because I'm close to three different groups in very diffferent locations who reliably want to go. So, viewing 1/3.

Can I really enjoy it while also having some serious critiques? Because I like critiquing, so it's all good!

 

[Julius_Van_Der_Beak]

It's interesting that those who saw this movie report things like "no character development." It makes me wonder if these people really did see it.

I honestly think the complaints about this movie are the dumbest I've ever seen for a Star Wars movie. At least of half of them are essentially people complaining because their lame theories about Rey, Snoke and Luke didn't come true. For me, I loved it in part because it hit all the right notes regarding that stuff (I got the kinds of answers to that stuff that I wanted), and it managed to move beyond nostalgia porn I also think it's a more optimistic movie than I was expecting, and I welcome that. I'm a little tired of grimdark. Another significantly dumb complaint is that there's too much humor (equally amusing because ESB director Irvin Kershner said that if he directed ROTS, he would have put lots of humor in it.) Everyone thinks of ESB as the dark middle chapter, but everyone seems to have forgotten how funny the movie is.

I really loved this article.

And even if you can get with the new trilogy’s ideas about how things ended up after Jedi, then The Last Jedi spends a lot of its running time telling you that a lot of the things fans have obsessed about since The Force Awakens was released just didn’t matter.
The 2015 film was directed by J.J. Abrams, who never met a mystery he couldn’t tease. But Johnson immediately quashed many of those mysteries in Last Jedi. Who was Snoke? Who were Rey’s parents? Who cares, The Last Jedi ultimately concludes.
Rey is impressive because of who she is, and Snoke is just a distraction from the real villain, who turns out to be Kylo Ren, who’s all the more terrifying because of his ultimate choice to embrace evil. But these storytelling choices weight the characters’ choices more heavily than their destiny, and if you spent a lot of time over the past two years trying to prove that, say, Rey is a Kenobi, well, you might find yourself disappointed at the casual disposal of something that seemed so important to the last film.

I love it.

Do you think the movie is optimistic about the future, or unable to compete with the wonders of the past?

What’s interesting about the critiques of The Last Jedi is how often, when you talk about them, many of the above criticisms fall away, and you’re left with a distinct philosophical difference between people who love the film’s insistence that the future can be better if we make it and those who don’t like the way it forces us to grapple with the sins of the past, with the way it argues the Rebellion might have won at the end of Return of the Jedi, but it largely upheld the status quo.

Like I said, I actually think this movie is more optimistic than the movie that came before it. I felt that this point was really interesting.


In conclusion:

But if it’s going to keep pleasing those who love it most, then it needs to stay preserved in amber (or, if you will, frozen in carbonite), leaving Luke Skywalker as the best boy who ever lived and continuing to tell endless variations on the story of a young kid from a nowhere planet who learns he’s part of the biggest saga of them all. But that kind of fetishization of what’s come before is the quickest way to kill off a pop culture artifact.
The Last Jedi is about this tension, about the ways that generations uneasily give way to other generations and the ways we all learn to accept that our parents (or parental figures) sometimes have the right answers and sometimes don’t. It’s a big, bold, complex film, full of contradictory notes, a little like Empire was. I suspect, in time, it will age just as satisfactorily, but it’s also possible I’m wrong. Loving it means letting go, just a little bit, of some rosy past and embracing a future that might lead to disappointment.

 

[Mal12345]

These hacks said that The Last Jedi was "messy":
Red Letter Media Half in the Bag: The Last Last Jedi Review :
The video is at YouTube.

I'm still pretty sure that we're not talking about the same movie. I believe Jay and crew watched it, I really do. But messy? Did they actually watch the movie while they were there, or did they just sit there and act like it was an MST3K episode? Did they have too much alcohol before attending the showing? Hmmmm...

What does it mean for a movie to be "messy"? (I've always regarded their videos as messy as they sit there drinking beer while recording, their voices get slurrier and their judgments more questionable.)

So far nobody who has seen the movie called it predictable (that I saw). One guy who hadn't seen the movie scoffingly stated that it will be a remake of Empire Strikes Back. It does have some of the elements of that movie (e.g., AT-ATs). But these elements are being portrayed under very different circumstances than "Empire."

The writer "took all of your expectations and twisted them." That's kind of true, Mark Hamill producing arguably the biggest twist. But this was hardly true of the entire movie.

The writer "is a secret asshole." Hmmm. Okay. These guys like to drink beer and discuss movies, and now they have their own IMDB page. Well good for them. (I'm a secret Mr. Plinkett fan myself, he's the only professional and objective critic among them, and he's not even a real person.)

"I was thinking 'is this movie a joke?' many, many times." I often wonder the same thing about their movie reviews.

Rich Evans (one of the hacks in the video) stated that Luke Skywalker did too many one-liner jokes. I myself did not hear any jokes at all. Same movie? Or did Disney release different versions of the same movie?

Rich says that the timing of Skywalker with the light saber

(tossing it over his shoulder)

didn't work. Really? It worked for me. On the other hand, I didn't go see the movie smashed out of my gourd the way those hacks do.

Jay says that Laura Dern had

a secret plan

, and for some reason this gives him a problem.

The plan wasn't very secret, but it did have a need to know classification. Holdo (Laura Dern) just doesn't happen to like hot-headed space jockeys who don't follow orders.

She has pinkish-purple hair and walks around like some kind of royalty, compared to Poe who comes off as some over-confident smart-aleck who doesn't play well with others. So I can see her point-of-view. The real problem is (and this is an important plot point, not a mere complaint from Jay the whiny-voiced alky),

Laura Dern made some assumptions that didn't come true and should have gotten them all killed. As it was, she only got most of the remaining rebels killed.

I'm at 14:31 minutes into the video and I haven't learned anything new from these hacks. But I understand that they can't take anything seriously, because everything is so damn funny when you're chemically impaired.

I don't see Rich drinking but Jay and Mike drink to change their personalities in order make fun of things better. They like to lighten the mood and make everything serious into a travesty because, by looking through their alcoholic goggles, they see comedy where none was intended. They are a rip-off of MST3K, and only a shadow of what that show was.

 

[HorrorFan]

What type was benecio del toro character?