Star Wars Episode VIII - The Last Jedi *spoilers from Post 2857*

The Nal

Its okay. Some great bits, some God awful bits.

py2006

So we were led to believe that Luke led a lonely, isolated existence in Kerry

yet out of nowhere we get those weird nun creatures.

Saruhashi

Pretty interesting that a common response to movies like this is the idea that you need to see it 2 or 3 times to actually "get" it.

If I watched it the first time and didn't like it but went in the second time determined to like it and determined to ignore the bad parts then how the hell does that become a positive for the movie?

Like admitting it isn't good unless you try to convince yourself it's good.

It's OK to not like a movie.

dinneenp

py2006 wrote: »

So we were led to believe that Luke led a lonely, isolated existence in Kerry

yet out of nowhere we get those weird nun creatures.

Is there any Star Wars (warning contains spoilers) thread?

chrislad

I think it's more that the film went against so many expectations, that there's almost a sense of being stunned. A number of things happened that I didn't fathom them doing. I enjoyed it, and I want to see it again, more to watch it, knowing what to expect and see if I still like it then. That said, my immediate reaction is that it was a bit long and I didn't fancy another 2.5 hours in the cinema.

one armed dwarf

server down wrote: »

Reviews are good. Uber nerds who own all the books and therefore think they own the universe are amongst the first to go, so deviations from their worldview makes them mad. That’s what we are seeing here. Most people including people who are old enough to have watched the original in the cinema just want a story set in the universe.

Saw it with my Dad last night. Neither of us are 'uber nerds' who care about taking creative license too far or whatever. Big fans of TFA. But both of us found TLJ genuinely unpleasant to sit through. It was painful.

one armed dwarf

chrislad wrote: »

I think it's more that the film went against so many expectations, that there's almost a sense of being stunned. A number of things happened that I didn't fathom them doing. I enjoyed it, and I want to see it again, more to watch it, knowing what to expect and see if I still like it then. That said, my immediate reaction is that it was a bit long and I didn't fancy another 2.5 hours in the cinema.

It wasn't this for me. Again the deviations they might have taken with some characters wasn't an issue, if anything I wish they went farther.

It was just a big fat overlong confusing turgidly paced hodgepodge of different plots and action sequences. Was all a bit Phantom Menace-esque with how much 'stuff' was in it.

The Kylo Ren and Rey stuff was great admittedly. But had to let an internal groan anytime they went away from that stuff back to Laura Dern or Finn or the others.

nix

After sleeping on it.. Whats weird is, i liked the prequels more than i liked this...

Victor

Saruhashi wrote: »

On a similar note, if a ship can now ram another ship at light-speed and annihilate it then why didn't the First Order just pop a droid in a massive ship and fire it into the Resistance fleet? Why use rockets and torpedoes at all against massive ships that take hundreds of hits to bring down when you can just build a
giant metal brick with a hyperdrive engine and aim it at whatever you want to blow up?

Fair point.

Saruhashi wrote: »

Also if you must insist on doing that scene then it should have been Admiral Ackbars last hurrah and not some nobody we just met and learned nothing about over the 2 hours or so.

As mentioned above, that scene may have originally been shot with Leia at the helm, but might have been reworked when Carrie died.

brevity

Still trying to process it myself.

Some parts pulled me right out of the movie. The CGI was way off in certain sections. The dialogue, the pacing and some of the acting was questionable.

I think they were trying to appeal to so many different parts of the audience that it became a bit of a mess in parts.

It needs another watch imo. I was stupidly excited for this movie that maybe I couldn't enjoy it for what it was.

The Nal

brevity wrote: »

Still trying to process it myself.

Some parts pulled me right out of the movie. The CGI was way off in certain sections. The dialogue, the pacing and some of the acting was questionable.

I think they were trying to appeal to so many different parts of the audience that it became a bit of a mess in parts.

It needs another watch imo. I was stupidly excited for this movie that maybe I couldn't enjoy it for what it was.

The editing is the issue. And when you look at who edited it and what films hes done previously you can see why.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Ducsay

Also for people worried about spoilers, if you haven't see the movie yet, what the fúck are you doing taking the risk by reading this thread?

