The Last Jedi: Here There Be Spoilers

[Ramsay B.]

36 minutes ago, felice said:

I wonder if there'll be a big time jump for the next film? Give the casually force-using kid at the end time to grow up, and Leia time to rebuild a real rebellion offscreen.

I was thinking they would have to do that, at least 5 years or maybe more. Have all the pieces in place and both sides built up for the final battle. The last scene kind of foreshadowed it I assumed.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

There are many sides to the Kashyyyk issue...

 

2 hours ago, Crazydog7 said:

 

When the Wookies come join the resistance they are not sending their best and their brightest  hey're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists, and some, I assume, are good Wookies.”.

We need to stop these rebels from tearing down our Imperial statues! They are an important reminder of our proud history and culture! And then we need to repeal and replace Leiacare. We can’t afford to keep giving these scruffy schlubb nobodies from desert planets new free hands all the time.  And then after that we’re going to push for an intergalactic tax cut. We’re going to make our far far away galaxy great again!

[Argonath Diver]

I went in to the theater in total fanboy mode. Just kind of winced as the plot contrivances flew by. 

The callbacks and visuals fueled me through a fantastic experience.

Now that I'm parsing it more, and hearing other people think the same thing, about 2/3s of that movie made no goddamn sense.

[felice]

44 minutes ago, Ramsay B. said:

I was thinking they would have to do that, at least 5 years or maybe more.

The characters certainly need a decent break! Not counting unconsciousness, has anyone had time to sleep since before the Force Awakens? Finn participates in the attack that captures Poe, decides to defect and rescue him, crashes, makes his way to the Falcon just in time to escape, then more or less immediately meets Han, then quick brief trips to Maz's place, the Rebel base, and Starkiller, followed by a rushed evacuation of the rebel base and hyperspace jump, and a chase lasting less than 16 hours. Luke's island planet must have very short days.

[denstorebog]

24 minutes ago, felice said:

The characters certainly need a decent break! Not counting unconsciousness, has anyone had time to sleep since before the Force Awakens? Finn participates in the attack that captures Poe, decides to defect and rescue him, crashes, makes his way to the Falcon just in time to escape, then more or less immediately meets Han, then quick brief trips to Maz's place, the Rebel base, and Starkiller, followed by a rushed evacuation of the rebel base and hyperspace jump, and a chase lasting less than 16 hours. Luke's island planet must have very short days.

Well, Finn did get a nap between the duel with Ren and the evacuation ...

[Jace, Extat]

Can we take a minute to appreciate that our Princess got blown up into outer space, then casually flew herself back to her ship to sleep it off like a bad weekend.

[Werthead]

Another plot hole that a friend pointed out: Finn's not a pilot, at all. He needed to rescue Poe in TFA in order to escape from the First Order. There's been no time for him to train up as a pilot, yet in this film he at least co-pilots the transport to the casino planet and at the end of the film he pilots the sandskimmer with some competence. Weird.

[Kalbear]

35 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Another plot hole that a friend pointed out: Finn's not a pilot, at all. He needed to rescue Poe in TFA in order to escape from the First Order. There's been no time for him to train up as a pilot, yet in this film he at least co-pilots the transport to the casino planet and at the end of the film he pilots the sandskimmer with some competence. Weird.

He sucked at piloting the skimmer and had to be told how to use it by Rose. Who also pilots the transport to canto, and then pilots the yacht back. He literally drives forward and doesn't juke. 

Saw it again thanks to work. Love it. Love that the kid at the end used the force to get the broom in his hand. 

I want a montage of Luke casually throwing things over his shoulder. 

[Jace, Extat]

5 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

He sucked at piloting the skimmer and had to be told how to use it by Rose. Who also pilots the transport to canto, and then pilots the yacht back. He literally drives forward and doesn't juke. 

Saw it again thanks to work. Love it. Love that the kid at the end used the force to get the broom in his hand. 

I want a montage of Luke casually throwing things over his shoulder. 

Republican tax bill.

gif

[Kalbear]

I'm still not at a keyboard, but I recognize the plot holes and as @Werthead might recognize, say "these are all reasonable points".

I still loved it. I loved it from the moment Luke threw away the saber. I loved that Finn and Poe ended up failing because they couldn't trust their leadership. I love Holdo and Leia talking like old friends and the hope they had. I love Rose's whole arc. All the women in this rocked hard. Even Maz. 

 

[red snow]

I've had a day to contemplate on seeing the film. I'm still very much undecided and think I will catch a cheap screening with my dad over Xmas (as my treacherous siblings watched it without him despite living in same town) to help cement things.

That should be a paragraph?

