Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi (2017) (spoilers free to be seen)

[Edward J Grug III]

Apparently there is a guy on a mission to bring down the RT audience score of The Last Jedi using bots:
https://www.facebook.com/Down-With-Disneys-Treatment-of-Franchises-and-its-Fanboys-464301390617317/

And he's succeeding.  It's down to 56%.  On the flip side, the Cinemascore is at an A.  Cinemascore works like an exit poll, and can't be skewed by bots.

Mad Online.

[NRRork]

Watching it a second time I got a lot out of it. That'll happen, especially with a movie like this.

The young heroes all formulated some kind of plan to beat the First Order. Poe blew up the dreadnaught, and suffered heavy losses. He and Finn concocted that plan to sabotage their tracker, and it failed miserably. Rey ran off to find Luke and recruit him to the cause and be trained herself in the force and the two of them would kick the First Order's ass as some Mentor/Student team, nothing doing. Then she took off to turn Kylo Ren back to the light to finish things once and for all. Even Kylo Ren saw the chance and took it to end everything right then. And again, they both failed.

But the older characters who'd been through it once already, it's almost like THEY were the only ones who knew they were in the middle episode of a trilogy. They were the ones who knew they were in no condition to win a war today and their victory would be living to keep the fight going. Leia's plan all along was to get somewhere to lay low until help arrives or things cooled off a little. And Luke's goal was to distract the First Order long enough for the Resistance (what was left of it) to escape.

And theirs was the only plan that succeeded, despite the damn kids making it worse at every turn! Which I assume is meant to go back to Yoda's "The greatest teacher, failure is" talk and HOPEFULLY some of that will sink in. We'll see where J.J. Abrams takes it from here.

And I am curious as FUCK to see where it goes from here. We're used to it now, but Empire was a pretty hard left from A New Hope. It's 1980, there was no precedent set for what they expected a Star Wars movie to have. The only other thing they had was that damn special a couple Christmases ago, so this could REALLY go bad. Hell, they didn't even know it was a part two of three. But all three were out by the time I saw them, so to me A New Hope always felt like the strange outlier of the three, where it felt like it hadn't really found its footing yet, and Empire is like the "Growing the Beard" movie (look it up).

[blspro]

All I can say is that Rian has given our boys at Rifftrax here some of the reddest meat they could ever want.  I am truly looking forward to their riff of The Last Jedi. 

[Variety of Cells]

It was fine. Had some things I liked. I really liked how they depicted Rey and Ben's connection, and it was the cheapest effect in the entire film. All they did was match screen direction and mute the surrounding ambience, but it worked so well. You got that they were connected across trillions of miles without the use of any fancy cgi whatever. So bravo for that.

As for the less successful: despite being too long, you never got a chance to really inhabit a new space or connect with anything. The audience was whisked around so fast that I never became familiar or attached to a character or a location like I did in the original trilogy. I'm sure there were a bunch of plot holes but they actually didn't bother me, and neither did all the deus ex machina for whatever reason.

But one thing really bothered me, because at first it was the thing I liked the most about the film. I loved that Yoda came back and burned all the books, because fuck it, you don't need them. He told Luke to learn from your elders, but don't become a slave to dogma. That was an awesome message. But no, one of the last shots reveals that the books were saved, and then you realize Yoda knew Rey had taken them and he was just being a coy little fucker. Stupid, is what that is. You ruined the best scene in your movie.  (That is what that shot was of at the end, right?  The projection I saw was super shitty and dark, so it was hard to tell)

[Imrahil]

Yes, she has the books.

[Edward J Grug III]

But one thing really bothered me, because at first it was the thing I liked the most about the film. I loved that Yoda came back and burned all the books, because fuck it, you don't need them. He told Luke to learn from your elders, but don't become a slave to dogma. That was an awesome message. But no, one of the last shots reveals that the books were saved, and then you realize Yoda knew Rey had taken them and he was just being a coy little fucker. Stupid, is what that is. You ruined the best scene in your movie.  (That is what that shot was of at the end, right?  The projection I saw was super shitty and dark, so it was hard to tell)

Luke doesn't know Rey has the books, so it has no impact on the lesson Yoda was teaching him.

[Kete]

As for the less successful: despite being too long, you never got a chance to really inhabit a new space or connect with anything. The audience was whisked around so fast that I never became familiar or attached to a character or a location like I did in the original trilogy.

I get that. I think if they had done the casino stuff differently, this wouldn't have been as much a problem. Maybe cut the casino stuff completely.

[Henry88]

you know the pink haired lady's stubborn unwillingness to share her plan just bugged the hell out of me if she had just said what she was going to do a lot of grief would have been avoided.

[Edward J Grug III]

Why should she tell a recently demoted asshole who gets in her face anything?

[Henry88]

Why should she tell a recently demoted asshole who gets in her face anything?

not just poe, everyone on the darn ship.

[Edward J Grug III]

Why should she tell a recently demoted asshole who gets in her face anything?

not just poe, everyone on the darn ship.

Just because we the audience don't know, doesn't mean others on the ship didn't know.

[Variety of Cells]

But one thing really bothered me, because at first it was the thing I liked the most about the film. I loved that Yoda came back and burned all the books, because fuck it, you don't need them. He told Luke to learn from your elders, but don't become a slave to dogma. That was an awesome message. But no, one of the last shots reveals that the books were saved, and then you realize Yoda knew Rey had taken them and he was just being a coy little fucker. Stupid, is what that is. You ruined the best scene in your movie.  (That is what that shot was of at the end, right?  The projection I saw was super shitty and dark, so it was hard to tell)

Luke doesn't know Rey has the books, so it has no impact on the lesson Yoda was teaching him.

But it has an impact on the lesson he teaches the audience. We can't be sure he would have torched the tree with the books inside. Probably not.

[Henry88]

Why Do So Many 'Star Wars' Fans Hate 'The Last Jedi'?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2017/12/19/the-last-jedi-why-star-wars-fans-hate-one-of-the-best-star-wars-movies/#677ac3b35658

so could one say  that 'The Last Jedi' was a deconstruction of star wars.

[blspro]

All the reviewers keep saying it is 'new', 'fresh', and 'different' and thus is one of the best Star Wars movies.  In other words, slavishly repeating prior story points is bad.  But slavishly reversing prior story points is good.

BOTH are bad story telling.  BOTH use what has come before as their template.  NEITHER is 'new' or 'fresh'.  Mindless repetition and mindless reversal are NOT 'different'.

[linszoid]

I must say, Mark Hamil's performance in TLJ is almost as good as his cameo in Carnival Magic.