Went to dinner tonight and ordered a filet mignon. Waiter brought out a chicken patty instead.

I was pissed at first, but then I remembered not giving somebody what they were expecting automatically makes it better than what you wanted. What I thought was trash was really great culinary art. Thank you Rian Johnson and snooty movie critics for teaching me this lesson.

Looking forward to next star wars installment where Rey hooks up with Rose and Leia cuts her wrists in the bathtub.

mazag08 said:

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Watched a YouTube theory that claimed that Snoke was never actually on the bridge but that he was projecting himself like Luke did. He didn't trust Kylo to not turn on him. Said the fact that Kylo and Rey were able to force link after Snoke died was proof that he's still alive.

But I guess the showdown with projection Luke shows that the lightsaber wouldn't have severed the projection Snoke.. which it did.

Another theory was that he is an old being that can transfer his consciousness to a new body.

The third theory was that Snoke is dead. I think that's the correct one.

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I think trying to theorize anything about the movies is useless now (Snoke, Rey's lineage,...) because the filmmakers have acknowledged there is no overarching plan. They're just making it up as they go.

bangobango said:

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Went to dinner tonight and ordered a filet mignon. Waiter brought out a chicken patty instead.

I was pissed at first, but then I remembered not giving somebody what they were expecting automatically makes it better than what you wanted. What I thought was trash was really great culinary art. Thank you Rian Johnson and snooty movie critics for teaching me this lesson.

Looking forward to next star wars installment where Rey hooks up with Rose and Leia cuts her wrists in the bathtub.

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How the hell did this get 8 stars?

bangobango said:

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Went to dinner tonight and ordered a filet mignon. Waiter brought out a chicken patty instead.

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The part you're leaving out - or that you don't understand yet - is that you were at McDonald's. I'm as disappointed as anyone else, but the fact of the matter is that these movies are made primarily for children. More than even the prequels, what this one finally did is force me to come to terms with that fact. Thinking we're getting anything more than a Happy Meal with Star Wars from here on out is, sadly, delusional.

Last Jedi was PG 13, so not for children, no.

You just took a terrible analogy and somehow made it worse.

And ironic, because it's probably the most "outside of the box", least cookie cutter movie in the saga, especially when compared to TFA. If any movie should've made you feel that, it's TFA.

Agreed. No little kid vibe from last Jedi.

Saw the movie tonight. Hated it. Astoundingly bad. Felt too long by an hour. It's failures are too many to count but one can look at the overt audiences it was craptastically trying to woo as the best way to measure its flaws; it was targeted at girl power, young kids (not since the Ewoks) and the international market/country of China.

Hamill was awful. Not just his ill-conceived storyline but his acting. Vaudevillian in its cornball humor. The only thing that resonated to me was Rey and Kylo during their movie-long dialogue. It connected. Rey is the only real bright spot. Amazing star that filled the roll.

Laura Dean was an awful, misplaced character from Marvel...for some reason thrown into a Star Wars movie with a political message...The Resistance is female! Get it?

Disney has finally ruined this franchise.

TCTTS said:

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bangobango said:

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Went to dinner tonight and ordered a filet mignon. Waiter brought out a chicken patty instead.

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The part you're leaving out - or that you don't understand yet - is that you were at McDonald's. I'm as disappointed as anyone else, but the fact of the matter is that these movies are made primarily for children. More than even the prequels, what this one finally did is force me to come to terms with that fact. Thinking we're getting anything more than a Happy Meal with Star Wars from here on out is, sadly, delusional.

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Don't get hung up in the food. I could've just as easily said I ordered ribs and got brisket instead. Point is, Disney lured us in with the idea that we would get to see our heroes one more time in action, and instead of giving us what we came for, they pulled the rug out from under us and basically thumbed their noses at our nostalgia. And now we are being told if we didn't like it, then we just don't get it.

Again, you want to take it in a new direction, reboot the series, clean the slate, etc, there were better ways to do it that wouldn't leave a lot of longtime fans feeling deceived and like they were duped.

