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Ask Slashdot: Thoughts On Star Wars: The Last Jedi One Week Later? [Spoilers] (independent.co.uk)
AmiMoJo writes: After what feels like an eternity of waiting, Star Wars: The Last Jedi has finally reached cinemas, scoring a whopping $450 million opening weekend worldwide. While reviews have been unanimously positive for Rian Johnson's blockbuster, there's been huge backlash online, many fans expressing disappointment. There's no better place to see the great divide between critics and fans than on Rotten Tomatoes, where the critical consensus scores 93% while audiences score The Last Jedi 56%. The Last Jedi is apparently worse than Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith. Conversely, critics say The Last Jedi equals A New Hope and The Force Awakens, only falling behind The Empire Strikes Back.
One problem with Rotten Tomatoes' audience score, along with IMDB, is there's no vetting process. Instead, we should look to the movie's CinemaScore, an America-based exit poll system that scientifically works out an audience score. The Force Awakens earned an A score, with 90% of all respondents being positive, the average score being 4.5. According to Deadline, non-Disney sources are saying the backlash has been primarily online "trolling." The publication also points to one Facebook page titled "Down With Disney's Treatment of Franchises and Fanboys" who are claiming to use bot accounts to target the film's score. SPOILERS: With Star Wars: The Last Jedi being released one week ago, we ask you to share your thoughts of the film now that you've had some time to watch and digest it. How did you like Daisy Ridley's performance? Do you think Kylo will try and turn Rey again as Supreme Leader? How will General Leia's future be dealt with now that Carrie Fisher has passed away last year?
One problem with Rotten Tomatoes' audience score, along with IMDB, is there's no vetting process. Instead, we should look to the movie's CinemaScore, an America-based exit poll system that scientifically works out an audience score. The Force Awakens earned an A score, with 90% of all respondents being positive, the average score being 4.5. According to Deadline, non-Disney sources are saying the backlash has been primarily online "trolling." The publication also points to one Facebook page titled "Down With Disney's Treatment of Franchises and Fanboys" who are claiming to use bot accounts to target the film's score. SPOILERS: With Star Wars: The Last Jedi being released one week ago, we ask you to share your thoughts of the film now that you've had some time to watch and digest it. How did you like Daisy Ridley's performance? Do you think Kylo will try and turn Rey again as Supreme Leader? How will General Leia's future be dealt with now that Carrie Fisher has passed away last year?
It had corny pleb joke, a useless side plot, some entertaining space action, and cool CG.
I didn't like it enough to go out of my way to recommend it to just anyone, but I wouldn't take back watching it.
The modern fencing sabre bears little resemblance to the cavalry sabre, having a thin, 88 cm (35 in) long straight blade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
...Johnson and the suits at Disney wanted to recreate the feel of Empire and felt that failure and seeing heroes at their low point was the key. Then they cobbled a pretty poor story together where everybody mostly spun their wheels.
I grew up in the 70s/80s and loved the original 4-5-6. Prequels 1 and 3 were okay, 2 can be wiped off the face of the universe for all I care, but I liked 7 and Rogue One. Episode 8 ... crap!!! What ruined it for me was all the stupid jokes. Han Solo made a wisecrack now and then, and those were funny because they were rare and witty. But it felt like Episode 8 had an idiotic joke every 10 minutes. And it's one thing if a new/younger character makes a joke, but Luke???? What will episode 9 bring, fart jokes? Cut the jokes and re-release it as-is, the movie would be 20 minutes shorter and then I can actually evaluate the plot. Extremely disappointed.
As far as I'm concerned, Star Wars ended after the original three movies.
If I wanted to see a cow being milked vigorously, I'd tour a local farm.
I think nobody really cares about that movie anymore.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Never gonna change. Dysfunctional family needs therapy. Lots of explosions. Cute robots and critters (think: merchandising).
Money maker, cash cow, hard to see how they can change what's pretty much set in stone. Uh, I meant Carbonite.
For me the first half hour of the movie tried way too hard to be funny, but once the movie got going I thought it was relatively good. The main thing that irrated me was the speech from Holdo, "who is this person and why does Rian Johnson think the audience should to sit through a speech from this random?". I'd have less issues if they dropped Holdo and had Ackbar go out fighting. If they'd made that one change I think I'd be less annoyed with it, but it was no phantom menace.
Isn't it interesting the personal body guards serving an evil personified show such great loyalty to him even after he was dead?
It is three generations after Anakin was burnt completely except his head. And they were able to keep him alive. They can't to that to Snoke?
What is there that could burn with such nice orange and yellow hydro carbon flames in space ships?
How come the dreadnought class battle cruiser or whatever it is can be split into two but still there is breathable atmosphere for all?
Why do I get flash backs of Guns of Navarone like barrels and recoils? and why do spacecraft bank when they turn?
