ST The Sanctuary - (Dissenters Unite! - Warning on page 232)

Disagree with the ROTS bit. It was bound to be more.."marketable" because it's what the Fans have wanted since TPM. It's the "darth Vader moment" everyone has anticipated for. Still, it made a plethora of bold decisions not many expected(love being Anakins turn, Padme losing the will to live and then some).

I do agree that TPM and AOTC were possibly the most riskiest SW films and it does make sense. He had a ton more creative freedom with TPM and AOTC(said so by himself). ROTS was the film he struggled on the most despite starting the script right before the end of AOTC productionz

 

He said:

JJ Abrams says Star Wars Episode 9 won't "revel" in the past: "We have to go elsewhere" "We have to take them places that they haven't gone."


"When the opportunity presented itself to finish a story that we had begun with these new characters, to tell the last chapter of their story, it felt like there was a chance to do it in a way where we could go beyond, and do better than we did in Seven," Abrams said.

Speaking about fixing some of the issues people may have had with The Force Awakens, Abrams said he has learned quite a lot since directing Episode VII. "I learned so much in that movie and I saw that this was a chance to sort of realize something that we hadn't quite achieved – and part of that was it was simply the beginning of these new characters and their story," Abrams said.

Now, the filmmaker is ready to take some of the lessons he's learned to help make Episode IX a finale fans will be thrilled with. "The opportunity to sort of take what we had learned, to take the feeling of who these characters are and what they are and give them a final chapter that felt in the spirit of what we begun?" Abrams said. "It was too delicious of an opportunity to pass up."

 

Luke02 I want to believe you. It would be nice to see KK and RJ have some repercussions from this film but I doubt it will happen. The reason being is the number one driver: $$$ was achieved. They will defend themselves by saying "Bob, seriously? We made you $200million, shut up." Money talks.

Also seeing the critics giving it 93% yet fans give it 5% is also disconcerting. Its obvious that the critics had an incentive to rate it that high.

 

Luke02 I want to believe you. It would be nice to see KK and RJ have some repercussions from this film but I doubt it will happen. The reason being is the number one driver: $$$ was achieved. They will defend themselves by saying "Bob, seriously? We made you $200million, shut up." Money talks.

Also seeing the critics giving it 93% yet fans give it 5% is also disconcerting. Its obvious that the critics had an incentive to rate it that high.

 

So much double posting lol. Everyone, if the server is screwing up, only press the "reply button" once.

TFN is really strugglin today..

 

Everything in this trilogy has come too easy.

The Empire was long-established and had the entire old Republic to mine for resources. The First Order being built on the remnants of the Empire appears to be massively more powerful even though it is relatively new and has up until recently only operated out of a small part of the galaxy.

I gave Rey's force abilities the benefit of the doubt in The Force Awakens, because I thought there must be more to her character. The Last Jedi shows she is just a ready-made Jedi that doesn't need any training. That insults Luke's arc in the original trilogy - he earned his right to go toe-to-toe with Vader and the Emperor, learning from his mistakes on Cloud City. Rey has mixed it with Kylo and Snoke in the middle of the 2nd act. Again, too easy.

It feels like the Marvelisation of the Star Wars universe, where struggle and hard work is replaced by ready-made characters that can slot in to set piece situations.

The conversation between Luke and Vader in ROTJ after Luke handed himself in is what I want to see in Star Wars - real conversations steeped in story, tension and motivations. I would be amazed if we had anything as nuanced as that in this trilogy.

 

Everything in this trilogy has come too easy.

The Empire was long-established and had the entire old Republic to mine for resources. The First Order being built on the remnants of the Empire appears to be massively more powerful even though it is relatively new and has up until recently only operated out of a small part of the galaxy.

I gave Rey's force abilities the benefit of the doubt in The Force Awakens, because I thought there must be more to her character. The Last Jedi shows she is just a ready-made Jedi that doesn't need any training. That insults Luke's arc in the original trilogy - he earned his right to go toe-to-toe with Vader and the Emperor, learning from his mistakes on Cloud City. Rey has mixed it with Kylo and Snoke in the middle of the 2nd act. Kylo, a confused man-child is now effectively the Emperor - something not even Vader achieved. Again, too easy.

