Star Wars: The Last Jedi

roxics said:
Or it could just be bad writing for her character. This guys makes some pretty solid points.
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I'm not sure I buy everything in BanditIncorporated's video. Somebody who is a natural savant would certainly outwardly appear to be a "Mary Sue", but this could also be said for a person recognized as a "Renaissance Man or Woman". Someone who is able to do things that most of us can't, and they can do it with such ease that you can't believe what is happening in front of you.

I have only met one person like this in my entire life. He was 20 years old and was naturally great at virtually everything he tried: Artistic, Athletic, Scientific, etc... I was floored when I interviewed him and then started to realize how wide his talent range was. He could have easily replaced a dozen people in our studio. I wanted to hire him but he got offers that were 5 times what we could afford to pay.
 
Disney still doesn't get that "new cool stuff" is a big part of the tone of Star Wars. I hate to state it so bluntly and inelegantly, but new ships, new technology, cool new aliens, "things that you've never seen before" are at the heart of the franchise, and again, even Star Wars "fans" don't seem to get this. They'd rather see the Milllenium Falcon swoop by again and pat themselves on the back for recognizing it.

That said, The Last Jedi is getting great reviews, so it's nice to see Disney is finally getting their act together. The space penguin, the planet with the red stuff and the ice wolf aren't exactly filling my mind with a sense of wonder, but it sounds like they managed to tell a good story this time, so good on them- that's the most important thing to get right anyway.
 
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I posted on FB about feelings of meh and have been met with support. I think its one of those 50/50 movies. Half of us love it half of us nope
 
Josh Bass said:
I think its one of those 50/50 movies. Half of us love it half of us nope
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I'm in the "Half'n'Half" mix, where some things were great and other things were a big waste of time.

All of the recent Star Wars / Super Hero movies suffer from the same disease, where a huge amount of money is thrown at the visuals, but very little of the budget is spent on the story, so the finished film looks gorgeous but the story lumbers around like a drunken hippo...
 
The audience scores are definitely dropping. RT is down to 55%, the Metacritic audience score is down to 4.8 / 10, and even the imdb score has been falling. It's possible that some of the audience reviewers may be trolls, but I think there is a significant and genuine fan backlash against this film.

However, some of the critical reviews are, as another poster pointed out, overly rosy. For example, take a look at Christopher Machell's review below. He concludes by allowing that "not everything in the film works" before proceeding to list several shortcomings... then gives the film a perfect 100% score!

https://cine-vue.com/2017/12/film-review-star-wars-the-last-jedi.html

I also find it odd that so many critics are praising The Last Jedi as a new type of SW film while deriding The Force Awakens as derivative. TLJ has several sequences that are lifted directly from The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi (especially the climactic Luke/Vader/Emperor confrontation which is mirrored in TLJ play-for-play), yet no one is crying foul.
 
David Jimerson said:
I've seen that said about the RT scores, but there's no way to know how much of an impact there really is.
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My understanding of the reviewer scores is that if the review is even only 51% positive, it's counted as "fresh", and if it's only 49% positive, it's counted as "rotten". So theoretically the two could be reconciled; if every reviewer was giving it a 51-60% positive, and every audience member was giving it around a 56% positive, then ... everybody's saying the same thing, and the only differentiating factor is how the reviewer score is counted?
 
Going forward I wonder how many of these critics will be writing glowing reviews so as not to invoke the wrath of the ever growing mouse.
 
Anyone remember what the immediate reaction to the prequels was like vs looking back at them 5 or 10 years down the road? For instance I remember way back when seeing the Aint It Cool News guy on some talk show telling the host Phantom Menance was the the greatest movie he'd ever seen. I read much later that he confessed that he feels in retrospect that all the star treatment/wining and dining he'd gotten from the bigwigs associated with the movie might have influenced his opinion and that the film was maybe not so good.
 
*Needless to say... *SPOILERS*...

Saw it yesterday and been reading/thinking through it, and have to accept the film is more "meta" than I would have liked/anticipated/hoped for - but there it is.

IMO Rian Johnson has done some really brilliant things, but it's difficult because this isn't an arthouse film, it's a beloved blockbuster franchise with a lot of fan expectations (self included). And I think there's a false dichotomy set up regarding "fan service" vs "new fresh" when to me the real issue is "execution".

Pacing was off for me in several dimensions: mico-pacing (in the cuts and breathing room - it's a trend in this ADD prone generation) and macro-pacing (parts that drag, are long and overly drawn out) to story-pacing (so you're telling me that if you add up the entire timeframe of TFA and TLJ, this entire story has so far happen in about the span of... a week? Empire + RoTJ was like what, 3 years or something in story space? In about 7 days we've witnessed everything that's happen and to me it seems unbelievable to witness such an expedited story arc for these characters... I'd have rather seen the film take place over a few months.

