Star Wars:The Last Jedi (SPOILERS!!!!)

Baron, your comment about the first half of the movie being boring hits it on the head for me. I can’t remember a Star Wars movie where I just felt bored for so long. I can appreciate how people enjoy the more complex characters, etc. But at the end of the day, I want a Star Wars movie to make me feel some wonder and to appeal to the kid in me. This just didn’t do it until the second half (last third?). And I’m left feeling kind of meh about the third film which is a bummer.

Sadly I find myself more excited about the Marvel films. Which I know makes me a sad, shallow person.

IUMogg wrote:
Balthezor wrote:
pyxistyx wrote:
Hobear wrote:
Doc Joe wrote:

Kylo is just not a convincing bad guy.

Yeah. The mask made him a menace. Without he is a tantrum full of power and that is all. EP 9 needs to make me fear the FO not think they are an incapable band of morons run by a literal tantrum.

have you seen the Internet recently? He's a pretty convincing, realistic bad guy from where I sit.

A villain that throws tantrums when he's upset like the internet is not intimidating to me. They are just annoying. :D

I thought Kylo was the best part of the movie. The tantrums make sense because he still is in that period between childhood and adulthood. He is finding himself and deciding who he will be. He is pulled in different directions and overwhelmed. It kind of parallels Poe development. Young hotshot wanting to go all in but learning that’s not always the best route. Except Kylo goes the other way and doubles down on going all in.

Kylo Ren is 30 years old. THIRTY! I am not sure how one could classify him as an adolescent.

Tscott wrote:

A villain that throws tantrums when he's upset and leads an entire freakin' government is pretty damn scary (see also the year 2017).

I saw this yesterday and LOVED it. I liked that our heroes aren't perfect. There's a point in the movie where everyone realizes they dun messed up. Rey walks blindly into Snoke's trap. Poe's mutiny was misguided and he didn't have all the facts. Finn trusted the wrong guy. I was engaged with these characters because they made mistakes. It wasn't everything worked for the plot because Luke was being Luke, or Han was being Han, like in the original trilogy. Don't get me wrong I love the original trilogy and always will, but this movie took what I loved from those films and added a complexity that wasn't there before.

Evidently, making the best of a crappy situation which they put themselves into because of mistakes was not part of the OT. I find everyone's observations/feelings/comments intriguing but there is an incredible amount projection/colored glasses/hindsight bias going on with this movie. It is not wrong, but I am just curious where we all end up after some time has passed.

Anyway..
I still need to see it again, but I think the thing that bugs me the most right now is that this movie took almost everything that the PT, OT and TFA built and burned it to the ground. I get that it may have been the intent, but do that in the third act not the second. They could literally not make the next movie, take the remaining characters and call it a "A Star Wars Story" rather then part of the Skywalker saga. So unless they pull a rabbit out a hat in the third act, they might have burned a mighty long story bridge. You know, unless Rey really is part of the Skywalker family, in which case how will we feel about the TLJ then?

sheared wrote:

-The Finn/Rose story line served almost no purpose. They possibly killed Captain Phasma, but not much else. If they had rescued Rey, then there would have been some redeemable reason for their mission.

To be fair, did Luke actually achieve anything useful in the second half of RoTJ either? I don't think it would have made any difference if he wasn't there.

Zelos wrote:
sheared wrote:

-The Finn/Rose story line served almost no purpose. They possibly killed Captain Phasma, but not much else. If they had rescued Rey, then there would have been some redeemable reason for their mission.

To be fair, did Luke actually achieve anything useful in the second half of RoTJ either? I don't think it would have made any difference if he wasn't there.

I don't think Vader would have had to nerve to turn on Palatine without actually witnessing/feeling Padme's son in agony. Now his trip to Bespin in Empire, completely useless. Changed nothing except getting his hand chopped off, and letting Vader drive an emotional wedge between him and Obi-wan and Yoda.

I enjoyed it. I thought it was a little long and there were a couple scenes that could have been left out trimmed, but overall I was satisfied. My biggest gripe is I would have preferred them to have steering out of the surreal-artistic style that worked well in Force Awakens and more toward the harder sci-fi themes i enjoy in the novels, but instead they doubled down on artistic surrealism and took it too far. I'm hoping they correct a bit on 9, but it's not like i would not go see it regardless.