Anyway I think I still like the brave against the grain reveals/resolutions in this film. The problem, I'm realising is that I'm not sure I'm happy with the reveals. Basically the execution is great and the content isn't. And it mainly boils down to the fact that everything is an anticlimax. Who is snoke? Doesn't matter he's dead. Who are Rey's parents? Nobodies. Finn's/ Poe's mission? Failure that makes things worse. What happened at jedi academy? A misunderstanding (nothing on Ren killing other padawans). Phasma? Still useless. Luke taking down Ren and a dozen at ATS? Just a hologram

Even rens helmet was thrown away in what now feels like Rian Johnson's answer to all JJ Abrams questions was one of dismissal. Which may reach Abram's not to set up mysteries with no thought out resolutions.

So my odd feelings about the film boil down to not liking how it retroactively makes force awakens lose a bit of its impact on future researches.

Oh, I forgot to mention how much daisy Ridley has grown as an actor in 2 years. I was very critical of what I thought was a very wooden and facially unexpressive (beyond snarl) from her in vii but she totally owned all her scenes and was the equal with Hamil and driver. She also doesn't appear to have an ego and allows for those sharing the screen to do their thing. She just seemed more relaxed and at ease with the role. Hopefully not a director thing! 

Still sad about Leia not getting the third film. If TFA was Han's, and TLJ was Luke's then surely the next film would have been Leia's? 

I agree with others there will probably be a 5-10 year gap to allow an easy "Leia is no longer with us" transition. And maybe more resistance, jedi and Knights of ten. They can't go too far ahead without Rey and Finn looking too young though

[Iskaral Pust]

That was AWESOME!

i don’t want to get analytical yet with all the flaws or heavy-handed messages.  I’m just enjoying it for what it was — pure fun. 

I want to be a Jedi. 

[felice]

1 hour ago, denstorebog said:

Well, Finn did get a nap between the duel with Ren and the evacuation ...

Though he did seem to be up and about with no apparent ill-effects remarkably quickly after getting a lightsaber to the spine. Incidentally, they had a medical frigate; why wasn't he on it?

1 hour ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Can we take a minute to appreciate that our Princess got blown up into outer space, then casually flew herself back to her ship to sleep it off like a bad weekend.

Yes, that was pretty cool.

[Werthead]

Something else I'm not keen on is how claustraphobic these movies are. The original trilogy made us feel that the entire galaxy was always out there, lots of mentions of distant planets, where fleets were mustering etc. Even the prequel trilogy did a reasonable job of that. These new films don't. I've got no idea how big the First Order are, what the status of the Republic is, where the Republic fleet is, are the Hutts still a thing, what's up with Coruscant etc. The new movies make the galaxy feel like it's three miles wide and everything is conveniently vague.

I feel like they're leaving a lot of heavy lifting in the worldbuilding of these new films to the supplementary, they're-canon-honest-guvnor material like comics and books. Phasma's got her own book? Great. Why should I care when she was so rubbish in the films?

I'm glad I was able to pick up Rebels Season 3 very cheaply, hopefully that should get my enthusiasm for Star Wars up again.

[The Lord of Cinder]

@Werthead makes an excellent point. Space has never felt this small. The world of the new trilogy doesn't feel like a world at all. The lack of aliens in important roles adds to the world feeling much smaller than before. The world is pretty much 90% humans, a nebulous First Order vs a tiny Resistance, and a couple of planets, each of them having only one location.

Not being a huge SW fan, I can deal with a mediocre movie, but what really bothers me is the missed potential. I want to see the movie where Rey decides to team up with Kylo because she thinks that she can keep him from doing too much harm. I want to see the movie where Luke survives and thinks he has to take down both Kylo and Rey. I want to see Luke and the Resistance lose all hope at the end of episode 8 because they think Rey has betrayed them and turned to the Dark side. If something like this had happened, I would have been insanely excited to see the next episode, despite any other flaws the movie had.

In other words: I've never wanted someone to take someone else's hand in a movie as much as I did in in TLJ.

[Howdyphillip]

So, I have seen the movie twice now, and have bought my tickets to go a third time for tomorrow night. I have a couple of initial thoughts.

1.) I got almost nothing that I wanted from this movie. Almost every single expectation I had going in was not met.

2.)This is all OK, because most of everything that I did get was at least as good if not better than my imagination for the characters.

With the exception of Canto Bight, which seemed to belong more to a Harry Potter movie rather than Star Wars, and the handling of Capt. Phasma, I thought everything else was brilliant. I was conflicted with a few moments, like flying Leah, and the death of Luke because they were just both outside of anything that I would have thought of, but on second viewing, my thoughts were more on the emotions of what was happening rather than the events of them happening in the first place.  I believe that they will go down for me as iconic Star Wars moments for the rest of my lifetime. 

 Snoke and Rey questions were also really hard to not have a concrete answer for me. I do think that getting Snoke out of the way as ultimately a red herring to make way for Kylo as the ultimate antagonist is a great move. I just hope that JJ Abrams can adequately explain what the power is of being no one for Rey moving forward. 

