Went at midnight opening night like I have for all of them. This movie was absolutely horrid, reminds me of when my kids were little and had to write a story in grade school. "And then he went to the store, and then he got stuck, and then he was lost...." just a bunch and then he moments, none of it flowed nor remained consistent with the "rules" that have been established within the Star Wars universe

In middle school we had a creative writing exercise where one student would write a paragraph and then hand it off to the next student to pick up the thread and then pass it along.

You can imagine how jarring it ultimately was to read and I certainly didn't help matters. When it got to me I vaguely remember it was a bunch of students in a bus being driven to some event. I promptly drove the bus off a cliff - mainly because I was 13, edgy and trying to be provocative but also because I couldn't stand the dude behind me who would have to figure out how to write his way out of that.

I haven't thought about that in almost 25 years but it immediately sprang to mind after watching this movie. Disconnected, bold for the sake of being bold, show offy in a way that probably didn't serve the story in the best possible way. Will be interesting to see how JJ resurrects those poor kids on the bus.

It's not our responsibility to address any of that for you.

Just like it's not yours you convince me to dislike the movie.

Some of you guys need to stop trying to convince everyone else in the thread. The movie has its problems but nobody has to like or dislike this movie.

Personally, I find it exciting that I have no idea where Ep IX goes.

Can we lock this thread? This is more depressing than anything on the politics board.......

What he said. I could try and type 2,000 words detailing why I think this is a great movie, but I know that's not going to convince any of you guys that hate it otherwise. Although I think this film will age really really well for a lot of you that don't currently like it.

Your dislike for it is obviously genuine, and I know it sucks when you want to love a movie but it disappoints (Prequels as Exhibit A).

They faded away after he picked them up

I'm starting to wonder if this is a generational thing. I am 23, and all of my friends I've talked to thought it was a great movie. I'm talking a mix of the biggest Star Wars fans I know, and casual movie viewers as well. No one I've talked to thinks it was perfect, but everyone has generally agreed it's in the top 4 Star Wars films and much better than the prequels. I'd be real interested to see what the like/dislike ratio is based on age.

Koldus131 said:

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I'm starting to wonder if this is a generational thing. I am 23, and all of my friends I've talked to thought it was a great movie. I'm talking a mix of the biggest Star Wars fans I know, and casual movie viewers as well. No one I've talked to thinks it was perfect, but everyone has generally agreed it's in the top 4 Star Wars films and much better than the prequels. I'd be real interested to see what the like/dislike ratio is based on age.

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I think it's generational to an extent. Those of us that grew up with the originals will measure everything against those. Youngins want action and shiny things above substance.

This is AWESOME. Warning - you'd better not be drinking or eating anything in front of your monitor/phone/laptop.



I think we all need a laugh break.

Cromagnum said:

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Koldus131 said:

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I'm starting to wonder if this is a generational thing. I am 23, and all of my friends I've talked to thought it was a great movie. I'm talking a mix of the biggest Star Wars fans I know, and casual movie viewers as well. No one I've talked to thinks it was perfect, but everyone has generally agreed it's in the top 4 Star Wars films and much better than the prequels. I'd be real interested to see what the like/dislike ratio is based on age.

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I think it's generational to an extent. Those of us that grew up with the originals will measure everything against those. Youngins want action and shiny things above substance.

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Nice dig there at the end

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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It's not our responsibility to address any of that for you.

Just like it's not yours you convince me to dislike the movie.

Some of you guys need to stop trying to convince everyone else in the thread. The movie has its problems but nobody has to like or dislike this movie.

Personally, I find it exciting that I have no idea where Ep IX goes.

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and I'm done with this thread. This nerd rage is worse than the Politics board.

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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It's not our responsibility to address any of that for you.

Just like it's not yours you convince me to dislike the movie.

Some of you guys need to stop trying to convince everyone else in the thread. The movie has its problems but nobody has to like or dislike this movie.

Personally, I find it exciting that I have no idea where Ep IX goes.

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Nailed it.

Had second viewing today taking the kids after school. All three loved it (5, 6 and 9).

First off, I have discovered theater 18 at the Cinemark in Webster, TX is a turd. It's where I had viewing #1 and I came out of it thinking TLJ looked too digital and clean and prequel like in many scenes, almost fake. IT really took me out of it ad hampered my enjoyment of the movie. I saw it today in the DX theater and it looked MUCH better. Looked like TFA, like a film. No CGI stood out and it looked seamless. Afterwards it clicked that theater 18 was the same place I had my initial RO viewing. A viewing where I walked out underwhelmed because of how fake and horrid Tarkin and Leia looked. (Rogue One has since grown on me, in part thanks to better viewings). Whatever it is with that projector it SUCKS. Now I know, and I'll avoid it.

