Spoilers Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Grading & Discussion

Thought it was a really bad with a ton of cringey stuff and plotholes, kind of ruined the originals for me in many ways. Would rather just forget about it.

 

Movie was uneven... Had some cool scenes and I really liked parts of it, but overall the story was a mess... Gave it a C

 

In other words, it sounds as if Finn got screwed over. Yep, I saw that coming.

 

Isn't he doing the new planned triology?

Yep the side quest didn't really seem to add too much, it wasn't bad per se.

 

Got to say i just really didnt like this movie. Im not the biggest Star Wars fan around or anything but i really liked the last one, but the story just didnt do anything for me.
And for the first time ever, i felt a movie was too long. Many times im like get to the good parts or get to something interesting.
I mean most movies i watch i feel are over too quick, just like the last Thor movie or the Justice League movie that i wish had more story.
Maybe its cause i just dont care about the characters. Or the direction they are going with the characters.
I dont want to post spoilers in here yet. But movie looked great and all. Just to me missing a great story and characters i care about.

 

I read most of the spoilers before hand. I just back from seeing it. I am not sure if it was a good to read them now or not.

Usually it jumps over the feeling of a movie being better on second viewing because I have a sense of where things are going.Before some of the issues many fans who read the spoilers had problems with I did not. I mostly still feel the same.

My problem is the movie does feel long. Not so much the pace in individual scenes. But the different plot lines feel unconnected. There are long stretches were characters are off camera and wondering when will get back to them. For an extended length not as much advances as I would expected. i would hope the next film will jump a head many years.

I am not at all convinced Rey's past is fully resolved. I understand the point that she is her own person. Choices her own future. But Kylo out of nowhere saying he knows what happened to her parents... Seem usual bad guy trying to manipulate the hero.

Snoke's fate might be brilliant. He was obviously an Emperor wannabe. Giving him a detailed backstory and appearing over multiple films would have been hard not to seem just a Palpatine stand in. Maybe this is better he has served role and is gone. Kylo did something his grandfather never did.

Luke... Conflict on this. As he said no one is ever gone. We saw an old teacher of his return, again. Even if Carrie had not died Luke would have returned. Now it will probably be a bigger part than planned. Yoda showed that Jedi that vanish can still do a hell of a lot more than we ever saw before

 

People who've seen the movie have said

Spoiler

that Kylo only knows the things that he says to Rey because he's read her mind, and that him saying them to her allows/forces her to accept them as the truth.

 

I did see it. He tells Rey this is not her story, you do not matter to anyone. But you can matter to me. He could be telling the truth but he is trying to bring her over to his side. It's very possible he lying to do so. At the very least him caring about is her is an obvious lie. Once Snoke is gone and she helps him dispatch his guards, he turns on her right away.

 

Just got back from it and thought it was very good, I think those saying it's the best since Empire aren't being extreme but, really, at the same time saying such a thing isn't really saying a whole lot.

I think a couple of moments in it were kind of... "cheap" and cheating a bit, using the mysticism of The Force and that we don't "really" know its limits and what it can and cannot do. A couple of the big reveal moments also to me seemed to be a momentary surprise but only to lead nowhere.

The little gerbil things all over the trailers, thankfully, weren't overshadowingly and annoying like they seemed they would be in trailer. At the same time they're clearly there only to sell plush toys (just in time for Christmas!), I much more liked the look and use of crystaline dogs. The visuals on the red-salt planet was also really cool. (I wasn't sure what to make of that from the trailers, to me it looked like some kind of exhaust from the spacecraft but it being the disturbed salt from the ground made it a neat looking effect. The next-generation AT-ATs were also under-used and were just sort of there as a call-back which, thankfully, this movie didn't do too much and probably the lamest bit of it was the "blue milk" thing, (And thank you, PG-13 rated movie, for showing me the plump, round, shapely four tits of a CGI creature. Heaven forbid a PG-13 movie show us a female human's bare breasts (well I guess one movie can in a non sexual context) but we can see four CGI ones. Would it really have been that hard to make them look more like the udders on a cow instead of like actual boobs on a human female?)

There were also a couple of beats that were played to a dramatic crescendo only for it to be cut short.

Kylo Ren was good and more compelling in this rather than the little bitch in he was in Force Awakens.

Mark Hamil does an awesome, awesome job here.

Daisy Ridley also does a very good job but some of her stuff has her sort of in a stationary orbit like Luke in Empire.

The side-quest with Finn and the other chick was kind of a waste of time, it was part of the story and movie and all but it sort of felt like the movie almost screeched to a halt when it cut to them and, really, it sort of ended up being for nothing.

Great work by Fisher here, RIP.

So, for a grade I'd probably would go with an A-. It may be a bit long in parts, but it doesn't retread old ground like TFA did (replaying A New Hope) and there are some good surprising, clap-worthy, moments in it.

 

Based on what I've seen in terms of spoilers, there's no reason, narratively, to believe that there's any misdirection with regards to what the film says about Rey's parents, especially since it was made crystal clear nearly two years ago that she wasn't the "legacy character" that fans kept insisting she was, and especially since Rian Johnson tried earlier this year to make it clear that her parentage wasn't actually important to the plot of the film, or to the broader 'mythos' of the Saga in general.

