A new Star Wars happened, and opinions are released upon us like nibbling hounds demanding biscuits

[Dazzle Novak]

What an odd movie.

Spoiler

I feel bad for Abrams. I'm far from the biggest fan of TFA, but it's gotta burn to be called back in after another director has deliberately subverted and dismantled 95% percent of the set-up you established in the film prior. But then again, fuck Abrams for trying to pass the buck with all his "The next two movies will explain it..." horseshit. None of the "mystery boxes" he set up had compelling explanations, so can people cop to some of TFA's weak writing now?


Also, Emperor throne room battle, I'mma let you finish, but Holdo's warp kamikaze was the greatest Star Wars kill of ALL TIME. Seriously. Coolest kill of the property.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

Point is, lightsaber combat is littered with impossible, bordering silly. Read the description of Ataru ie. spinning, somersaults and ...cartwheels. How would Bob Anderson do that? I'd expect his reaction being 'you have got to be kidding me, right?'.

Like, no? I mean where are these materials actually covered? Because if they're not set with the primary canon, why exactly should we expect audiences to follow? No one I know liked the garbage in the prequels, whether or not they were a Star Wars nut, or whether they had a passing familiarity with the prior movies.

Why the fuck would the average person want more of it? While you have a fair argument of relative skill involved and the actual coherrency with reality, clearly the TFA was channeling Bob Anderson's influences of the original mythos of the universe, instead ignoring the Prequel's circus act inspired theatrics of swordplay.

I get why some fans might not like it, but it was at least a welcome sign to me that the days of old Hollywood swordplay aren't dead.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

He isn't going to let Han go fight in a battle and not be there to protect him.

In the expanded universe stuff, didn't they like separate for years right after the E6? Regardless, strong point ... but ultimately in the primary reference materials, I see precisely 8 times the numbers of scenes Chewie fixing things than piloting things.

Which always strikes me as odd whe one poster says 'Han is a mechanic, Chewie is a pilot...'

In fact, all the times Han is shown to be the mechanic, it's for comic effect and for some reason the 120kg furred giant is the one tasked with crawling around air vents of live sparking wires while Han does precisely fuck all, choosing rather to annoy Leia while she's working on enginery ...

 

[09philj]

But I don't buy the idea of needing to use the force to actually treat a lightsaber as a weapon. And frankly if the whole lightsaber as Force capacity is a real thing, I'd use creative licence to drop that nonsense.

Not at all what I meant. I was referring to your suggestion of "what if she force-pushed a mound of blade heated rock shards into Kylo's face and chest". Interesting way to develop, but necessarily implies greater proficiency with the Force than anyone that new to the power has any right to have.

I did not imply anything about lightsabers requiring the Force (it's not pragmatic without the Force for the same reason that using a knife in a gunfight isn't pragmatic, but that's a different discussion altogether). What I did imply was that Rey used a very different kind of weapon. There is some truth that in reading combat you study motion, but here's the thing. A mace has a very different balance and handles very differently from a longsword. Heck, you can't approach a longsword the same way that you do a rapier, or vice versa. Rey was used to a staff, which is an entirely different kettle of fish from all of those, and certainly different from a plasmabrand that - depending on your interpretation, would either handle as if it were weightless or as if you were brandishing a stick with a gyroscope on the tip. I mean heck, look at the poster image. You don't even hold it the same way. It requires a completely different moveset which she has no [known] experience with, whereas it was Kylo Ren's weapon of choice.

Lightsabers are also very strange weapons indeed; canon is that the blade itself is essentially weightless but exerts a strong gyroscopic effect. They aren't merely difficult for the untrained to wield, they're outright dangerous.

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

If I remember correctly, the weapon description of the stock standard vibrosword in KotOR actually mentioned they were for use aginst lightsabers and designed to actually block them ...

They'd have to be made from corthosis, or some rare lightsaber blocking material, though.
And if my memory serves me well, the explanation behind swords being used as normal battlefield weapons in KotOR, was forcefields. That block blaster projectiles, but not a blade.