I thought some of the Jedi bits were up there with the best Star Wars bits ever but the OJ bronco space chase derailed the movie.

S.M.B.

Victor wrote: »

As mentioned above, that scene may have originally been shot with Leia at the helm, but might have been reworked when Carrie died.

How could that possibly be the case given the prominent role she played in the next 45 minutes of the movie?

I had no issue with it being Derns character. Hindsight is 20/20.

Tony EH

Saruhashi wrote: »

Pretty interesting that a common response to movies like this is the idea that you need to see it 2 or 3 times to actually "get" it.

If I watched it the first time and didn't like it but went in the second time determined to like it and determined to ignore the bad parts then how the hell does that become a positive for the movie?

Like admitting it isn't good unless you try to convince yourself it's good.

It's OK to not like a movie.

Most films you'll "get" on first viewing. You'll either like them or dislike them, or feel that way about elements within.

There are some that take a while though.

For years I hated 'They Live' and 'Big Trouble in Little China', despite being a big Carpenter fan. It's difficult to say why exactly, but those films just didn't click with me...and then one day, they did. I still don't really know why they did. But, I can enjoy them now for what they are. Stupid comedies with a little wit thrown in.

But that type of thing is rare. As said, you should go with your gut and just understand you simply don't like something.

I learned this, with regards to Star Wars, after 'The Phantom Menace'. I tried to convince myself that it was me and not the film. So I watched it again and then again. But, no. It was the film. It was simply a poor film and I just had to be honest and say so. It got further compounded by the sheer disaster that was 'Attack of the Clones'. A film which cemented the fact that Lucas had just simply lost the magic and 'The Phantom menace' wasn't a case of a single misfire.

These days, I am just honest with myself where my entertainment is concerned. No one is going to tell me what my entertainment should be and I am not going to get pushed along on any hype trains. Likewise, I don't go into anything wanting to hate something - I don't have the money to waste doing that. I simply watch the film and internally criticise. if something is bad, it's bad and if something is good, it's good and then there's a whole lot in between.

But Star Wars is a strange thing. To echo what someone said earlier, it's almost like pissing in the kiddies swimming pool if you say that a particular film just isn't very good and I find that too often, too many excuses are made for a given film's downfalls. 'The Force Awakens' being the prime example of this. 'The Force Awakens' was generally a poor film, that had some good parts. But, by and large, it left an awful lot to be desired and the more I watch it, the less I like it, especially the "comedy" moments that are just terrible.

PauloConn

I liked TFA, i'm not sure on TLJ. Some of the lines were awful and they could have added more gravitas and impact in the script.
Will need to watch it again though. Just in case

Overall though I think this falls short

FreeOSCAR

Definitely the most divisive Star Wars film we have experienced so far.
I enjoyed it overall but there were some really head scratching decisions made throughout I felt.
Having read through a lot of the comments here and on /r/movies (bit of a negative echo chamber at the moment IMO) here are my thoughts.

Visually stunning, easily some of the best scenes of any of the films we have seen so far.

Lightspeeding through Snoke's ship, Rey & Ren in the throne room, the Rey/Ren Jedi Skype sessions, when Yoda showed up looking all ESB Happy/Stoned puppet look , all of the parts on Crait were spectaular

But then there are the audience criticisms I totally understand and agree with.

Leia in space, Hux & Poe 'banter' scene at the beginning, the Canto Bight space horse chase part in particular and when Maz shows up in what I have seen described as a rip-off from a video game cut scene

And then there are these criticism I don't agree with. I think a lot of hardcore SW fans are upset that how they perceived things like

how they think the force should work, or people's obsessions with wanting to understand every detail of a persons backstory.

Quite frankly get over it. Change needed to be made here.

Oh and Porgs > Ewoks > Gungans

The Nal

thegreengoblin

Saw it in the Savoy last night (farewell Screen 1!). You have to go with your gut reaction and mine was that I enjoyed it but it has problems. Parts of it I really loved and parts of it I just thought to myself 'why?'.