Now, I am in the camp that TLJ improves on second viewing. I would give it a 7/10 right now. Still flawed (especially the first half) but good. The second half is a legitimately great SW movie (with a few tiny missteps).

The Rey/Kylo stuff is great. The entire scene with Snoke is awesome!

The humor comes across better but some jokes are still bad. The two worst being Luke's brush my shoulder off moment and the entire Poe/Hux prank call. Hux in that opening scene is just slapstick horrible with his facial expressions "can you hear me? can... can he hear me?" ugh. His character struggles to recover the entire movie thanks to that one scene.

A lot of it is more carefully crafted than you would think (especially after reading this thread). For instance:

- Laura Dern not telling Poe the plan. This is actually logical. She takes command and all she knows is this newly demoted pilot who just got people killed is up in her business. Of course she brushes him off. Why on earth would she tell him anything? The second time he approaches her he sees that she is powering up the pods and he immediately LOSES IT and starts throwing a tantrum. Again, why on earth would she tell this nut anything? Yes, the entire casino plot could have been avoided, but Dern was 100% logical and correct in not telling Poe anything.

- Luke's passing is explained a little early on when Kylo tries to figure out the force talk and says to Rey something like "You're not doing this, the effort would kill you". Giving us some insight into just how much power something like that takes. This sets the stage for just how drained Luke would be with the astounding projection he pulls.

- The casino trip, while not really successfully pulled off, makes a lot more sense to me. I think written it was good, but the execution failed. Fin is not a die hard on either side, but more a devotee of Rey than anything. He was dark, then turned light, but remember TLJ immediately follows TFA, so he really hasn't been light for long. I think it is a fitting journey for him to take to be taught the lessons he learns on that trip, to see the profiteers of war, and to see someone (Del Toro) who benefits from not picking a side.

- Snoke not noticing Kylo about to kill him. This is really well done to me. His speech and the words mirror Kylo's actions and thoughts exactly. Snoke's being consumed with his almost blood lust at extinguishing Rey combined with Kylo perfectly guise his actions to match Snokes words makes this a great scene.

Seems like their was more I thought of during the viewing but it eludes me now.

Anyway, this movie is FAR better than the prequels to me. There are some legit great moments. I think the hardest part comes in knowing how close it came to being GREAT. Cut a few things and better execute a couple others and this film would jump quite a bit. As it is, the first half is slow and a bit meandering, but the second half takes a big leap to me and finished pretty dang strong.

And I echo that I'll probably stop reading this thread as well. Too much hyperbole. I am comfortable after a second viewing on my feelings on it.

agracer said:

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Haldo was some made up female 'hero' who put the hot shot pilot in his place but was just hitting us over the head with Poe needs to think ahead more and that really could have been a lot better.

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Haldo is a character that doesn't make sense to me in this movie. It's pretty clear they want strong female protagonists and that doesn't really bother me but some of these heroines are totally manufactured. Leia is already the leader and Rey is the protagonist, what is the point?

Ackbar would have been a clear, organic character for the role of Haldo in this movie. I understand the "breaking from the past" theme that permeates TLJ but it's hard to introduce a secondary or tertiary character in the second film of a trilogy and then have them perform some heroic sacrifice that connects with the audience. Instead Ackbar dies offscreen so Haldo can put a man in his place and then make the sacrifice. Maybe that's just nit-picky but it is baffling to me when you have the perfect character available.

Finally got around to seeing TLJ on Monday after a busy weekend with no chance to go earlier. I walked in really excited - Rian Johnson has a good resume, the trailers looked great, and I thought it had a lot of potential. Walking out of the theater I was disappointed. Then I reflected on it, and I decided I thought it was a genuinely bad movie. Here's why.

Characters Actions
I'll accept the notion that you have to suspend some disbelief in a space opera movie. After all, there are space wizards. So I don't mind bombers that drop bombs in zero gravity without propulsion, faster than light travel, or the instantaneous communication. But, here's what I do expect. The characters need to act in ways that make sense, rather than in ways that advance the story toward a certain outcome.

None of the characters do anything sensible. General Hux is the least competent person to ever command. Custer, Chamberlain, and McClellan have nothing on this guy. From the outset, everything he does is idiotic. He has a massive fleet of star destroyers and doesn't use them at all, relying purely on the behemoth to destroy the planet and the resistance fleet. They just hang back. Then he lets a single fighter disable his capital ship and still the star destroyers do nothing. Then, once he loses another massive world destroyer (his second by the way) in spectacularly incompetent fashion, he brushes it off because they're tracking the resistance. Which by the way, they were before the resistance.