It feels like the Marvelisation of the Star Wars universe, where struggle and hard work is replaced by ready-made characters that can slot in to set piece situations.

The conversation between Luke and Vader in ROTJ after Luke handed himself in is what I want to see in Star Wars - real conversations steeped in story, tension and motivations. I would be amazed if we had anything as nuanced as that in this trilogy.

 

Wow, I haven't been here in a long time!

But I had to post my rant...

My thought walking out of this and the previous installment in the series was: "A fine commitment to recycling, they have."

As if, "It made money last time so we have to do it again this time, and everything fans hated about the prequels we have to avoid like the plague this time." Which results in canned repeats of the same old thing, which are bare of any meaning to me, because they are stripped of all history, and relevance.

Back in the day, "slow" sequences like the Galactic Senate came under fire because audiences considered them boring. But George Lucas was trying to make a point. What happens when you give corporations too much power? (Citizens United, anyone? Don't we almost have corporate entities in the Senate now??) And it let the movie slow down and breathe a little bit. These films suffer some from our 10-second attention spans. Everything FLIES by, and I'm going, "What?" Everything's gotta be biggerbiggerfasterfastermoremore! I went home and turned on the TV and the original Star Wars was on TNT. And I enjoyed it SO much more than what I'd just walked out of. Here were these, JUST FOUR, characters and their two robot sidekicks running around on sets that are so minimal compared to what I just watched, and they're so entertaining it works better than all that technological whiz-bang.

BECAUSE I CARED ABOUT THE CHARACTERS.

OK, Luke and Leia and Yoda and Artoo and 3PO we're always going to care about...because GEORGE LUCAS created those characters, and HE gave them personhood and history. We CARED why Anakin fell because, first we were curious about this commanding and powerful (not derivative and dorky-looking) villain. Then, we saw his entire life story. We knew what happened and we knew why it mattered. Even Palpatine had a rich history, one thousand years of a wrecked order trying to reassert supremacy.

Who are these bad guys now? A name like "Snoke"? Really? And he looks just like Palpatine. Can't you just imagine the story meeting? "Well, we need a Palpatine, but he's dead, so we'll just create this CGI thing that looks just like him and he's the bad guy. Who is he? Where did he come from? Does it matter? Nahhh...just so we have a bad guy that looks like the old, real bad guy we killed and he does the same thing. Only now it doesn't mean anything, it just has to look good and persecute the good guys we're trying to hand the story off to."

And the explanation offered of HAN AND LEIA'S SON ending up like this: OK, Luke made a miscue, I get that. But how/why was the kid dark in the first place? THAT was a BIG piece of what mattered about Star Wars, and now...Cue the story meeting: Well, we can just do this to Han and Leia's son, and it doesn't matter how or why. Just that he kills Han and everybody's sad.

I get it about learning from failure, I really do. (You don't know how much I do.) And some of the richness of the prequels was fans thinking about how the Jedi Order was going wrong. So, on that note, I can kind of see the wise Yoda saying, We made mistakes. Take what you learned, and start over. THAT'S one thematic note of richness that works.

But there's shallowness in these new films that DOESN'T work. If the filmmakers had put the depth of thinking into ALL of the themes and characters that they did into this one, I'd be a lot happier.

The more I see of these new Disney Star Wars films, the LESS I CARE, and the more I want to know what George Lucas's original ideas for these last three stories were. I have read reports that he was upset the Disney studio didn't want to use his ideas, and I don't blame him. I guess we'll never know, and that's sad. He wrote to share wisdom, and even though his writing (and, um, sometimes, directing) could,on occasion, be a bit clunky, that's exactly what he did.

These guys write to make money.

'Nuff said.

