The Last Jedi

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The Last Jedi

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Sat Dec 16, 2017 4:49 am

Jesus. H. Christ.

I was slightly wary with this movie, that it wouldn't meet my sky-high expectations, but like IT, this movie blew me right the fuck out of my chair. The audience I was with (as well as me) applauded three times through the movie, then it was all cheering and applause at the end.

The acting was better than any SW movie, no exceptions. The humor was on point. The action was badass (though not quite as jaw-dropping as Rogue One). Every character has an arc, has their moment, and contributes. The plot was tight, and it was amazing. And I noticed several times in the movie (especially when one character pulls a maneuver on the enemy fleet, which made my theater go quiet in awe) that some of the shots are just beautiful.

I'm not going to say this is the best SW movie ever made, although I'm feeling it right now. I need some distance from this movie before I go see it again next weekend. It is certainly the best movie since The Empire Strikes Back. If Rogue One gave me all the action I've been wanting from a SW movie since Ep 6, this one gave me all the pathos and character that I've been wanting since Ep 6.

Spoiled for spoilers:

Spoiler: show
Seriously, that shot when the admiral turns her Mon Calamari Cruiser on the enemy fleet and hyperspaces right through them was so gorgeous. The entire theater went dead silent, both with the emotion of that scene and the beauty of the fleet torn apart.

Snoke's death was a surprise to me, as was the fact that Leia didn't die as I assumed she would. For one crucial moment, I genuinely believed that Rei was gonna turn, and I genuinely believed Finn would die in that one part where he charged the cannon.

Luke's death, if that's even what it was, was so beautifully done. I thought he would be killed by Kylo, which would've been such a disgraceful way to end his character. Instead, he just found peace and moved on. It was such a moving death, and even though I suspected he would die before I even saw the movie, it was everything it needed to be. Graceful, meaningful, and heartwarming. What a way to end a character, with more pathos and perfection than even Han got.

My suspicions were correct in regards to similarities with The Empire Strikes Back. They cut the trailer to look like Ep 5 just to make you think that was what you were getting.

I cannot find a fault with this movie. I'm trying to think of one right now, and I can't find one. I'm still just psyched about this movie, and it'll be torture to wait a week to see it again.
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Re: The Last Jedi

Postby iMURDAu » Sat Dec 16, 2017 6:15 am

Spoiler: show
That moment at work when coworkers are discussing some "gray Jedi" bullshit regarding Luke and his character arc for Ep. IX. :D Me, I've read the spoilers. I didn say noffin.
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Re: The Last Jedi

Postby phunkyfish » Sat Dec 16, 2017 11:29 am

I actually didn't enjoy it as much as TFA. In all fairness though, I'd gone for a pint beforehand so by the halfway mark I was bursting for a wee which kinda put the mockers on things. A bit. Top tip - have a wee before you go in. Things I liked and things I didn't - spoilers ahoy!

Spoiler: show
I thought that Finn & Rose's adventure on the casino planet was a bit flabby, it seemed a bit pointless.
18 hours to save the fleet? Let's go to casino land to grab a slicer! We didn't get the slicer but we got Benicio Del Toro (who was brilliant) instead, who by coincidence is just as good as the guy we were originally looking for! It all seemed a bit... contrived and kinda unnecessary. Filler, if you will.

But despite my complaints, Kylo was utterly brilliant - I totally wasn't expecting him to kill Snoke and it was a very satisfying movie villan death. Adam Driver brings a hell of a lot to the role, Kylo's obvious conflict makes him utterly unpredictable. He's not the best Supreme Leader in the galaxy. And the moment where Hux finds him in the trashed throne room and draws his pistol, ready to shoot and claim Supreme Leadership for himself! Fuck, I'm squeee-ing like nobody's business now.

Yoda! Yoda, Yoda, Yoda! When he appeared, I felt all warm and comfortable, like the Star Wars franchise gave me a big hug and it was nice that they used a puppet, rather than CGI and to have the old, slightly nuts Yoda back was nice. "Read them (ancient Jedi texts) have you? Page turners they are not." Beautiful.

Luke had a good death, finally finding his peace. That was nice. Faking out Kylo with an astral projection and making him look like a total tit in front off the whole First Order was a nice touch. Wars not make one great, but psyching someone out with the force form ACROSS THE GODDAMN GALAXY? That's some Jedi master shit right there.


I could go on and on, but I need to go shopping this morn.
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Re: The Last Jedi

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Sat Dec 16, 2017 2:44 pm

iMURDAu wrote:
Spoiler: show
That moment at work when coworkers are discussing some "gray Jedi" bullshit regarding Luke and his character arc for Ep. IX. :D Me, I've read the spoilers. I didn say noffin.


Actually, now that you say that, I realize I have found a flaw with it.

Spoiler: show
I was so certain that they were going to go the 'gray Jedi' route with Rey, but instead she's just gonna be a Jedi.

It was cool to see Luke acknowledge that the Jedi from the prequels were complete garbage, arrogant and stupid, and has become convinced the Jedi need to die. It seemed like he really wanted to just allow everything to burn so there's nothing to fight over, and so did Kylo (in his mind, anyways), but it just became that neither of them could really do that in the end because of the other's existence.