I was hoping for an ultimate plot twist like, Rey is the daughter of a long living space being being that is the "father" of Anakin with Shmi (and erased her memory after). Thus making Rey a step sister of Anakin and an aunt for Luke. No such luck. I don't believe Kylo. There is a story behind Rey's origins.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The movie was fine, but full of problems that detract from the story. The best review I've read discussing those problems is 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi': The Full Shapiro Review (spoilers). The review also discusses good parts and things that work toward the bottom, but that list is way shorter than the list of problems.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I'm just going to go ahead and not participate in this. Thanks anyhow.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
Why didn't they use the Rebel Cruiser as a weapon the moment they abandoned it? (or as they abandoned it and save Adm. Holdo)
This probably ruins the entire Star Wars universe/canon as far as space combat..
Where are the hyperspace missiles? If a ship the size of the millenium Falcon can go lightspeed, a similar sized hyperspace missile is unstoppable:
" Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star.." - Han Solo
See also: https://www.theringer.com/2017/12/20/16800970/vice-admiral-holdo-maneuver-the-last-jedi
-ahb
have read reviews that say how great it is because how original it's. I disagree: the old Expanded Universe had more originality.
And those who criticize hardcore fans don't get it. The fans could accept that Luke&Co are no longer the main characters. The problem is that this movie doesn't offer closure. It desecrates the characters. It's what I call "genius complex".
"The modern fencing sabre bears little resemblance to the cavalry sabre, having a thin, 88 cm (35 in) long straight blade."
Modern fencing sabre? Do you hear yourself? These are sports items, used to deliver electricity to a adversary costume, not slicing weapons.
Nonsense! Judging from the reviews on Slashdot in 2015, The Force Awakens was not nearly as good as A New Hope. Any claim that A New Hope and The Force Awakens are on par with each other is pure marketing, and it's likely that the 93% critical approval of The Last Jedi is also pure marketing.
Although I haven't seen the film, I'll trust the audience over the critics on this one.
This movie did a lot of things right, and I'm going to watch it again, but there are many things that make me question whether it should have been made as a Star Wars movie.
Visually it's great. It looks like a Star Wars movie, and speaking as a fan I'm glad they used so many practical effects instead of computer generated effects.
Plot-wise it is a bit of a roller-coaster ride. Ups and downs. Some funny moments.
But when you think about the overall story and what is going on, it's bleak and depressing, far beyond what is tonally appropriate for Star Wars.
Spoilers follow. This whole topic is spoilery anyway.
People didn't like how The Empire Strikes Back ended on a "down" note. Oh my gosh, this movie was at least a thousand times bleaker. Apparently after the big success of blowing up the second Death Star and the death of the Emperor, the Rebellion spent the next 40 years or so losing and losing and losing. The Rebellion starts the movie with one capital ship, a medical ship and some sort of freighter or something; and only a few dozen X-Wing fighters. Then they take horrific losses and end the movie with literally a couple of dozen surviving members on board a battered old freighter. The only senior figure left in the Rebellion is Leia. They have no resources, and no allies (the allies they thought they had did not come when they were needed the most).
This is so bleak and depressing that it's painful to think about. But at least we get Luke training Rey as a Jedi, right? Oh no; Luke is bitter, and instead of learning from what happened and moving on, he spent decades in self-imposed exile; he said, in so many words, that he went to that planet to die. And in fact he didn't give Rey any useful training. He promised three lessons, and gave two, and they were great lessons if her big problem was that she was stuck-up and had an inflated sense of her own importance; her actual problem was that she was truly gifted in the Force yet had no idea what to do or how to use the Force, in short that she needed good training.
Then there is the whole Finn and Rose sub-plot where they try to get a codebreaker. Their efforts are worse than useless. The codebreaker somehow figured out that the rebels were sneaking away and tipped off the First Order. (I really don't know how a codebreaker could figure this out; Finn couldn't have told him because Finn didn't know either.) The rebel plan to sneak away was working until the codebreaker tipped off the bad guys, so something like 90% of the surviving rebels died because of that codebreaker guy.
And why did they take the risk of the whole codebreaker thing? Because the Vice Admiral didn't tell Poe that she actually had a plan, and she went out of her way to let him think she had no plan and everyone was going to die. Was this to "teach him a lesson"? Makes no sense, and that lesson came at a horrific cost.
I hope that the writers have a plan already for Episode IX. The story is at such a low point that it will take a truly amazing plan to have the Rebellion come roaring back and defeat the bad guys.
Now, I'll briefly talk about stuff I liked.
I really enjoyed the bit at the beginning where Poe was all alone in an X-Wing in front of the First Order ships. Some people say all the comedy fell flat, but the bit where he was stalling for time by pretending he wasn't hearing anything was IMHO laugh-out-loud funny.
I think that one of the stupidest George Lucas ideas from the prequels is being redeemed. (Not midichlorians... that bit of stupidity is irredeemable.) There was this prophecy of "the one who will bring balance to the Force" and that whole thing went nowhere in the prequels. Well, maybe Rey is about to bring balance to the Force. She isn't afraid of the Dark Side and the Dark Side doesn't seem to be pushing her to do evil things... and Yoda seems to think she will do better without the historical teachings of the Jedi. Maybe she will be able to embra
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Just like the rest of these children's movies for stupid kids who don't know shit, especially not physics. Advertisement for action figures for children, it should be forbidden or at least called what it is.
Hell they didn't even get the name for the stupid light_sabers_ right? Sabers are _curved_, that's what differentiates them from a sword.