Re: disconnected plot, yes - but Rian wasn't making a coherently connected movie plot wise, as much as he was theme wise - for better or worse. You could cut the entire Casino planet and Star Destroyer break-in story-wise, but thematically it's all part of what he is doing.

Here's my best guess / 2 cents: The power of Luke and all heroes is less in their perfection or their powers and more in the symbolic idea of him: the legend. the ideal. This is portrayed even by him not being physically present at the end, it is the very idea of him that stops the first order in its tracks and buys the escape. It is the STORY of him that spreads throughout the galaxy at the end. The movie really calls into question dark/light and replaces it all with shades of gray and "balance" (conflict within the resistance, pretty much every hero making bad choices and being fallible, the truest evil being outside of the resistance/first order and being the people who fund it for their own benefit from a detached, apathetic stance and stand selfishly in the "balance", the systemic evil that extends beyond the empire/rebellion dichotomy, etc.).

I could go on, but at the end of the day, while the film is jam-packed full of subvervise and smart themes, ideas, and messages - and while it certainly defies all expectation and pushes, no, forces, the series into a bold new direction (if I was JJ I'd be sitting there scratching my head as Rian basically just threw out the entire framework for where the trilogy might have gone), the question is: is that what anyone *really* wanted?

Or could this have been done in a subtler way while still delivering a few things, namely:

- Restructured pacing
- An actual epic last battle with Luke, where blades actually clash, where we see a Rogue One Vader moment but for Luke, giving fans their 30 year wish fullfillment, and still hitting at these themes of the legend and idea ultimately being more than the flawed man?
- A plot structure that has as much meaning and purpose story-wise as it does thematic wise?
- Not portraying every hero as a sort of flawed, pointless anti-hero where they "would have been better if you stayed put" - couldn't a thematic point still be made in more nuisanced way here (it's not terribly satisfying from a non-arthouse perspective to watch all your heroes screw things up)
- etc.

Overall I liked Rogue One more I think, it felt more grounded and better paced. A lot of the moments didn't connect for me with the emotional weight I would have expected in a dark middle chapter (ie this was no "The Dark Knight"). I didn't have a chance to really fear Snoke and feel the "WHOA" of his early death. I didn't have enough time to prepare and breathe to feel the passing of Luke (or feel enough audience satisfaction of getting to see Luke do something awesome). I didn't feel proper tension leading up to Rey / Ren's encounter - it all happen so fast and didn't have proper gravitas to me. The training scenes with Luke often felt rushed and a bit stilted, and I think a lot of this came from ADD pacing (I mean, couldn't we just hang out there longer and set up longer, less rapid fire conversations?). I also didn't find it believably that Luke didn't just tell Rey the full truth about Kylo encounter off the bat - he's not the type to be needing to hide something like this anymore, and he's been carrying it far too long. etc.

Regarding the scores... RT critics have it 8.2/10 so it's not a matter of a barely passable positive rating, the overall acclaim from critics is high.

I do wonder how the movie will age once people watch and rewatch after time passes, without expectations, and with the third and final installment to give context to the arc. But right now I am a total mixed bag on this movie regarding my feelings. I can appreciate many things for what they were, but I just don't feel like the narrative and character arc for anyone (Luke, Finn, Rey, Snoke, even Ren) was fully satisfying or that the movie really moved me forward in a grand story. Many things felt too 1 dimensional or contained with uneven pacing and a higher interest in philosophical themes than in narrative storytelling.
 
Saw it. Another disappointing offering from Disney.

Star Wars should be more than this. This is basically a children's cartoon show that is live action. Extremely simple setups. By the end of the film, we're led to believe that the entire (entire!) resistance/rebellion is able to fit aboard the Millenium Falcon. And it's not even packed to the gills. It's like 12 people.

It's so, so bad. The expanded universe books that you'd buy for $5 in the 90s had 10x more imagination and cleverness. :(
 
Wife and I just left it.

Totally craptacular.

One of the first times we both wanted to leave a movie mid-film.

What a turd.
 
In my humble opinion, with a film of this level of hype, it takes more than one screening to find your true personal opinion of the film. Having seen the film several times now through work and later with friends / family, my opinion of the film has gotten better over time.

At first I was a bit bothered by the pacing & attempts at humor, especially during the first half of the film, but the movie got better as it went on and really hit its stride during the latter half of the film. Now the only things that really bother me are the length (few too many side plots) and the Commander Hugs scene that still feels more Guardians of the Galaxy than Star Wars. And there is a lot that I like or love about the movie.

If you compare the film on its own merits against all of the other crap big budget sequels, remakes, and superhero movies out there, Last Jedi is much better than most of the other blockbusters out there.
 
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