I have to see it again but my initial reaction leaving the theater was disappointment. Something about it just felt off and I felt like parts of the movie were disjointed or just plain strange.

I also didn't care for how they handled Luke at all. I get that he's broken but how is having an unguided Ray (with so much potential for good or bad) out there safer than Luke teaching her, even if he's not confident in himself or teaching abilities?

I will say there's a lot to digest and take in here and it deserves a second viewing. I appreciate the deeper intentions, just not sure I want it in a star wars movie especially the second movie of trilogy. Kind of getting the feeling this trilogy will be all over the place when it's said and done.

Baron Of Hell wrote:

4. Using the force to survive space. Moving through space, ok. Surviving long enough to move through space, not ok.

We've seen it use many times for gravity defying jumps, enhanced speed, and heavy lifting. In the absence of gravity, moving one person through empty wouldn't be all that much of an effort.

As for however much Luke taught Rey, and whether the Jedi texts are really unimportant like Yoda said, they probably contain a lot of the stuff about the Jedi Order and however they organized things in their religion, which is ultimately pretty useless. Like Luke said, the Jedi were right there during their own downfall and the rise of the Empire. Her empathy for others, her physical abilities and control, her aptitude for mechanical problems translating into aptitude when using the Force, she already has that inside her. Her connection to everything around her, a very pointed bit about her weakness to the Dark Side, those are the big things Luke could impart to her.

thrawn82 wrote:
Zelos wrote:
sheared wrote:

-The Finn/Rose story line served almost no purpose. They possibly killed Captain Phasma, but not much else. If they had rescued Rey, then there would have been some redeemable reason for their mission.

To be fair, did Luke actually achieve anything useful in the second half of RoTJ either? I don't think it would have made any difference if he wasn't there.

I don't think Vader would have had to nerve to turn on Palatine without actually witnessing/feeling Padme's son in agony. Now his trip to Bespin in Empire, completely useless. Changed nothing except getting his hand chopped off, and letting Vader drive an emotional wedge between him and Obi-wan and Yoda.

But wouldn't Palpatine have been blown up with the Death Star anyway? Anyway, sorry, I'll stop derailing things

For the Last Jedi, they could easily have cut 30-40 minutes without losing anything important, and it would have been a vastly better film.

Zelos wrote:

But wouldn't Palpatine have been blown up with the Death Star anyway? Anyway, sorry, I'll stop derailing things

Luke didn't get blown up with the Death Star.

Docjoe wrote:

I can’t remember a Star Wars movie where I just felt bored for so long.

I can think of 3 Star Wars movies in particular where I was more bored than this one.

Zelos wrote:

For the Last Jedi, they could easily have cut 30-40 minutes without losing anything important, and it would have been a vastly better film.

Thankfully, we can do it ourselves if need be! My edit of the film will significantly cut down on Rose's parts and Canto Bight.

I saw this on Friday evening on the big screen at Leicester Square with 1,400 others. First time I've heard people cheering in a cinema in years! That alone was worth a lot to me.

Generally, I enjoyed it, but I need a second viewing. Not least because - despite the vast sums no doubt spent on sound - the audio for dialogue was sometimes poor. I still do not know exactly how Finn and Rose escaped the rebel ship undetected.

Bits I loved:

- Luke throwing away the light-saber at the start.
- Luke's Force projection at the end.
- Rose.
- The important roles given to women generally in film (though Captain Phasma was wasted in my view). Thanks, Eleima, for posting that information.
- Snoke's throne room, and his menacing red guards.
- Finn and Rose's doomed mission. It reminded me of that observation in The Big Bang theory about Indiana Jones doing nothing of value in Raiders of the Last Ark.
- Linked to the above, the fact that I was constantly surprised by developments in the plot. Almost everything of significance came against my expectations.
- Luke's death.
- The fact that the ending cleared the decks and sets us up for something (perhaps the one thing) we've not seen before in Star Wars: the beginning of a Galaxy-wide rebellion.
- Snoke's reference - pointed in my view - to Kylo Ren being a child in a mask. He has a long way to go as a villain.

Bits I disliked:

- Leiai's non-death. It confounded my expectations, but I thought her 'death' had been done beautifully. Spared by her son, but still destroyed by the forces he unleashed (no pun intended). On the other hand, it did serve to make the Force more mysterious again...
- The pacing of individual scenes and sequences. I'm with The Conformist on this one. Some of them just felt a little 'off'.
- The busy-ness of the story. At one point there must have been half a dozen narrative threads in play. -
There was a lot for the viewer to keep track of. This may be a good thing.
- Setting up Kylo Ren as the villain. I don't think the actor or the character can currently support the weight of this.