Firstly, sabers are swords just like a Ferrari is a car. Secondly, while the saber started out as a curved bladed adopted by Europeans through contact with the Ottomans, by the 19th and early 20th century sabers became progressively more straight bladed. The US Model 1913 Cavalry saber for example, had a completely straight blade as did many other contemporary sabers. but you are right in that the 'light saber' has nothing in common with any kind of saber. If the lightsaber is anything it's a kind of 'laser shikomizue' or something (one of the few straight bladed Japanese swords I can think of other than a Shinobigatana). Kylo Ren's weapon is more of a 'laser longsword' and he uses it a bit like one too. That was kind of interesting to watch because the 'light sabers' in Star Wars are used in a somewhat 'katana-esque' manner and it is always fun to see Talhoffer and Liechtenauer's ideas clash with the Japanese mindset. Mind you it's way more fun to watch at a HEMA event where the Longswordsman and the Katanna fanboy are both purists and both of them actually know precisely what they are doing.
The only reviewers whose opinion matters are those who have similar tastes to yours. That's the whole point -- to give you an idea if you, personally, would enjoy the movie or not.
(mostly spoiler free)
That is the best way I can put it. It does okay-ish for watching it. It's pretty, and some cool things happen. There are a few WTF worthy moments (Leia), the humor is out of place, and there's one lenghty disgression from the main action that could have been avoided.
The main problems come out on further thinking.
The main problem is: I can see what it tries to do, and it fails badly at it. For instance, a theme running through the entire movie is failure. Everybody screws up. There are two problems with this: first, it's done way, way too consistently, to the point that it feels like a saturday morning cartoon where some writer took on the job of hammering into kids' heads that drugs are bad, rather than something that fits in naturally. Second, it's not even done right. For instance, Poe's screwup kills a lot of people, and yet he suffers no serious repercusions from this. He's not seriously punished in the end, nobody seems to mind his mistake, and he feels zero guilt. Why have a theme of learning from your errors when you're going to paper over the mistakes in such a way? There are multiple such events where grave consequences are bizarrely papered over, which conflicts with this very explicitly stated theme.
The other problem is that it seems to be obsessively taking down all that came before it, without replacing it with anything better. This is a weird thing to do in a movie that's right in the middle of a trilogy and results in destroying every interesting mystery and not creating anything to look forward to in the next one. To make the problem worse, the overall situation hasn't changed much at the end.
The movie also spends time on the wrong things. Luke's incident with Ben is big, important and has great consequences, yet the movie refuses to say what actually happened, and what gave Luke the idea to act as he did, while dedicating half an hour on the casino plot instead.
And then there are the minor details of the execution, like Leia's WTF moment, Luke's bizarre routine on the island, and the ill-fitting humor. Most of it is of no major consequence and could be edited out easily, but it's there and it's at times annoying and bothersome.
The JJ version.
So, in other words, the version of Star Trek that is essentially Star Wars?
Space physics in movies is usually dumb... But I fell like they gave up completely... Dunkirk in Space...
by all accounts they put so much effort into making their own version of the Star Wars mythos they completely ignored how characters like Luke and Leia should act. The nail in the coffin was that Mark Hamill interview where he's basically said he tried to get them to let him act like Luke and they wouldn't do it.
I'm not opposed to them doing their own thing, but if you're going to the writing needs to be much better. In the first movie they shoe-horned in a lightsabre battle that was just dumb. An untrained girl should not have held her own against a Dark Jedi. And Finn kept changing from a bumbling fool to a seasoned warrior depending on the writer's needs. I left the theater with a positive impression but the more I thought about it the more I knew it was a bad movie. I'm guessing the second one's going to be like that but more so (especially given the sharp drop off in viewership going on right now).
I just expect more from a Star Wars movie. Write better scripts guys. This isn't Transformers.
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nobody read the posts much less the Articles around here.
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That sure felt like a huge continuity gap, did they cut a scene?
Overall I thought the production values were first-rate, but the plot and script were mediocre and predictable. (And don't get me started about bad physics or bad tactics - I had to suspend A Lot of belief.)
1st viewing I had a fun time. It was a pop corn flick moment. So I'll say that for it. Didn't hate every second of seeing it. I'll still own this movie on blue ray I'm sure.
That being said - what a sad waste of potential on the story line of the character we all loved so much for those of us growing up in the 70s, 80s. I get that they wanted to kill the character off, ok. I can live with that - but make it glorious. He should have gone down doing something visually stunning. Saving the rebels by pulling a star ship out of orbit with the force. Or thrashing the whole ground attack crew with the force. And certainly shouldn't have been played as a grump old man, without the force, in depressed isolation. He was always a beacon of hope and should have stayed that way. We were robbed of seeing Luke the Jedi Master.
Been watching Star Wars for about 30 years. That said, it was a fun film despite the jokes, which I thought was a bit overboard. Anyway, I have come to accept there's nothing truly groundbreaking from them anymore so I just switch the old brain off and sit back and watch the film. Why am I so content with that? Because I have nothing to gain or lose from these films not being a stakeholder. It doesn't fix or ruin my childhood and I don't have a void to fill in my life with it.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Best part of the movie: You weren't sure who was good or bad throughout. My favorite scene was going to light speed to cut Snoke's ship in half was made that much better because the vice-admiral turned out being good after all. Close 2nd: Snoke getting Darth Mauled. Yeah, Snoke was a wasted character, but wow what a cool way to send him out.
