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Last Jedi

Posted: Wed Dec 27, 2017 2:29 am
by Staris
With the most recent movie having some division on people enjoying and not enjoying the movie, I became interested in what the Alvian consensus was. Though I figure its been long enough for most to have seen the movie I will keep this post spoiler free for those that haven't.

I can't say for sure the movie has out done Return of the Jedi but its definitely up in the top spots for me. I do understand some of the complaints and the movie does drag along a bit but as potentially putting it in the number one spot would suggestion over all I really liked the movie and do feel quite a few of the complaints can be explained.

I've already seen it twice and wouldn't be surprised if I see it 1 or 2 more times in the main theaters let alone a couple times in the dollar theater.

Re: Last Jedi

Posted: Wed Dec 27, 2017 3:15 am
by Bulwark
They tried too hard with the comedy. Almost as if the writers watched Guardians of the Galaxy right before finalizing the script. Honestly, I could have done without the Jedi parts. They rest was pretty good.
Spoiler:
Leia flying through space like the wicked witch without a broom was where it jumped the shark for me.

Re: Last Jedi

Posted: Wed Dec 27, 2017 3:41 am
by Furiel
I'm one of those weird people who isn't on either pole with it. I liked it. I don't think it was great, but it wasn't bad either. I know Cuspar is in the group that hated it. Like he ranks one of the prequels above it level hate...
Spoiler:
I agree completely with Bulwark, I had a huge problem with Leia saving herself the way that she did.
I kinda liked Benecio Del Toro's character because he ratted them out in the end instead of going all scoundrel with the heart of gold. I actually thought when they first said they were getting a guy to be found at gambling tables I kinda expected it to be Lando.
I didn't like that Akbar died like he did. Like I honestly didn't notice that he had died and when they mentioned it later I was like "wait, what, when did Akbar get ganked?" For a character who honestly didn't have a lot of screen time, but had such an important role I feel like his death should have been more noticeable.
I'm kinda meh about how Luke died. I knew that he had to because of the whole balance thing they kept playing up and once Snoke was dead it was a forgone conclusion Luke was toast too. But it just felt a little hollow to me that he died after being a projection for like 10 minutes the he keeled over from exertion.

Re: Last Jedi

Posted: Wed Dec 27, 2017 8:04 pm
by Blackferne
Spoiler:
I liked it.
Concessions: I will give points for trying new things. Also i'm willing to overlook some things simply because a chance was taken. Playing it safe is why Doctor Strange is just Magic Iron Man. it is fine to a point, but if we want to escape a cinema-verse of reseeing the same handful of origin stories,
we need to be willing to let film makers take chances.

Things I liked a lot:
Space battles. The opening sequence felt very much like an old WW2 movie with bombers, fighters, and battleships...in space.
Rey and Kylo- Not all of it, more on that later, but in generally I think Adam Driver is what Anakin should have been in the prequels. Do a little recasting in your mind and I think you'll agree, Anakin played by Adam Driver would have been amazeballs. Rey likewise has really grown from the accused Mary Sue of the Force Awakens. We see her, and to a lesser extend Kylo, realize that you cannot expect the training you seek to be handed to you. You need to take chances and own it yourself. You have to be willing to fail. That is a theme of this movie.

The failed hair brained scheme-Poe sends Fynn and Rose on that mission to get a galaxy class slicer on the casino planet. This whole plot depends on the Vice Admiral Problem (see below), but they took us on a ride and it didn't work out. We need to see that our heroes can fail, sometimes spectacularly. Han getting frozen is one of the reasons Empire was so great. If all they do is win, then the villains are less intimidating, and our heroes are boring. (The Superman problem, separate rant about how no one writes Superman right)


Things I didn't like:
The Vice Admiral Problem- Laura Dern's character was an opportunity to give us the inevitablely needed Mon Mothma for the new series. But she "didn't use her words" which could have made Poe, Fynn, and Rose more effective on assisting the escape to the saltflats. Poe asks "What's the plan?!" and she just ignores him. He gets frustrated and comes up with the hair brained scheme, which brings in Benecio's scoundrel, who betrays them in a way that renders her plan pretty useless. Had Benecio not been in play, the resistance would still be ina bad place, but not as bad. Maybe it needed to be that bad in order to justify Luke's last act.

