Spoiler

The bomber scene was just pure "Why mobility is important when the fight is in three dimensions." Either come equipped with massive shields à la Star Destroyers or GTFO. (And even then, the amount of times we see the heroes in a tiny X-wing or something blow up something huge is rather high.) That victory was completely Pyrrhic, and the space chase has effectively put the resistance down to about 0 until someone else comes and helps. (Which is probably going to happen about 5 minutes into ep IX.)

 

It's just such a safe movie. I mean, it was enjoyable and had a few great moments. (That one random moment of absolute silence was great) but honestly? Just kinda did painting by number. A pretty painting, yes, but lifeless and one we've seen time and time again.

 

Or how about how when the support ships ran out of fuel, they seemed to loose momentum and started tumbling backwards. That’s not how space works. You could argue that they stopped accelerating, which should have been what was done, but they wouldn’t randomly start spinning. The science in the movie was bad. That’s about all of it.

 

Spoiler

Well...he didn't, to be fair. He considered it for a moment, and was appalled and ashamed that he'd done so. It was just a moment too long - unless of course you assume Kylo was telling a more truthful version of the story, which seems unlikely. I can buy Luke, scared and out of his depth, having a moment of mental weakness, although I can understand it being divisive.

Anyway. On the whole, I'm with Erandil. I really enjoyed it. At the moment, fresh from seeing it and still buzzing, and subject to a long overdue rewatch of the series, I'd tentatively put it at top three, although not best of the franchise level. I thought the whole film looked stunning, the cast were good to great, some fantastic set pieces and some genuinely surprising plot twists and turns. It's also, I'd say, the funniest film in the series, and frankly I'd recommend a ticket solely to see Domhnall Gleeson chewing all the scenery. It certainly has its flaws, but overall, really good.

Spoiler

Good bits:
- I laughed long and hard at Poe trolling Hux at the start, as did a good chunk of the audience. As above, I think Hux/Gleeson is an underrated element of the new films, gloriously OTT and scene-stealing, and he was even more so this time round.
- Luke. Just all round. There were a few moments where there were definitely some Joker inflections creeping into his dialogue, which actually really worked given the mystery around what he's been doing between films, and what happened with Kylo Ren, but even that aside, I really bought into this new, tragically flawed version of my old hero. And then he 'appeared' on Crait to kick some ass, and I was just giddy with excitement. The fact that he wasn't actually there made it even better, because holy shit. I was genuinely shocked when he faded away at the end, partly because of the actual death, but also because that means that in the next film, none of the original trio are going to be around.
- Kylo Ren taking a couple of steps up the ladder of villainy, even as the film embraces the popular view of him as a bit of a whiny brat (which wasn't exactly underplayed in the Force Awakens, but they really played it up here, especially in his scenes with Snoke). Again, I was surprised by his complete embrace of the Dark Side, and the Rule of Two.
- Related to the above, I was rolling my eyes a little at all the callbacks and plot points from Empire and Return of the Jedi, but then it became apparent that Johnson was playing with expectations really rather well, and from then on I was completely on board with the whole thing.
- The fight between Rey, Kylo and Snoke's bodyguards.
- I know I mentioned it earlier, but honestly, Luke striding out to face down an entire army all by himself (well...) really deserves its own spot.
- Benicio del Toro's slicer (DJ, I think he's been called behind the scenes; I didn't hear him get named in the film itself) was really good fun, quirky and charismatic.
- The reiteration that the mystical energy that binds all of life across the galaxy, and can be manipulated by certain individuals to incredible affect, is actually really fucking weird, and hard to pin down in any meaningful way. As much as Rey's trip to the darker side of the island was a rehash of the cave in Empire, it was really unsettling and effective. Good stuff all round.

Eh:

- Yoda. I'd like to put him the good section, and if his dialogue had been clearer, I would have done. That lightning strike though.
- Rey. Not because of her sudden strength, or alleged Mary Sue-ness, but because either her dialogue was clunkier, or Ridley just couldn't sell it as well as others. To be fair to her, she wasn't helped by a lot of her dialogue in the middle section being very reminiscent of Luke in Return of the Jedi, which was irritating me a little, but there were a few points here and there where I began to understand why some people thought she was a bit wooden in The Force Awakens. Then again, there were other scenes that she sold really well, like the afore-mentioned Dark Side trip, or the visions she had with Kylo, which worked surprisingly well.
- Time scale was all over the place. From the Resistance being ambushed to them landing on Crait was, explicitly, a sixteen hour period, meaning that Finn and Rose managed to get to another planet entirely, have their own adventure, then get back, in less than sixteen hours, which is bullshit. By extension, starting with the Resistance fleeing their base, then cutting to Rey and Luke without any clear skip back in time suggests that the two strands were happening in sequence, but Rey clearly didn't spend sixteen hours training with Luke! Obviously, her strand started prior to Finn and Poe's, before catching up, but that could have been depicted more smoothly.
- Snoke. I was much more interested in him this time round, and his sudden death was a real shock, but that does leave him a little undercooked, assuming he's gone for good. There just doesn't seem to be much point to him. Still, some nice moments of black comedy from his bisected body.
- Leia's 'death' - on the one hand, OMG she's using the Force to fly through space! On the other hand...really? She's using the Force, after precisely fuck all suggestion that she's used it more than passively, to fly through space and not die? That's some bullshit.