Good or bad point in the movie (divisive): There was a Rogue One like "graying" of the black and white, good vs. evil Star Wars universe. Having the bomber close her eyes right before her bomber was destroyed and she died, and then the First Order dreadnought's captain accepting death in the same stoic way as the bombs struck his ship and blew it apart, was a very good and subtle way to humanize both sides. It also ended up being the precursor for the tone of the entire movie: There aren't really good guys and bad guys.
Also, this is a divisive plot point to some, but I loved that Leia FINALLY getting to use the force to save herself. She had Skywalker blood, but her use of the force had never materialized until then. It was NOT corny.
Worst part of Ep8: Luke. Like Flynn in Tron Legacy, Luke got ruined by sequels.
In the original Tron movie, Flynn was the fun and light hearted (yet serious) protagonist. He had a heart of slacker hacker gold that you'd love to have as a friend. In Tron Legacy, however, they turned him into a bitter old man who'd been burned one too many times and carried a sack of guilt for his hubris and mistakes. He was miserable, cantankerous, and without spirit for 99% of the parts he was in, and in the end he disappeared from existence without dying.
That's almost exactly what they did with Luke in Ep. 7 & 8. He was a burned out hermit that was absolutely no fun at all to be around.
And the anti-war, anti-capitalist, anti-profiteering, anti-animal-abuse all went against the grain of what the Star Wars saga was all about - a fun movie. The entire casino scene especially felt out of place and preachy.
When the movie ended, nobody clapped, cheered, busted out in loud conversations about the movie, etc. - nothing. People just somberly walked out of the theater. I hadn't seen that quiet and reserved response since the end of Episode 1. I knew immediately that some were definitely disappointed.
Final feeling on my way out: That was a powerful movie on its own. Great drama, good direction, character development, etc. In that way, it was a great movie - like Rogue One. But it felt like it was the end of Star Wars for me. It was Episode IX (not 8) - the END end. Han is gone. Carrie Fisher is gone. Luke is gone. Han is gone. R2-D2 + C3PO relegated to nothing roles. The Rebel Alliance is gone.
I'll have to see in a couple of years when Ep. IX comes out, but I'm not sure I care anymore.
Uh... because a fictional 'light sabre' is any less disconnected from old cavalry swords??
The biggest problem that I see with the Last Jedi (and The Force Awakens) are the disparagement of Luke, Han and Leia. Most die hard Star Wars fans have read at least some of the Star Wars books, which show Luke, Leia and Han continuing to be involved with the New Republic that's formed after the Empire falls and Luke going on to become the father of a new Jedi order and a master as great as any that came before him. In The Force Awakens we are aghast that Han basically went back to being a no account smuggler and con man (and left Leia or she kicked him out), Leia for some reason is not in any way associated with the New Republic and Luke was a complete failure as a Jedi Master who let his nephew go over to the dark side and apparently in a fit of despair went to live as a hermit on some uncharted world.
Not that there's anything wrong with characters that have some flaws, but this new series just takes the characters we know and love and tries to tell us that although they had momentary success that in the end they were complete and utter failures. I'm sorry Disney but you've really made a lot of people very angry at the treatment of characters that have become legends in the eyes of the fans.
There is a problem with weighting reviews. In the video game world, a great divide between professionals and gamers have been seen numerous times. In some instances, it was due to suspected payment for favourable reviews, and this doesn't mean an outright payment, but there was an incident with a game called "Kane & Lynch" where banner advertising was bought and a reviewer who scored the game poorly was dismissed, in other cases, which appear to have befallen a company once praised for quality games, Bioware, whose later years have been plagued with games that the public have panned, all the while professional reviewers more broadly have missed and generally reviewed rather favourably. The ending for Mass Effect 3 and overall quality of Dragon Age 2 come to mind.
On the 93% on Rotten Tomatoes vs. the much lower "audience liked it" score, the latter is usually the better indicator of the likability of a movie for the average moviegoer. While it is good at pointing out stinkers and is easy for everyone to understand (the anti-BCS college football formula), the RT percentage/score is not good at telling you exactly HOW good a "fresh" movie is because there's no nuance to it. It's fresh or rotten - that's it; There's no how fresh the movie is: Is it a perfectly fresh tomato, or is it "wilted", "rotting", or "kinda fresh but ready to throw at someone" option.
Example: Your everyday critic kind of likes a good but flawed, 3-star movie only has the option of giving it a fresh rating (a mathematical 100%) or rotten (0%). When you get 93% of critics doing that, it makes the movie look better than it really was.
If RT took an average of all the "fresh" critic's separate 1-5 star ratings for it and added that score along with the overall RT score, it would probably much better represent the quality of a movie - and would probably serve much better as their qualifier for their supposed "Certified Fresh" score.