However, a lot of this movie focuses on the more circular nature of history and war, and about how nobody can just leave well enough alone. That was a big part of Benicio del Toro's character, being like "There will always be war between 'good and bad', and the profits keep rolling in regardless". So I kinda get that instead of being like "Let's have a final resolution on this Force business", they decided to go with how it actually works in the real world. Evil is always going to rise eventually, so good has to--if grudgingly on occasion--rise up to meet it as well or else one side will just get to impose its will on--I'm basically just going on with the cyclical nature of history again.

So I was a bit disappointed to not see the Grey Jedi business rear its head, and I'm also a little irritated they didn't bring up the Knights of Ren, but this (like Ep 5) was a gloomier take on good v. evil.
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Re: The Last Jedi

Postby Australia » Sat Dec 16, 2017 5:46 pm

It’s been a year or so and I can’t remember if Jedi fell into my superhero category that I insist on reviewing in this fashion every release but I have thoughts on The Last Jedi and this is as good a way to review as any. Plus I’m pretty sure I remember doing a GBU review for Fantastic Beasts and if wizards count as superheroes, space wizards are at least twice as likely. Anyway, spoilers obviously.

The Good
All I’d heard going in was that it was the best instalment since Empire (even that consensus has turned somewhat since I saw that) and I’d been avoiding the internet like the plague so raised hopes is better than knowing specific moments going in so I can’t complain. I didn’t see so much as a meme of a major moment which are usually all over the place within half a day of a blockbuster release (I’m Mary Poppins, y’all). Probably helps that I saw it on the second or third day as opposed to next week when I can’t imagine I would have survived unspoiled. My point is don’t read this before seeing the movie. Don’t read it at all actually. It’s mindless drivel masquerading as humorous observations. I’d say it is the best Star Wars movie in 37 years but just as strongly doesn’t hold a candle to the first two. (I came to this decision because in 20 years, I don’t think there’ll be any iconic moments people look back on, outside of maybe Luke’s lightsabre breaking and there are hundreds of moments in those movies. Well, dozens certainly.) I also would totally get if people didn’t aren’t on board for it. Unless you’re a purist who goes looking for stuff to hate in the new stuff. I mean, I certainly noticed stuff, which is not going in this section unless I do, as I often do in these contradictory ramblings, but I go into every movie wanting it to be good, even if I expect it to suck. Not mentioning any names, Justice League. Also for a movie that’s more or less a chase scene, it’s no Fury Road.

Not a bad thing but I’m just playing Devil’s Advocate.

My favourite character has always been and probably always will be Chewbacca. All I wanted from the movie is for him to survive so I’m happy. While he doesn’t get a lot to do in this movie, I did enjoy him smashing down Luke’s door and trying to chew a cooked Porg while being guilted by its more oxygenated kin. That scene was adorable but they had to keep going back to the Porg so often that they ended up being my least favourite of the new creatures in the film. I didn’t hate them like the Ewoks but still, it was blatant Toys Toys Toys, down to the price tag hanging off one of the paws. That didn’t happen. Or did it? I didn’t go to the toilet or anything during the movie (I had a bottle for that. Or did I?... I'll stop doing that now. Or will I?) but I did blink several hundred times so what do I know?

While I’m on the creatures, awesome. Creature design is one of the reasons fantasy is up there in my favourite genres. The Men In Black trilogy always had cool aliens walking around in the background. The Neverending Story was my favourite movie as a kid (until I saw Die Hard for the first time and that’s barely been topped since) and that meeting towards the start with the people with two faces and the beak-dude made exposition fun. Hey, I warned you about tangents, didn’t I? My point is, humans are boring, creatures are cool and The Last Jedi knows that. The crystal critters, the goathorses, Snoke, the I dunno, seal thingys on Luke’s island? All awesome.

New weapons. Aliens have inexplicably been introduced in the Indiana Jones franchise, so I hope Indy acquires one of those laser whips (lightlassos? You know, there’s probably a name, I just don’t want to Google it, lest I stumble upon someone else’s review and it sways my own thoughts. If I forget an important part, good or bad, let it be on my head, I will not cheat. That’s why I always try to write these before Monday when The Weekly Planet comes out because those guys always have funnier observations than me) in the next movie.

That’s how you open a movie. I mean the scrawl was by the numbers but the whole blowing up a thing with another thing spectacle says this isn’t your, uh, who was alive for the prequels but never saw the classics or the new ones? Ugh, unnecessarily mean and heartbreaking, but this isn’t your childhood pet’s Star Wars. What do you mean you never let your dog watch Attack of the Clones? How’d you get yours to sleep?

This is tricky. My favourite moment the second it happened was the badass Luke moment where he gets shot a bajillion times but presumably uses the Force to get all of them to miss. That was something even Morla the Ancient One wouldn’t sneeze at. Not that in matters. That was undone when it turned out to be an astral projection that actually was hit a bajillion times. Which is cool and was obviously a strain but if he was going to die anyway, why not keep the moment and have him die on the planet? So I’m back and force on that at the moment. The only conclusion I’m drawing is that it’s a fakeout death and he’ll show up in a later movie. My money is he was swallowed up by the force somehow*. I mean, he will return anyway as a force ghost but I like to think there’s always a Luke Skywalker out there somewhere, living with both his accomplishments and failures. Ultimately I’ll put the moment in the good column because I enjoyed both Luke being there and when it turned out he not really there but they cancel each other out and I may have to find a different favourite moment.

