Star Wars: The Last Jedi

[Panther_99FS]

Saw it on a biiig screen with Dolby Atmos and laser 3D, and I loved it. so far the 'Disney' movies have been much better than Lucas' own second trilogy.

LoL Ferry!
Better put on your Kevlar 'forum armor' - The original trilogy Lucas fanatics won't like your statement!

 

[Odie]

I thought the second trilogy was there to sell video games: although my sons know them well, I have bother remembering much about zzzzz...

I was the same way with the second trilogy, too. They just didn't stick with me like the first set. My son and his wife are the STAR WARS wing of filmdom for our family. My wife and I enjoyed the first trilogy immensely, but are behind in viewing the current trilogy.

 

[Ferry_vO]

LoL Ferry!
Better put on your Kevlar 'forum armor' - The original trilogy Lucas fanatics won't like your statement!

The original (Luke vs. Vader) trilogy was great, I'm talking about movies I-III. Terrible acting and dialogue, too much politics and waaay too much jar jar.

 

[hairyspin]

Churchill maintained jaw jaw was better than war war, but jar jar was pushing it too far for me.

 

[CybrSlydr]

Did not like it at all.

I just saw it last night and the more I think about the movie, the less and less I like it. I think it was absolute garbage.

Let's start with the bombers. LITERAL bombers whose only method of attack is DROPPING BOMBS ON A SHIP IN ZERO GRAVITY. Then we have the control of the bombs with some remote switch that could literally end up anywhere on the ship??? Apparently projectiles are no longer a thing...

Then we get the arcing energy blasts shot at the Cruiser - and don't get me started on that whole ridiculous concept. Just fast enough to stay out of range - but they can't jump the Star Destroyers ahead of them and pincer them??? Unreal... I'm also getting tired of all these "noble sacrifices" - but utilizing the Cruiser to light-speed jump through Snoke's ship was ****ing awesome. Oh - killing off Ackbar off-screen like that is unacceptable.

Oh yeah - Snoke. WTF?

Then we also have an Asian female and black male trying to pose as First Order personnel. What do we know about the Empire? They were famously xenophobic, ethnophobic and didn't utilize women except in rare exceptions. What happened to the Empire? It became the First Order. So WHY IN THE WORLD are TWO of the three people you're sending to infiltrate SOMEONE THEY WOULD EASILY PICK OUT??? It's like there's nobody at the wheel here!

The casino scene was absurd in the extreme as the director's dig at Capitalism and served no other purpose.

Let's also talk about the entirely superfluous character of Rose. Pointless character - only serves to offer on-the-nose, ridiculously long exposition. Now that we've talked about Rose, how about the physics-defying save of Finn in the speeders? They show every single speeder turn back except his - yet her equally crappy ship could then turn around, swing out and away, get ahead of him and then T-bone him out of the blast??? No way. At this point, I'd also say Finn is a pointless character - he's literally done nothing.

But the biggest sin of this movie and it's predecessor by a COUNTRY MILE is a COMPLETE LACK OF EXPLANATION OF WHAT HAPPENED BETWEEN ROTJ AND TFA. What happened to the Empire? What happened to the Rebellion? Why is the Rebellion now the Resistance? Why is the Empire now The First Order? GIVE ME SOME DAMNED CONTEXT IN WHICH THIS SERIES OF MOVIES FUNCTION!!!

This is why I will never accept these movies as Canon over the expanded universe stories. The stories are vastly better, the characters are awesome, the timeline is fully fleshed out and sensible... The more and more I look at it, these movies are just a cash grab.

 

[HyFlyer]

Whatever else, the lightsaber battle in Snokes palace was awesome.....

 

[Josh Patterson]

Did not like it at all.

I just saw it last night and the more I think about the movie, the less and less I like it. I think it was absolute garbage.

Let's start with the bombers. LITERAL bombers whose only method of attack is DROPPING BOMBS ON A SHIP IN ZERO GRAVITY. Then we have the control of the bombs with some remote switch that could literally end up anywhere on the ship??? Apparently projectiles are no longer a thing...

Then we get the arcing energy blasts shot at the Cruiser - and don't get me started on that whole ridiculous concept. Just fast enough to stay out of range - but they can't jump the Star Destroyers ahead of them and pincer them??? Unreal... I'm also getting tired of all these "noble sacrifices" - but utilizing the Cruiser to light-speed jump through Snoke's ship was ****ing awesome. Oh - killing off Ackbar off-screen like that is unacceptable.

