Star Wars: The Last Jedi discussion thread(Warning: Spoilers!) (1 Viewer)

[Greg.K]

Oh Chewie, porgs are friends not food.

 

[Simon Massey]

I suspected Rey’s parentage would be no one of consequence and with that reveal and the last scene felt very much like the film was trying to reclaim the Force from the Skywalker lineage and given that this sequel trilogy is supposed to wrap up the Skywalker saga it makes sense especially since Leia would have closed out the last film had Carrie Fisher been alive.

I think we will see a bit of a time jump for IX with the Resistance built back up ready to take on the First Order and probably Leia will have died in the opening crawl and Poe will have taken over as leader.

 

[Greg.K]

Decided to go at the last minute tonight. Some stuff I enjoyed, some I really didn't care for, but overall I think it's a solid entry in the saga. There were definitely a few surprising moments.

Mark Hamill definitely elevated the movie for me. Loved every bit of his performance as Luke and I feel that they made his self-exile more believable and sympathetic than TFA did.

The casino planet and the codebreaker subplot as others have mentioned was pretty much worthless and ended up not even mattering much in the end when they are betrayed. I wish they'd done something different there.

Carrie Fisher also added some serious gravitas and I loved her scenes too. And I'm REALLY glad she and Hamill got to have a scene together.

But wow, killing off Luke and leaving only Leia of the original leads left - episode IX is going to be suffering for that. I worry about how Abrams is going to handle it.

I'm sure Luke will be there in force ghost form but the stakes for the now decimated rebellion are higher than ever with basically all that's left crammed onto the Falcon, and I'm sure the original intent was for Fisher to have a pretty prominent role.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

My theory after TFA was that in 8, Luke would die fighting Kylo, and then in 9, Leia would be the one to put an end to him. After seeing the movie tonight, I wonder if something like that had indeed been in the cards.

 

[Carabimero]

I thought when Leia got blasted out into space that was the end of her. Kinda wish it had been, given her real-world passing. I thought Laura Dern was the weakest part of the movie. The only thing I didn't like about the entire movie was her character.

New John Williams STAR WARS score in my mailbox tomorrow! That doesn't happen every day

 

[Jake Lipson]

So Snoke is dead and we get zero details on his backstory? Weird!

That didn't bother me at all, really. Neither did the non-reveal that Rey's parents were no one special. I'm not going to deny that I spent some time over the last couple of years theorizing on who these characters might be, but I was never obsessed with it. Of course, seeing Han and Leia again was fantastic, but it always would have been fantastic to see them. What I thought was the biggest achievement of The Force Awakens was the new characters being so well-introduced, and how compelling they were, and how much they felt like a real and vital part of the Star Wars galaxy, in a way that the prequel characters didn't, due largely to Lucas' inept writing of those films. Coming into this film, I was more interested in seeing what would happen next to the characters than getting answers to questions off a checklist.

I wanted to see Rey interact with Luke. I got that.

I wanted to see what would happen next for Kylo Ren/Ben and how he would process killing his dad. I got that.

I wanted to see more of Poe and Finn and Leia and the others. I got that.

The backstories of the characters didn't seem to be as important as watching their progression forward -- and Ben killing Snoke and taking over leadership of the First Order is a massive event for the character that pivots him in a new direction. I liked that a lot, and I think the value of it overshadows the lack of information on Snoke's origins.

Honestly, we got three movies about Darth Vader's origins, and they sucked, and served to make him less imposing in the original trilogy, which wouldn't be a problem if his arc had been interesting, but it wasn't. Maybe Snoke is better off being what he is, and it doesn't matter where he came from. If it matters to some people, I'm sure they''ll put out a book or comic or some such other thing that can expand upon it.

I was really impressed with all the character work in this film. The action was great, the movie was really funny and I really didn't know how it was going to end up, which was great. I'll need a few more viewings for my permanent opinion to settle in, but I really liked it. I appreciate how new it felt and that they were really trying to do something different that still made total sense within this world.

That being said, the handoff to Leia as the major "old guard character" for Episode IX was pretty explicit, and I do not envy J.J. Abrams the job of figuring out how to end this without any of the iconic original trilogy characters in play next time. I feel like this confirms my earlier theory that Colin Treverrow probably had a pitch that was extremely reliant on Leia, and couldn't figure out how to rework it into something that would work in her absence. It will still be very hard for Abrams, but at least he's already made one Star Wars film which does not hugely rely on Leia to drive it. Lucasfilm is very fortunate that the first two films of this trilogy have done such an outstanding job creating and developing new characters that the fans have invested in, since it's really all on them now.