Okay, the entire scene in Snoke’s redrum red room was awesome. Considering Vader’s “choke on your aspirations” joke in Rogue One, I’m both glad and a little disappointed that after the Supreme Leader misread Kylo’s intentions, he didn’t take after his grandfather and say “Looks like he Snoke too soon” and then winked at Rey, then after she didn’t give a courteous chuckle raged out at her. That would have been the best and worst moment in the franchise simultaneously. I know, I know, I should write Episode IX, but Disney just won’t respond to my texts. I even added Mickey Mouse emojis to suck up but noooooooo, it’s not true.

Same note, different paragraph, because I went off the rails there. That’s not like me. Staying on the rails is my thing, everyone who disagrees is fake news. I stay on the rails better than the characters in season 4 of The Walking Dead where they just would not get off the rails despite everyone begging them to get to the point. Ironic, huh?

Sorry again. So the whole Kylo killing Snoke was the only way I saw the scene transpiring when it began, if Rey hoped to get out alive, but the way it was done was good. If Kylo had turned to the light side, I would have called bullshit because I don’t think you can have anyone kill Han Solo and be redeemed in anyone’s eyes. Rey didn’t know him well obviously, so I bought that she thought she could turn him, but I didn’t forgive Vader when he turned (I maintain saving his son doesn’t make him a good person and was rather selfish motivation for helping guard the galaxy), and if I don’t forgive him for killing Obi Wan and a bajillion others, I’m not going to watch an entire movie in two years where I’m rooting for Han Solo’s killer. So the part where he’s like "fuck the Jedi and fuck the Order. I’m making my own dictatorship. With blackjack and hookers” I was like, yeah, that’s a better and more believable motivation.

Same note, fourth paragraph. Look, it’s a big scene, okay? I enjoyed the trolling of the fanbase where they kept teasing Rey’s parentage despite it not being important in The Force Awakens and it turns out it’s Occam’s Razor and they’re just some randoms. Had it just happened in that scene I would have been like ‘oh, okay, that settles that argument’ but the fact that it was brought up half a dozen times to taunt her and then Kylo doesn’t even give her their names, despite it still being presumably important to Rey, it’s definitely trolling. Like if he said “They’re Mary Sue and Joe Hitchcock” and Rey’s like “who?” “oh, they died of an overdose decades ago. It doesn’t matter” that would have been an answer but “who cares?” is hardly a mindblowing twist. Having said that, the joke will date fast as people seeing this trilogy for the first time in twenty years will be like “why did they spend so much time teasing Rey’s parents?” unless it’s a hobby in the 2040s to read backlogs of internet forums. I don’t remember that in Ready Player One and that generation feeds off nostalgia. And the villain said it and villains lie so the debate is probably going to continue until Star Wars has killed all of everyone’s favourite characters and decide to do a prequel of Mary and Joe conceiving a baby (or did God cockblock him? Ambiguous…)

Paragraph 5: The point writes back. Rey and Kylo fighting off all the Snoker players was awesome but the scene of them both students struggling for control of Luke’s lightsabre was cool in both metaphor and actuality and then it just breaks in half which was an interesting twist on that cliché.

Oh, Hux continually being Snokeblocked was a lot of fun too.

Yoda was a sensei instead of a backflipping lunatic. Good to see him again.

What do you mean five paragraphs on one thought and one line on the next two makes my review inconsistent? I’d tell you to fuck right off but this is the positive section.

They didn’t call the movie Star Wars Episode BBVIII. Considering BB8 saves the day at least three times, I wouldn’t have been shocked.

They didn’t make Kylo yet another Disney orphan in this movie. I mean five minutes into Episode IX, her ship will blow up because you can’t give Leia a happy departure while her son is going on a killing spree, but for now, Kylo is safe from falling into that category. A longer rant to come in The Bad zone but I liked Leia in this movie, even if the hug with Chewbacca is too little, too late and makes the fact she hugged a stranger over him a few weeks ago all the weirder.

As out of place as it was, I enjoyed the casino scene. There was a girl at one of the tables that there’s a lingering shot of and I was like "wow, Queenie from Blackadder hasn’t aged a day", but we never saw her again so I wasn’t able to confirm just how similar they looked.

“He really hates this ship.”

*I know what you’re thinking. But Australia, how can midichlorians swallow a human? Shut the fuck up. Even Luke more or less said the force is magic in this movie and I believe him over everyone in the prequels.


The Bad
Fuck right off.

The prison break was the substitute codebreaker picking a lock. Hardly a Guardians of the Galaxy level of ridiculous. You can do better than this, movie. As opposed to ‘you can do better than that movie’ which no you can’t, Mr Simpson, no-one can. I did enjoy the chase scene afterwards on goathorseback. Dumb but fun.

Don’t lick the ground, weirdo. You couldn’t tell it was salt by smelling it or something? The fuck’s wrong with you?

BB8 hacks into everything in this movie – killer robots, ships, everything, but can’t open a door. Movie would have gotten rid of a 30 minute sidequest if BB8 could get his shit together.

Also, Maz Kanata was in this movie for a skype call and nothing else. Why put her in it at all if you’re not going to use her? Surely someone on the ship could namedrop a codebreaker.

I liked that Kylo and Rey were connected by the force and that it turned out Snoke was doing that somehow (I wasn’t on the let’s-find-out-who-Snoke-really-is-Scooby-Doo bandwagon but now I really do want to know more about how he learned that power and now that he’s some guy, I guess I’ll choke chalk it up to blackmailing the Force with its affair with Anakin in exchange for call-waiting) but there were a few too many of those scenes. It felt like an excuse for hero-villain confrontations without any danger whatsoever. I kept expecting Rey to say ‘no, you hang up first.’