 

Well, overall, I liked it a lot. But there were quite a few bits with which I was hella disappointed:

Spoiler

Snoke: The fact that he gets killed off without any explanation as to who he was, how he came to be so powerful, or what his motivations were for wanting the Republic and Luke wiped out, was such a letdown. Also... this leaves Ben as the big bad for the next movie, and Ben is wholly unthreatening.

Rey becoming the new "Last Jedi": They set it up perfectly for Rey to become a balanced grey force user with no ties to the Jedi or the Sith, but then threw it all away with Luke's dumb line in his exchange with Ben.

Rey's heritage: Ugh. Boring.

 

Spoiler

I almost enjoyed it, but I don't feel that it was a good Star Wars movie. I feel like it hit the notes it had to hit, because it's the second movie in a trilogy, but that even in a bridging movie it quite falls flat. The acting was quite good almost all around, and the costuming and music were great. The ship design was... I dunno. If the First Order are supposed to be a fuckabout Imperial Remnant that got lucky, where are they getting all this shiny shit? They're not a Galactic Empire and don't have the resources to be field ships legitimately bigger than Imperial Star Destroyers. I thought they were supposed to be like a lean, angry, ready for revenge with the master blitzkrieg warplan Imperial Nazis in SPACE. Instead we get Hux being Ren's chewtoy, dumb space battles all around, a shitty mid-movie casino plot that helps pad the run time but does quite a bit of "not a whole lot" for character development, and Luke's character assassination.


Oh. I liked Rey's scenes. I felt they were fairly Star Wars-y, even though it was a conventional, don't rock the boat sort of fashion. That throne room fight though was well done.

I'm not saying I'm not a Star Wars fan anymore or that I hated The Last Jedi. I'm just saying that the payoff for all this in Episode IX better be fuck loads of awesome and Star Wars and win.

 

I feel like the people making these movies don’t know Star Wars.

They know the movies, but all the worldbuilding that has been done outside the movies is completely ignored. It’s not a matter of the whole being exactly like Legends in terms of character. Rather it’s the rules of the world.

It’s like if movie Harry Potter had removed Wands or had hogwarts not be a boarding school.

It throws me for a loop when I see things that should be one way but are not... idk

 

I knew I could count on the ability of (most of) you joyless twats to hate everything.

 

It’s more about who the target audience is. IMDB rating is 8.3 right now? I think the movie will be well received and the money and ratings will solidify to the makers that they did a good job.

It’s a popularity contest, not whether it was a technically good movie or not.

 

Spoiler

Had a late night showing, so I finished watching it not too long ago. There's a lot that can be said for what the film did or didn't get right on the object-level between Luke's characterization, the mystery continuing to surround Snoke, and so forth. That said, more so than playing with expectations vis-a-vis Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi or the like, I think the thematic undertones of the film were fairly concrete. What the film was about was failure. The film is replete with it, from beginning to end.

The very first scene starts with a failure on the part of both the Resistance and the First Order: we see Hux's grand plan and ambition to take down the Resistance for good go up in smoke with a few well-placed shots by Poe, and he receives a personal chewing out by Snoke for it later. We see that Poe's ambition to take down a First Order Dreadnought, while a success, is a failure on a deeper level, costing the Resistance precious lives as he's later berated by Leia about it for. Not long after, we cut to a scene between Kylo Ren and Snoke, where Kylo Ren is berated as being a failure in Snoke's eyes, perhaps no longer worthy to be heir apparent to Vader's legacy after all.

Almost the entirety of the scenes between Rey and Luke on Ahch-To emphasize how Luke is a failed Jedi and master, having failed his student and himself utterly in his mistakes with Ben Solo, and we see Rey that, for all her efforts in the Force and the mirror scene, fails to get any closer to any idea to whom her parents were. And in the end, she fails to redeem Kylo Ren after all, despite her hopes and efforts.