Bit I was Confused By

Benicio Del Toro's character. So Finn and Rose are arrested for they can speak with the master hacker. But, once in gaol, they come across another master hacker? And he can escape gaol at will using a gum wrapper? At this point, I lost my way because of the dialogue sound issues. Was this ever properly explained?

One final thought:

On Paladin Tom's comment about this not feeling like a sequel to The Force Awakens. I read an interview with Rian Johnson where he said that - on taking the job - he expected to be shown a white board summarising the plot of the next films and detailing the arcs of each main character. Instead there was nothing, and he basically had to start from scratch. I think that contributes to his feelings about the lack of a clearer/stronger link to the preceding film.

It also - I think - finally explains why Luke's expression is so unreadable at the end of TFA: at the time, Mark Hamill literally doesn't know what he's meant to be emoting.

Sorry. Two other bits I loved.

- Holdo's destruction of Snoke's ship.
- The shots of Luke standing there, facing down five AT-ATs... which had been modelled to look just that little bit more animalistic and malevolent, like a pack semi-feral dogs.

detroit20 wrote:

Benicio Del Toro's character. So Finn and Rose are arrested for they can speak with the master hacker. But, once in gaol, they come across another master hacker? And he can escape gaol at will using a gum wrapper? At this point, I lost my way because of the dialogue sound issues. Was this ever properly explained?

There's a bit of info here on Sci-Fi Stack Exchange. The master codebreaker - the one with the lapel as Maz described, was the real codebreaker. DJ is apparently just some thief. They don't explain how/when DJ betrayed Finn and Rose, exactly. The page I linked to speculates that it was after they were caught breaking in, but the way the First Order treats him made it seemed like it happened much earlier. But yeah, the whole thing was a little odd and just made the casino section seem even more under-developed and unnecessary that it already was.

His stutter was never explained in the movie. I've read some peoples thoughts (maybe here? It's hard to keep track) that it was cool to have a character with a speech impediment and have it be somewhat normalised - it's never pointed out/explained/used as a punchline as other movies likely would. I'm not convinced that a character with few scruples is the best character to normalise a speech impediment, but that's probably a conversation for another thread.

As an aside, DJ reminded me a lot of Tom Waits, although my Tom Waits obsessed wife disagrees.

O.k. So it's not just me who was left a bit unclear on this?

Also, I wasn't clear on how DJ:
(1) knew that the the Rebels were using cloaking to make their escape, and;
(2) knew how to bypass the cloaking

Two gifted Codebreakers seems a bit of stretch.

And, of course, this does raise the question of why cloaking wasn't extended to other Rebel ships before...

detroit20 wrote:

O.k. So it's not just me who was left a bit unclear on this?

Also, I wasn't clear on how DJ:
(1) knew that the the Rebels were using cloaking to make their escape, and;
(2) knew how to bypass the cloaking

Two gifted Codebreakers seems a bit of stretch.

And, of course, this does raise the question of why cloaking wasn't extended to other Rebel ships before...

1) He overhears Poe telling the whole plan to Finn and Rose

2) He doesn't bypass their cloaking; a FO officer says to Hux something like "We've run a decloaking scan on the area and found their transports"

The funny thing about D.J. is that I was expecting it to be revealed that he had lost that pin in a gambling game and was the codebreaker being discussed, and then completely forgot about it and just assumed he was the guy after all.

Thanks for clearing that up, Tanglebones

Now you say, it I remember it being that New Order that actually initiates the scan.

Somehow I'd forgotten about him being there when Poe relays the Vice-Admirals plan.

EDIT: Yes, cceserano, I made the same assumption. Overall, it was a very complicated and clumsy way of demonstrating that in the Star Wars universe heroes can fail, and still be heroic.

detroit20 wrote:

Now you say, it I remember it being that New Order that actually initiates the scan.

New Order: English Rock Band, Nazis in new Wolfenstein?
First Order: Space Nazis in new Star Wars

detroit20 wrote:

On Paladin Tom's comment about this not feeling like a sequel to The Force Awakens. I read an interview with Rian Johnson where he said that - on taking the job - he expected to be shown a white board summarising the plot of the next films and detailing the arcs of each main character. Instead there was nothing, and he basically had to start from scratch. I think that contributes to his feelings about the lack of a clearer/stronger link to the preceding film.