I don't like that they used a JTL into a capital ship as a doomsday device. This is a quibble, but it seems like the Resistance's best tactic going forward will be hijack hyperspace capable ships of sufficient mass, have an astromech droid as part of the hijacking crew, leave the droid to do the jump. I don't think that is as heroic necessarily.

Lack of Snoke payoff: Not huge, but I really wanted to know how he came to be the powerful character in the years after ROTJ. Maybe they'll have a novel or soemthing. His death though was pretty badass.

Things I was meh about:
Luke's death. I wasn't as emotionally bothered by it as some seem to be. I would have liked to see him venture out a little more.

Flying Leia. Don't really care or not.


Overall this is as good imo as ROTJ. My personal ranking is ESB>ANH>ROTJ=TLJ>ROTS>TFA>R1>AOTC>TPM

I rewatched Rogue 1 the other night and I think I might have undervalued it at its release. It maybe equal to ROTS, but I'll have to ponder that.

Final grade TLJ: B

Re: Last Jedi

Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2017 1:42 am
by Furiel
@Blackferne - you missed TFA in your ranking list...

Re: Last Jedi

Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2017 4:46 pm
by Blackferne
Furiel wrote:
Fri Dec 29, 2017 1:42 am
@Blackferne - you missed TFA in your ranking list...
Inserted.

Re: Last Jedi

Posted: Mon Jan 01, 2018 6:11 am
by Dashl
I hated it. I will not watch any future Star Wars in the theater.

Re: Last Jedi

Posted: Wed Jan 03, 2018 10:52 pm
by Bulwark
Dashl wrote:
Mon Jan 01, 2018 6:11 am
I hated it. I will not watch any future Star Wars in the theater.
Can I has your stuff?

Re: Last Jedi

Posted: Sat Jan 20, 2018 7:46 pm
by Skiggity
Hey all. Thing I wrote a while ago for a private FB page of others who saw it early, figured I'd just repost it here since it encompasses my opinions. Since writing this I've seen it an third time, and with a sharper eye for things I'd read as "plot holes" I left impressed that they actually addressed all of them and the supposed holes were not there at all. Thing follows:

Star Wars was the first movie I ever saw, at a drive-in theater as a wide-eyed kid in 1978. I'm fairly nuts about Star Wars. Also, I tend much more heavily towards enthusiasm than criticism as a rule.

On to The Last Jedi: Enjoyed it immensely the first time (just me, opening night), even more the second time with my wife and 6-year old on Sunday. Here's my spoiler-rich download of the things I've unpacked the most in my tiny brain:

On my first viewing, I was somewhat uncomfortable with Poe's arc and the themes about heroics, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt it was worthy and necessary for his bravado to be brought into check with the dire reality the dwindling resistance/reborn rebellion is facing. TLJ's story makes him a much more worthy leader for the next installment. His humor in the opening scene was perfection, and the X-Wing in battle still makes me feel like a giddy 8-year-old. Still holding for General Hux...

Kylo Ren goes from being a brat who was trying to be what a brat would think Vader was like to actually being kind of scarier than Vader in this movie. Vader was always leashed. Kylo has managed to kill his master without dying, and his hopes of joining with Rey were dashed simultaneously. He's powerful, panicked and stranded all at once, and his rage and unpredictability combined with the First Order's toybox of death machines make for a seriously cool and frightening villain. Adam Driver was a genius casting choice.

The casino planet struck me as the least interesting part on my first viewing, although the part of me that felt the horse/dog/lion things were a bit prequilish was drowned out by the dad part of me that knew how giddy my daughter was going to be during that scene. And the payoff in the final scene with the young boy actually connected me more to that whole arc on my second go-round. And my kid loved it. So did my wife, actually.

Spaced Leia...I get the impression this one is bugging other folks quite a bit, but she's a friggin' Skywalker. Luke's twin "there is another" sister. She never took up a lightsaber, but clearly the spectre of death and a boost of adrenaline were enough for her to reach out, summon a bit of her Force-empowered legacy and save herself--and ensure the return of Rey, by way of the binary beacon thingy still on her wrist.

