Star Wars: Episode VIII – The Last Jedi

What's to defend? it's not like every video is "I hate this movie because of this, this and this"
They don't ease up or give both barrels to certain movies or franchises, even the ones bashing movies I love make me chuckle

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can i have one of those buttons?

You can make a good movie that is also terrible for the franchise and that's what The Last Jedi was. It was a really good movie that killed Star Wars on a fundamental level, you can't have a "war" with an Empire against 12 people no matter how ethnically diverse they are.

In the end Kylo Ren is the real hero of the story because he's trying to end the stupid never ending war.

So congrats Rian Johnson I'm now team Sith

I wanted to love this film. I desperately, ardently wanted to love The Last Jedi. Instead it was a bit of a mess that left me feeling angry and betrayed.
I’m sure I’m forgetting both some positives and some negatives here, but here are my Pros and Cons of The Last Jedi.
PROS:
- Beautiful battle sequences. I loved seeing A-Wings. I loved seeing Kylo Ren pilot a TIE Interceptor. I loved the moment of silence when the ship is split in half. I loved seeing the red dirt under the salt on Cait as the speeders rushed past. The battles were top-notch. The dogfights were elegant.
- "Dreadnought Down."
- The fight scene with Kylo Ren/Rey in the throne room was beautifully epic (except for how Snoke died). "Let it die." "Please."
- Amazing aerial and exterior shots of Ahch-To (filmed on Skellig Michael in Ireland)
- The Porgs were cute, if definitely created exclusively for merchandising. They're basically just wide-eyed puppets on screen to sell toys. Well, mission accomplished, Disney. I bought one.
- Rey’s parents really did turn out to be nobody.
- Kylo Ren going fully Dark instead of getting redeemed.
CONS:
- The pacing felt awkward. The movie was wayyyyy too long and bloated with unnecessary subplots. It needed a minimum of 30 minutes cut. The flow of the film overall was senseless. Bad, bad, bad script writing.
- Basically the entire plot hinged on the incredibly flawed idea of low fuel reserves…? So this is Speed 2 in Space, pretty much.
- Did Luke really just take green milk straight from an alien teat and chug it for laughs?
- I simply did not like Rose Tico. She felt childish in all the wrong ways, and I think she was pigeonholed alongside Finn for *reasons*. I didn’t like the forced heterosexual dynamic between them. Her backstory was contrived. Her hair was a joke (a petty complaint, but just a stupid aesthetic choice in an otherwise visually great film).
- The entire casino sequence felt entirely too human/Earthly. Aliens in tuxedos? No. There are no tuxedos in Star Wars. It didn’t feel like a cantina scene; it felt like James Bond. The idea of arms dealers selling to both the “good guys” and the “bad guys” would have packed more weight if the film had bothered to actually break down the Dark/Light binary it wound up reinforcing.
- The score was, at best, “variations on some very good John Williams themes” but had absolutely no stirring moments that captured my heart the way the TFA soundtrack did with its most powerful moments. I liked hearing brass used in Rey’s Theme when she pulled the Falcon away. I never thought I’d get sick of “March of the Resistance,” but by the end of this movie, I’d be cool if I never heard it again.
- Leia. Flying. Like. Superman. No. No. No. No.
- Did I mention Leia flying through space?
- One more time, let’s discuss Leia flying through space.
- "Fishnuns," as someone put them. The caretakers on Ahch-To. The icy foxes. The enslaved racing creatures. I can't be bothered to remember these aliens' names, because we already have a canon of hundreds of species to work with. But, that's cool; let's just pretend canon doesn't exist and make up everything from scratch.
- And just in case you missed it, a frozen Leia soared through space with all the grace and believability of a 1987 made-for-TV sci-fi special.
- Leia flew in space.
- Saw Luke’s Force Projection fifteen minutes before it was revealed (no footprints in the salt; he used the blue lightsaber that had been broken). It was 0% surprising to me to see him sitting on Ahch-To. I rolled my eyes.
- The fact that one instance of Force Projection was enough to kill Luke Skywalker. Luuuuuuuke Skywalkerrrrrrrr. Died from one instance of Force Projection, which has been canonically established to not kill a whole ton of people much weaker in the Force.
- Luke tossing the lightsaber away as for a cheap laugh when we ended TFA with the emotional cliffhanger of Rey holding it out to him. Would have been better for him to just walk away from Rey. Not a good way to start this film.
- So much of the “humor” felt forced, stilted, or actually counterproductive to the emotional gravitas of the film. “I’ll Hold for Hux” was the dumbest sequence I’ve ever seen in my life. The humor was cheap, cheap, cheap and there was wayyyy too much of it. Most of it garnered a few chuckles at best from my theatre full of lightsaber-wielding Star Wars fanatics.
- The overall tone and writing style of the film felt more like a Marvel film than a Star Wars film. This felt like I can expect to see Rey, Poe, and Finn in Infinity War (Hey, Disney, don’t freaking do that).
- Snoke literally just kind of toppling over dead after failing to foresee the lightsaber strike against him was anticlimactic, to say the least. Apparently he had the capacity in the Force to bind minds together, but not to avoid getting sliced in half. Weak sauce.
there u go i had to say it