 

[Addendum_Forthcoming]

If I remember correctly, the weapon description of the stock standard vibrosword in KotOR actually mentioned they were for use aginst lightsabers and designed to actually block them ...

They'd have to be made from corthosis, or some rare lightsaber blocking material, though.
And if my memory serves me well, the explanation behind swords being used as normal battlefield weapons in KotOR, was forcefields. That block blaster projectiles, but not a blade.

Seems oddly specific the metal is also very effective against lightsabers as well. I get lightsaber wielders are supposed to be rare, but commanders being outfitted with a type of blade that just so happens to be effective against the LS seems like a major coincidence.

The logical answer is; "We need something for melee builds that isn't just a LS..." but in-universe makes sense for back then?
Also makes sense that by the time of ANH they fon't need them at all, anymore.

Thd logic there might be commanderd might be expected to defend the bridge from LS and Force users looking to commandeer the vessel so they might be outfitted with them?

There's a shitload of Jedi and Sith left over even in KotOR... so maybe it was just the fact that commanders had both a ceremonial blade that just so happens to be useful in duels? They still use csvalry sabres for parade... might as well make them usrful against a potential boarding enemy you might face if LS force users are a thing?

 

[gsilver]

So, I saw it.

Spoiler

I thought it was a good popcorn film with some cool scenes (Luke facing off against a bunch of walkers in Pacifist Badassery was pretty awesome) though some utterly stupid ones really stand out:

1. Leia shrugging off being blown up and then hurled out in the vacuum of space with just a quick nap (and dragging herself back in from it) *especially* because the actress is no longer alive. It would have made more sense if they reshot it so she died there. Now, they'll have to write around her absence in the next film.
2. Apparently, The Last Order ran out of fighters, were really slow, and had zero backup, so all they could do was just tail the rebel cruiser for half the movie? That seems... useless.
3. On the same note... The rebels apparently have invincible shields? Made sense for the death star with a large base channeling who knows how much energy to it from a local planet. Not so much for a scrappy rebel cruiser.
4. Rose interrupting Finn. Actually, Rose in general.
5. Poe throwing a fucking mutiny
6. Chewbacca's "friends"
7. Let it die and burn it to the ground. K, Rian. We know how you feel about Star Wars.

I didn't hate it or anything. It was a fun popcorn flick, though not one that I'm likely to remember too much. I'm already having difficulties remembering the plot (ok, I'm also tired and didn't sleep enough last night or especially the night before... but the point still stands)

 

[Naldan]

The absolute worst Star Wars movie, including even those fucking CG serieses, I have ever seen and an average movie altogether.

Averagely shot (modern) action scenes I generally dislike with frantic cuts, like almost the entirety of everything that happened in space.

Almost zero build up to supposed outbursts of conflicts and climaxes, they often just happen.
-> Generally too many cuts of absolutely anything that could build something up, some kind of hype, like when Luke went out to stall time, confronting Kylo and Co.

Weak melee-choreography. The fucking prequels, Menace and Revenge, outdid this movie and I have barely any memory about Episode II.

Luke was wasted. His planet was wasted. The old Jedi knowledge was wasted. Snoke was wasted (holy shit). Rei was wasted (holy fucking shit).
-> Why? Was that all? Was this and that really enough for their motivation, like, what the actual fuck? Who is this, anyway? Where did they come from? What is this place? ---------NAH! ALL DONE NOW! DOESN'T MATTER, LULZ!

The whole Monacco scene on the Monacco Planet with the single Monacco city on it was absolute fucking shit. It dragged on that I, for the first time in about 23 years, asked myself when this fucking Star Wars movie finally was going to end. That animal-arc, rich vs. poor arc, casino arc was so damn poorly implemented that I really asked myself if I should leave, but I didn't go alone. And before you ask: I don't talk while watching a movie.

