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?

Comments

More franchise bullshit.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Meh

[Nadir]

I have to partially disagree: The Empire Strikes Back was a worthy sequel.

Re:Meh

[NoNonAlphaCharsHere]

Looks like your parser failed. I said "Matrix" was a one-off. There weren't any sequels.

Re:Of course it's about money and always was

[swillden]

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.