It is Disney and Rian Johnson's right to make an "edgy" film that reboots the series by not giving the viewers what they wanted and expected. It is also the viewers' right to tell them to get bent when they don't like not getting what they wanted.

Btw, an "edgy" film wouldn't continually bail out certain characters with highly improbable saves. I probably would've handled Luke's death better if they would've had the decency to kill of either Finn or Rose. But bailing both of them out and then killing Luke was just spiteful. Saving Leia with the biggest wtf moment ever cheapens Luke's death even more, in my opinion. Especially when you are watching and you know Carrie Fisher is dead. At that point, how do you justify killing off Luke and not killing off Leia? One was caught in an explosion and launched into space and The actress playing The character died in real life. The other had a stitch in his side from over exerting himself and the actor playing the character had just delivered his best acting performance in the entire saga.

I would say Mark is 10x the actor he was in the OT.

Ag Since 83 said:

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Wait, since Carrie Fisher is dead, it feels spiteful to kill off Luke....what?

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I don't really think this train of thought is difficult to follow.

You are writing the script and then directing the last jedi. You have a scene where Carrie Fisher is blown out of a spaceship into deep space. You decide that rather than have her die, she is going to develop force powers never seen before and float her ass back into a space ship and survive this. You then decide that she will spend the rest of the story pretty much in a coma and not appear in the rest of the film. You are then shooting the movie and she dies. You have time to edit the movie and have her die in the explosion without really changing anything else in the story.

Then you have an iconic figure. The hero of the first three movie. A cultural figure nearly unparalleled in American cinema. The actor is healthy. He delivers his best performance in any of the previous star wars movies, maybe even his best performance in any movie ever. And you kill him off after he over-exerts himself using the force. Nothing really dramatic or heroic about that. It doesn't feel like it flowed naturally from the writing. Like the director was telling a story and then he just realized, oh man, Luke has to die here. That's the only thing that makes sense and that's just how the story goes.

Luke's death doesn't feel that way at all, at least not to me. Especially after you've bailed out Leia, whose death in that moment would have felt natural and a result of the story telling. Kylo is about to kill her, but he doesn't, but then she dies anyways, killed by the allies he has chosen in this battle. That sets up a beautiful dichotomy between what the antagonist was and what he is becoming. How he reacted to that would have been interesting and poignant.

What did Luke's death bring? Not a damn thing. It didn't feel natural, it didn't feel "earned." It felt like Rian Johnson decided before writing anything that he was going to kill off Luke Skywalker (because this ain't your daddy's star wars, boys and girls. Now go buy our Rey dolls!), and he was going to make Luke come "full circle" by having him die looking out at two suns.

Just a cheap death and done in such a way and with such little care that it feels like a big FU to a lot fans of the original trilogy, me included.

Redstone said:

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Very disappointing to see all the criticism this film is receiving. The Diverse casting and empowerment of characters who identify as female should be a very welcome development, and the undercurrents of the negative responses are really noxious. I'm glad that Johnson is being empowered to continue his work, and hope that he continues in this vein. The cinematic arts have changed, and even though larger cultural progress proceeds at a small pace, achievements such as this film deserve our praise and admiration.

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This review says everything there is to say about TLJ...it is as embarrassing as the movie itself...

Just watched Rogue One again. So great.

One of the defenders of TLJ on here is an unabashed lover of the prequels. There are videos on YouTube showing people who just got out of Phantom Menace talking about how great it was. Mentally unstable people are roaming out there among us.

Your second or third viewings of rotten dot com or the Budd Dwyer footage are a little better because you're a little desensitized and know what to expect.

Remember that when you're psyching yourself up on the way to the theater to see it again. "It's gotta be better this time. I've put so much hope and trust in it."

wesag said:

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LE_Funt said:

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Got an hour and a half to kill?

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I was going to watch this, but this guy has bad facial hair and wears his hat backwards. Just can't do it.

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Kevin Smith has kind of looked like that forever.

Ag Since 83 said:

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bangobango said:

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Ag Since 83 said:

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Wait, since Carrie Fisher is dead, it feels spiteful to kill off Luke....what?