Leia's scene in space looked absolutely awful. What the fuck, was Fisher already dead then? But Leia really was the best part in this movie and I am so sad that the whole Po - Mon Mothma - Leia arc, which was really really awesome with all the twists and the final FTL scene of Mon Mothma really was the absolute best thing of this movie. If you could cut this all out, Leia's scenes and arc, Po's misjudgment (which though I at first were on board with), and Mon Mothma's everything out of this movie and put it into a better one, I would have dropped my jaw in awe for finally seeing a EU-esque scene on film. This whole arc was stellar in my opinion.

Reis and Kylos dialogue while Rei was on Dagobah was really wrecking my mental state. They talked like if they were 16 or something, about shit mostly, Luke's involvement in Kylos turning could have been really cool, but the execution of the whole flashback scene was motherfucking weak, like holy hell... and that was all that took it to turn Luke into Yoda? Even Revenge did a better job to show Anakin's character development.

Luke died either too early or he didn't do enough in this movie alone, meaning he should have kicked ass instead of the movie wasting time in Monacco or leave Luke dying for the next movie. He did a force projection to another planet, which is cool, but that literally was everything. With the previous movie hyping him up like a ************.

I like jaded Luke, but his motivation was so weak. I can not accept that just because he """"""""""""failed""""""""" once, with a bunch of dead children and his nephew kinda turned to the dark side as the result of his failure, that he goes into exile for good, despising everything the Jedi said and did, wanting to burn it all. I personally even would agree here, but his motivation was too fucking weak, he didn't even read the old teachings so how should he ever have known that they were wrong in the first place? Because he failed --------------once----------------? What the actual fuck, while writing this it's getting worse for me.

Those set pieces in general, Snoke's red greenscreen room, were unimpressive. It all feels like they shot the movie 2 months ago and began filming 5 months ago. What the fuck, guys...? Missed a date? Rogue One was last year......

Much more, like how did Rei get on the Millenium Falcon after her force-brawl with Kylo? And really, she has 0 heritage despite 7 movies previously, and this one as well except for Rei herself, having the theme of destiny and heritage? I wouldn't have a problem with that, if Rei was weaker in the force. But this is rather minor.

I liked the scenes on Hoth in the last scenes of the final chapter. Except for Fin being saved. This scene up until this was gut-wrenching (I really liked Fin and was quite happy about how he turned out in Episode 7), but he got saved by that multi-talented technician ex-machina chick that unfortunately got introduced when I had to go to the toilet.

I liked the theme of questioning the old, some wanting to destroy it and others not, and in general that Jedis aren't clearly portraied as the ideal standard. But we got a bitter Luke Yodawalker, who just says it is bad, but not why. We got Kylo saying that this needs to be done, but his version of the why was unimpressive.

The humour nose-dived for me in almost every scene, and those animals were worse than Ewoks, being even more blatant in just having the purpous of being exposed to the audience in order to get produced as toys or whatever later.

Movie average, Star Wars shit.

----

edit: Holy hell, my English is the absolute worst right now. I'm deeply sorry for that, honestly, and thank you for reading. I just woke up, if I don't forget to, I will edit this post later. Really, sorry for that.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I loved it. Fuck what anyone else says, it was a damn fine movie and I'm looking forward to this trilogy's conclusion. Empire was still the best, but this trilogy's a damn sight better than the prequels so far, and not in the "well anything's better than that shite." Fite me.

 

[Hawki]

So, the Internet's kind of self-imploded around TLJ. Think I'll stay clear this time.

That said, the film is...okay, but a different sort of "okay" from TFA. TFA was okay in the sense that it was competently written and presented, but didn't do anything particuarly interesting. TLJ is okay in the sense that it's got higher highs than TFA, but also lower lows. This is a very flawed film, but has moments of brilliance in it as well. That said, I think I have to rate TFA higher. TLJ seems to get worse the more I think about it, while with TFA, my view became a bit more charitable over time. Right now, it's my #6 Star Wars film with TFA being #5, but those two could switch over time, while everything else I don't see shifting anytime soon.