I'm very glad I booked another showing today with the chisellers. I badly need to see it again just to process it better as so much happened in it. It was incredibly dense, way more so than TFA.

I can completely get why some people would hate it and vice versa. It's a very different Star Wars film to anything we've seen to date and I think Rian Johnson just about pulls it off. He has tinkered with the status quo in terms of what the Force actually is and how it can be used for good and bad. This will no doubt cause hows of anguish and cries of 'You can't do that!' but it's to his credit that he did. Although not everything worked. Such as...

Leia's 'resurrection' in space...it was toe-curlingly bad. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, I was silently screaming at them 'please don't do this!' It would have been the perfect send-off for her, to have her just float away in space. She hardly did anything for the rest of the film so re-shoots and re-edits wouldn't have been a huge deal. Still, Carrie Fisher put in a worthy final performance and it was heartwarming to see her reunited with Luke, albeit not the way we would have predicted. They've clearly put Poe up as her Han Solo foil and it works but at the expense of Poe as a character. He's still quite one dimensional and that's a pity as I think Oscar Isaac does a fine job with him in general.

Seeing Luke go out like that made me choke up, and in fact I could have burst into tears. I saw A New Hope in the cinema and, like Han Solo in TFA, this is an iconic character who has been always there in some form or another...films, books, comics, figures even. And now he's gone. Seeing him on the big screen again was a joy. Mark Hamill was fantastic in this film and surely he will appear in Episode 9 as a Force ghost

I thought they Rey/Kylo scenes were fantastic. This element of the story is going to throw a few people but it was handled brilliantly.

Adam Driver has given one of the best performances in any Star Wars film and Daisy Ridley wasn't far behind, she was superb. I could watch them all day long.

I loved the fact that we could root for Kylo in the throne room scene knowing full well he wasn't going to be turned back and that naked ambition was his reason for killing Snoke.

The Canto Bight sequence was rather unneccesary. It felt like the viewer was completely taken out of the film and then dropped back in. Just have Del Toro as maybe someone who was working on one of the Rebel ships, someone in the background who Rose knew and then all they had to do was call him. Something like that. It would have tightened things up. And btw, the casino would have been perfect for a Lando Calrissian cameo but it wasn't to be. Pity.

Johnson borrows substantially from a range of other films and shows. There are nods to Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Battlestar Galactica (ironically enough!), The NeverEnding Story and of course previous Star Wars films.

The throne room scene will provoke more 'rehash' accusations as it's almost a direct lift from the Luke v Vader scene from ROTJ in places. Rey even says 'I feel the conflict within you.' Did it have to be the exact same line? But it was a fantastic scene especially when the guards launched into action

The humour is something that works well sometimes, and other times it falls flat. That's always how it's been in Star Wars. The Porgs were fine, they didn't bother me at all.

The tit-milking scene was...bizarre. General Hux is a caricature at this stage. And Phasma? We were told her role was going to be more substantial in this film but she was hardly back and then she was gone again. A waste of a potentially good character.

Watching Yoda on screen again was fantastic. It looked like they got his likeness all wrong when we see him at first but then it's just like seeing him as he appeared in Empire. Wonderful scene.

Overall I think the film is propelled along extremely well by incredibly strong performances from Driver, Ridley and Hamill. Don't go and see it in the hope that it will be better than Empire. That's not the way to approach it. Leave your expectations outside the door, as I did, and you will appreciate it more. But things are going to get messy on this thread, I can sense it!

Agent Coulson

If Lucas had written and directed this he would be slaughtered.


It fits in with his second trilogy Meh for me nearly 24 hours after watching it and having let it sink in abit.

irishthump

server down wrote: »

Reviews are good. Uber nerds who own all the books and therefore think they own the universe are amongst the first to go, so deviations from their worldview makes them mad. That’s what we are seeing here. Most people including people who are old enough to have watched the original in the cinema just want a story set in the universe.

Ok. This kind of response really pi**es me off...