Episode 7 was a remake of episode 4, episode 8 was a remake of episode 5 and 6 so that means episode 9 will be a remake of episode 1, 2, and 3.
He should've taken a huge-ass bite out of the roasted bird/thing, and then barked something at the live ones like, "If you don't get your Jar Jar Bird asses out of this movie, you're next."
The little animal(s) - especially the one in the Falcon towards the end - were the most annoying part of the movie; They didn't fit the tone of the movie at all, IMO.
I'm going with the critics.
When we saw episode VII, we knew that the hopeful situation after Episode VI had fizzled. The Republic was once again threatened by the First Order, much like it was by the Empire. The new Jedi Order was a disaster, producing Kylo Ren and apparently not much else. The characters from the first movie (with the exception of Chewbacca) had been hurt by the intervening events, sometimes hurt badly. There are some new, upbeat characters (Rey, Finn, Poe) who resemble the original trilogy characters. That's the situation going into Episode VIII.
We see how badly Luke was hurt by what had happened. He's not acting like the Luke of the original trilogy, and there's darn good reasons why. He wants the Jedi Order destroyed. We see that the heroes can screw up, too, rather than having everything work out. Kylo Ren acts decisively when he can, and tries to subvert Rey, despite often looking like he really doesn't know what he's doing. This is Star Wars with more real characters. They have flaws. They often screw up. They keep going. The logic isn't all there, but that's Star Wars as a whole, not just Episodes VII and VIII.
We've got the visuals we'd expect from Star Wars. The story is bleak, but Leia claims they have everything they need to start a rebellion. We'll see how that goes in Episode IX. Finn and Rose have inspired some discontent and hope on the casino planet.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
"Subtle undercurrent of man-shaming" my ass! It couldn't possibly be more overt!
Every male character in the movie was a failure, and needed a woman to guide him with her superior wisdom (apart from General Ackbar, I guess, but he didn't last long enough to count).
Luke is a failure who has decided to run and hide and let the universe die, and he needs Rei to guide him back to the path of caring.
Poe is so toxically masculine that he just wants to blow everything up, and he needs a purple-haired woman to have a better plan (which she keeps a secret for no reason), to reprimand him, to forgive him and say she likes him as she nobly sacrifices herself to save the day where he failed. And, apparently, Poe is only interested in seeming like a hero whereas she is only interested in being a hero.
Fin is a coward who wants to flee under pretenses of protecting Rei, only to be stopped by Rose who gives him a better plan and re-ignites his courage. Later on he is so eager to seem like a hero that he is ready to get himself killed, and needs Rose to save him and explain to him that saving what we love is better than fighting what we hate.
Kylo is, of course, falling to the dark side and needs Rei to pull him back to the light. I guess we will see the rest of that in the next movie (or rather, some of you will, because I sure won't).
Snoke and general Hux have no women to guide them, so they are just pure evil until the end.
The take-away is clear: men are violent and selfish and foolish, whereas women are wise and loving and competent.
I can't believe I'm saying it but the 1st and 3rd prequel may have been better than this. This one was just so tedious. There was no story telling, no character development, no plot to speak of. My son said it was like a bad video game campaign. Go here, blow up this gun, escape from these guys, go there get this thing. No epic story. Oh Chewie flew the MF through some hard to navigate thing that caused the pursuing tie fighters to crash because they're not as maneuverable again. Also the first order is so evil that even the snow foxes know to run from them.
Great review! .. Worth the time.
.
(youtube video "The Truth About Star Wars: The Last Jedi"
by Stefan Molyneux )
https://youtu.be/6l9go9X1EbE
I will continue to go see all the canonical StarWars films on opening night - out of tradition. But the thrill is gone.
Jar Jar Abrams makes a movie, and people are still suprised it stinks!? The man is juuuust behind Uwe Bolwe, Dark Lord of the Bad Movie!
It's a movie, get the fuck over yourself. I enjoyed it. Any Star Wars movie can be eviscerated by the plot holes. For fucks sake the death star could simply navigated to the correct position to destroy Yavin IV instead of waiting 30 minutes for it to be in range.
Having a Holdo lecture other cast members and the audience did not add to the plot.
The property destruction at the casino city did not move the plot on.
The Skywalker plot sold movies and endured the past movies to generations of fans.
A Rey, Rose and Finn want to replace all that with a very average plot?
Snoke adds nothing creative or interesting.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Just one question:
Why in the whole of Lucas's galaxy did the First Order not just Light Speed to head off the Rebels? Double jump it guys, something. It'd only take 1 or 2 destroyers - you've got plenty to spare in your fleet there. Every god-awful storyline choice stems from this stupidity.
Other plot holes:
Fin and Rose - call for help from casino planet instead of code-breaker
Lea - send someone by light-speed directly to allies to get help
Purple-haired lady - send small groups around in your light-speed craft (you've only got 400 to worry about). You could do much better than the 15 or so that make it by the end of this stupid movie
Other rebel craft - doc with the capital ship, unload all your people, then light-speed into armada...
And the list goes on!
The main story arc was stupid and terrible.. and resulted in the slowest chase in movie history because they were low on gas!?