 

[iamzim101]

Question how did Han and Finn jump with the falcon into atmosphere if it is now established that real-space effect objects in hyperspace? Shouldn't they be burnt up or worse? Not to mention the awesome capabilities of having ftl cannons and how that would shit upon any fleet.

 

[Drathnoxis]

But I don't buy the idea of needing to use the force to actually treat a lightsaber as a weapon.

The reason you need the force to use a lightsaber as a weapon is because otherwise you'd be an absolute idiot to bring a sword to a gunfight!

Other than that they toned down the Mary Sue thing.

Can people please outline this argument for me?

A female character was competent.

This is simply not true, and is basically an ad hominem attack on anybody claiming that Rey is a sue.

There are many female characters who are competent but aren't mary sues. Nobody calls Mikasa from Attack on Titan a sue and she's basically Death on two legs. Nobody says Scully from X-files is one either, or Olivia Dunham from Fringe, or the rabbit from Zootopia, or tons of other competent well written characters. On the other hand there are a huge amount of male characters that get accused of being sues: Wesley Crusher from Star Trek, Kirito from Sword Art Online, Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars, Sherlock Holmes, Percy Jackson, Eragon fricking Shadeslayer from the Inheritance Cycle books.

If female characters get accused of it more often (which I'm not convinced of) it's only because the writers in general don't seem as comfortable portraying females as actual flawed human beings. They get so focused on making a strong female character that they make them virtually infallable, never needing to struggle or improve, maybe with couple Not Actually Flaws thrown in if you're lucky. Terry Pratchet was TERRIBLE for that. His male protagonists range from bumbling oafs, to sniveling cowards, to broken down alcoholics, and more. But his females are all basically strong, independant, always know better than everybody else, maybe a bit strict.

 

[Dazzle Novak]

To put my observation in D&D terms, this push for Jedi populism seems to be a bunch of people who want the space wizard powers without the restrictions of the class or need to bother with all that Jedi "religion" telling you you can't do the stuff you want to do without falling to the dark side, but instead you can just follow your heart: "Why can't I be a swashbuckling Han-type AND use a cool laser sword?"

I've never really enjoyed the morality in Star Wars, but it seems hypocritical to see a lot of the people who praise the OT for being straightforward monomyth fairytales now jacking off the idea the franchise benefits from shades-of-gray, meta-analysis, and deconstruction.

 

[RJ 17]

It was a "fun" and "entertaining" movie, I'll definitely say that. I felt like it was worth going out to see it in a movie theater. That said, I do have a number of issues with the movie.

Apparently someone else decided to drop a spoiler bomb, for out of courtesy I'll still put mine in a box.

Spoiler: Here there be monsters...erm, Last Jedi spoilers.

Issue number 1: I'm not quite dead!
Leia gets spaced when the bridge to the cruiser she's on gets blasted. Now, I'm sure the Force can do powerful and amazing things. It's not such a huge leap to believe that a Jedi master could use the Force to prevent the effects of catastrophic decompression and exposure to the cold of space...then Superman their way back to an airlock. Now I haven't read the books that are now official canon, but I'm pretty sure that Leia has not received any formal training in the use of the Force, let alone would should have the power and precision necessary to execute such an insane feat.

Issue number 2: No Country for Old Snokes.
Yep, Snoke's already dead, killed by Kylo. Now this didn't bother me as much as it did a number of other people as that is the way of the Dark Side: if an apprentice sees a moment of opportunity to kill his master, he'll take it and assume his master's position. This is what Kylo did, so fair enough. What I have an issue with is that - because there's still so many unanswered questions revolving around Snoke (Who/what was he? Where did he come from? How did he assume control over the remainder of the Empire's military forces considering he apparently came from absolutely nowhere?) - he's literally more of a plot device than an actual character. I would have been fine with him getting killed in this movie if we learned something about him first (such as, but not limited to, the previously mentioned questions), but instead this new Master of the Dark Side was just a throw-away plot device used to prop up Kylo as being the main villain.