I’m a massive SW fan, but I have no interested in the expanded universe books, comics or whatever. I certainly don’t think I own the SW universe. In fact, I have repeatedly stated that i have no issue with the radical changes in the story and character’s direction. In fact I welcome it. It was essential to the new movies that thy don’t become rehashes of the original trilogy.

The execution is the problem here. It’s not a great movie.

Wibbs

DrWu wrote: »

I think one of the problems with the Disney takeover is that there is no singular vision - at least there doesn't seem to be. There was continuity in the original trilogy that I do think is lacking here (as far as the prequels go, they don't exist to me). It's like that game where one person draws some lines on a page and the next person comes along and adds to the lines and so on.

Pretty much seems to be the case. The main singular vision is milk the franchise for as much return as possible. One could suggest they're milking the mythology of the SW universe and they do, but much of the time they will throw it away for the sake of dodgy plot device. Hell they don't even carry on the mythos from the last one to this. As if in the interim they decided to destroy the various fan theories circulating about the various characters to keep the audience guessing. Great, if you create better stories from that, but not for the sake of doing it.

Luke is painfully unused and discarded in this IMHO and so much of it makes no sense for him as a character, or as someone who is the most powerful Force user/Jedi around and should be on near Yoda level at this stage of proceedings.

Don't get me started on the Yoda WTactualF? part. A nod to fans that's more like a drunken headbutt.

. Then again having old guy as a hero that could wipe the floor with the other force users in the story wouldn't fit and would make the new crop look like the cut price badly written nostalgia stand ins they tend to be. Looking back at TFA and Han's very last appearance on screen, I reckon that look on his face wasn't pain, it was relief.

Tony EH wrote: »

But Star Wars is a strange thing. To echo what someone said earlier, it's almost like pissing in the kiddies swimming pool if you say that a particular film just isn't very good and I find that too often, too many excuses are made for a given film's downfalls. 'The Force Awakens' being the prime example of this. 'The Force Awakens' was generally a poor film, that had some good parts. But, by and large, it left an awful lot to be desired and the more I watch it, the less I like it, especially the "comedy" moments that are just terrible.

+1. It's by and large a well made film, but it's not by any stretch a good one, on so many levels. It was beyond tragic with the near scene for scene, plot device for plot device cogging of A New Hope. With the cut price Spielberg that is Abrams at the helm this was not such a shock. One thing that wasn't copied and should have been was the Hero's Journey of Luke(and damn near every hero in every narrative ever), but instead what we got was the near zero growth of Rey. She just is from the very start, just cos. Compare and contrast with Luke in the originals. He starts off pretty useless and remains so for almost the entirety of the first flic and isn't much better in the second, he's still flawed by the third and throughout the original trilogy he needs near constant help from others. Rey? Nope. Learns about the force, then discovers she has it and masters it in nigh on a couple of days within the storyline, to the degree of being able to take on a trained high powered Sith type and beat him. It takes three flics for Luke to get near that point and even then his da has to ultimately save his arse. Godawful storytelling and makes Rey an empty character that we don't really care what happens to her. She's not believable or identifiable. That Daisy Ridley makes us care for such a lightweight character says much of her acting chops and charisma.

nix wrote: »

After sleeping on it.. Whats weird is, i liked the prequels more than i liked this...

As did I. The prequels were cringeworthy on a few levels, but there was a singular vision, a genuine sense of trying to tell a story with classical narrative and mythology. I reckon you could edit all three down to one flic and it would be a pretty good one. At least he was attempting to actually tell a story, rather than a disjointed marketing exercise. Maybe Lucas was right when he used to say that there'd be no more after Return of the Jedi as there was no more story to tell. Maybe there was but for me Disney haven't been the ones to try.

irishthump wrote:

It was essential to the new movies that thy don’t become rehashes of the original trilogy.

It was, but TFA failed that spectacularly. It wasn't far off a remake of the first Star Wars film. At least TLJ didn't copy ESB. Though I found it overlong and I could think of a few places they could have cut back or cut entirely(Del Toro's bit for example). It looked great for the most part. The CGI was fantastic, though some of the "real life" scenes had dodgy lighting.

Agent Coulson wrote:

If Lucas had written and directed this he would be slaughtered.