Also: when R2-D2 played back Leia's message from the first film, my audience lost their minds. It got a bigger reaction than anything else in the movie. That would have been effective anyway, even if Carrie hadn't died, but with her loss, it made it even more emotional seeing that.

 

[mattCR]

I was waiting for when Luke met Leia for it to turn out she -had- died in space, and what she was her post-life Jedi self.

 

[Jake Lipson]

The thing is that Carrie's role was 100% complete before her death. They said ahead of time that they hadn't changed it. So, I was never really expecting her to die because Johnson wrote it assuming that she would be part of Episode IX, which she would have been. Keeping the current film as-is, Johnson got to maintain his original vision and simply punted to Treverrow-turned-Abrams to figure out what to do next.

 

[Carabimero]

Han Solo: Where'd you get [Luke's lightsaber]?
Maz: A good question for another time.

Guess that other time is never coming. If so, it's just another example of how contrived THE FORCE AWAKENS is. Abrams needed Rey to find the lightsaber and couldn't come up with something plausible enough to explain. I was naive enough to think THE LAST JEDI was going to answer the question. But I don't blame Johnson. I blame Abrams. Johnson did his best to jettison all the irrational, superficial baggage from TFA.

So why was the lightsaber calling to Rey in TFA? Just seemed like a good idea at the time, I guess.

Geez. Sure wish Abrams wasn't directing 9.

 

[Greg.K]

One of my favorite moments was when Luke finally took the lightsaber from Rey (we've been waiting 2 years for it!), he just chucked it off the cliff.

 

[Carabimero]

One of my favorite moments was when Luke finally took the lightsaber from Rey (we've been waiting 2 year for it!), he just chucked it off the cliff.

This is exactly what I liked about THE LAST JEDI. It had humor, yes. But IMHO it took all of Abram's contrived baggage from TFA and literally threw it over a cliff. For example, Johnson marginalized Maz, killed the impotent Phasma, and called Kylo Ren's mask exactly what it was: stupid. I could go on and on. Johnson could have been really hamstrung by all the derivative dumbness in TFA. Yet brilliantly he either threw it over a cliff, minimized it or got rid of it altogether. And I'm so glad. THE LAST JEDI is a movie that will stand up to repeated viewings without me asking why characters are doing jaw droppingly dumb things to service a contrived plot.

THE LAST JEDI was only the middle part but Johnson gave it the feel of an ending for me: Snoke gone, Luke gone, hope in youth, etc. I can see why Kennedy gave Johnson the keys to the car, so to speak.

"Expertly crafted is this movie," as Yoda might say. To see Frank Oz's Yoda together with Luke again brought tears to my eyes, I'm not embarrassed to admit.

 

[Tino]

This is exactly what I liked about THE LAST JEDI. It had humor, yes. But IMHO it took all of Abram's contrived baggage from TFA and literally threw it over a cliff. For example, Johnson marginalized Maz, killed the impotent Phasma, and called Kylo Ren's mask exactly what it was: stupid. I could go on and on. Johnson could have been really hamstrung by all the derivative dumbness in TFA. Yet brilliantly he either threw it over a cliff, minimized it or got rid of it altogether. And I'm so glad. THE LAST JEDI is a movie that will stand up to repeated viewings without me asking why characters are doing jaw droppingly dumb things to service a contrived plot.

THE LAST JEDI was only the middle part but Johnson gave it the feel of an ending for me: Snoke gone, Luke gone, hope in youth, etc. I can see why Kennedy gave Johnson the keys to the car, so to speak.

"Expertly crafted was this movie," as Yoda might say. To see Frank Oz's Yoda together with Luke again brought tears to my eyes, I'm not embarrassed to admit.

So......I guess you didn’t really like The Force Awakens??

 

[Tino]

I was shocked to see Yoda in that scene. He looked.....weird. Not that he’s a puppet again. He looked strangely not like Yoda. Kinda squat, and dare I say...fat?? Didn’t know Force ghosts could overeat.

 

[Carabimero]

So......I guess you didn’t really like The Force Awakens??

