Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)

It's almost like they need a time skip now and two more movies (big franchises always have 2 part finales now). We already had the return of the jedi style confrontation (in the middle of the movie!?).

Rey and Kylo mould their respective groups into their own vision of how things should be. A new Jedi order/Rebel alliance and more Knights of Ren/New empire.

It's 10 years later and Rey/Kylo finally meet again as the two forces have built up to a point where war is inevitable.... one movie to reset things, set up some things to pay off and reignite interest and the other to wrap it up.

I thought for sure Rian Johnson was European because this movie does have that vibe of "There is only a little difference between good and evil, shades of grey, everyone is equal, love is more important than war, don't judge other people, etc" whereas Americans are very much the "There is good and there is evil, you are with us or against us, some cultures are better than others, etc".

But nope, Rian Johnson is a 44 year old American from Maryland so there goes that theory, he's not even a millennial or anything so can't use that easy punching bag.

End of the day, yeah, this movie wasn't made for a certain audience, and i guess its pretty successful with the younger audience it was made for. It definitely had some good ideas of trying to do things different but it did it in a really terrible way. Episode 9 is being written now so really box office won't have much impact on it, plus JJ is already a certain kind of movie story teller so I doubt episode 8 will change much of that.



gotta watch the whole Graham Norton episode, i'm intensely curious as to what Brienne of Tarth thinks of Phasma in TLJ

LiquidDeath said:

Finn was useless, less chubby Margaret Cho is going to survive but why,

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Just think of those two as this series's equivalent of Gimli and Legolas. I really hope they find something to surf through a battle on in the next film.

LiquidDeath said:

I disagree with this completely.

The Great Gatsby makes very clear what is going on by the end of the book/movie. You take a crazy path to get there, but at no point do you look at it from the point of view of Gatsby's neighbors.

By the end of this movie, you are wondering what the hell did all this mean? So they saved 20 or so of the last rebels from the salt planet. So? Luke's dead, the outer-rim rebels didn't answer the call, Rey doesn't have a mentor (just some books) and her parents were nobody, Finn was useless, less chubby Margaret Cho is going to survive but why, Poe is a less lucky Han Solo, Leia is still alive for some stupid reason, Kylo is now supreme leader but doesn't have any of the skills to utilize it, and we have lightsaber boy who won't have any impact on this story line. What the fuck did this movie accomplish except temporarily messing up the good time of the rich assholes at the casino? Nothing except shitting on basically everything they set up in TFA.

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Dude it accomplished a lot okay? Kids need to know they can fight the power and that even if you're born an urchin you can become strong and powerful and even if you're victimized you can have strength man, and most importantly, you don't win the fight by hurting your enemy, you do it by loving your friends. Okay man? Chill man, this masterpiece film accomplished a lot.

Wait a minute. This isn't some random indy flick. It's the 2nd movie in an epic space opera trilogy.

well fuck

Weaponizing lightspeed travel is a horrific precedence to set - but as we have seen none of that ever matters in StarWars - no one ever reads or cares about tactics or past tech etc. If that is literally the most powerful - impossible to stop move, then fuck just make a bunch ships and send robots to light speed attack through everything!

TFA had problems with character development, it was there but "not enough" in consideration to its mirror ANH etc.. but people generally said "okay, it was a set up and 8 will expand upon them" and none of that happened.

Finn, exact same character
Rey, exact same character
Poe, exact same character
Kylo, exact same character
Snoke, exact same character
okay, they DID expand upon Luke...in the WORST WAY POSSIBLE

and Finn, Rey and Poe are to be "the next generation?" that should have happened 1/2 through this movie... now they have 1 movie to be "it"... princess...gnereal...whatever she should have died at the start, that would have been epic...that should have been the tipping point for "crazy luke" who was self-cut off from the force to be forced back into it. Kylo should have shot- shown his true resolve - Luke gets forced "back into the force" whatever that means and then "sees" all that has happend- and shows Rey an actual coherent reason why the Jedi and Sith "balance" is crap and needs to be destroyed.

Luke then should pull a highlander endgame and make rey kill him or somesuch nonsense so she can get his power or so he can be a force ghost and help her more- or he could do something, anything other than the shit we got with a terribad 2 sun callback to 4

from then on, its all rey, finn, poe and kylo with Snoke still pulling the strings leading to something epic in ep 9... but the "new crew" needs more time without the old, if thats what they wanted.

I dont understand why they pushed so hard to make Poe so Unlikeable.
I like Fin but am getting tired only seeing the same excited/panicked/scared emotion.

I still do not really understand who the new order is, are they just a rebranded Empire? Did ROTJ do nothing to end the tyranny and strangle of the Emprie?? There are 20-40 rebels in a Galaxy of Trillions? well who gives a shit then. There are wet farts that are more dangerous to the government than 20 chumps in a salt mine.

Just way too much Leia, funking monolouges about hope...

Rey should have joined Ren to end the 2nd movie in the trilogy on a super downer.


I will now rehash some tired complaints you have already heard.

Snoke? Wtf was the point of all that hype.
Gravity bombs? in Space? fuck you.
You can Kamakazi with lightspeed? Why the fuck did we just not do that to both deathstars and every star destroyer ever...
Should have made C3PO the autopilot instead of Purple hair (wtf) Laura Dern. Who by the way was a horrible horrible character.