---

I don't really think this train of thought is difficult to follow.

You are writing the script and then directing the last jedi. You have a scene where Carrie Fisher is blown out of a spaceship into deep space. You decide that rather than have her die, she is going to develop force powers never seen before and float her ass back into a space ship and survive this. You then decide that she will spend the rest of the story pretty much in a coma and not appear in the rest of the film. You are then shooting the movie and she dies. You have time to edit the movie and have her die in the explosion without really changing anything else in the story.

Then you have an iconic figure. The hero of the first three movie. A cultural figure nearly unparalleled in American cinema. The actor is healthy. He delivers his best performance in any of the previous star wars movies, maybe even his best performance in any movie ever. And you kill him off after he over-exerts himself using the force. Nothing really dramatic or heroic about that. It doesn't feel like it flowed naturally from the writing. Like the director was telling a story and then he just realized, oh man, Luke has to die here. That's the only thing that makes sense and that's just how the story goes.

Luke's death doesn't feel that way at all, at least not to me. Especially after you've bailed out Leia, whose death in that moment would have felt natural and a result of the story telling. Kylo is about to kill her, but he doesn't, but then she dies anyways, killed by the allies he has chosen in this battle. That sets up a beautiful dichotomy between what the antagonist was and what he is becoming. How he reacted to that would have been interesting and poignant.

What did Luke's death bring? Not a damn thing. It didn't feel natural, it didn't feel "earned." It felt like Rian Johnson decided before writing anything that he was going to kill off Luke Skywalker (because this ain't your daddy's star wars, boys and girls. Now go buy our Rey dolls!), and he was going to make Luke come "full circle" by having him die looking out at two suns.

Just a cheap death and done in such a way and with such little care that it feels like a big FU to a lot fans of the original trilogy, me included.

---

1. Changing the film to kill Leia in the first act after Fisher's death would have seriously altered the ending of the movie, including depriving us of a great scene at the end between Hamill and Fisher. Which is something I think you would want. Even more so after Fisher died. I'm sorry, it is asinine to say killing Luke is spiteful because Carrie died.

2. I'm just going to disagree with you about Luke's death not being heroic. He did something we have never seen another Jedi do, and saved the remaining Resistance fighters, including all of the main characters, in the process. It's not the movie you wanted for the character, and I'm sorry about that. But Disney didn't dupe you. They didn't trick you. They said from the beginning that the new films would be about the new generation, and that the returning characters would be supporting characters. If you expected something different, you lied to yourself

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The great scene between Leia and Luke where a holographic projection of Luke hands Leia a holographic projection of some dice nobody has ever noticed before now that are supposed to be Han' s? Then holographic projection of Luke walks out to face First Order and Leia flees and leaves holographic projection of super sentimental Han Solo dice behind on the ground?

That was a great scene?

I waited to see it until my family was in town and we could all see it together on Christmas Day. I've been slowly working my way through this thread ever since.

I won't rehash all the specific problems with the movie that others have discussed ad nauseam except one, because it nicely illustrates my big picture problem with the movie: Force-flying Leia.

From the beginning, the magical thing about the Star Wars universe has been the Force. And part of what made the Force so compelling was that is was mysterious. Not everyone could use it. Jedi underwent years of training to be able to use the Force. The Force wasn't something that just anyone could use on the spur of the moment. Like Han told Finn in The Force Awakens, "That's not how the Force works."

Only, now, I guess it does. Leia, someone who has had no Jedi training, and shown no Force abilities other than the ability to sense feelings, suddenly and inexplicably has the ability to fly through space. That scene really bothered me. If they just needed to get Leia out of the way temporarily, they could have easily just had her get injured in an explosion and fall into a coma. They didn't need her to be blown out into space to set up Holdo taking command. Meaning, they really wanted to show us Force-flying Leia. Why? It's not to advance the you-don't-have-to-be-a-Skywalker theme since, you know, she's a Skywalker. It seems like they just really wanted to illustrate "Oh, yeah, she can use the Force now, too" - without needing any of that fancy Jedi learnin'.