It also - I think - finally explains why Luke's expression is so unreadable at the end of TFA: at the time, Mark Hamill literally doesn't know what he's meant to be emoting.

That's... disappointing.

Thought they had at least a vague outline for 3 movies. The MCU certainly has more than that.

Not sure if this is the same interview but I remember something similar in regards to people constantly saying Star Wars directors had no say in the movies they were directing. Rian was saying in other interviews that "No, we do have say in the movies" and he was using these things as examples that he had some freedom.

IMO it is good that they are held to strict character guidelines over the course of the trilogy.

Long thread so I am not sure if this has been said but

Where was the camera during Maza's conversation? It seems like she was hopping around, under fire etc. It seemed very odd.

farley3k wrote:

Long thread so I am not sure if this has been said but

Where was the camera during Maza's conversation? It seems like she was hopping around, under fire etc. It seemed very odd.

Probably a small flying camera.

I may see it again today so I will be looking at that part for ya! Usually people use those little hand held or wrist holos.

Also, sad eyes or not, I'd eat the hell out of that roasted Porg. Chewie got a nice browning on that sucker.

Eleima wrote:

So I found this tweet thread. . .

There are not enough Likes in the world to give that analysis. Thanks for sharing it, Eleima!

detroit20 wrote:

Bits I disliked
- Setting up Kylo Ren as the villain. I don't think the actor or the character can currently support the weight of this.

I couldn’t disagree more. I thought Kylo was easily the MVP of the movie and much of that was from Adam Driver’s performance. He was the most interesting and engaging villain in a movie since Heath Ledger’s Joker

IUMogg wrote:
detroit20 wrote:

Bits I disliked
- Setting up Kylo Ren as the villain. I don't think the actor or the character can currently support the weight of this.

I couldn’t disagree more. I thought Kylo was easily the MVP of the movie and much of that was from Adam Driver’s performance. He was the most interesting and engaging villain in a movie since Heath Ledger’s Joker

Yeah I also enjoyed Adam Driver in this movie, I just feel the movie itself didn't deliver on the promise it was setting up. Kylo wanting to destroy the old ways completely is a genuinely interesting idea, the burn it all to the ground approach is heavy handed but atleast there is some nuance to it. When he picks up directly where Snokes left off even so far as having Huxx continue calling him that title afterward was when I felt it ruined his motivations.

The New Order without some shadowy puppet master seems neutered. I don't buy Kylo as the main Villian. I still think it would have been far more interesting to have him and Rey join up and have to try to end Snokes and Luke. Maybe it didn't have to play out like that but I think it would have been a fun turn. Either way I do still want to see how the finish this trilogy, maybe it can be redeemed in the third arc or it might just be a prequel level wreck.

Rave wrote:
IUMogg wrote:
detroit20 wrote:

Bits I disliked
- Setting up Kylo Ren as the villain. I don't think the actor or the character can currently support the weight of this.

I couldn’t disagree more. I thought Kylo was easily the MVP of the movie and much of that was from Adam Driver’s performance. He was the most interesting and engaging villain in a movie since Heath Ledger’s Joker

Yeah I also enjoyed Adam Driver in this movie, I just feel the movie itself didn't deliver on the promise it was setting up. Kylo wanting to destroy the old ways completely is a genuinely interesting idea, the burn it all to the ground approach is heavy handed but atleast there is some nuance to it. When he picks up directly where Snokes left off even so far as having Huxx continue calling him that title afterward was when I felt it ruined his motivations.

The New Order without some shadowy puppet master seems neutered. I don't buy Kylo as the main Villian. I still think it would have been far more interesting to have him and Rey join up and have to try to end Snokes and Luke. Maybe it didn't have to play out like that but I think it would have been a fun turn. Either way I do still want to see how the finish this trilogy, maybe it can be redeemed in the third arc or it might just be a prequel level wreck.

I just can't see him as a villain. I am around enough teenage angst and toddler tantrums where I cannot stand the way he is being played. IDK what they can do for him at this point. Feels really half baked as a character. I know the actor has it in him but so far he is prequel Ani to me.

I hope on the second watch I can see the Joker come through but that is setting a high bar and he just seems like he forgot what he was doing in every scene.