The secondary plotline was completely irrelevant to everything and everyone. Hating on rich people at a casino and then beating people over the head with heavy handed and incredibly simplistic morality before riding a pack of animals around and trashing the place!?
Most of the characters are two-dimensional and had no development whatsoever.
Annnnd they wasted Luke Skywalker's last appearance. After doing a very poor job of the build up throughout the (overly long) bloated mess of a movie, they wasted their last chance to redeem it with Luke going out like the legend he was despite his protestations.. and instead did a stupid gimmick for the final confrontation so it ended up having no emotional resonance at all.
Like it was bad, man. Just all around terrible storytelling.
But hey, it's making a ton of money so prepare for more of the same.
Liked it, will see it again and buy it. On track. Not as fresh as 7 or Rogue, but these are the middle innings.
A few missteps and this could have been a dud. I blame Disney for everything out of band for Star Wars.
I’ll get this out of the way now: Whoever wrote the “towel” line needs to go stand in a corner until they are very, very sorry for what they did. That line was the skunk at the garden party. That’s a Poe line, not a Rey line.
OK - stop casting characters qua retail items in movies. In the beginning, there were Wookiees. I like Wookiees. But the Wookiees begat Ewoks. And the Ewoks begat Gungans. And the Gungans begat Porgs. They're going to sell a lot of Porgs. I get it, but *sigh*
Characters: *Rey is setting up to be a fine parallel to Luke. I was hoping she was going to be another Solo - still could be. She needs her mentor like Luke had Yoda. Hope Luke comes back, but not holding my breath. Her motivation is still a bit uneven, likely a result of wanting to keep some suspense about her background. *Poe is the new Han, he's slotted right in where he needs to be, character is developing well. Needs to do a bit more swashbuckling having had to stand down from Holdo and having all his ships squished and the cave sequence. *Luke is right what he needs to be. I know there is an interview where he says this is “not my Luke” - but it had to happen and he did it with grace and bravery and smarts. *Ben/Kylo is riveting. This is going to be a great character arc if they keep it up. Pity he wasn’t Anakin in 2 and 3, but glad he’s here. *DJ - loved it. So hang me.
Plot: Say what you want about 1 2 3, but Lucas knows how to tell a story. The four-parallel-story closing act in 1 was so well done you barely noticed it until it was well underway or finished. I need to go back and look at it, but I believe what made it successful is that each had a unique tone and design so that you could follow the shifting shots. Johnson tried it here, and I think it just made it confusing, largely because the tones were not distinct enough. The ships, the caves, etc. in the last half hour kind of muddled together. In general I think they went for visual complexity at the expense of story progress - see “editing” below. The mirror sequence is a good original thing that went nowhere. There is enough meat here for an episode 6.5 with Luke and Ben/Kylo, but I won’t hold my breath. With Snoke gone, Kylo/Ben in 9 needs to be the baddest baddie since his grampy.
Questions: *I lost count of how many Luke lightsabers there were, working and busted. It was midnight. *Rose can fly stuff? *Did Finn feel the force or did he just wake up?
Editing: This was my biggest issue. I'd make a director's cut a half hour shorter. There was a bunch of exposition that was just too much. It's hard to show the continuing effect of a slow speed chase, and they did too much of it. The find-the-codebreaker sequence would have been half as long in the original trilogy, and had a lot of fluff - save the animals, etc. Likely an better / shorter / less preachy way to set up the kids at the end. Who cares if it’s salt on the surface? The fishwives and the cow-thing on the exile island? Ennhhhh. Tighten it up. More of this: Holdo’s jump-attack is the most magnificent visual of the movies so far. The rest of the visuals look positively byzantine in comparison. I think Abrams would have made a tighter movie, but hey.
Flotsam: So let me get this straight - we have two live actors whose characters are dead, and one dead actor whose character is alive?
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Luke and Yoda literally say what the movie is about. I've only seen the movie once, so I'm paraphrasing.
Yoda says that failure is the best teacher. What do the Resistance leads do? They fail, often. Poe shows that he's learned from his mistakes, and I'm sure the others will in the next film.
Luke tells Rey something along the lines of "legends and myths are bullshit." And that's what happens. Snoke is struck down without any backstory. Rey goes from thinking she's the Chosen One to the daughter of smackheads. Canto Bight is full of people cashing in on the legend of good vs. evil. Finn's mission to sneak onto the most powerful ship in the universe is a legend that never sees fruition. Luke doesn't even confront Kylo: it's a fake out.
It was just a bad movie. Far too much comedy for the serious subject matter, plot holes, illogical motives, deus ex machina (laser battering ram?).
I get that in this day and age, people aren't used to seeing well made movies. So some can look passed the obvious flaws. But Star Wars has finally been Disney-fied. Blan, safe, and monolithic.
Star Wars is dead, long live Star Wars.
There are a lot of vocal people who didn't like the movie, that's ok.
I really liked it. I go for Space Cowboy Wizards, and that's what we got. If you're just now realizing that Star Wars lacks realism and internal consistency in physical, moral, or metaphysical laws, I don't know what to tell you.
Maybe you're just figuring out that Star Wars is a vehicle for subtle counter culture messaging.