Luke: Mark Hamill was SUBLIME as old, bitter, pissed-with-himself and past-the-point-of-caring Luke. I did not expect him to be such an...actor. And I am in awe of how masterfully they handled his trajectory in this film. He was great with Rey, the Yoda bit was magic, and then the huge standoff and fight at the end was the PERFECT sendoff for a fully realized Jedi Master Luke Skywalker. Let your enemy thrash and wail and bombard all they want, then reveal their folly, their utter stupidity. The ultimate Jedi mind trick, so perfectly above it all. A touching self-sacrifice, and the twin suns/John Williams score one-two punch was emotionally powerful for me.

Um...congrats if you made it this far? I write too much.

Re: Last Jedi

Posted: Sat Mar 17, 2018 11:55 pm
by Takanudo
I liked it as well. I think it explored some interesting aspects of Star Wars lore that we have not seen in the other movies. While the Finn and Rose storyline felt underdeveloped, I did appreciate getting to see another side of the galactic civil war in which opportunists are the only people who truly benefit. I think that makes for the kind of world building I love in Star Wars.

I thought the strongest part was the relationship between Kylo and Rey. I like that ultimately the only person who understands Rey, and accepts her for who she is, is Kylo, and vice versa. It will be interesting to see how their relationship develops when Rey starts to be weighed down by the same pressures that weighed down Luke. I bet Kylo's offer might start to become more tempting.

Speaking of Luke Skywalker, I loved him in this movie as well. I always saw Luke as a flawed Jedi. He received an abridged training, really only learning what he needed to defeat Darth Vader. Ultimately, it wasn't even his Jedi training that defeated Darth Vader and the Emperor. It was his character, which he had from the first moment we met him in A New Hope. The fact that he ended up being a failed Jedi Master seemed perfectly in line with his character arc. I hope he comes back to haunt Kylo as an irascible force ghost.

The Leia thing did not bother me. I have always wanted to see Leia actively use the force, instead of just having the occasional reaction shot feeling. If all we get is an unconscious force pull to instinctively save herself, I am cool with that.

My only real problem was with Poe's story arc. I loved the opening battle, but that was about the last time I enjoyed watching Poe. It just struck me as odd that Pow would be celebrating that battle. If you have a squadron of bombers, each of which can take out a battle ship on its own, and you end up losing all of them to one enemy ship, you have failed. I get that Poe's arc was to learn to be a leader, but I think that first battle should have been his failure and the rest of the movie should have been him trying to make up for that. Instead he continues to compound his error to the point that the entire resistance was almost single-handedly wiped out due to Poe's decisions. Even at the end of the movie he basically leads what is left of the resistance into a dead end. Why anyone would listen to him after all of that is beyond me, but I am sure he'll be a general in the next movie. It seems unearned and sloppy story telling.

Still, I was so happy with Kylo, Rey, Luke, that it more than made up for the weaker moments.

-Takanudo (is pouring some out for his fallen homie, Admiral Ackbar)

Re: Last Jedi

Posted: Thu May 17, 2018 8:22 pm
by Dood
So, I started a new job in September and my old job had blocked the forums and I just realized after almost 9 months that "Hey, I can access the Church forums again!"

Um, what were we talking about?

Oh yeah.

I thought TLJ was meh. It wasn't great. It was not teeeeeerible, but it had terrible parts to it. They had some interesting ideas, and anything involving Luke, Rey, or Kylo was pretty interesting and I was with it...until they chickened out in the end and kind of reset everything to starting positions. It was basically a movie where almost nothing happened and nothing had any weight.

I wasn't angry about any plot points necessarily - more just that it left me not caring anymore. I don't really care about the next movie. For all its faults, TFA left me interested in where they were going with this. TLJ left me feeling like I did after I saw Rogue One - "that was OK I guess."

Most of that I blame on bad structure and HORRIBLE editing. And someone needed to stop the racelemur escape thing from making it on the screen. Or the Rose kiss thing out of fucking nowhere. There were just a lot of emotional beats that were unearned and kind of nonsensical.

Meh.