 My rankings may change, but I have this as my 6th favorite Star Wars movie right now behind the original trilogy, Force Awakens, and Revenge of the Sith right now.

 

 

 

 

 

[dooog]

This was probably the least satisfied i've ever been coming out of a Star Wars movie. Overall it was a better film than any of the prequels but at least Phantom, AOTC and ROTS while rubbish, at least had some really satisfying moments and  universe building.  This Last Jedi... well, it was a disappointment on too many fronts.

 

Where to even begin...

I actually liked how they crafted Leia's death. Out of the blue, to a redshirt and completely unlike how these deaths usually play out in these type of movies.  And... and then, after being blown up, with a giant fireball for good measure and ejected into outer space she... well, she started flying around. And lived. Served practically no plot purpose other than to have a brief reunion with Luke, but she's alive, and now they have to kill her off again.

Hux was awful. An incompetent character and Gleeson's acting was hammed up to 11.

Phasma. So she's dead, what was the point of her? Most useless character ever in the SWU?

Finn. I read it earlier in this thread, but remove Finn's "contribution" and this is a better movie for it. The casino scene was garbage, reminded me of that nonsense in TFA when the bounty hunters and various creatures are chasing Han Solo around. Pointless. When Finn was finally about to do something useful in going full kamikaze on the cannon I thought Ahh so that's why he's in this movie, but no.

The throne room scene. I actually liked the unexpected death of Snoke. They could have gone in so many interesting directions afterward but instead they have Rey and Kylo play force-tug-of-war and just reset their positions to exactly where they were at the end of TFA. And then Rey magically disappears onto the MF from a burning destroyer in the middle of the first order's fleet.

 

Luke.  What i was most looking forward to in this movie and boy did it disappoint.  I enjoyed his scenes but honestly I probably would've enjoyed watching an old wise bearded Luke doing handstands for 20 minutes because he's a beloved character surrounded in mystery, but every creative choice they made with him seemed like a wasted opportunity. When he finally gets his time to shine it's underwhelming. Was hoping he'd do something along the lines of force smashing some AT ATs or show his immeasurably superior fighting prowess against Kylo.  Instead he did a Poochie and teleported back to his home planet. Why the hell would he become a force ghost now of all times?! didn't he just say the war was just beginning, yet he's checked out for no apparent reason.  I was half expecting him to die in this movie, possibly to Snoke or to the First Order in some self sacrifice so I was relieved at the hologram reveal... and then he just poofs into robes anyway. Fuck that noise! I wanna see Luke do some cool shit and go out like a boss!! They literally couldn't have gone with a less satisfying way out for him.

[Rhom]

35 minutes ago, Howdyphillip said:

 My rankings may change, but I have this as my 6th favorite Star Wars movie right now behind the original trilogy, Force Awakens, and Revenge of the Sith right now.

On first glance, that sounds harsh... but I think that’s about right.

[HokieStone]

Just saw it, and didn't bother to read all 5 pages of this thread...

In my opinion it was better than The Force Awakens...but still a disappointment.  Poe doing a "mom joke" at the beginning was just an awful decision.

I think I have to resign myself at this point that they have not taken the overall story and character arcs of the original trilogy characters in the direction I would have liked.  I get that Han had to die in Ep. 7 because of the high likelihood that Harrison Ford would only sign on if they killed off the character.  But I will be forever upset that we were robbed of the opportunity to have the original 3 all on the screen together in a Star Wars movie.

And then there's Luke - "character assassination" is too harsh...I know that.  But...there's just no way in my mind that he would have thought about murdering his nephew in his sleep, and no way he would turn into bitter hermit Luke.  And killing him off at the end felt cheap.  Like "we have to do this to make it a big emotional moment".  I mean...why did he even die?  Frankly, I was hoping to get Jedi Master Luke Skywalker kicking ass...and we sort of did....and then he just faded away.

Anyway...I have other issues with the movie, but don't feel like writing a tome about it tonight.

[Lady Of The Crossbow Inn]

Test. Only doing this b/c I have a big long post and would hate to lose it b/c I wasn't properly signed in....just got home from the film and needless to say my mind's in turmoil!. so if you see this, give me several minutes for my next post...EDIT: Ok I'm in. So I'll be back.

 

One initial thought though in this post: Wonder when/if Kit has seen it yet, and if he knows from his scripts that Jon will indeed die to save Westeros by sacrificing himself in battle with the NK in suitably epic heroic fashion. If this indeed proves to be the case, (of course we won't know until 2019! For D/D's version anyway.)...I imagine Kit wanting to tweet Mark Hamill: "Dammit Mark, you stole my thunder!" But of course he knows he can't (yet.) And Dave and Dan: "Dammit Disney,, you stole our moment!" Ha ha.

 

And if George sees it....what might go through his mind?:)

I'm calling this movie "The Winds of Winter"  b/c it fits. Dark. And light...Luke gives them "A Dream of Spring" indeed.