We see Kylo Ren continuing to fail on multiple levels, first failing to conquer the inner light in him as he finds himself unable to kill Leia and later fails to conquer his inner darkness when he finds himself unable to return to the light after killing Snoke and fails to win Rey to his side as he hoped, with her literally shutting the door on him at the end.

Snoke himself fails for the same reasons as the Emperor before him did and as Yoda berated Luke for in their scene: he was so focused on the future that he forgot to be mindful of the present, so sure and caught up in is foresight that he didn't see what was before him with Kylo Ren's betrayal at hand, and that cost him his life the same it did the Emperor's.

The entirety of the plan between Finn, Poe, and Rose is a failure from top to bottom: Poe fails to secure the mutiny, Finn and Rose fail to actually disable the tracker, and the entire plot was a moot point given Holdo and Leia's plan from the get go, which itself fails due to the failure by Finn and Rose. And later on, we see that their desperate gambit to take down the cannon on Crait fails, with the cannon going off, Poe giving up on it, and Finn failing in his heroic, suicidal charge at it.

And near the end, we see Kylo Ren fail to take down the Resistance for good despite the Resistance's failure to stop the cannon, so caught up in his hatred for his old master, and the heir apparent to Darth Vader fails to have his vaunted final confrontation with Luke Skywalker, the legend himself, who manages to pull out one last trick out of his hat, and what a trick it was.

And yet, failure is not the end of the journey here, but the beginning; it is in failure that hope and the promise of the new becomes possible. Yoda's scene with Luke is arguably the most important scene in the film in relation to overarching theme of the film, when he emphasizes how failure is the greatest teacher of all, and his burning down of the remnants of the very beginnings of the Jedi Order arguably represents Yoda's acknowledgment of the failure of the Jedi Order of old, and that new beginnings are needed.

This new beginning is naturally Rey; as Luke implies, she's the Last Jedi—but she's also the First of the new, having to start from scratch the same way the first Jedi did. There are no more sacred texts or wizened old masters in abandoned planets for her to seek out—she has to make her own path, to define what it means to feel and harness the Force for herself and quite possibly for the rest of the universe from now and on.

Ironically, this idea of new beginnings born out of the failure of the old is echoed also by the antagonists; as Kylo Ren notes, he wishes to just let the past die and move on, with his own dark version of Yoda's lesson. He wishes to let his past go and urges Rey to do the same with hers, to stop holding on and just forget about her parents, the Jedi, the Resistance, and all that so that they can rule the galaxy together, an offer which Rey refuses to accept.

However, it is Poe that we have the counterpart to that: as Poe notes, they are the spark that will light the fire, a fire born out of the dying embers of the old guard. And as we see at the film's close, it's the next generation that's taken in by that spark, already carrying and spreading that spark to bring forth the new dawn, to serve as the new hope.

 

This film biggest problem, though for fans who spent two years trying to figure out some things and not casual viewers, was probably an empty mystery box left by JJ Abrams. Having one anti-revelation is already annoying, two is probably too much.

 

Spoiler

I'm curious how they'll handle Snoke in future material. Given how he was killed off in this film, I was expecting him to reveal his origins and nature during the throne scene at some point, but I'm surprised that he remains just as mysterious as ever. We'll have to see what they do in the final film, but the current situation with Snoke is kind of awkward in the broader context of everything because unlike the Emperor in episodes I - VI, Snoke so far as just can been... there, with no apparent explanation or reason for how or why.

Also, as a bit of speculation: a lot of folks here have expressed disappointment over Luke's characterization in the film. He's definitely a far cry from the Luke we saw in Legends in general for sure, and even that parting moment of suspicion and shame arguably goes against the grain of the Luke we saw in Return of the Jedi—the most important and powerful thing Luke did there wasn't out-dueling Vader, but throwing away his lightsaber, showing what kind of person he was. Luke's greatest strength in the climax of the Original Trilogy was arguably his compassion and empathy, exceeding even Yoda and Obi-Wan as exemplars of the Jedi ideal when he redeemed Darth Vader, a task Obi-Wan had entirely given up on.

As such, I'd find it difficult to believe that Luke would turn on his student whom was simply strongly tempted by the dark side, but by no indications had yet actually fallen let alone committed the myriad atrocities Darth Vader already had.

That said, what might explain Luke's behavior here perhaps would be Snoke; Snoke claimed to arrange the meeting of minds between Rey and Kylo Ren, and we saw throughout the film that Snoke was clearly a Force user of no small power or reach, and clearly skilled in mental attacks and manipulation. Quite possibly, just as much as Snoke had gotten to Kylo Ren as Luke said, he may have gotten to Luke unbeknownst, to place that same seed of doubt and suspicion, to amp up Luke's own wariness and fears, perhaps in Luke's dreams or nightmares.

