Spoilers Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Grading & Discussion

It was confirmed by people who work at LucasFilm. Darth Plagueis is dead, and Snoke is a brand new character.

 

We saw that in '77 already.

 

Did we? I honestly don't remember. I'm thinking specifically internally of the ship and not externally. I'm not trying to change the goalposts, but that's what I was thinking when I made that comment.

 

We see Artoo fixing bits and pieces during the Death Star battle. We don't see inside the X-wing though, although the placement of Artoo's flaps and tools and what-not I'd assume he did that too. He's too big to physically pull his head inside the ship.

 

Yeah, I always assumed that's what he was doing but it was nice to actually see it.

 

Was Rian Johnson dictated by J.J. Abrams and Kathleen Kennedy on how to shape the narrative of "The Last Jedi"? It seemed as if he had copied so many scenarios, sequences and characterizations from not just all of the Original Trilogy films, but also his 2012 movie, "Looper". I was amazed that a man who wrote and directed such an original film, had also written and directed such an unoriginal film like "The Last Jedi". And what on earth did he have against Rey and Finn exchanging words?

 

I thought the movie was so bad, besides 20 minutes towards the end, that it was nearly unwatchable and I almost rather have been watching a prequel movie.

It's like this trilogy seems to want to waste all of the original characters as much as possible. Leia is in a coma for most of the movie, I found it BORING and small in scale and that's the worst two things you can have in a Star Wars movie.

 

Not in terms of specifics.

 

Maybe they shouldn't have opened on the space battle. If the film picked up Rey and Luke for the whole first part, yeah it might have been a sedate start (so is ESB) but by saving the battle 'til later you could have a big sequence to kick off "the rest of the movie" AND it wouldn't have required them to stretch the very slow chase sequence over so much of the running time.

For some reason the movie makes sure to have one person in a coma for most of the film. Finn comes out, Leia goes in. Leia comes out, Rose goes in.

 

Ha! I missed that. The more cynical viewers would say that's a hidden message.

 

Well it's a little know fact that Episode 8 was going to be called 'The Someone Awakens'.

 

OK, let's cut the sensationalism and be honest here. No insult intended, but one of those plastic birds that bobs for water could have directed TLJ and the opening weekend would have been just as big. People weren't flocking to the theatres to see the latest Rian Johnson project. Give credit where credit is due.

What will count is how well it does once the people who bought tickets 6 weeks ago have come and gone (which likely will still and always be driven by it being Star Wars, and not on the director).

 

People were concerned that there would be another Death Star-type super weapon. We breathed relief when we saw there was no such thing, for there were ships. Oh, how little did we know that they had clevely inserted a Death Star-type super weapon. It is the Supremacy.

Death Star 1 Population:
1,186,295–1,206,293 total personnel (mission dependent)

Death Star 2 Population:
1,186,295–1,206,293 total personnel (mission dependent)

Supremacy:
2,225,000
This ship has seven droid factories, eight durasteel foundaries, starfighter assembly line, star destroyer construction and maintenance facility, capital ship component manufacturing, and asteroid mining complex which can convert asteroids into materials for the ship. It is equipped with thousands of heavy turbolasers, anti-ship batteries, heavy ion cannons, and tractor beam projectors. It is the flying capital of the First Order. Not capital ship. Capital as in Washington, DC. (Illustrated Cross-Sections, pp. 22-23)

If the Raddus had hit center line, Snoke and Finn and Rey and the whole of the First Order would have been blown up real good.

(Population counts for the two Death Stars are from Wookiepedia.)

 

I am completely confused by the people who hated this movie. Did we watch different movies or something? Not original, too similar to the OT? Seriously? It led us to believe it was going in that direction, and then started taking tropes and subverting them one by one. It was a glorious and beautiful piece of film making... So many iconic shots too - very well directed film.

 

The backlash being directed at TLJ has little to do with the actual quality of the film, being motivated by pride and an unwillingness to admit fault in building up unrealistic expectations by ignoring the filmmakers' efforts to curtail wild speculation and the buildup of said unrealistic expectations.

 

Honestly, I'm torn. The stuff with Luke and Rey and their subsequent confrontations with Kylo Ren I considered classic, epic Star Wars material. The stuff with Poe and Finn I consider to be dangerously close to prequel level.

 

Well the PT were a solix box office success, but fairly or unfairly their reputation deflated over time and something similar could happen to The Last Jedi (and it's got dismal audience scores over on RT and Metacritic).

 

I went in spoiler-free, open minded and with reasonable expectations of an enjoyable movie. I left the theatre a bit befuddled. I've had two days to ponder this and I can't go higher than 3 out of 5. There were some great individual scenes but the movie as a whole was an unfortunate mess.

 

Yeah, its something to behold. No movie could be made that can make certain people happy. I just kind of tune those ones out.