I like both characters but hopefully it turns out Finn and Rose are related so Finn and Poe can get the June wedding they so richly deserve.

My only major complaint is that they’re going to have to shoehorn Leia’s death into the next movie and it’s going to be all the weirder since she barely survived this movie just to die immediately anyway. They had the perfect opportunity to either lift her out of the movie after the ship blew up (although I can see why they wanted as much Carrie Fisher as possible) or edit around it to make her a force ghost. Maybe even make it a twist after she gives Poe a dressing down for the mutiny and then show she’s still in bed, although then maybe viewers would just think she’s astral projecting too. Imagine the Luke and Leia scene in the third act where it turns out neither of them are physically there. That’s bittersweet right there. Also, maybe I saw it wrong but I hope Leia didn’t literally fly like Superman to get back to the ship and was actually using the Force to bring the spaceship towards her.

The rest of the 'bads' are just what-ifs that I thought would be cool. What if Rey actually killed Kylo in that showdown, which turned her dark or grey as Luke hinted it would, and then the final scene was them against Rey instead of Kylo but they aren't aware of that. But you can't really do that with a main character like you could Finn or even Poe given his lack of respect for authority. I was more intrigued by the mirror scene because I mistook that to mean Rey was her own parents somehow. That's what being a Red Dwarf fan gets you. But it turns out rather than her literally being a plant alien born asexually, it just means she has no family. Don't need that scene to figure that out. It's like Thor going to the looking pool in Age Of Ultron instead of Ultron letting it slip about the infinity stones given he's an all-knowing robot thingy. Still, like Age Of Ultron, one misstep doesn't make it a bad movie. Just an imperfect one.


The Ugly
The entire Rebellion is on one ship? Whose bright idea was that?


I thought going in that this was the last movie that had a chance of knocking Ragnarok out of my top five movies of the year and I don't know if it does. They're both in space, they're both about getting sidetracked from the mission at hand and they're both filled with crazy characters and antics. Ultimately, Ragnarok is much funnier but Star Wars isn't a comedy so that doesn't feel like a good enough reason. I do like the idea of having three space movies in my top five so maybe I can pull Blade Runner 2049 from fourth into sixth place instead. If I wanted four space movies, I could pull Covenant from 219th to 5th but I just don't want to. Eh, I'll figure it out at New Years. My top three is safe unless a dark horse rears its head in the next fortnight.
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Re: The Last Jedi

Postby Marcuse » Sat Dec 16, 2017 11:43 pm

These are my pretty unfiltered thoughts, I've had a couple of hours to think about it and my views might change later on. Suffice it to say that I found the movie enjoyable and it didn't do anything very wrong or do or say anything which was out of character for Star Wars as a franchise.

Spoiler: show
However, I have to say that the movie is not a Star Wars movie. It's a completely different movie with a Star Wars patina bolted on. Several parts of the story felt like they were elements from other kinds of movies imported onto Star Wars, especially the ridiculous 18 hour sublight car chase where nobody (not even the monstrously powerful Force user on the main ship) could think of a way to catch up to the Resistance. The humour throughout was goofy and I didn't find any of it funny in the least. I actually found the Force Awakens humour like BB8's lighter thumbs up to be more funny and in character for the series. I wasn't laughing at Snoke's dismembered corpse flopping off the throne for no reason.

I'll take the plots in turn:

The Resistance

Oh man. Rian Johnson does not know what happens to people in the vacuum of space. I'll let the Doctor explain. This applies to both the unnamed sister of Rose (a decidedly not Star Wars name) and Leia later on. It's particularly egregious with Leia given she walks away from it with nary a scratch on her. Never mind her Force flying all the way back to an airlock a door straight on to hard vacuum (which decompresses nothing) like she's a superhero. I can buy Leia having some control over the Force and that's fine and dandy, but it seems weird to have her be able to do this and not in literally any other scene.

Whyyyy are the bombers slower and worse at bombing than a Y-wing? How do bombs fall like that in space? Why does the button need to be pressed by a person on site? Why can't a droid do it? Why can't a computer do it? The answer to all these questions is plot.

The car chase, man. What was that? Why would the Resistance do that? Why would the First Order allow that? The whole thing is meant to create tension, but when you state openly in the movie that your chase is going to last 18 hours then it becomes tension free and an excuse to tie up most of the main characters in order to get them to kill time while you deal with other plots. Even the shots with the macro cannons were a bit doofy, because they seemed to use a trajectory that suggested they were artillery fired as though gravity is a thing you account for in space.

If the Resistance knew they could crash their cruiser into the FO flagship at light speed and cripple it, then why didn't they move all the other fuel and crew to the frigate, do that (with a droid piloting it ffs) and bounce on the smaller ships? The shot was beautiful but all I could think was why was Admiral Prom Night only doing that when the transport ships were threatened instead of right away? All she was going to do was die under their fire anyway and they knew the FO couldn't know that the transports were there. So why wait?

If they could skype Maz Kanata in the middle of a warzone, why couldn't they call for help from their ship? Why are we supposed to have any faith in the potential for the galaxy to rise up and overthrow the evil empire if the existing Resistance cells give no fucks? What is the point of depowering the rebels even more than they already were only to have them win at the end anyway?