Which is, of course, what they're doing with Rey, too. She's had, what two days of half-ass training? After The Force Awakens we were all assuming that the only way to explain her abilities, with no training, was that she had some really strong Jedi (or maybe Sith) ancestors. But The Last Jedi seems to make it clear that, no, you just don't need to have any training to use the Force anymore. Like the 6 year old slave boy at the end who is Force-pulling the broom. In their effort to, I guess, democratize the Force, and take the focus off the Skywalkers, they've decided to totally ignore, really rewrite, the rules of the Star Wars universe as they were established in all the preceding movies. And if they follow that thread where just about anybody can use the Force at any time, the Force becomes a lot less mysterious, and the Star Wars universe becomes a lot less interesting.

That ticks me off. You want to take an unexpected turn with Luke's character? Okay, great. You want me to stretch my suspension of disbelief by having Finn end up in the same jail cell as the one other guy in the Galaxy who can get onto Snoke's ship? Okay, I've looked past some implausible stuff with Star Wars before. But, good grief, is it too much to ask that you observe the long-standing basic rules of the movie universe in telling your unexpected story?

EDITED because I can't spell.

bangobango said:

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Ag Since 83 said:

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bangobango said:

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Ag Since 83 said:

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Wait, since Carrie Fisher is dead, it feels spiteful to kill off Luke....what?

---

I don't really think this train of thought is difficult to follow.

You are writing the script and then directing the last jedi. You have a scene where Carrie Fisher is blown out of a spaceship into deep space. You decide that rather than have her die, she is going to develop force powers never seen before and float her ass back into a space ship and survive this. You then decide that she will spend the rest of the story pretty much in a coma and not appear in the rest of the film. You are then shooting the movie and she dies. You have time to edit the movie and have her die in the explosion without really changing anything else in the story.

Then you have an iconic figure. The hero of the first three movie. A cultural figure nearly unparalleled in American cinema. The actor is healthy. He delivers his best performance in any of the previous star wars movies, maybe even his best performance in any movie ever. And you kill him off after he over-exerts himself using the force. Nothing really dramatic or heroic about that. It doesn't feel like it flowed naturally from the writing. Like the director was telling a story and then he just realized, oh man, Luke has to die here. That's the only thing that makes sense and that's just how the story goes.

Luke's death doesn't feel that way at all, at least not to me. Especially after you've bailed out Leia, whose death in that moment would have felt natural and a result of the story telling. Kylo is about to kill her, but he doesn't, but then she dies anyways, killed by the allies he has chosen in this battle. That sets up a beautiful dichotomy between what the antagonist was and what he is becoming. How he reacted to that would have been interesting and poignant.

What did Luke's death bring? Not a damn thing. It didn't feel natural, it didn't feel "earned." It felt like Rian Johnson decided before writing anything that he was going to kill off Luke Skywalker (because this ain't your daddy's star wars, boys and girls. Now go buy our Rey dolls!), and he was going to make Luke come "full circle" by having him die looking out at two suns.

Just a cheap death and done in such a way and with such little care that it feels like a big FU to a lot fans of the original trilogy, me included.

---

1. Changing the film to kill Leia in the first act after Fisher's death would have seriously altered the ending of the movie, including depriving us of a great scene at the end between Hamill and Fisher. Which is something I think you would want. Even more so after Fisher died. I'm sorry, it is asinine to say killing Luke is spiteful because Carrie died.

2. I'm just going to disagree with you about Luke's death not being heroic. He did something we have never seen another Jedi do, and saved the remaining Resistance fighters, including all of the main characters, in the process. It's not the movie you wanted for the character, and I'm sorry about that. But Disney didn't dupe you. They didn't trick you. They said from the beginning that the new films would be about the new generation, and that the returning characters would be supporting characters. If you expected something different, you lied to yourself

---

The great scene between Leia and Luke where a holographic projection of Luke hands Leia a holographic projection of some dice nobody has ever noticed before now that are supposed to be Han' s? Then holographic projection of Luke walks out to face First Order and Leia flees and leaves holographic projection of super sentimental Han Solo dice behind on the ground?

