It's fine to dislike it for not matching your vision of Star Wars. I disagree that it actively wants to piss on the source material, but I'm not a massive Star Wars fan, and I can see how characters like Luke would develop the way they did over 30 years. But from the perspective of a movie fan, it did an awful lot of things very well, and the plot wasnt nearly as bad as people have claimed it is.

EDIT: For the record I'd probably give the movie a 7/10. I dont think it's perfect, just that it gets way too much stick.

 

That's not the only reason why the casino sequence was bad. It was also bad because it sets up a time bomb--they have to go get the codebreaker and get onto the Supremacy before X hours pass because that's how much fuel the Raddus has left. And thus begins the slowest chase in the history of movies. But the other thing is that it forces the audience to think that Rey got all of 2 days of "training" from Luke, which only highlights the fact that she's stupidly powerful to arbitrarily match Kylo. Even Anakin Skywalker, the Jedi Jesus, actually had to train.

We all bemoan bad indy fics for launching Harry into OP-land in the course of one summer but bringing it up with Rey is nitpicking, apparently.

Oh please. Go look at the TLJ thread. People pretty much agreed that the film looks fantastic (because it does). That alone does not a good film make. Critics were in a significant proportion riding the "toxic misogynist fans" train and I'm absolutely certain that at least as many (proportionally) gave TLJ 95% in a knee-jerk fashion as there were knee-jerk 0% from people who loathed the film.

That's fine. I actually agree with you that there weren't many possible ways to go with Luke, given that he fucked off when he probably knew the First Order was about to fuck shit up. That's more of a problem with TFA than TLJ imo. Jajabrams just really, deeply, fundamentally, horrendously fucked up with basic worldbuilding.

On one hand, you are absolutely right that Palpatine wasn't much more fleshed out in the OT. On the other, that doesn't mean that you can't try to do better. The difference of context (the OT had no EU behind it) is precisely why people expected something. The sequel trilogy had 40 years of history of SW before it ever hit the theaters and completely disregarding it, to the point of remaking ANH with an identical worldstate as ANH is what makes all of these things, including Snoke's unceremonious exit, fucking retarded, and I don't give Rian points for doubling down on the retarded shit Jajabrams did in Ep 7.

Poe's development, fine. The way it was facilitated, retarded. The FO is so close behind the Raddus they can litreally fucking see it. They're not gonna see transport ships departing from the Raddus? Holdo was an idiot. Also, the Resistance ain't exactly the Grand Army of the Republic. How has Poe (apparently being Jon Snow'd by Leia to lead one day) never met this allegedly legendary Resistance commander in an organization of a few hundred people? How is she enough of a stranger to him that he's prone to think she's a traitor? Rian being retarded again.

From the moment we meet her in the sequels: she turns out to be a great pilot, she just knows how to deal with the Falcon's systems, she discovers the Force mind trick in 30 seconds, she beats Kylo the first time she ever holds a lightsaber, she beats Luke when they have their little spat, she takes on the Red Guards with Kylo, she gets a triple kill on Crait, she saves the Resistance by performing a feat basically equal to what Luke spent ESB learning to do.

The problem isn't with her being extremely competent. Protagonists being competent is what draws us to the protagonist. The problem is that, what draws us, is that the protagonist overcomes challenges because they are competent. Rey has no challenges and the explanations (staff skills translate into lightsaber sills) are on the same level of nitpicky that defenders of TLJ say the complaints about the casino are.

Kylo is one of the few good things about the new movies. One can say he's a whiny bitch, which he is, but he's also interesting to watch.

But it sucks as the continuation of the sequel trilogy.

For you these are nitpicks, for someone else these are glaring, obvious, big problems. It's fine to ignore them if you liked the movie, but at least you admit you ignore them because you liked the movie overall. Ignoring those flaws isn't eliminating them.

 

I just want it noted that Luke Skywalker stood before a fully realized Darth Vader who'd spent his career slaughtering people, defending slavery, murdering children, overthrowing the Republic, killing Luke's teacher, cutting off his hand, kidnapping/selling his best friend, and participating in the destruction of Alderaan. Luke looked at that man and said, "You are redeemable, it's not too late."

In TLJ, Luke looked at his teenage nephew he had a bad dream about and decided he needed to murder him in his sleep.

 

Say what you will about Episode I, but the podracing was awesome and that alone made me look fondly on the movie.

 

Yup. Agreed. The casino sequence made a lot of problems with the movie, the time bomb being one as you mentioned, along with the Rey timeframe with Luke. I dont mind Rey getting powerups, because I feel the training sections are generally the weakest areas of most films, but leaving it ambiguous as to how much time passed would have made her being Kylo Ren's equal a lot more believable and a lot better. I also blame the fact that they show the Resistance evacuating their planet and having essentially no breaks for this, as it too removes the plausibility of Rey being so powerful.

Looking fantastic isn't the only thing I was on about, and it was hyperbolic of me to claim nobody cared about them. But things like the performances, the editing, the sound design, ext are all top notch.