 

No way JJ will fix it as he is a part of the problem. It was JJ what started the issue but he then went on to suggest that Rian's script was brilliant. Between the two of them they are totally tone deaf to what StarWars is. Maybe an emergency call to Gareth would be a better response at this point.

 

Sorry if this has been mentioned before as I didn't ready all 17 pages, but when Leia did her 'Mary Poppins or Superman' thing - It just looked ridiculous. And I don't want to speak ill of the dead, but i just have serious issues with Carrie Fisher's voice throughout the movie which sounds more like latter day Al Pacino

 

I was taken out of the moment by several things, which took the shine away, but I imagine that these disappointments will ease and the film will grow on me:

Flying Leia: bet it was awesome on paper, and people can survive in space for a time, but it was awful on screen.

Continuous rank incompetence of the First Order: to hit the plot points (reckless Poe being demoted, the slow speed chase, Rose saving Finn) they had to make the dominant military in the galaxy look stupid. Why not send the fighters after the Raddus? They saw what one fighter and one bomber did to the dreadnought, but they couldn't cover the fighters so they didn't attack with them. Why not cut the Resistance off with the Supremacy? Combined with making Hux the comic relief, the galaxy doesn't seem under serious threat. The Empire was scary. Yes, the stormtroopers could never shoot, but you were never in any doubt that the Empire rule with a ruthless efficiency. TLJ portrayed the First Order like the Keystone Kops.

Yoda: Our local screen isn't very good, so maybe it will look better on Bluray, but Yoda was jarringly awful on first appearance though seemed to improve.

Luke's reason for leaving didn't chime. So you let the genie out of the bottle (not one of his own creation), someone that only you are an equal to, but then you leave? I think the mood he was in could have been explained by a more rounded backstory, but it feels like it had to be all related to Kylo to serve his arc, and Luke's own arc suffers for that.

Lots of BB8: From firing coins at the police, running around the Supremacy in an upside down trash can, to driving the AT-ST - this little fella had a lot of ludicrous things to do.

The humour: Lots of it was good Star Wars humour, but it was smeared on too thick and it left the film without a certain gravitas. It has to have its light moments, and I am a Porg fan, but if you play the serious bits for laughs it doesn't seem so important.

Generally thought it was good and whilst I didn't buy why was on Ahch-To, I did like how Luke was portrayed.

 

DML3

The Hater cliché that Rottentomatoe's was paid off exactly the same rubbish said 2 years ago ....

You just can't handle the truth WORD OF MOUTH IS STILL STRONG - proved in the spike to $220 mill OW ( Haters thought it would take less than The Avengers )

IMDB = 7.9 down 2 points over The Force Awakens will probably go 3 meaning only 3% think it's worse than The Force Awakens ,

Were the 99 users on here who rate TLJ 5/5 paid off - then Where is my money ??? I'll take a Cheque or Paypal ASAP thanks cause I'm a little short with Christmas coming up......

 

DML3

The Hater cliché that Rottentomatoe's was paid off exactly the same rubbish said 2 years ago ....

You just can't handle the truth WORD OF MOUTH IS STILL STRONG - proved in the spike to $220 mill OW ( Haters thought it would take less than The Avengers )

IMDB = 7.9 down 2 points over The Force Awakens will probably go 3 meaning only 3% think it's worse than The Force Awakens ,

Were the 99 users on here who rate TLJ 5/5 paid off - then Where is my money ??? I'll take a Cheque or Paypal ASAP thanks cause I'm a little short with Christmas coming up......

 

So I haven't posted on this site in two years but after seeing TLJ I need to talk about this stuff. I have many problems with the movie even though when I was watching it I was having kind of a good time. That's also the reason why I can get past a lot of my gripes with the film. However there are a couple if issues that are impossible for me to overlook:

- The entire space ship chase plot is absolutely ridiculous. Why don't the FO star destroyers just plot a light speed course that would get them in front of the Resistance ship? Jump to another system and come back into the previous system in front of the ship. Or why didn't they sent in all their Tie Fighters?

