Saw it Sunday night, enjoyed it - some scenes were truly jaw-dropping, some were wholly unnecessary imho but overall an enjoyable way to spend 2.5 hours of my time, will buy when its released for home ownership and add to the other movies, won't get into the raging arguments about who can and can't do whatever with the force and how there isn't a precedent except in the EU which Disney made non-canon blah blah blah. I'm a grown-up and recognise that none of it is real and that it's the product of someone elses imagination that happens to have chimed with lots of other peoples imagination.
Spoiler I knew Luke wasn't really there, when they made big of people & machines leaving red footprints, all except for him
yeah to me it had a few problems... Spoiler i think if it didnt have the Disney / Marvel humour moments, and dropped the Fin / Rose story section or at least condensed it down, i felt the whole casino section was wasted, and i felt it would be better if instead of needing a code-breaker bla bla bla, they said instead there is a mole on board with a tracker, and they needed to find the mole or destroy the tracker receiver on the 'insert super star destroyer mk2' you could even write it so Leia was attacked by the mole rather than have that bizarre sequence of leia in space to put her in the hospital...also i would liked a line or two from Snoke saying how he was the one projecting evil Kylo visions into Lukes mind and thats why luke pulled his lightsaber on him, it would mean Snoke was manipulating Kylos fall to the dark side in a very similar way Palpatine did with Anakin with a self fulfilling prophecy, then Luke doesnt seem like such an ass, as he would blame himself for pulling his lightsaber which ensured Kylo's fall rather than just 'i sensed darkness in him so i pulled my lightsaber'. I did also feel they were teasing the audience with Rey's family search, then slapped them in the face with the 'they were nobody' card...while it was most likely the better call, it did feel like bait for MOST of the film... and i felt killing Snoke without knowing anything about his backstory was a mistake That being said it did have some STELLAR moments, my personal favourite was Kylo / Rey back to back fighting the red dudes...and the hyperspace kamikaze was stunning, especially with no sound at all and the luke facing down Kylo was a good scene
Spoiler I didn't mind the humour too much, I do kind of agree about the whole casino/codebreaker stuff, felt a bit like filler compared to other bits. I heard a comment about the film before I saw it "There's a fantastic 1h 30min film stuck in a 2h 30min film". And whilst I don't think there was an hour of rubbish, bits definitely felt weaker. I liked the parent reveal, not everything has to be connected and special, Snoke seemed interesting so would have been cool to know more about the character but mystery avoids a bad back story I guess? I didn't mind Luke's general idea, but felt it was just pushed a little too far (with his general mood etc)
To me the problems with The Last Jedi run much deeper than the surface. They've taken a franchise was built on the structure of Joseph Campbell's Monomyth to create a timeless, pseudo-mythological story and they've replaced that structure with ad hoc, subverted expectations and self-referential postmodern irony. Spoiler "Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to." "This isn't going to go the way you think" "Who are you?" "I'm no one" The film was a commentary on itself. There's a little bit of Deadpool in Star Wars now, and it's all gone a little Spaceballs.
It's JJ Abrams, even Michael Bay vets scripts more carefully than JJ Abrams, who clearly graduated from the same school of film making as M.Night Shyamatwist.
I actually think JJ did a great job with EpVII. It played to his strengths; He's good at setting stages, not so much at finishing stories, but he certainly captured some of the magic of the original trilogy in TFA. The responsibility for story cohesion and continuity falls squarely on the shoulders of Kathleen Kennedy. She could have insisted that her filmmakers stick to a pre-planned skeleton, but instead is allowing the saga to grow organically at the whims of the writer/directors. JJ only pitched the story for Ep IX a few days ago.