That was a great scene?

---

In my opinion, yes. You had a bittersweet reunion between a brother and sister, mourning their best friend/husband, acknowledging that their nephew/son is lost for good, and essentially saying goodbye to each other. If you buy into what the Force is, it doesn't matter that Luke is a projection in this scene: he and Leia are actually talking, and they have all the emotions they would have if Luke was physically there. You complain about Disney not giving you enough of your old favorite characters, and then don't like an emotionally poignant moment between two of them? I don't care about the fact we hadn't noticed the dice before, because it's pretty obvious the characters knew what they were and that it meant something for them. And as for her leaving them, I admit that's a weird choice, but maybe she knew they would fade away anyway so she left them for her son to find? I don't know, there might be some weird symbolism there, or no good reason at all, but certainly doesn't ruin the scene for me.

Furthermore, regarding your earlier comments about if Luke's death made sense: Luke had an arc in this movie. You don't have to like the arc (and I completely understand why some wouldn't), but it was there. At the beginning, he's lost and has given up his faith. Over the course of the film, he finds that faith again, learns new lessons from his old master Yoda, and realizes what role the Jedi have in the galaxy going forward. He finds purpose again, and he sacrifices himself to save the good guys like Ben Kenobi. You don't have to like Rian's arc for Luke, but it made a lot more sense for Luke to die at the end of his arc within this movie than it did for Leia to die at the end of hers. Reversing it would just be forcing things because Fisher passed and wouldn't make sense given the story Johnson was telling. Abrams has a challenge to figure out now how to handle it, but I don't fault Johnson for staying true to the story he wanted to tell.

There's another part of this movie that I agree with the general consensus is pretty terrible. I was really hoping Rose would die there at the end. Hell, Johnson succeeded in making Finn so uninteresting I would have been OK with him sacrificing himself. Maybe Rose tries to stop him and ends up killing both of them. It would have gone nicely with the theme of everything those characters tried failing miserably. But the Luke stuff, that worked for me.

WestAustinAg said:

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Saw the movie tonight. Hated it. Astoundingly bad. Felt too long by an hour. It's failures are too many to count but one can look at the overt audiences it was craptastically trying to woo as the best way to measure its flaws; it was targeted at girl power, young kids (not since the Ewoks) and the international market/country of China.

Hamill was awful. Not just his ill-conceived storyline but his acting. Vaudevillian in its cornball humor. The only thing that resonated to me was Rey and Kylo during their movie-long dialogue. It connected. Rey is the only real bright spot. Amazing star that filled the roll.

Laura Dean was an awful, misplaced character from Marvel...for some reason thrown into a Star Wars movie with a political message...The Resistance is female! Get it?

Disney has finally ruined this franchise.

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This. So much this. Like many things in our contemporary society work quality has taken a back seat for diversity for diversity sake. The acting was horrible. The social justice warrior messaging was horrible. The comic relief was horrible. I half expected Luke to say something like "hashtag not a jedi" or something stupid like that. They took the Star Wars franchise and made it a more expensive sci-fi Austin Powers.

I usually don't notice many of the political things other people see in movies, but the Poe and Holdo meeting was weird. In a world where one of his commanders is an anthropomorphic squid/fish and his best friend is a robot, he's "shocked" that his leader has purple hair? Did he have the same response when he saw Leia sporting the side buns? How had they not seen eachother or met before, there wasn't a whole lot of them left? Did she just arrive?

It was very weird that in a Rebellion that has been whittled down to nothing, he had never met her. Definitely Rian Johnson trying to emphasize the purple haired nightgown feminist factor and doing so in a way that made no sense.

If you couldn't appreciate the reunion between Luke and Leia (for the first time on screen in 34 years), then frankly I don't know what to tell you.

And they burned it by having it be holographic. You just furthered his point.

The reunion between Luke and R2 was better.