By the way, the resistance's whole plan was terribad. Step 1 - send a single fighter to disable the anti-bomber guns on the giant ship. Step 2 - bomb the ship. That's.... not brilliant.

Look, I could pick apart every tactical decision in this movie. Not that they were simply somewhat ill-advised. Hux and Snoke are so dumb the only explanation for their actions is simply that they needed to do them to get the plot where it wanted to be.

And the resistance was no better. Holdo keeping mum about her plan made no sense whatsoever. Her justification, that hope needs to be something freely given, makes no sense. And her keeping mum led to a mutiny, a secondary plan that failed, and leaking of her plan causing it to fail too. And again, it's not like these are world beater strategies. We're going to drive till we are close to an old bunker and abandon ship.... No reason not to just tell everyone.

Bait and Switch Tactics
Then I felt like they deliberating played games to manipulate your emotions without any real ultimate effect or payout. Leia flying back.... added nothing. There were 4-5 scenes like that were they deliberately lead you to think one thing, do something else, and then reveal, aha, nope it was the first thing after all. And that doesn't lead to revelations. It's just kinda resetting status quo. Leia using the force to get back on the bridge changed nothing. So why go through that? Just seemed like cheesy are these person going to die, are they not? Oh fooled you.

Motivations
I thought Luke's character arc didn't make a lot of sense either. His involvement with Rey, sorta training her to show her why things are better off without the Jedi, some of that makes sense but it didn't feel earned. That said, I'll accept he is so scarred from his own revelation that the dark side is still close to him (almost killing Kylo) and then Kylo ****ing up his academy that he has to leave and separate from the universe. Seems extreme, but whatever. Trauma. Okay. But him coming back? What drove that: a 20 second conversation with Yoda who basically said "eh, Rey doesn't need to be trained by you to be a jedi so your whole book burning episode ain't worth *****.." Yup, that seems like a powerful enough message to end a 30 year exile.

Consequence
At the end of the Force Awakens, the first order takes a pretty big blow. Their planet killer / actual planet gets blown up and most of their army gets incinerated. The Republic still exists, and what you're led to believe is that the First Order is a growing threat. I think it'd take more than a few days for them to overcome a setback like losing a planet killing planet. And at the beginning of TLJ, the crawl basically tells you nope, that didn't mean ****, they're still totally badass. And then they lose another planet killer in the first 20 minutes of the movie. Why do these guys keep building giant ships / planets? They're terrible at keeping them up and running. But saul good, because Snoke shows up with his bigger yet flagship of the armada. That... doesn't last either. Neither does Snoke. Both get cut in half. At what point do we acknowledge that the first order isn't really a credible threat because all their spacecraft keep getting wrecked, usually by 10-20 small fighters?

Look, I'm a supply chain guy in my professional life, so maybe I'm reading into this space wizard story a little to deeply, but I don't see how you can keep building and maintaining an armada of death if it gets pasted every time some purple haired tart points her ship at it and hits the warp speed button.

In all seriousness, from a story telling perspective, it's hard to view this story as a great underdog story in which the rag tag band of misfits overcomes impossible odds when every time they fight, the misfits totally **** up the bad guys.

Rogue One did this so much better. They used guerilla tactics. In and out faster than the empire could react. When they finally commit forces, they get their asses crushed completely. You walk out of Rogue One impressed with the empire and realizing the crazy odds stacked against the rebels in episode 4. I walk out of TLJ and expect General Hux to step on his dick, fall over, and impale himself on Kylo's lightsaber guards.

I'm sure a lot of people will disagree with this word vomit, but these reasons for me are why I thought the movie just wasn't good. And it's a shame, because they were easily, easily correctable without even changing the story much.

The only way the next movie works is with a time skip, right? The resistance is basically down to the people on the Falcon while the First Order is still rolling X dreadnaughts deep + Y Star Destroyers.

That doesn't include the fact that the First Order also has the second most powerful Force user in the galaxy who has access to all of Snoke's wealth/knowledge and a fully intact command structure via Hux and the remaining brass in the FO.

Meanwhile, the Resistance has one hot head pilot, one soon to be dead leader, a Wookie, a former janitor, a bunch of spares, and oh, the greatest force user in galactic history apparently.

Basically the only way this thing works is if they time skip 5-10 years to allow for a rebuild of the Resistance, or Ridley just destroys the FO which would be the worst ****ing thing ever.