Leia's arc is to nearly die then not be dead.
Poe's arc is to learn not to make suicide attacks all the time and to run away.
Admiral Ackbar learned that whether you know it's a trap or not, you die offscreen and nobody cares.
Hux learned that he's a bitch all the time.
Snoke learned you can be in two places at once. We did not learn who he is, what he wants, what his reason for specifically resurrecting the Empire is, or his interest in Kylo Ren or Rey is. We don't know how he uses the Force or who taught him.

Finn and Rose

Could have done without this entirely tbh. The Neverending goat horses were cool and sympathetic. Canto Bight was another cantina scene with plot bolted on. The location was lovely, but the story included was ham fisted and didn't really say anything other than "some people profit from war and those are bad people". I would have preferred it if they'd have shown some resistance to them from people there, like show that to some people the Resistance are terrorists and destroying things. Right now we're being told that the Res can kill and destroy whoever and whatever they want as long as we think they're bad, or rich, and that annoys me because it doesn't remember that the Empire is made up of people too.

I have no idea why they bothered to bring Phasma back for a fight with Finn only to die again. Pointless waste of the potential for a really interesting Stormtrooper character.

They didn't even find the guy they wanted, and they just randomly grabbed another dude, and he could do it. Then he betrayed them and got a ton of people killed. If Poe, Finn and Rose had just shut up and followed orders it wouldn't have happened. They risked, and lost a ton of people for literally nothing.

Finn learned that he shouldn't run away so much and make more suicide attacks.
Rose learned that half yin yang things are nice conductors.
BB8 learned that coins make nice bullets, and augmenting himself with other tech (dat AT-ST shell) is totally a thing he could do.

Rey and Luke (and Kylo)

Having Luke completely subvert the drama of the scene at the end of TFA by tossing the lightsaber over his shoulder retroactively makes the ending of that movie even more doofy than it already was.

That said, there were elements of this I liked. Not the fat guy boob cows and porgs, but the stuff about the Force and the Jedi. I liked how Luke had realised that the Jedi as an Order were finished and had to end. It was a shame that in the end they forgot that, but I did like how Luke didn't really forget that himself even at the end. He made his peace with the Jedi and let them go. Shame Rey didn't really get that message. In fact that was the only message she didn't get, with most of this feeling less like training and more like her text messaging a couple of dudes, one older bitter guy who she thinks has what she needs, and one younger hunk who she thinks might be a bit of an asshole but is so damn hot.

I liked how they had Luke channel a bit of Ben Kenobi and lie about what happened between him and Kylo, and then Kylo lie about it just as much. The truth ended up feeling more like a discovery than a statement and it felt more organic to get a different story from more than one person and piece it together properly. It was waaaaaay out of character for Luke to murder Ben when he was a kid under his care and family. I didn't mind Yoda being there when he burned the Jedi texts, but I thought his comment about them not being great reads was way out of character. It felt like the only really fanservice moment which meant it was actually satisfying to see. I liked that Yoda came back to give Luke a measure of peace.

I feel like the "plot" of Rey's parents was a huge letdown. When she went to that weird abstract mirror thing and saw a face coming to her I was saying under my breath all the time "palpatine palpatine" because that would be fucking awesome to have a Jedi related to him. They made so much over the Skywalker bloodline, and they make Rey's parent be deadbeat assholes who sell her for no reason? Why did her "adoptive" parent Unkar Plutt just happen to have Han Solo's ship then? Why was he an associate of Han when Jakku is supposed to be a nowhere place (as Luke reminds us)? It just leaves the entire thread hanging dead and makes no sense. Of course Kylo could be lying and she's secretly his sister but I don't think Abrams will have the guts to resurrect the question in the third movie now he has to literally build a new rebel alliance and defeat the Empire in one movie.

Luke learned that there should be no more Jedi
Rey learned that there should be more Jedi
Chewie learned to speak Porg
Kylo learned that he needs to work on his pick up lines.
Yoda learned that Force Lightning is completely okay so long as a cloud does it.

All Back Together Again

I don't think anyone is surprised that the best "yeaahhh" moment of the movie is when Kylo kills Snoke and then him and Rey work together to kill the buckethead guards. Also yay lightwhips. I felt like my enjoyment died when they had Kylo try to get Rey to join him in ruling the Empire, because that's such a lift from Episode 3. I would have been suuuuper interested if she had accepted, and tried to bring some sense to Kylo and the FO. But alas all it seemed to do is drive Kylo bonkers with rage and actually turn him into Vader proper and make Rey abandon the "no jedi no sith" thing and decide she's totally a Jedi even though everyone had told her the exact opposite the whole time. It seemed really off to me that she tried to make him join her and when he does hold his hand out to her she refuses to take it, surely with her on side the FO could be mellowed out more than if she just runs from it. Wouldn't that be a more mature decision?

The fakeout at the end was, for all the movie's other flaws (who stands with a massive blastdoor open when enemies are literally flying towards you???) totally a Jedi thing to do and exactly what Luke should have done to end the movie. Dunno how he legit gave Leia those dice, but whatever. I felt like Luke just dying for no reason should be coined as "padmeing" because why did that even happen? Like Vader supposedly being redeemed for one act of heroism, Luke is portrayed as being at peace after decades of turmoil after a five minute chat with Yoda and burning a tree.

The line from Rose that they win not by killing other people but by saving things they love is cool. I can buy into that sentiment. Too much of the movies have been too outmatched and hopeless and grim and while it would be good to see a losing battle being cleverly worked out of, seeing the Resistance running like whipped dogs all across the movie was just not fun for me personally. They seem to really want to play up how powerful the First Order is, and depower the Resistance, and that just makes the movie seem uneven because the powerless ones have to actually win sometimes, so aside from trickery there often ends up being fuckery to make that happen (like the dreadnaught kill).