Oh yeah - Snoke. WTF?

Then we also have an Asian female and black male trying to pose as First Order personnel. What do we know about the Empire? They were famously xenophobic, ethnophobic and didn't utilize women except in rare exceptions. What happened to the Empire? It became the First Order. So WHY IN THE WORLD are TWO of the three people you're sending to infiltrate SOMEONE THEY WOULD EASILY PICK OUT??? It's like there's nobody at the wheel here!

The casino scene was absurd in the extreme as the director's dig at Capitalism and served no other purpose.

Let's also talk about the entirely superfluous character of Rose. Pointless character - only serves to offer on-the-nose, ridiculously long exposition. Now that we've talked about Rose, how about the physics-defying save of Finn in the speeders? They show every single speeder turn back except his - yet her equally crappy ship could then turn around, swing out and away, get ahead of him and then T-bone him out of the blast??? No way. At this point, I'd also say Finn is a pointless character - he's literally done nothing.

But the biggest sin of this movie and it's predecessor by a COUNTRY MILE is a COMPLETE LACK OF EXPLANATION OF WHAT HAPPENED BETWEEN ROTJ AND TFA. What happened to the Empire? What happened to the Rebellion? Why is the Rebellion now the Resistance? Why is the Empire now The First Order? GIVE ME SOME DAMNED CONTEXT IN WHICH THIS SERIES OF MOVIES FUNCTION!!!

This is why I will never accept these movies as Canon over the expanded universe stories. The stories are vastly better, the characters are awesome, the timeline is fully fleshed out and sensible... The more and more I look at it, these movies are just a cash grab.

Too bad Disney threw out all the old EU as canon. I would love see Heir to the Empire made into a movie. (Would like to say the entire Thrawn trilogy, but I haven't gotten around to reading Dark Force Rising or The Last Command yet. Pretty sad actually since I read HTTE all the way back in 1993!)

 

[jmig]

Did not like it at all.

I just saw it last night and the more I think about the movie, the less and less I like it. I think it was absolute garbage.

... The more and more I look at it, these movies are just a cash grab.

I saw it and liked it. You just have to suspend your sense of disbelief. It is a S. F. fantasy movie. The whole concept of 'humans' in another galaxy is in itself a non-starter. I find them to be an enjoyable 1 1/2- 2 hour escape from reality. I do agree with your last statement.

 

[CybrSlydr]

Too bad Disney threw out all the old EU as canon. I would love see Heir to the Empire made into a movie. (Would like to say the entire Thrawn trilogy, but I haven't gotten around to reading Dark Force Rising or The Last Command yet. Pretty sad actually since I read HTTE all the way back in 1993!)

Seriously - the EU stories would make for an amazing TV series. Starting with The Truce at Bakura and running all the way through The Corellian Trilogy. That's 30ish years of stories that includes some of the best in the series - Thrawn, X-Wing/Wraiths, The New Rebellion... The stories go on and on and on!

 

[CybrSlydr]

I saw it and liked it. You just have to suspend your sense of disbelief. It is a S. F. fantasy movie. The whole concept of 'humans' in another galaxy is in itself a non-starter. I find them to be an enjoyable 1 1/2- 2 hour escape from reality. I do agree with your last statement.

I'm a die-hard StarWars fan. There is no need to suspend disbelief for me - because it's StarWars.

What this movie requires you to do is remove your brain and blindly accept the BS it's feeding you.

 

[HyFlyer]

I'm a die-hard StarWars fan. There is no need to suspend disbelief for me - because it's StarWars.

What this movie requires you to do is remove your brain and blindly accept the BS it's feeding you.

 

[Snuffy]

Alrighty then.

 

[HyFlyer]

Alrighty then.

See? As with anything, there's a limit to how much BS a viewer is willing to accept.......

More seriously... I liked the movie, but thinking about the films that proceeded it, specifically the original trilogy, what I missed was the joy, hope and innocence of the original films.

More fitting to our current times and mood, (I guess) everything in the new films is a bit dark/grim, and none of the wide-eyed derring do adventure as seen from the eyes of a farmboy (and new audience) embodied by Luke and his initial adoration of Princess (A Princess!) Leia.

Nothing matches the triumphant make-the-audience-cheer destruction of the original Death Star, and the even more triumphant march and medal scene that closed the first movie with a flourish.

If I missed anything in the latter films, its the sense of good-guys-against-truly-bad. Even Ben is all shades of grey.