The moment Luke raised his lightsaber even in a brief moment of doubt was the same moment he lost Ben Solo entirely. That then would have been Snoke's masterstroke, to ensure that Ben Solo would take Luke's behavior as the final confirmation that he needed to break away and join Snoke for good as Kylo Ren.

Snoke got one over Ben Solo, but he may very well have also gotten one over Luke Skywalker himself.

 

Seeing it in 2 hours. Hopefully the subtitles won't be obnoxiously large. I'd go at 3 am if there was a non-3D showing, in English, without subtitles. Oh well.

 

The introductory scrolling text is the best part of watching Star Wars in cinema for me for that exact reason. No need to read those pesky subtitles.

 

Beware I haven't seen this yet and don't expect much as I considered the first movie absolute dog shit and 2nd better but sort of uninspired and bland. That being said.

It's really difficult to see how JJ Abrams would be responsible. I know some people don't like him because they don't enjoy the direction of the new Star Treks. But all the movies I've seen from him he never delivered such utterly snooze feasts like the first Disney SW movie if he tried. That movie was the laziest and stupidest reset I've ever seen with weak characters and zero atmosphere.

I put all the blame on Lucasfilm's Kathleen Kennedy *and* Disney.

Just look at Lucasfilm's corporate webpage as it tells it all. Whatever Lucas's short comings were as a director the guy had a vision. Does anybody see these corporate people at Lucasfilm to have a good vision of what Star Wars is and should be about? I don't and that's what you'll get.

Even when Lucas disappoints in his last SW trilogy these movies had depth even the bad dialogues couldn't ruin. They had actors and characters which could carry such movies, for the most part. There was something somewhere behind all the blue screen digital effects.

 

Spoiler

Consider this: At the end of ROTJ, when Vader pitched Palpatine off the platform, how much did you know about him? I don't know how old you are, and therefore don't know if you saw Episode VI before the prequels or Clone Wars came out, but in 1983 he was just as big a mystery to most people then as Snoke is now. You got told in Ep. IV that he'd dissolved the senate, you learn that he's Vader's master, and that he wants Luke to join him and take Vader's place. There's a bit more in the novelization, but not much - and that's really about it - which makes Snoke's current level of exposure almost a mirror image, as far as I'm concerned. Only problem is, Palpatine got explained in the prequels... and the prequels to this arc have already been out for a little while.

I'm assuming, seeing this is the way they seem to be going, that we're going to get a backstory in novel form, and I hope it's one of the better authors - the quality of the books so far has been wildly inconsistent, so I hope someone does it justice.

 

Spoiler

I don't mind the lack of backstory to Snoke, I mind that he's almost unceremoniously killed off in the middle of the second film in the trilogy. Timing is everything.

 

I don't know why I expected anything ambitious. After all, this is a Disney movie. Parents are going to take their kids to see it. The film has to be comprehensible by 6 year olds.

Spoiler

As far positives go, there are some cool visuals in the movie. Most of them are there only for the Rule of Cool.

Take the speeders in the final battle. What were those spikes that dragged across the ground? Was that landing gear? Some kind of gyroscope system that allows those things to stay upright? Or was it just an excuse to have a cool shot of red smoke shooting across the salt flats? And call me crazy, but the shots of those speeders looked mighty similar to shots of X-wings over the lake from TFA.

The film is thoroughly unambitious. It's like Rian Johnson wanted to write something a bit out of the box, but Disney shoved him back into the box. Snoke died like a bitch. Luke said that Kylo took some of Luke's students with him--did they become the Knights of Ren? Are we ever going to see them? Snoke's red guards, were those the Knights of Ren? Does it matter?

The only reveal we did get, and the only thing that strayed from the By The Numbers formula--about Rey's parents--was made into a giant Fuck You. Enjoy the tease in TFA, two years of speculation and trolling by the cast themselves, and then what you get is "Rey's parents were entirely inconsequential". Huh?

Star Wars appears to be a tired franchise that's out of ideas and should be retired. Or at least the mainline movies. Are the Death Star and the Trench Run the only two tricks the SW pony can do? Don't tell me you didn't immediately notice it. The mini-DS supergun targeting another rebel base and another twist on the Trench Run to stop it. They tease that Finn might actually sacrifice himself, but no. And hey, it doesn't really matter anyway because even though the DS gun blew up the door and the First Order went inside, the rebels are all okay--well, not all of them, just the ones you give a shit about.