With the last of the Resistance fleeing on the Falcon, and the FO under the control of Kylo Ren, what does that leave for the last movie? Are they doing an entire military campaign and buildup in one film? I doubt it. Probably they'll just kill Ren and the FO will collapse like the Empire did when the Emperor and Vader died.

Biggest Positives:
Dat Rey/Kylo/bucketheads fight
Cool effects
Luke and Rey talking about the Force

Biggest Gripes:
No space logic
Finn/Rose + Canto Bight
Superleia
Goofy humour
Rey didn't give Kylo a chance when he offered it.
No knights of Ren
Out of character Luke behaviour

Overall I enjoyed the ride, but most of the time I was too distracted by glaring lack of logic and sense to properly engage with the plot as it was written.
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Re: The Last Jedi

Postby jbobsully11 » Sun Dec 17, 2017 8:17 am

I saw it on Thursday night. I thought it was pretty good, overall, but then Marcuse pointed out a bunch of stuff in his post that I didn't really think about, so now I'm not sure. I guess I'll have to watch them in sequential order from Rogue One through this movie to rank them properly (which I was thinking I should do anyway), but at least this one wasn't anywhere near as much like Empire as I had feared. The worst thing for me was having to sit through an hour of trailers (literally; I timed it) before the movie actually started. Opinions below:

spoilers gonna spoil
I thought that the Kylo/Rey telepathy scenes were good, if a little excessive. I also agree that it would have made perfect sense for Leia to die in this one, and I figured she wouldn't recover once she got back on the ship, which was hard enough to believe on its own. Instead, Luke died (or... disintegrated or whatever), which I guess had to happen at some point in the series, but after he deflected all of those shots (along with that fight scene with Kylo Ren), it was pretty disappointing.

Maybe this is explained somewhere, but why does the First Order use chickenwalkers? They were hilariously prone to falling over in the original trilogy. How have they improved since then?

Other random things: I thought Finn and Rose were good together, but I agree that the casino scenes went on a bit long, in addition to the problems with them just saying "fuck it" and grabbing some guy who ultimately screwed them over. Poe's mutiny (and pretty much everything else about him) annoyed me. It's always nice not seeing Yoda talk as extremely back-asswards as he did in the prequels (but then, I like seeing pretty much anything done differently than it was in the prequels). I thought most of the jokes were funny, but they did give this movie a different tone from the others.
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Re: The Last Jedi

Postby A Combustible Lemon » Sun Dec 17, 2017 7:16 pm

I watched it and I rate it the same as I rated TFA when I watched it. They're competently shot but only slightly better quality than the Prequels.

This one's better than TFA, but that's not really saying much. Me and friend I was watching with heckled the movie beginning to end. There was so much shit to make fun of that's baffling or stupid.
Spoiler: show
Opening Crawl:
"The First Order reigns".
How. How the fuck does blowing up the "rotating" capitals of the REPUBLIC OF SYSTEMS give the first order power? How many systems are in star wars, total? Ten?
What's even happening, were they conquered? Pretty fast conquering tbh, they don't look nearly tough enough to do it. The movie itself doesn't do anything with this info. The people in Las Vegas are just Lando helmeted police, not First Order people. For all the stakes the movie claims to have, all we see is about five ships chasing five ships.

Opening Battle:
The opening battle was ridiculous. The bomber design wasn't as strange or alien as AT-ATs, so it's not even close to as believable how shit they're designed. There's no excuse at that point. One of them is blown up because it was shot in the permanently open bomb hatch. They're that easy to get rid of. The equivalent of Videogame Boss Glowing Part. Then the design decisions. They're space bombers who drop about five thousand bombs on their target. Inches apart. Those bombs aren't combining together to become a bigger explosion, they're literally just blowing each other up at that point. There's no manual release on the bombs. The bomb doors are permanently open and there's a remote control button to detach them. This is definitely a good design decision. They leave an engineer down there to tell the bombs bedtime stories, not like her job would be to help release the bombs or shut the door in case the pilot can't or anything.
The scene ends with Poe Dameron learning that using more than half their bombers to destroy a dreadnought while they're supposed to be running away is moronic. Jk the movie doesn't give a shit, we should let flyboy waste as many planes as he wants because he's the hero damnit.

Then Leia's ship explodes, and something magical happens.

Luke's planet

I have mostly no complaints about Luke himself, Mark Hammil is awesome. I loved that he calls it a Laser Sword instead of a lightsaber. But god is the new trilogy's prequelness obvious here. Random distracting background critters, (DID YOU NOTICE THE GIANT FISH THING IN THE WATER? THAT DEFINITELY NEEDED TO BE THERE) random cutesy critters that provide comic relief, multiple species of aliens that don't do anything. An alien race whose job is to be janitors, that no one even acknowledges.

Force Skype
Force Skype, to be fair, existed in the original trilogy. That's as far as I'm willing to go, honestly, it was already ridiculous then. But I could ignore it because force skype didn't give anyone any information they didn't already have. It was just a way to showcase Luke slowly relating to Vader more and their relationship being explored in an interesting, magical manner.
But Last Jedi's Force Skype is literally just Daisy Ridley and Adam Driver sexting each other for half the movie. It's also the main medium in which exposition happened. This was the only substantial part of the movie, and it was lazy and involved two people talking on the phone, sometimes interrupted by an old man.