I'd agree. Though for all his faults he wouldn't have and he certainly wouldn't have written TFA. Oh wait he did. Back in the mid 70's.

I suppose the main problem with Star Wars is that it became(and was one of the creators of) the blockbuster series with new and exciting toys for xmas to follow. While Lucasfilm had it and were independent and could shoot what they liked pretty much Lucas could take risks, which he did with the prequels, but Disney can't. They have to run a colour by numbers hit the right spots blockbuster that gets the cash in. On that score it's not too bad, but outside of that not so much. For me the prequels were good ideas and story arcs painfully screwed up, whereas the Disney arc are painfully screwed up ideas and arcs done extremely well.

TCDStudent1

I am not a SW nerd by any metric. I enjoy watching the movies but wouldn't know anything beyond them. Went to see this yesterday and for the first time ever, I was pretty bored during a SW movie. It was too long.

In saying that, I thought Hamill was absolutely fantastic in it.

Drumpot

• thegreengoblin wrote: »

  Saw it in the Savoy last night (farewell Screen 1!). You have to go with your gut reaction and mine was that I enjoyed it but it has problems. Parts of it I really loved and parts of it I just thought to myself 'why?'.
  
  I'm very glad I booked another showing today with the chisellers. I badly need to see it again just to process it better as so much happened in it. It was incredibly dense, way more so than TFA.
  
  I can completely get why some people would hate it and vice versa. It's a very different Star Wars film to anything we've seen to date and I think Rian Johnson just about pulls it off. He has tinkered with the status quo in terms of what the Force actually is and how it can be used for good and bad. This will no doubt cause hows of anguish and cries of 'You can't do that!' but it's to his credit that he did. Although not everything worked. Such as...
  

  Leia's 'resurrection' in space...it was toe-curlingly bad. I couldn't believe what I was seeing, I was silently screaming at them 'please don't do this!' It would have been the perfect send-off for her, to have her just float away in space. She hardly did anything for the rest of the film so re-shoots and re-edits wouldn't have been a huge deal. Still, Carrie Fisher put in a worthy final performance and it was heartwarming to see her reunited with Luke, albeit not the way we would have predicted. They've clearly put Poe up as her Han Solo foil and it works but at the expense of Poe as a character. He's still quite one dimensional and that's a pity as I think Oscar Isaac does a fine job with him in general.

  Seeing Luke go out like that made me choke up, and in fact I could have burst into tears. I saw A New Hope in the cinema and, like Han Solo in TFA, this is an iconic character who has been always there in some form or another...films, books, comics, figures even. And now he's gone. Seeing him on the big screen again was a joy. Mark Hamill was fantastic in this film and surely he will appear in Episode 9 as a Force ghost

  I thought they Rey/Kylo scenes were fantastic. This element of the story is going to throw a few people but it was handled brilliantly.

  Adam Driver has given one of the best performances in any Star Wars film and Daisy Ridley wasn't far behind, she was superb. I could watch them all day long.

  I loved the fact that we could root for Kylo in the throne room scene knowing full well he wasn't going to be turned back and that naked ambition was his reason for killing Snoke.

  The Canto Bight sequence was rather unneccesary. It felt like the viewer was completely taken out of the film and then dropped back in. Just have Del Toro as maybe someone who was working on one of the Rebel ships, someone in the background who Rose knew and then all they had to do was call him. Something like that. It would have tightened things up. And btw, the casino would have been perfect for a Lando Calrissian cameo but it wasn't to be. Pity.

  
  Johnson borrows substantially from a range of other films and shows. There are nods to Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Battlestar Galactica (ironically enough!), The NeverEnding Story and of course previous Star Wars films.

  The throne room scene will provoke more 'rehash' accusations as it's almost a direct lift from the Luke v Vader scene from ROTJ in places. Rey even says 'I feel the conflict within you.' Did it have to be the exact same line? But it was a fantastic scene especially when the guards launched into action

  
  The humour is something that works well sometimes, and other times it falls flat. That's always how it's been in Star Wars. The Porgs were fine, they didn't bother me at all.