I enjoyed watching TLJ but tbh it has some issues. Spoiler Imo they ruined Luke's character. The whole point of Luke was his goodness and purity. It was because of Luke's ability to see the good in Vader that they were able to defeat the emperor. Now he instantly pulls a lightsaber on a sleeping young Kylo because he glimpses a possibility that he might turn bad? Even if it was Snoke's projections it shouldn't have been possible to manipulate Luke so easily by that point, and the original Luke wouldn't have reacted like that anyway. The way everything happened was very contrived to get Kylo to turn bad in a way that wouldn't be his own fault. They're basically saying that the premise for this entire trilogy was a misunderstanding between Luke and Kylo, with Luke being out of character. It's dumb. The Fin/Rose and Poe/Holdo storylines were boring and pointless, and seemed to have been written just to give them some screentime rather than add something to the story. The time could've been used to provide more exposition on Snoke instead of having him be a token expendable bad guy like Phasma. Rey's identity being a red herring was another waste of potential. The new force powers didn't bother me tbh, but the hyperspace collision did. Why didn't they just do that to destroy the two deathstars and starkiller base? Just hyperspace into the reactor. I enjoyed the movie while watching it but the more I think about what happened the less fondly I remember it.
Spoiler I would say that given Luke's impulsive behavior in ESB where he ignores Yoda and ultimately gets a good kicking means that his moment of weekness with Ben is totally in character. This time he has learn't to control that impulsive behavior better and hence doesn't chop him in half!
Spoiler I was going to make that same point. Luke hadn't trained in the way that Jedi before him had trained; he hadn't been training since early childhood in a Jedi academy and he wouldn't have developed the mental discipline that Jedi like Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon would have had. He had what? A few hours with Obi-Wan and a few weeks - a month or two at most - with Yoda. It doesn't diminish what he achieved, or his strong connection with the Force, but compared to the training at the height of the Jedi order, Luke had bugger all training. I'd say it's totally within his character that he'd struggle against the dark side even after all that time.
I agree it's badly written, but not that it's out of character. Spoiler In the first movie Luke's reaction to Obi Wan's death is throw a rage fit and start gunning down Storm Troopers until Obi Wan's spirit orders him to run. Then Luke spends almost the entirety of RotJ grappling with his connection to the dark side of the force, one that is literally in his blood. He almost falls to it too, first attempting to kill the Emperor and then beating Vader (his own father) into submission in a rage powered frenzy. Ultimately it's not Luke's lack of temptation that makes him such a heroic character but his ability to face his demons and reject them. It's entirely within character that when confronted with visions of death and destruction he would react. Of course the way the movie handles it is terrible, I don't buy Luke Skywalker immediattely moving to kill his own nephew over a vision of the future either. Send him back to his parents, or embark on a quest to prevent it (that ultimately causes it for irony and predicatbility points), or even trying to protect Ren until arriving at the conclusion that no, the kid really does have to die. But then the writing in this and the The Force Awakens is terrible.
JJ Abrams shouldn't have anything more than a consulting role. There are some things he does well, but story is not one of them. Someone needs to tell him where to get off when it comes up with his stories. Like Kasdan did back in 'the day'.
By remaking episode 4. So Disney are just doing whatever the hell they want with the franchise? Lucas had all 9 films sketched out, but went with the middle 3 originally, than returned with the prequels. Are these new ones not following the storyline he initially set out?
Nope, because Lucas is also a terrible writer and Star Wars succeeded because so many other people intervened. If I had to pick one of the many (many many) post Return of the Jedi stories from the Expanded Universe I would probably go for the Thrawn Trilogy of books to make into movies, since they're good stories. The trouble is they star the original characters mostly and time has put pay to that.
The only scene I enjoyed was Rei / Kilo back to back fight against the Imperial Guards, however, one single excellent fight cannot salvage this betrayal of a movie! They trashed everything J.J had set up, they went for a cheap story with a lot of FX and big explosions. This was lackluster and underwhelming, at best, it was aimed at casual movie goers and not at fans. Anyone who want to see the real Star Wars, read the Thrawn trilogy, SW: The Crimson Empire, SW: Legacy, SW: Darth Vader or SW: Knights of the Old Republic.