I liked the island stuff, i loved seeing Luke again. Kylo Ren was the only character that grew on me since last time. Glad they ditched the mask early. The movie looked amazing, especially the use of the red and white on the salt planet.

This film is the cinematic equivalent of Homer Simpson's makeup shotgun

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/thread

LiquidDeath said:

I disagree with this completely.

The Great Gatsby makes very clear what is going on by the end of the book/movie. You take a crazy path to get there, but at no point do you look at it from the point of view of Gatsby's neighbors.

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Nick Carraway, the point of view character for the whole damn book, is literally Gatsby's neighbor.

No character development? Lets just look at one character : Poe

Royal said:

lol have we really gotten to the point that people are bitching about the way they use the all caps in the opening crawl?

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If they'd fucking lay off it for a while I wouldn't get so bent out of shape

Neki said:

Still the best Star Wars 'movie' to have come out in the last decade. I needed to watch this straight after TLJ so to get it that POS out of my head.



Why oh why, why, WHY can't Disney just adapted TOR into a new SW bunch of movies instead? The writing in it is miles better than what we have seen in the new SW movies so far. Just copy the scenes in the animation frame for frame and expand on it to print money.

Fuck you Disney.

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Not to hate on this, but TOR in general has been pretty garbage since initial release once you were done with the class stories. I'll admit some of the Fallen Empire expansions was well done, but once they got to the middle/payoff time, writing went to shit again and they didn't have good way of resolving anything. Yet another item under the SW umbrella that was totally fucked over when it could have been so much better.

Nirgon said:

If they'd fucking lay off it for a while I wouldn't get so bent out of shape

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Lay off of what?

I hope the lesson Rey learns from what's happened since the OT is that getting involved will only make things far worse 30 years from now so there is no point in fighting fate.

Episode 9 opens with her killing herself with a lightsaber in despair.

Anybody who thinks TLJ is comparable to The Great Gatsby is smoking some serious crack.

Qhue said:

Nick Carraway, the point of view character for the whole damn book, is literally Gatsby's neighbor.

No character development? Lets just look at one character : Poe

Spoiler

Poe starts the movie as he did at the end of The Force Awakens, hot-shot pilot who can accomplish miracles in his Xwing and is incapable of seeing the bigger picture. He proceeds to overreach against the dreadnaught, send's Rose and Finn on a fool's errand and is pretty much lost once he loses his Xwing. To Leia Poe is her surrogate son and a chance at redemption for bringing Kylo Ren into this world. She needs him to be better not just to help the Resistance but to justify her faith in him...that she hasn't made yet another big mistake.

There is a lot of symbolism at play here. Poe is a warrior but for most of the movie he is without his Xwing and so the question becomes what is a warrior worth when he doesn't have a weapon? He tries to answer this by picking up a rusted piece of shit so broken down that he puts his foot through the floor, but that isn't the answer.

The classic Star Wars trope has long been that the heroes are strong enough that they make do against impossible odds because they are just so much better... Think back to the snowspeeders taking down the AT-ATs in Empire Strikes Back. Realistically that battle should have gone much more like the Battle of Crait where military craft blow the crap out of the makeshift vehicles the rebels employ against them.

Finally, at the very end, Poe realizes that he needs to focus on the bigger picture and starts to become the leader necessary to carry the load heading forward. He IS more than just a fighter pilot and he does bring more to the fight than just his flying skills. This whole misadventure has changed him in a profound way. In Episode IX we won't see a hotshot pilot, we'll see Poe as a leader of the Resistance / Rebeliion.

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No shit? It has been decades since I read the book and I remembered him as the new friend from across the lake.

RE Poe: Sure, whatever. I wanted to watch a Star Wars movie, not the bullshit we saw. It would have been better if the roundabout way he learns humility would have been interesting or engaging, but it wasn't. It was him acting stupid and conveniently never being brought into the plan until it was far too late.

You get that, right? That this movie was a shitty Star Wars movie. It might have worked in another setting, but this one it didn't.

It really did feel like a lot of filler.

As someone who's not read any Star Wars books, or watched any of the shows (Clone Wars whatever), or even played many of the games, this seemed like generic-ass Star Wars to me. The trailers made it look like it could break the mold, and they even hinted at wanting to several times, but it just didn't. It was some weird hybrid of the original trilogy + prequels where they tried to make it big and meaningful but ultimately it was all completely irrelevant and disappointing. All the most visually interesting scenes were spoiled by the trailers (except the FTL attack I guess) so that kinda sucked.

"The Jedi must end because they failed too much and they were just a random ass religion created by people anyway" turned into "no way we need the Jedi because reasons and it wasn't their fault and the Force" blah blah. The entire scene in Snoke's room with Rey and Kylo had potential to go a ton of different ways and they found perhaps the least interesting and most tropish one possible. Even after the fight it STILL could have gone different ways and they STILL went with the simplest, most boring way.

I dunno. The movie wasn't outright bad. But it was greyer than their attempts at philosophy were. It's a huge pile of nothing happening despite making a point to say that some interesting things could have happened. I feel like it was similar to Rogue One in that you basically knew what was going to happen and nothing of value actually came from the journey in the end besides spectacle, which increasingly seems to be what Star Wars actually means. They refuse to dig deeper and embrace what it could be, rather just tread water.