 

Just got back from seeing the movie...its a solid C for me. I need to think over more what I liked and didn't like about the movie but right now I feel kinda meh after seeing it. It appears that the main goal of this new trilogy is to deconstruct everything we think we know about the universe, about the Force, about the Jedi and the true nature of good and evil. This is accomplished to mixed effect in the movie. I personally felt Luke's arc in the movie was extremely weak, we are told time and time again why he has shut himself off from the universe, but we are never shown Luke's pain and inner turmoil. Likewise, there were a few glaring plotholes in the movie that took me out of the reality of watching the film and quite honestly, I just didn't really care much for many of the characters. As a humongous Star Wars fan it hurts me to say that I'm not sure I'm looking forward to the next one in the series after this movie.

 

B+

It wasn’t perfect but damn was it fun. I think there were two important messages in the film.

The first was stated very clearly by a certain Jedi Master: Failure can be the best teacher. Our heroes failed in this movie big time. Rey failed to bring Ben back to the light. Finn and Rose failed on their mission on Canto Bight and Snoke’s Star Destroyer. Poe and Leia failed to save as many Resistance fighters as they could. And Luke? Well, his failure led to huge consequences for the galaxy. But in the end they managed to let the Rebellion live to see another day. No, it’s not cool to watch your heroes fail. Now they have only upwards to go from here.

The other message is regarding that last scene, and one that really resonates through the whole Finn/Rose story arc — that anyone can be a hero. You just have to believe in yourself.

I’m sad Luke is gone. But I loved how he went out. With peace and purpose. It didn’t ruin the movie for me because the series has always been multigenerational. It was also a heroic sacrifice. I think Luke knew he couldn’t take the full brunt of what was going to happen. Not only that, how was he going to get off that rock? His X-Wing was in the sea and had been there likely for many years. AND his wing was a door! He made a choice. It hurts, not only the characters but also us as viewers. I get it.

Snoke wasn’t important. Cool by me. If he was, it would be a full on retread of Sidious. Ren is the big bad. I actually really like that.

As for the negatives, Canto Bight went on a little too long, the movie could simultaneously be too long and too short at the same time, Finn was underutilized, and there really is a lot to unpack in general for a 2.5 hour movie.

I just think the movie, with a few exceptions, succeeds in doing what it needed to.

 

Spoiler

Was Chewbacca eating a porg in one of the scenes ? It looked like a small chicken.

 

Spoiler

According to Bleeding Cool, Yes.

 

I just got back from seeing it. I like the fact that the story isn't as neatly and tightly constructed as TFA. It creates an element of naturalistic chaos, similar to the meandering narrative and multiple false endings of The Dark Knight. I just don't get the criticism of "messy story" when it comes to movies. Real life itself is one big messy story, not a neat three-act play! Fiction should break the artificial mold and reflect this more.

Actually, especially with TLJ, I thought that this aspect was perfectly in line with all the exposition about the nature of the Force that we already got in the Clone Wars series. It's great to see this kind of stuff in the live-action movies.

Kor

 

I'm not sure if I liked it or loved it. I'll need another viewing to solidify my feelings.

The chase plot and overall structure of the film was just kind of baffling honestly. Underconsidered and implausible given what we know and see and Finn/Rose's side-quest similarly raises a few eyebrows.

And he had the wrong lightsaber at the end.

 

Some of it was great, and some of it was very WTF. The pacing decisions were perplexing, and the Finn plot was a real oddity. (Was this because they had no idea what to do with him? They should have let him sacrifice himself.) Like an objective-based video game that went on while the Rebels and First Order had the slowest chase scene in history. What the hell was with that? For half the movie they just crawl along and wait for other stuff to happen. Weak.

Also, is someone going to call out Poe for his shitty decision making? Most the Rebels are now dead thanks to him. Because if him, a shitload of transports got shot down AND the base was attacked. He's an idiot. Doesn't help though, that Laura Dern was the '80s cop movie character who comes in and refuses to do or say anything other than seem incompetent so that we'll be rooting for the rogue cop. All she had to do was tell him that they had a plan.

The movie was one third ESB, one third ROTJ, and some TFA stirred into some vaguely new stuff. Like ROTJ, the good guy/bad guy/evil master stuff was much more interesting than the battle scenes.

And this may have had some of the worst dialogue of any of the non-prequel films. Some of it was...hoo boy!

I still mostly enjoyed it and look forward to buying it and hopefully enjoying it more on a second viewing.


"Salt!" Yeah, thanks dude. Important info to have!

 

If only someone had taught him some way to remove a submerged spacecraft from a body of water.

 

I watched it yesterday.

I will just say that, for me, the movie was a huge disappointment. Lots of bad acting and bad storytelling. The movie don´t flow the way it should be. I feel the missing of the right timing, and the passing is also wrong in many scenes. Even when trying to be funny, it don´t goes right a lot of times. The jokes also don´t works almost all the times. There are good moments, sure, but I think the bad moments surpasses the good ones by a large margin.

 

Oh yeah, I forgot about how often it tried to be funny and didn't really hit the mark. A few bits were funny though, but usually not the jokes. I liked the look Ben shoots at Hux when he repeats his orders.