  The tit-milking scene was...bizarre. General Hux is a caricature at this stage. And Phasma? We were told her role was going to be more substantial in this film but she was hardly back and then she was gone again. A waste of a potentially good character.

  Watching Yoda on screen again was fantastic. It looked like they got his likeness all wrong when we see him at first but then it's just like seeing him as he appeared in Empire. Wonderful scene.

thegreengoblin wrote: »

Overall I think the film is propelled along extremely well by incredibly strong performances from Driver, Ridley and Hamill. Don't go and see it in the hope that it will be better than Empire. That's not the way to approach it. Leave your expectations outside the door, as I did, and you will appreciate it more. But things are going to get messy on this thread, I can sense it!

This plus 100+. I thought exactly about

Lando and the casino

. You would of had some people whinging that they didn't need to bring back older characters for nostalgia and that it was completely unnecessary, so it shows that you just will never please everybody.

On second viewing:

When I thought of Luke just like Yoda in TESB, his querky behaviour didn't
bother me at all. In fact it all made sense in the context of why he was
isolating himself. He has been tormented by what happened with Ren and lost
faith in his religion.





The child at the end using the force to grab the brush and look into the
stars. It was kind of a nice homage to Luke in ANH when he is looking at the
sun. It also signified that the rebellion is not over and that the Jedi's are
not finished yet. In terms of story narrative, much of Luke's agony was his
disillusionment with the Jedi Order but now we have endless possibilities for
the future of Jedis, without the old Prejudices and red tape that was partially
to blame for Darth Sidius success.





Rey and Kylos story is even more enjoyable.





Humour does not define the movie. Still hit and miss but doesn't need to be
an issue.





Luke's comments of something like "What, do you expect me to face down the
first order all on my own " when Rey is trying to convince him to come back is
kind of funny considering what happens in the end.





Poes character progression is superb. At the start of the movie he is a brave
but careless hero. By the end, he has learned from Leia (and the vice admiral)
that gung ho isn't always the best option. He stops them from suicide mission
into that big gun and as Leia says "why are you looking at me, follow him"
because he has become a true leader who considers the consequences and odds of
each action.





Finn's character ark is also less annoying (including Casino) because it is
important to the story. The whole movie is about the rebels hanging on a thread
(pun intended), looking like their end and nobody is brave enough to stand with
them against the empire. The Casino story shows that while it may look like
people aren't interested ("this place is beautiful" says finn - "Look more
closely") when you look closely, there are people desperate for change.





There are also people remaining neutral (thief) who will, like the nasty arms
dealers, sell their services to the highest bidder. But why should those who
sell to the First order, be considered worse then those who sell to the
rebels?

So many dynamics that could easily be missed. I think its a solid movie but I understand why its divisive.

EDIT: When I added spoiler tags it totally messed up the spacing !!

johnny_ultimate

With the benefit of hindsight...

how ****ing great was the whole sequence in Snoke's throne room? Superb example of a series' conflicts and core relationship just taken to the next level.

And the lightsaber stuff... I mean, I'm still a big fan of the raw, snowy duel at the end of TFA which I think really captures Kylo's confused fury (I think the scene where he attacks the rebel ships early in this does that brilliantly too - there's that superb shot where his ship just roars past the bridge). But this definitely vies for the best fight Star Wars has offered. It's so brutal and visceral without any actual blood being drawn, despite someone being cut in half and others being literally shredded. The choreography and wonderful artifice of the thing, with that aggressive use of dominating red, definitely makes the most out of the late-Kurosawa influence.

Saruhashi

server down wrote: »

Reviews are good. Uber nerds who own all the books and therefore think they own the universe are amongst the first to go, so deviations from their worldview makes them mad. That’s what we are seeing here. Most people including people who are old enough to have watched the original in the cinema just want a story set in the universe.

I don't know that people are generally "mad". A few isolated people, maybe.

I think if you absolutely love the Star Wars universe and are really into it then I can understand anger if you see this movie as being disrespectful to the lore of SW.