- Tracking through hyperspace? Eventhough, this has never been seen before in Star Wars, the resistance members know that they are being tracked through hyperspace. Wouldn't it be more plausible that there was a spy on board or a tracker on the hull of one of the ships? Nope, they immediately figure out that it is a less likely scenario where the FO developed technology to track them through hyperspace. Also, if all of this is new technology, how do they know so much about how to turn the tracking off in the main ship?

-If Finn and Rose could take a ship to Canto Bight why didn't they just ferry all the remaining resistance members to safety? Has it to do with fuel?

- The pink haired resistance leader. Why on earth wouldn't she just tell the plan to Poe? Even up until the point of mutiny she doesn't say anything. No idea why someone would write a script like that.

- The hacker guy that happens to be in the same jail as Finn and Rose on Canto Bight. Is this a joke? I mean Star Wars has some very coincidental stuff, but usually it can be explained by the Force. But this scene is just insane. They find the guy they need, but get captured and put into jail. But then another hacker that can hack the first order super dreadnaught happens to be in the same cell? He has the means to escape as shown, why was he waiting in the jail cell in the first place then?

- The ship going hyperspeed into the FO fleet. So every Star Destroyer in the vicinity got destroyed as well? I get that there would be a lot of debris flying in all directions. But really all 5 (I don't remember exactly how many) Star Destroyers get taken out? Also, the Super Dreadnaught is 60 km in width, so half of the ship shouldn't even be affected by the ramming of the resistance ship. I mean I get that it should do an insane amount of damage but with a width of 60 km a big part of the ship should remain undamaged. In the film the hanger bays where Finn and Rose are seem damaged, but also the throne room where Kylo and Rey are seems damaged, thus is the damage throughout the entire ship? Or are these locations just close to each other?

The writing just seems so weird to me. Too many weird plot conveniences that in the end just don't make sense. Half of the time I was confused with the decisions they were making.

- Lastly, I have more of an out of universe reason. We've waited for two years since the release of The Force Awakens and since that time I was hoping to learn everything about the period between RoTJ and TFA, but here it is and still nothing is revealed. Just a little bit of story on Kylo and Luke and that Rey comes from nobody special. Really that's what I've been waiting for all this time? So what now I wait around two more years for another disappointment.

Even if you take the movie outside of the Star Wars universe and forget about already established characters and such, these points don't make any sense. And I would honestly be surprised if a casual movie-goer could like the movie despite these points.

Let me know if some of my points were already explained in the movie and if I made any mistakes.

 

I really feel like this movie was marketed as something that it just was not. The Force Awakens talked about how Luke "went searching for the first Jedi Temple." Then in the trailers we are told "It's time for the Jedi to end" "Light, dark, a balance" "It's so much bigger" the movie is called The Last Jedi. The books, the tree, the first temple, this was advertised as a film that would dive deeper into the origins of the Jedi and their beliefs about the force and maybe challenge them and emerge with something broader or different. This is , I think, a direction they needed to go for the sequels not to feel like rehash trash of the OT. But they half-assed it here. We don't learn anything about the Jedi that we didn't already know. We don't learn what those books say or if they say anything interesting at all. It is not clear that Luke learned anything interesting at this temple or why he choose to come to this place in particular in the first place. They play it off like he just wanted to go into hiding and cut himself off from the Force but it doesn't jive what was set up because why go somewhere super strong in the force to cut yourself off from it. Why make a map to find yourself if you don't want to be found? This entire trilogy is a mess because they didn't actually plan anything out and it seems like RJ barely paid attention to the stuff people said in The Force Awakens that set up his movie.

Very disappointing.

 

when the dark rises the lights grows to meet it

when did that ever happen before in starwars
thats not how the force works rian

 

THAT'S NOT HOW THE FORCE WORKS!

This was more Harry Potter than Star Wars. No Jedi could ever do any of the things seen in TLJ: Leia's resurrection, surviving in space, flying through space. Rey & Ren sit down telepathic conversations. Luke's interactive hologram. Yoda's Force ghost interfering by destroying the Jedi books/tree.