Daisy Ridley polished her Blaster until it went off at Adam Driver, then he took her to show off his new girlfriend to his dad, then his dad had this awesome scene where he explained that the Skywalkers are worthless and no son of his is going to marry a Skywalker, then Adam Driver says "NO DAD, I LOVE HER" and there's a fight.

The Rebels are great at strategy:
The empire has hyperspace tracking capabilities, holy shit, they followed us here. We'll never survive. We can't hyperspace jump again, they'll track us again. It's not like we can drop our stealthed transports like we eventually do and then hyperspace jump... or release the stealthed transports during the hyperspace jump... or use the bombers we established can be lethal to dreadnoughts as really costly distractions... or release the stealthed transports into an easily escapable area like the upper atmosphere of a known and neutral spaceport where people can spread out and hide and cost the first order precious time to find them in... Or space jump into an asteroid field where the empire's sweeping is neutralized by the danger from the asteroid field.

No. The correct answer is to move away from the bullets.
Image
perfect.

And after doing this for eighteen hours, they finally come to a base that doesn't have a single serviceable ship in it. That's double perfect.

By the way, when faced with the incredibly difficult challenge of how to track a ship through hyperspace, something so impossible the rebels have literally no plan to handle it.
Darth Vader wrote:Alert all commands. Calculate every possible destination along their last known trajectory.


So really, they had enough fuel for three jumps and the movie only showed us one instead of two...
Or they could've used both jumps and THEN jumpscared us by showing the first order landing.

Kylo's Dad
Snoke was more disappointing than Attack of the Clones. He was some mysterious teacher, responsible for Kylo's fall to the dark side, who wanted Kylo to train to harness his anger and dispassionately (lol dispassionate dark side, good job at writing a new consistent canon disney) assassinate his own mum and dad. How cool, what an interesting character.

Oh. He's an emperor cosplayer. That's it. That's the entirety of his character. His motivation, he really likes the Sith. His costume, emperor clothes. Throne Room. Staff-wielding red guards. Special custom dreadnought. Once more the Sith will rule the Galaxy.

I mean fucking hell, Return of the Jedi was amazing with the emperor scenes. He doesn't use a lightsaber, spends the entire scene just using his power over Vader to get them to fight while he watches. He doesn't do ANYTHING except talk to both of them until Vader is down and Luke gives up on fighting. That's badass.

Finn and Obvious Love Interest and their Las Vegas adventure
I mean, I'm sure she's fine, but she's so shoehorned in just to get Kylo-Rey to be canon. I also love how the chinese person gets the yin-yang necklace, because racism. She's /finally/ an indicator of what the first order's doing wrong. But like, this just brings up more questions, what the fuck is the first order? Is it the imperial remnant? That'd make so much sense, but then what the fuck is the New Galactic Republic doing without using their fleets to attack the imperial remnant and liberate more systems? Leia's resistance is the only group that was fighting the first order in TFA. Apparently the galactic republic that leia was a founding member of... decided to sit down and take a rest for a while.
But back to Rose. I liked her character. Her obvious finn-ship is distracting (Look I know engineer words too, let's bond over how nerdy we are). There's a ridiculous scene in the end where she stops Finn from being an hero and they have a cutesy scene where they finally kiss.

It's like if this happened
Image
because this was about to happen
Image
but then Randy Quaid's son just realized how much he loves his dad and rams his plane out of the way.

Much like Finn, someone who joined the resistance because she was involved in the origin story of the First Order is an amazing backstory, but she really doesn't do much with it.
Well more than Finn atleast, with the whole orphan scene.
Overall I give her an 8/10, compared to Finn's 7/10 (TFA) -> 5/10 (TLJ), Rey's 6/10(TFA)->7/10(TLJ), Poe's Wedge Antilles level side character/10 (TFA) -> More lethal to resistance ships than the first order/10 (TLJ), and Kylo's consistent 9/10.
So it's a good start for her.

Yoda:
Yoda was distracting as fuck. Here's a fun fact. Yoda doesn't speak like an alien who always uses the wrong sentence structure in the original trilogy. That's a result of 30 years of memeing that was finally canonized in the prequels.

Yoda originally just spoke like an ESL chinese person. You know, the archetype he's a blatant nod to.

So when they make yoda a hunchbacked old man who chuckles and cracks jokes and accepts his mistakes like in the original trilogy but keep the really distracting sentence structure, I can't enjoy my yoda porn.

Writing I don't have any complaints with yoda.

The finale:

Oh god the finale.

Let's have a history lesson, kids. The reason we don't use battering rams on things that aren't doors any more is that we invented something better. It's called artillery.
But wait, you say.
Image
Maybe that's just what star wars siege weaponry looks like.

Well, it's not like we had a bit where the empire was trying to level a rebel base, with pretty much the same defences as this one fifty years ago. What did they use again?
Image
Hmm, large armoured troop carriers with giant cannons mounted on their heads that they used to bombard the base from long range, you say?

But why would you use those?
This is fine though, new tech, bigger guns, yay, we can't always stick to AT-ATs and AT-STs and things we recognize.

So let's put the necessity of the giant avatar drill aside for a bit.