I would say it's not worth getting angry over but I would also say I can understand why certain things here would anger "uber nerds", as you call them.

I think there's pretty good discussion to be had around what actually makes a Star Wars movie. Is it OK to just have a movie with the "Star Wars" brand on it? Do there have to be certain characters or concepts present at all times?

Would a romantic comedy set on Tatooine, 100,000 years after the events of ROTJ be considered a Star Wars movie?

I think questions like that can feed into the new trilogy. Lucas is not involved at all it seems and the returning characters seem to be distinctly out of character.

What makes a Star Wars movie a Star Wars movie?

thegreengoblin

One thing which has me scratching my head in here is when I see someone remark that they actually preferred the prequels, or this is on the same level as the prequels. Nostalgia is one thing but revisionist history is something else.

These current films are far from perfect but they have an undeniable soul and character to them. That's something which could never be said about any of the prequels which were a hideous exercise in bluster and hubris, coupled with some of the worst acting I've ever seen in mainstream cinema.

Arne_Saknussem

thegreengoblin wrote: »

One thing which has me scratching my head in here is when I see someone remark that they actually preferred the prequels, or this is on the same level as the prequels. Nostalgia is one thing but revisionist history is something else.

These current films are far from perfect but they have an undeniable soul and character to them. That's something which could never be said about any of the prequels which were a hideous exercise in bluster and hubris, coupled with some of the worst acting I've ever seen in mainstream cinema.

Disagree with this 100%. Was thinking whilst watching that i'd never seen a film so obviously driven by hitting target metrics.

Contributed to it being an overlong jumbled up mess. I've never been so bored or disengaged at a SW film.

Saruhashi

Drumpot wrote: »

When I thought of Luke just like Yoda in TESB, his querky behaviour didn't
bother me at all. In fact it all made sense in the context of why he was
isolating himself. He has been tormented by what happened with Ren and lost
faith in his religion.

OK, I might be totally remembering things wrong here but wasn't Yoda only doing the quirky old man thing in ESB and only when Luke didn't know who he was?

I was sure he acted like a crazy old creature right up until he revealed that he was the Jedi master and then he was quite serious in all other scenes.

I thought the whole purpose of Yoda's quirky behavior was "appearances can be deceptive"?

Saruhashi

Wibbs wrote: »

As if in the interim they decided to destroy the various fan theories circulating about the various characters to keep the audience guessing. Great, if you create better stories from that, but not for the sake of doing it.

Regarding this, I thought at times the movie came across as being quite passive aggressive towards the audience in parts. If you know what I mean? It's hard to put it into words.

For example,

the ironing scene. The establishing shot is a ship that REALLY looks like an iron to the point where the audience must be thinking "this ship looks like a f-ing iron, what the hell" then of course it is actually just an iron. I thought this was a genuinely funny moment BUT isn't this just basically breaking the 4th wall to troll the audience?

A lot of funny moments like that felt more like Robot Chicken sketches making fun of Star Wars movies rather than funny parts of a Star Wars movie. Does that make sense to anyone?

thegreengoblin

Arne_Saknussem wrote: »

Disagree with this 100%. Was thinking whilst watching that i'd never seen a film so obviously driven by hitting target metrics.

Contributed to it being an overlong jumbled up mess. I've never been so bored or disengaged at a SW film.

But there's a sense of humanity about Rey, Kylo, Finn and Poe that we just didn't get with Anakin, Padme and Obi Wan (the least guilty of the three IMO). I don't want to get into another prequels debate as it's been done to death, I just believe there is a world of difference between them and what we're seeing now.

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irishthump wrote: »

Ok. This kind of response really pi**es me off...

I’m a massive SW fan, but I have no interested in the expanded universe books, comics or whatever. I certainly don’t think I own the SW universe. In fact, I have repeatedly stated that i have no issue with the radical changes in the story and character’s direction. In fact I welcome it. It was essential to the new movies that thy don’t become rehashes of the original trilogy.

The execution is the problem here. It’s not a great movie.

And yet general reviews are good. It’s the reviews on the Star Wars forums that are bad. So for ordinary critics it’s an ok movie.