Imagine any of the OT with these new Harry Potter powers!
In ANH Obi Wan's would have used an interactive hologram to kill Vader in the lightsaber fight on the Death Star; become a Force Ghost from exhaustion & then Obi Wan's Force Ghost would have blown up the Death Star.
In ESB Yoda would have had a telepathic sit down with Vader to provide psychiatric counseling.
In ROTJ when Vader threw Palpatine down the reactor pit, he'd have floated out and laughed AFTER the Death Star blows up.

Turn off your brains. RJ ended the Star Wars universe.

 

I feared Disney would employ morons who knew nothing about Star Wars.
JJ Abrams at least knew Star Wars. This RJ guy can do the next Harry Potter film. He needs to read Star Wars.

 

Rey not being a Skywalker ruins the whole trilogy for me. George said the ST was about the grandchildren of Anakin. Now there's only one grandkid, and the main character of the ST is not that.

 

Rey remaining a dull character throughout ruins this trilogy for me.

 

There is a big disconnect between The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. Why would Luke give Lor San Tekka the map to find him if he was completely disillusioned and didn't want to be found? RJ literally ignores the first scene of this trilogy. The way it was built up in The Force Awakens - 'Luke went in search of the first Jedi temple' etc. The opening quote of the TFA novelisation, about light, dark and grey - none of these interesting concepts were followed up in The Last Jedi to any satisfactory extent.

 

I actually liked TFA, and didn't mind that it was in many ways a remake of ANH. Movies and stories are like that, and series and trilogies all the more so. Circularity is the way of drama. There are always patterns in stories that can't help but repeat themselves. Plus, each trilogy has been about some apparent nobody who turns out to be be massively Force-sensitive being "discovered" and embarking on a journey of growth, challenges, highs and lows. So, it was inevitable that TFA would resember both ANH and TPM in many ways. It's how the trilogy unfolds that really matters. The OT unfolded in an ultimately positive way, the PT in a much darker way (but ending in "hope"), and the ST, well, we thought we knew where it was headed, but it turns out that we were very, very wrong. It's become cliche to say this, but it did NOT go the way we thought it would.

Anyway, beyond the many, many, many specific criticisms that I and many other have of TLJ, the main, fundamental one is that they've both dumbed it down for mainstream audiences to fill in the seats over the next 10-15 years, and "deconstructed it" for highbrow ones (who are nevertheless not SW traditionalists) who tend to write reviews and vote in awards shows. Traditional SW fans are being left behind. It's completely business-driven. They figure that today's audiences won't see each new episode if they stick to the SW formula. They want Marvel superheroes-like movies, where there are good guys, bad guys, lots of action, and resolution, not syrupy ones about hope and friendship and loyalty and the continuum between good and evil. That's too complicated and "old school". It's cynical, but possibly smart. Thing is, I don't think it's smart. SW has succeeded because it was different, and if they take that away, it dies.

My god, the directions they could have taken VIII in, that are no longer possible. Abrams really does need to bring in Kasdan and Filoni and maybe even Lucas to attempt to fix this. I'd like to believe that it's still possible. One has to hope.

 

It's like the technology has gone backwards, just look at the whole opening sequence.

The first order is unbelievably comical and non-threatening compared to the empire.

Bad, often cheesy dialogue, that has to explain things out to the audience in the most obvious terms. ESPECIALLY Poe

The overarching story really makes no progress.

The "side mission" is so out of place, and the place itself is ridiculous and doesn't fit into the sw universe. They might as well have just shot in Vegas.

The whole concept of the rebels predicament in the middle of the film is so contrived.

The humor they use is mostly so out of place, it's what you expect to see in a comic book/superhero movie.

How is this supposed to be a galactic scale conflict when the first order has a handful of star destroyers and the rebels one cruiser.

Vader was so much more twisted and evil than Kylo yet Luke is like "nope no chance of redemption".

Mark Hamill was terrific, and everything involving him was pretty good, but the rest...eh.

 

Mary Sue confirmed