Rambond has freed me from this thread, have fun guys

Onto the "hot topics"

Leia flying through space...I was okay with that. Leia having some hidden aspects of the force I'm okay with when I look at all the padding and action scenes and disrespect to continuity Leia getting that moment I'm fine with.

Poe's "hold for Hux" another thing I'm okay with because Poe actually has a personality and being sort of a dick and not being really that funny is in line with his character.

Rose/Finn the whole issue with Rose/Finn is it should have been a romance that ended with Finn and Rose dying. The story should have had a romance duality between Kylo/Rey and Finn/Rose. The Casino-subplot shouldn't have been for action/politics but for those two characters to fall in love and then tragically die saving their friends.

The only thing that really bothered me about flying Leia is that I thought the way it was shot/edited made it all look like it was cobbled together in the wake of Carrie Fisher's death (especially when she immediately went into a coma for the next hour or so of the movie as if implying that that was how she would be written out), which made it really surprising to learn that it was all shot before her death.

I also liked the "hold for Hux" part not necessarily because it was laugh-out-loud funny but because of how Poe was deliberately undercutting Hux's attempts at being intimidating.

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Iro's Top 100 Movies v3.0

First off I think we shouldn't use terms like bad guy good guy. But Deckard thought what he was doing was ok till he fell in love with Rachel. And the last scene where Roy sat down beside him with his tears in the rain poetry. Deckard knew that he was the predator all along that there is emotion and beauty to these machines. And whether he is a replicant or not I like the ambiguous ending to the original blade Runner. I was okay with the sequel but I like to think of the original as a standalone movie.

And yes you can let annoyances cloud your judgement like product placement but the last Jedi goes beyond that with in continuity throughout so many scenes. Bad plots and so much more and it simply cannot be ignored.

To be honest in what universe is the last Jedi in league with Empire strikes back. Be serious

The league of Star Wars movies, obviously.

I complained that people kept referring to Star Wars fans "hating" it as if it were an established fact, conveniently ignoring evidence to the contrary.

Yeah, but we've seen this phenomena before: a handful of loud, insistent people on the Internet regularly inflate people's perceptions of how much outrage there is about something. It happens all the time. You can believe it if you want, but it's ultimately just a guess, and a pretty self-serving one at that.

But, again, it's not relevant. I've posed this little thought experiment twice now:

And, again it shouldn't matter either way. Would you change your mind about the film if enough people liked it? No. So you shouldn't expect anyone who does like it to change their minds based on how many people don't.

Not even in the Star Wars universe are they in the same league.

The fact that you think they're not in the same league now, whereas lots of die-hard fans hated that one too on release, is the whole point. It shows that devotees can have an outsized emotional reaction to these films when they don't get what they expect.

Just to be clear I went into that movie with low expectations and an open mind my judgement is solid on the last Jedi.

I'm not really sure how that's a response to the thing you're quoting, or how somebody who might be having an emotional reaction to something is in a position to reassure someone that they're not, but okay.

Agreed, let's just pretend that it never was in the Star Wars universe to begin with. And it belongs to the universe of battlefield Earth or Jupiter ascending

Well clearly I'm speaking as an Authority on myself. The fans who went into the movie with high emotions I think are the ones who make excuses for it in continuities and plan awful nurse.

Having an emotional reaction is not the same thing as going into it with high emotions. Totally different things.

Year but when Mark Hamill starts hating on a Star Wars film you know something is up. Enough said

Yeah, if famous screenwriter Mark Hamill doesn't like it, you know it's bad.

You mean when he said this?

I still haven’t accepted it completely. But it’s only a movie. I hope people like it. I hope they don’t get upset, and I came to really believe that Rian was the exact man that they need for this job.”