Maybe it's funny for Yoda to scrounge for cookies in Luke's pack while making odd grunting noises, but you don't want Luke milking a walrus with a goofy look on his face.
We watch a lot of Star Wars in my house, and all this has been going on the whole time. Maybe you just hated how this iteration was done. That's fine.
I liked it. My kids liked it, and my kids's grandparents liked it. Rogue 1 didn't end up fitting in with the rest of what "Star Wars" is today, and it's not part of the "Star Wars" conversation with the people I build Star Wars legos with at home. Episodes 4-7, Clone Wars and Rebels are on all time around here. I expect 8 will join the rotation when it's available. It is Star Wars; it fits in.
My biggest complaint is that Episode 8 was too long. I nearly got peed on by the end. I think that's what Disney is going for. Kids in the theater for Star Wars should rather pee on a parent than miss a minute of the movie.
non-Disney sources are saying the backlash has been primarily online "trolling."
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
The whole saga is the one of the best examples of the cultural war that is plaguing the western civilization since the collapse of the Wall.
Original trilogy - classic archetypal story; just an exciting, well executed variation of it set in space. Good actors, unseen special effects, groundbreaking musical score, super cool baddies, etc. Great stuff! Bonus - Lucas not directing 5 and 6 (and the one he did he was pressured, uncertain and disbelieved even by the cast, let alone the studio - art born out of crisis and strife - the best). The phantom menace - Ewoks (put something in purely for the merchandise sacrificing logic and plot).
Prequels - the senility of a (lazy, fat, rich ass) baby boomer who has turned too much PC and prone to injecting contemporary politics into it. The deconstruction, begun it has! Han shot last; commerce is evil, jedi are bunch of senile creatures that can't see beyond their noses, Palpatine resembles GWB (Iraq adventures - playing both sides), etc. Merchandizing is out of control but while this can be understood (though not condoned IMO) it is nothing compared to the mortal wound inflicted on the story.
Sequels - total destruction of the archetypes, replacing it with the most extreme, silly, anti-science, anti-history, anti-logic, anti-everything "ideology" that is being pushed in the last 10-20 years in the west. Because you know, every archetypal story is a social construct, patriarchy and oppression. All people are identical. Not equal, identical you bastard! Meanwhile, merchandising has reached an entire new level of obnoxiousness.
Don't people get it, seeing how the critics fall in line out of conformism and fear to be shamed and destroyed within 2 minutes via the mob ruled, bend on lynching hysterical "people's court" of Twitter and FB? Check the opinions of the real fans who truly love good movies and good stories - Red Letter Media for instance - unanimously negative from anyone with a bit of sense and 2 brain cells.
As a guy who lived under the so-called communism (we had people's courts you know - they killed all the people with skills, brains and education crippling society for a fucking century!) let me say it again - westerners, you have no idea what genie you have let out of the bottle. The cultural division of the west is the worst thing that can happen to the world - this kind of stuff leads to collapse of whole societies, wars and shit..... Stop it! Please! While I wholeheartedly agree that the western system needs continuous improvement and eternal vigilance so that it does not slide into nasty territory at least we can work on it....whereas what is proposed by the reincarnations of the fuckers who ruined my society is totalitarian. You can't control such a system or improve it, you can only wait for it to collapse (as it always does) - meanwhile you and everyone else live in hellish prison for your body and your mind.
I tell ya folks, one day SW will be studied in history classes as a "manifestation of the deconstruction of civilization values which led to WW3".
What we got was social justice before storytelling
What? Where? Define where you saw this please?
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
I basically knew where this was going—at the franchise level—the moment Rey had the telepathic dream sequence after first touching Luke's light saber (the whole point of which was to be profoundly pointless and thereby encourage mass Stockholm-syndrome cud chewing) and I haven't given a shit about the rest of that movie, about this movie, or about the next movie ever since, though I do find it amusing to check in on how others are reacting to the Disney Matrix.
Almost every big movie these days is a pastiche of three or more genres (sometimes obviously so, other times mildly concealed).
I was watching the commentary track for Russian Ark last night, and at one point the cameraman panics and tells the guy beside him "I can't do it", because he's got such a bad groin spasm that he worries he'll become crippled permanently. (The entire movie is a single 90-minute take, with a very heavy Steadicam.) But then he sees the 300 actors in period costumes all in perfect position through the next door and he gets a shot of adrenaline and heroically makes it to minute 84. Cut! This breaks a tension so thick that 1000 actors and 1000 assembled extras almost begin to cry.
Well, that lightsaber dream sequence was the screenwriting team confessing "we can't do it"—noooooo!—about finding a principled way to combine all the necessary genres together in the mandatory Disney stew pot.
Fuck it, we'll use telepathy.
A conversation with Martin Amis — 2 December 2016
Does writing get any easier?
Fuck no, not onerous at all, not after The Great Force Vending Machine in the Sky pukes out, faster than light, lady-in-waiting telepathic midichlorians (of course, this minor capability would have barely figured in the outcome until movie number eight).