That's the funny thing. There's parts of TFA I really like. But there's parts where characters do things that make no sense. I liked TFA a lot more before seeing TLJ, which really exposed how contrived TFA is, in my opinion.

One example: The plot with Luke's lightsaber is apparently over now, as it was broken in half. So maybe someone can explain to me why the lightsaber was calling to Rey in TFA (forget how convenient it was that Maz had it, with no explanation). I think that's a fairly important question, especially if Rey's parents are nobodies. The way Maz says it--about it being Luke's father's, then Luke's, now it's calling to Rey...that implied something. But apparently, not. Just convenient for the contrived spell of TFA at the time. The point is, it made a promise that didn't go anywhere. And there are many, many other examples I could give from TFA after seeing TLJ. When I put both movies together as two parts of the same story, all the many contrivances (and a few broken promises) in TFA become even more exposed, which made me like TFA much less as of today.

I was shocked to see Yoda in that scene. He looked.....weird. Not that he’s a puppet again. He looked strangely not like Yoda. Kinda squat, and dare I say...fat?? Didn’t know Force ghosts could overeat.

I thought the closeups of Yoda's face looked great. But I agree. The long shots looked funky.

 

[Tino]

I can’t argue those points C. Perhaps they will be addressed in the next film. But the blame should be on the three writers, not just JJ.

Seeing it again in a few hours. And Sunday morning. It’s all Star Wars all weekend for me.

 

[Carabimero]

But the blame should be on the three writers, not just JJ.

Fair enough, except it's hard to give Abrams the benefit of the doubt, since the same contrived strains appear in virtually all his movies. IMO it just shows that he's not a very rational thinker--he's mostly about flash designed to hypnotize audiences. And he does it very, very well. Usually it's only after I get home with an Abrams Blu-ray that I start to see all the contrived cracks.

 

[Francois Caron]

Oh Chewie, porgs are friends not food.

It's like when you name a chicken! You can't eat it anymore!

I was bored by this movie. I've been watching the Star Wars movies ever since I watched the first one some 40 years ago, and I've yet to see the franchise recently achieve a sense of maturity beyond The Empire Strikes Back.

To me, the Last Jedi was a mish mash of old story formulas from the previous Star Wars movies all crammed into two and a half hours. Alien bar/casino scene: check. Prison break: check. Goodie/baddie vessel chase down a trench/shaft/cave: check. Big weapons: check. Conflict within you: check. Really bad family members: check. Settling old scores: check. Sloppy sub-par Jedi training: check. Ghostly apparitions: check. Overly cute creatures you want to smash into little pieces: check (I blame the Ewoks).

And just how many side stories can you cram into a single movie? It was thinking "is it over yet" by the time they've reached the planet! Whaddayamean there's still more? My legs are cramping up in this uncomfortable theatre seat! Get on with it!

Occasionally, there were glimpses of the old Star Wars franchise on the screen, but most of the movie consisted of very mediocre and fragmented storylines dressed up in top-of-the-line special effects. Essentially, lipstick on a pig. It's a good thing the ticket was free.

I don't think I was the only one who was getting fed up with this very long movie. After the house lights came back up, there was no cheering, no "whoop whoops", all I saw were a lot of exhausted theatre patrons who looked like they ran a mini marathon and just wanted to go home.

The Last Jedi was seriously underwhelming.

 

[Mikael Soderholm]

Oh Chewie, porgs are friends not food.

Also interesting to note he flies the Milleium Falcon, that once did the Kessel run in 16 parsecs or whatever, but apparently doesn't even have a decent stove, so he is cooking his meal on an open fire outside.

 

[TravisR]

Also to be brutally honest...

Spoiler

I think they should have ended Carrie Fisher where she was originally thought to have died. It was a perfect and emotionally fitting out (better than another space Jesus allegory to be sure). I don't think she contributed anything essential to the plot after that. And obviously it would have solved a lot of problems.

The good thing is that this movie didn't end on a cliffhanger so they can pick up some time later and say Leia died in that time.

 

[TravisR]

I was shocked to see Yoda in that scene. He looked.....weird. Not that he’s a puppet again. He looked strangely not like Yoda. Kinda squat, and dare I say...fat?? Didn’t know Force ghosts could overeat.

If Force ghosts can sit down for some reason (are their ghost legs tired?), I guess they could eat for some reason too.