Issue number 3: "I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roomate!" "So what does that make us?" "ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!"
To be fair, this one could still be expanded on in the next movie and could be a deception in this one. But there's a scene in which Kylo is talking to Rey and he basically says that she already knows who her parents were but she just doesn't want to admit it. While she's in tears and unable to speak, he spells out "what you (she) know in your (her) hear to be true". Apparently Rey's parents are a couple scumbag nobodies who sold her off for some cash to go buy some drugs then just abandoned her. Nothing special about her bloodline or heritage, she's apparently completely unremarkable.

Issue number 4: "All power to forward shields!" "But Cap'n, we 'aven't got any!"
Towards the start of the movie, this massive fuck-off dreadnought ship is attacking the rebel fleet and has all of the anti-fighter guns on the top of it taken out by a single X-Wing. Then one bomber manages to dump its payload on a weak spot and blow up the entire ship. My question is why doesn't this dreadnought - described as a "fleet killer" - have any shields? Shields play a massive role in this move, as we're constantly reminded of the shields the rebel cruiser has. And before anyone says "Well small crafts like fighters can get past shields!" (something that I usually accept and is displayed when Kylo is attacking the rebel cruiser from his fighter), the movie provides an inconsistency with this notion. Finn and a new (likely disposable) character Rose have to go on a side-quest to pick up some kind of Master Code Breaker, someone who can lower the shields of Snoke's capital ship so that they can get a craft through and board it. Apparently they needed to lower the shields for Snoke's ship to get a craft in close, but not the dreadnought's.

Issue number 5: Now you see why evil will always triumph...because good is dumb.
There's one major contrivance in the movie that allows the second half to even happen. After Leia does her Superman space walk, she's unconscious and left in the infirmary. Chain of command falls to a vice admiral in the resistance and she decides that the fleet - which is running low on fuel - is just going to cruise away at normal speed for as long as they can while the First Order fleet is chasing after them. This is because the First Order have some kind of new technology that can track a fleet even if it jumps with hyperspace. If the Resistance tries to make a jump, they'll burn up all their fuel and immediately be destroyed when the First Order pops up behind them. This is why Finn and Rose need to go to the casino planet to find a code break so they can hack the shields of Snoke's ship, get on board it, and disable the tracking technology. This is Poe's plan, and he even stages a mutiny in order to make sure that the cruiser is ready to jump once Finn and Rose have accomplished their objective.

But this movie is a story of failure, as everything the Resistance - in particular Poe - tries ends up blowing up in their face. The REAL plan that the vice admiral was enacting was to cruise past a planet that had an old rebel base on it. They'd then launch a bunch of transports fitted with scanner-cloaking technology and abandon the cruiser as a decoy, allowing them to land undetected at the rebel base. This plan goes tits-up because Benicio's character double-crosses the Resistance after being paid-off by the First Order. He provides them with something that allows them to detect the transports, so the First Order begins blasting them to space dust. However the only reason Benicio's character was even there was because Finn and Rose pick him up from the casino planet. The only reason Finn and Rose went to the casino planet was because they needed someone who could get them on board Snoke's ship to disable the hyperspace tracking device. The only reason they need someone to disable the hyperspace tracking device is because Poe believes the vice admiral has no actual plan to get them out of this situation and is just going to keep going until the cruiser runs out of fuel. And the only reason Poe believes the vice admiral has no actual plan is because for some completely unknown reason she decided she didn't want to share the over-all plan of making it to the rebel base with cloaked transports - which genuinely would have worked had Benicio's character not been involved - to anyone at all. Had she simply told Poe what was going on, there would have been no need for Finn and Rose to go to the casino planet and Benicio's character would have been chilling out in his jail cell, completely uninvolved in the movie at all.