Accordingly, these new order troops seem like just any ordinary military following orders with the banal evil that blurs and dulls modern day films. When Star Wars is probably at its best is as a full-on black-vs-white fable.

 

[paulopp]

I know Star Wars! It's about family...

 

[huub vink]

I have mixed feelings about this movie. Like all Star Wars movies it is packed with non-possible or non-necessary things, but that never really annoyed me. But all previous Star War movies had a main story, and the battle between good and bad was a secondary story line. However this movie didn't really have a main story,but was more a sequence of fragments which didn't really connect or which didn't go anywhere. This could just have been bad editing, but I found it a bit confusing. As a real basic story did not exist the struggle between good and bad suddenly became the main story. And there just wasn't enough story to fill 3 hours.
You could wonder why a group capable of destroying complete planets in a second, needs half a movie to destroy a few left over ships from the rebellion fleet.

Perhaps the next movie will answer some questions I'm still chewing on, but to summarise my feelings about this film: "quite boring for 2 hours and than Luke Skywalker died."

BTW But I did like Rogue One ;-))

Cheers,
Huub

 

[Eoraptor1]

Here's a post I made previously on Strat-Talk, where I posted my long essay about The Last Jedi. I think a lot of the membership here will find my recommendations interesting, especially aspiring writers....

NOTE: Here are two links I think SF/Fantasy fans would find interesting, especially if they want to take a stab at writing this sort of thing. If you think you can do better than The Last Jedi, maybe you're right.
​

This first link I've posted before. It discusses the way spaceships move in Science Fiction, especially how they sidestep the problems of travelling vast distances between planets in a universe where maximum velocity cannot exceed the Speed of Light. As a practical matter, I think a statement I've heard now from several science fiction writers sums things up: "Spaceships tend to move at the speed of plot." This link is for people who are interested in the technical aspects. If your mother bought you the ​

Starfleet Technical Manual

for Christmas like mine did, this page is for you. Go HERE: ​

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php

This second link presents a list of science fiction and fantasy tropes. Be warned, if you're a nerd you might want to set a cooking timer beforehand to remind yourself how much time is passing while you're reading through this. You can lose hours without realizing it. I feel I can pretty much guarantee you'll recognize almost 100% of this themes and plot points. Go HERE: ​

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SpeculativeFictionTropes

Enjoy.

JAMES​

 

[Ivan]

My Family saw this a few weeks back but not all at the same time.
I have already seen this mentioned a few times, so my opinions won't be new in this thread.

The Last Jedi was a fun example of a Space Fantasy, after all, that IS what SF stands for right?
As others have mentioned, don't presume you know what's going on or who or what people are just because you have seen every movie and read everything that was ever published about Star Wars. We are now playing by a new set of rules.
Leave your brain at home or turn it off as you would a cell phone at least for the duration of the movie.
If you think and analyze a bit, you are not going to be happy.

Watch this movie as you would a fireworks display.
There are lot of cool things sparking and exploding and they look pretty.
Just like a fireworks display, don't try to read a deeper meaning.
You will probably be disappointed if you do. Remember: Fireworks don't have to make sense.
Just enjoy the show while it lasts.

- Ivan.

P.S. I recently watched the JJ Abrams Star Trek movies. It seems like he has replaced the Warp Engines on starships with HyperDrives and everything ANYWHERE can be reached in a matter of a few hours. ...But at least there are a lot of cool colours and eye candy there too!

 

[scotth6]

My sister is a huge Star Wars fan, and she hated it. She is on crutches ATM, but said if she wasn't she would have walked out of the cinema half way through.

I have been a Star Wars fan for much longer, as I am older, and although I agree with the problems she had with it, I actually enjoyed the new movie. There were many shortcomings, but overall it was an enjoyable movie. I don't think you can get too caught up with the entire Star Wars universe, and just have to take each movie as it comes.

In saying that, I really hope they take some influence from some of the excellent novels that have been written over the years, and keep expanding and re-visiting the story lines.

I think Gary Oldman would play an excellent Grand Admiral Thrawn and Charlize Theron would make an excellent Mara Jade.

 

[Snuffy]

I'll wait for it to come out on HBO ...

That way I won't feel like I got robbed if I change the channel mid program.

 

[scotth6]

I'll wait for it to come out on HBO ...

That way I won't feel like I got robbed if I change the channel mid program.

Yeah, but you also won't "feel" the hum of the light sabres . The action sequences are fantastic on the big screen.

Says me who has been to the cinema a total of twice in the last four years, to watch Star Wars both times . I didn't even see Rogue One at the Cinema.