Let's get to the rebel strategy for this fight. It's to... ride at the enemy. That's it. We can tell how precious life is to the rebels, unlike those horrible first order people who throw away lives all the time for no reason.
Then the first order's response to this is to throw tie fighters at them and NOT USE THEIR AT-AT GUNS. This is emphasized by them showing off the shiny new AT-ATs and their shiny new guns while those tie fighters are basically doing nothing interesting.

Finn finally has a great idea to kill the drill with, but we already dealt with how that was derailed.

Rest of it's pretty damn good. Kylo shooting at the jedi with his entire army was fucking glorious and I was daring them to do it. I love it. Also New force power, Luke dying from overexertion, Leia being happy she finally got to see him again, Rey saving everyone using her power to lift rocks, no complaints at all. This would be excellent if every bit before it wasn't filled with distracting nonsense.

MVP:

I think the MVP of this film is, once again,
MVP
Image

While he wasn't there in person, his influence can still be felt in the words and deeds of Redcloak-with-two-sticks and Zombie Phasma. He is the greatest character in the new canon and he is a god among men. The main reason I will watch the next episode is to see where his spirit reincarnates this time. I don't know who it'll be, but I do know it'll be an amazing character whose job is to beat the shit out of traitor scum.


I was right about TFA's eventual internet rating last time, let's see if people stick to their high ratings of TLJ this time around.
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WE ARE ALL FLOATING IN THE WINDS OF TIME. BUT YOUR CANDLE WILL FLICKER FOR SOME TIME BEFORE IT GOES OUT -- A LITTLE REWARD FOR A LIFE WELL LIVED. FOR I CAN SEE THE BALANCE AND YOU HAVE LEFT THE WORLD MUCH BETTER THAN YOU FOUND IT, AND IF YOU ASK ME, said Death, NOBODY COULD DO ANY BETTER THAN THAT...
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Re: The Last Jedi

Postby AboveGL » Sun Dec 17, 2017 10:44 pm

I just came back from seeing this and I have to admit, I am thoroughly underwhelmed after expecting much better.

EDIT: to cut a long story short, I disliked many plot elements (and still do, even when fair comparisons are made to the flaws of the OT) and lots of things just flat out didn't deliver. What felt like shallow character development, especially with regards to Finn and Rose, was disappointing.

That said, it IS a fun movie with some cool fight scenes. I much prefer TFA, but you should probably go and see it and make your own mind up. The overall experience is worth it.

Further edit: I wonder if I'd enjoy this more on a second viewing?
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Last edited by AboveGL on Fri Jan 05, 2018 12:59 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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Re: The Last Jedi

Postby BROWNRECLUSE » Mon Dec 18, 2017 3:19 am

Screenshot_20171217-211800.jpg
Screenshot_20171217-211800.jpg (288.02 KiB) Viewed 7280 times


If Ackbar wasn't watching the booty pop, maybe he
Spoiler: show
wouldn't have been killed offscreen
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Re: The Last Jedi

Postby Marcuse » Mon Dec 18, 2017 9:53 am

This is 99.9% likely to be a joke, but.

Image

Might as well the way they're going. I did not blow up Alderaan, I did nahhht.
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Re: The Last Jedi

Postby selena81 » Mon Dec 18, 2017 3:06 pm

some random thoughts:

-Kylo Ren is somewhat interesting, but i hope his motivation will go beyond 'blowing shit up, getting rid of the past' in the next movie. That stuff is too much like some isis-campaign to sit comfortably with me.

-So is Rey really the child of some nobodies, or are we still going with 'only skywalkers have the force' and are thus to assume Luke slept his way though the galaxy ;)

-nice going team Finn/Dameron: you assholes fucked up a perfectly acceptable escape-plan because you can't take orders

-so leia will have to have on offscreen death? missed opprtunity.

-how come luke and his projection survive fire from all ships but not Kylo's lasersword??

-the one lasersword being cut in half by Kylo and Rey was a nice thouch

-Phasma? Snoke? much ado about nothing, they never deliver to all the build-up in TFA

I'm only a casual starwars-viewer who thinks of the franchise as 'popcorn movies'. Rogue One was a positive exception: it builds up believable heroes and finally explains why the death star has such a stupid flaw. But Last Jedi hasn't convinced me. Maybe i'll rethink after part 9 explains some of the flaws.
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Re: The Last Jedi

Postby IamNotCreepy » Mon Dec 18, 2017 4:02 pm

I liked the movie, but something really bothered me about it:

Spoiler: show
The whole side plot with trying to disable the tracking was dumb. It was a stupid plot to give Finn something to do during this movie. It was completely nonsensical for the Vice-Admiral to have a plan like that in place but refuse to tell anyone about it.

This caused unnecessary friction between the Resistance members, leading to a mutiny. It also caused Finn and Rose to go off on their half-cocked adventure looking for a codebreaker, who eventually betrayed them. With the information they had, this was the best course of action.

All of that could have been avoided with some obvious communication.
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Re: The Last Jedi

Postby Marcuse » Mon Dec 18, 2017 10:49 pm

This is going to keep bothering me if I don't say it.

Spoiler: show
On Canto Bight, Finn and Rose break free and release the dog horse creatures, but they don't free the enslaved children. I think that's because they were trying to call back to the earlier material at the end with the "anyone can be a superhero Force user" stuff, but it just revealed that the same kids they met were still enslaved. Some heroes.
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Re: The Last Jedi

Postby Deathclaw_Puncher » Tue Dec 19, 2017 3:28 am

Ladies And Gentlemen, prepare to feast your eyes on the most pathetic thing you'll ever see.

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