The admiral Holdo character was just a bore. Phasma was unbelievably wasted. They set up this cool as fuck chrome stormtrooper commander, she has blaster-resistant armor, there's some rivalry brewing between her and Finn-and then she dies like a bitch. Tease, tease, tease, fuck you, and no payoff. Hux is the only character outside the core crew I gave a shit about. He's grasping at something really great, but they didn't let him be villanous enough.

The Rey-Kylo connection was good. When he went "join me" I was like "do it, do it, do it, doit, doit, doitdoitdoit--" Naaahh. That would be interesting. Star Wars is literally about Light and Dark, the black-and-white boring dichotomy of Good and Evil. Shades of grey are too ambitious for this franchise.

Soooo, Ben is super Darkseid and killed my students, says Luke. But that's not the whole story, he tried to murder me in my sleep, says Kylo. But no, I actually didn't, says Luke. It was only a fleeting moment of weekness, I just forgot to zap my saber off. I'm the Mentor in this movie. Mentor!Luke doesn't have the mandate to be anything other than the Paragon of All That Is Good. That would be nuance, and character depth. Luke, giving into darkness to prevent Darkness? Nope, sorry. We can't have Luke Skywalker be a flawed, old man with regrets that actually have weight. Think of the children.

Speaking of the Mentor. The Mentor has to die in the movie, right? At least we'll give him a proper send off, he'll shrug off a massive laser bombardment, then he'll do a totally fly Matrix Bend under Kylo's sword, then he'll throw out some Sick Mentor Wisdom, and then Kylo will kill him, completing his transformation into the Vill---

Hoooold your horses. It's a kids' movie. Kylo can't kill Luke. That would be a waste of a character that just had a badass comeback---

Aaaand, he goes out like a candle. Literally gets snuffed out of thin air. So Kylo doesn't even get to kill him, and the Mentor still dies. Not that he was much of a Mentor anyway. How long was Rey on that island? A day? Two days? I mean, like 30 minutes into the film they explicitly set up a Time Bomb--the ship has 18 hours of fuel left. Then they reinforce it. Whatever. Internal logic is for assholes who hate nice things.

Snoke explicitly confirms that Rey got arbitrarily powered up by the Force because Balance. Who needs Jedi training when you can just Mary Sue your way into mastery? Fuck lifting X-wings out of swamps, that's so 80s.

That moment of silence when Holdo used a hyperspace jump to destroy Snoke's ship was a masterstroke. It's too good for this movie, TLJ absolutely doesn't deserve such a great moment.

Force ghost Yoda because fanservice, Leia Force-flies through space? Oh, apparently Benicio Del Toro was in this movie. Also space penguins because we need a cute toy to sell to children.

Fuck outta here.

 

JJ Abrams is responsible because he's the one to write the first film and the one who loves to have his mystery boxes which is why he played up importance of some supposedly big secrets. The question is whether these mysteries had no definitive answer for the beginning or the next writer and director, Rian Johnson, simply decided to go with a different take because he didn't want them to be that big deal.

I suppose the biggest problem is that it appears that the trilogy is written on episode to episode basics instead of having a bigger plan.

Spoiler

There is a small difference between these two. While Palpatine was mysterious character, there was no suggestion that there was more to him than the fact that he was the Emperor. Snoke on the other hand was intentionally played that way. At least outside of the films. Which is why I said it's the problem for hardcore fans instead of casual viewers.

The same goes for Rey's parentage. Nobody expected Luke to be someone important, everybody was asking questions if she was.

 

Spoiler

It helped stabilise them; Finn was having trouble steering his until he was reminded to lower it, at which point it ran much more smoothly. I suspect that they came up with the visual before the justification, but there is an explanation for it.

Spoiler

Yeah, not going to lie, while the fight between her and Finn looked pretty awesome, she's been utterly wasted.

Spoiler

I mean...you're not wrong, but I don't get why The Last Jedi is the film that broke you on that; it's not like shades of grey have ever really been prevalent in the franchise so far (the main films, at least).

(Spoilers for the Battlefront 2 campaign as well as the film, should anyone care)

Spoiler

Personally, I felt the death he got had far more weight than a predictable killed in action scene, but clearly YMMV. As far as the timescale goes, from the film I assumed that Rey travelled to Luke, spent some time training with him, and then the rest of the plot kicked off, but that this had been poorly shown in the film. However, the Battlefront 2 campaign DLC ends with Iden at the battle of Starkiller base, getting hold of the dreadnought schematics that enable the Resistance to blow it up at the start of TLJ; Resistance command gets the plans more or less straight after the battle, and immediately make plans to evacuate, which would suggest that yes, she was only with Luke for a day or two at most. This is obvious bullshit, so I'm going with my first, post-film assumption.