They are trying to do better, just not with Snoke. They're trying to do better with Kylo, and they are. Snoke was just a setup piece, but this is also a TFA thing. I dont think it's worthy of crediting Rian for this, but I also dont think it massively takes away from the movie either.

Yeah, those are legitimate complaints about the plot that I share. Again, I feel Holdo was meant to be AA before rewrites, but having Leia do everything Holdo did would have been better for the film in my opinion, leaving Poe's mistakes even more glaring when he tries to take over. But alas, not happening.

Several of those are TFA not TLJ, and in TLJ she faces more challenges than she did in TFA. She is literally on her knees before Snoke, powerless and basically being tossed around by Snoke and is saved by Kylo Ren killing him and Snoke being too arrogant to predict it. In the following sequence she is also struggling in a 1 on 1 with one of the Emperor's Guard, while Kylo successfully 1v3s.

Agree to disagree on this one. I feel it has taken the story further and look forward to Ep9.

They are problems. But they dont detract enough for the reputation TLJ has amassed, in my personal opinion. The good outweighs the bad. I'd give it a 7/10 personally, lower than Empire (9) and ANH (8) but no less than Return and certainly above the prequels and TFA.

 

To be fair, I'm willing to wait until Episode IX comes out to judge the whole "Rey is Mary Sue" thing. Her past will most likely be revealed then, and I'm pretty sure she won't actually end up being a daughter of some randoms.

 

What? You don't need to know a character's backstory to judge MarySueness.

 

Okay, I might've worded that differently.
What I meant is -- people (including me) have a problem with her being overpowered when she's apparently a random girl without any training in the Force, saber combat, etc. Well, at least from my point of view, I can see myself forgiving some of that if she turns out not to be a random girl without training.

 

Re: Luke beating/holding his own against Vader, I think ESB makes clear that that fight was Vader holding back.

And in The Return of the Jedi we see even then Vader has doubts. I stand by the stance that if Vader had wanted to kill Luke, Luke would be dead.

But even -if- this is not true and Luke somehow manages to get to this level of power within only a few years, that is still better than two days. Is Luke a Gary Stu? I think he treads that line but never crossed that. He makes enough mistakes and faces enough challenges to avoid that.

The ultimate Issur with the new movies is not that they are bad movies on their own. They are decentl sci-fi movies. They just suck as Star Wars.

They ignore the rules of the universe. It’s like if in Harry Potter they suddenly revealed that muggles possess magical resistance or something or that magic is actually an advanced form of science

 

What, Rey is Jason Bourne, or pretending to be a random scavenger? Do you really think that would fix the problem?

Spoiler

 

I'm surprised at the title, if nothing else. Assuming Han and Leia got divorced, Leia is the last Skywalker alive. Ben is a Solo. Is this a hint that Rey is a Skywalker?

 

Obviously Luke is going to rule the Galaxy as a Force Ghost.

 

Well fuck them, they're never happy with anything ever.

 

Criticizing something doesn't (always) mean you hate it. Those fans mostly loved the shit out Rogue One.

And I always appreciate the sentiment of shitting on people who buy the merch, books and comics outside just consuming mainline movies. SW wouldn't have been worth 4bln in 2012 without those hardcore fans.

 

This trilogy is just confusing as fuck on a conceptual level.

First the studio give the opener to a generic sci-fi director who ends up making a competent, if by the books, opener.
The major criticism is that "it's too committee."
Fine
Then the studio just hands the keys to the fucking kingdom over to "some guy" who shits all over all the plot hooks set up in the first film whilst at the same time not advancing the plot at all.
People outright despise the movie, for a whole lot of sensible reasons.
Fine
Then the studio just decides to go back to the original director who people eventually turned on?
Did they just completely run out of ideas? Why did Rian Johnson seem to have no oversight whatsoever except when it came to adding cringey quips in every scene? Do they seriously believe Abram's is capable of writing a satisfying conclusion to this clusterfuck of a trilogy in spite of the fact he's never once written anything good let alone competent? Are there literally no other good screenwriters available?

I don't see how this movie could be anything other than an awful end to a messy trilogy.

 

My hope is we get the real Star Wars: Episode VII eight or nine years from now, and we can chalk all this up to some shitty mass delusion brought about by [conspiracy of your choice.] And maybe this time, the trilogy won't be traaaaaaaaaaaash.

 

The general direction that the sequel trilogy has taken is so disappointing. Say what you will about the prequels and the midichlorians, but they established a large playground to play in. Clone Wars and Rebels show that there are interesting stories to tell in that playground. I really wish the sequel trilogy had found a good story to tell.

Is it even possible to tell any kind of story in the 2 hours (or whatever runtime) that they have for IX?

 

I disagree entirely. It is precisely that optimism and faith (dare I say that youthful naivety) that make it so believable that he would be so deeply brought down by the confrontation of his own failure (Ben) and complicity in the resurgence of the Dark Side.

That he would cut himself off completely might seem extreme, but the idea that he felt he was doing more harm than good is entirely believable.
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