Luke was completely out of character; even Mark Hamill has said so. Rey is the biggest Mary Sue since the term was invented. Because, *diversity*, or something. Go woke, go broke. At least I pirated it, and didn't pay to see it
I've spent a lot of time thinking about why I loved episodes 4-6 so much, and why it's so hard to make a new Star Wars movie that pleases me, and I think I've figured out the answer. I was born in the 70s and was a kid at exactly the time when the original trilogy was huge. Return of the Jedi was the first movie I ever saw in a theater. I watched the cartoons. I had all the action figures.
There's a phenomenon which happens on farm yards when baby chicks hatch called 'imprinting' where the chicks imprint on whatever creature they see first as being their mother. If the farmer's dog walks past, then they'll imprint on it (this is slightly hyperbolic, but you get the point). The way I figure it, Star Wars imprinted upon my young mind, and my love for the first trilogy is ingrained deep inside me. This makes in nearly impossible for anyone to ever create a movie that competes. Poor George Lucas didn't realize this when he made Episodes 1-3: You simply can't live up to an entire generation's nostalgia.
J.J. Abrams saw what happened to Lucas with E1-3 and realized the minefield that he was walking into, so he just played it safe and to avoid the nostalgia trap, he simply made E7 a direct plagiarism of E4 (if you haven't seen the parallels, just go to YouTube and type in "star wars episode 7 episode 4 rip off").
I thought Rogue One was an excellent movie, nearly perfect, until they dropped the ball literally on the goal line at the end of the movie and placed Princess Leia at the battle of Scariff, creating a huge consistency problem with E4, despite the fact that the whole point of R1 was to set up and explain E4. Sigh.
E7 and E8 certainly aren't anywhere close to even R1, and I don't need to cite nostalgia to rip them apart. There are dozens of major flaws with them, and many have already been pointed out above, so I'll just focus on my major complaint, which is that Kylo Ren is a wuss. He's not a super villain that commands respect, but instead is the most emotionally vulnerable and insecure bad guy in cinema history. It's like they took Ross from Friends at his whiniest and just draped him in a black cape. What the hell?!? Darth Vader was cool. He would force choke and murder subordinates that displeased him without ever even raising his voice. No whining or self-doubt. Now that's a proper villain worthy of fear and respect! Kylo is the opposite of that, and he's simply not worthy to be the villain in a Star Wars movie. This ruins the whole new trilogy, and there isn't really anything that can be done to offset this massive flaw.
And then in E8 they took Luke and turned him into a self-doubting whiner as well!!! What happened to the awesome dude who stood on the plank above the Sarlacc pit on Tatooine and told Jabba, "This is your last chance..."? You know what's even worse than not living up to my childhood nostalgia? Going and desecrating it by ruining my hero! What were they thinking?!?
I liked it. I didn't like how Luke was a prick at the beginning, but if you spend a decade running away from every thing, you're not going to flip to be sociable in a day. It doesn't bother me too much. It was great "seeing" come to save the day - even though he didn't really. I like they were able to get both Kylo Ren striking Luke down, and sending Luke off with a send off that feels proper and fitting.
The plot device of having an old hero try to convince protagonists that they're not really that great, and are done trying, has been done before. I think it was appropriate here. I didn't like quite how they handled it, but o'well. If Luke is upset about how he failed, Yoda has way more to be upset about and hide from. But Yoda was still willing to train Luke.
I like how Luke talked about the Force. Way better than anything in the prequals.
The music was good. The graphics were spot on. I liked how we got to see different worlds and environments. Very space opera; very Star Wars.
The whole tracking through hyperspace was odd. Previously it could only be done with a homing device of some sort. Not whatever plot device they came up with. The writers even had a great way to make it happen during the first battle with Poe giving the First Order extra time to plant a tracker in the extended battle.
Overall I really liked it. It didn't have any real universe defying inconsistencies like The Force Awakens did. It tied in some themes from all of the previous movies, without being too overt like the Force Awakens. It certainly had more originality than The Force Awakens.
I don't like how the whole Resistance now fits onto the Millennium Falcon, but I guess there going for a major low point so they can rise all the higher in the next movie.
Perhaps they thought that if they disposed of the Kylo and Rey, they could rescue their fallen leader and have his wound tended, or his life restored.
If they suspected a mole was reporting their location, then you keep the info on a need to know basis. Soldiers are trained to follow orders, for this specific reason.
Push the balls, what happens? Once in motion they will continue down in that direction. Especially without any air resistance. So yes, it looks like they're falling by gravity.
Oh, but the bottom ones fall first...yes. Um, you do realize that Star Wars universe has artificial gravity. So you're going to pull/push those bombs with a similar technology.
But hear me out...
The First Order is tracking the Rebel cruisers with new technology, a sophisticated system to allow them to track a ship's hyperspace jump.
What do you think happens, if a bunch of ships make jumps to lightspeed? It's like following one set of tracks in the snow, and then suddenly a dozen appear. So rather than risk them making a jump to lightspeed and not being able to track them due to their own ships jump trails, they decided to take a conservative approach that (to them) ensured victory - and they were right, none of the Rebel cruisers survived.
It would of interfered with their ability to track the Rebel cruisers in hyperspace. Creating too many trails for their new system to process. That's why they didn't immediately jump after the Rebels in the first encounter.