So yeah, the only reason the second half of the movie even happens is because the vice admiral doesn't tell the rest of the Resistance what the plan is.

Those are my big issues with the movie, what follows are more nit-picky things.

Issue number 6: Merchandising! Merchandising! Where the REAL money from the movie is made!
The only reason the porgs are in the movie is to sell porg toys/dolls. That is all. They serve absolutely no purpose to the story other than being cute little creatures that Disney could make into stuffed animals and sell.

Issue number 7: Space Wizards don't have magic powers.
There's a scene where Kylo is fighting alongside Rey against all those red guard fuckers that you always see just standing around and doing fuck-all. It's a pretty nice little action sequence...except for the fact that it's two Force users that don't use the Force. I'm not asking for much, but there's not so much as a Force Push used. Kylo's a guy who could stop a blaster shot in mid-air, you'd think he could choke out a fool or two during this fight. But no. They just use their light sabers.

Issue number 8: Fear and Loathing on Casino Planet.
As others have pointed out, this part of the movie does drag on a bit. As I mentioned before: Finn and Rose are sent on a sidequest to some luxury planet with a casino on it where the movie spends a bit too much time and ultimately the conflict that arises on this planet seems a bit forced just to get Benicio Del Toro's character shoe-horned into the movie. Not to mention they just happened to get put in the same cell as his is rather convenient.

All that said, I still enjoyed the movie. The action sequences were pretty nice and it's still an entertaining ride, but it's got a number of pretty glaring flaws when you think about it.

In the end, I think that most of these issues came from them taking the criticism of The Force Awakens being way too similar to A New Hope and overcompensating for it. It seems like this movie goes out of its way to completely separate itself from any other SW movie, and in doing so a lot of things come across as being forced and/or rushed.

 

[cathou]

It was a "fun" and "entertaining" movie, I'll definitely say that. I felt like it was worth going out to see it in a movie theater. That said, I do have a number of issues with the movie.

Apparently someone else decided to drop a spoiler bomb, for out of courtesy I'll still put mine in a box.

Spoiler: Here there be monsters...erm, Last Jedi spoilers.

Issue number 1: I'm not quite dead!
Leia gets spaced when the bridge to the cruiser she's on gets blasted. Now, I'm sure the Force can do powerful and amazing things. It's not such a huge leap to believe that a Jedi master could use the Force to prevent the effects of catastrophic decompression and exposure to the cold of space...then Superman their way back to an airlock. Now I haven't read the books that are now official canon, but I'm pretty sure that Leia has not received any formal training in the use of the Force, let alone would should have the power and precision necessary to execute such an insane feat.

Issue number 2: No Country for Old Snokes.
Yep, Snoke's already dead, killed by Kylo. Now this didn't bother me as much as it did a number of other people as that is the way of the Dark Side: if an apprentice sees a moment of opportunity to kill his master, he'll take it and assume his master's position. This is what Kylo did, so fair enough. What I have an issue with is that - because there's still so many unanswered questions revolving around Snoke (Who/what was he? Where did he come from? How did he assume control over the remainder of the Empire's military forces considering he apparently came from absolutely nowhere?) - he's literally more of a plot device than an actual character. I would have been fine with him getting killed in this movie if we learned something about him first (such as, but not limited to, the previously mentioned questions), but instead this new Master of the Dark Side was just a throw-away plot device used to prop up Kylo as being the main villain.

Issue number 3: "I am your father's brother's nephew's cousin's former roomate!" "So what does that make us?" "ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!"
To be fair, this one could still be expanded on in the next movie and could be a deception in this one. But there's a scene in which Kylo is talking to Rey and he basically says that she already knows who her parents were but she just doesn't want to admit it. While she's in tears and unable to speak, he spells out "what you (she) know in your (her) hear to be true". Apparently Rey's parents are a couple scumbag nobodies who sold her off for some cash to go buy some drugs then just abandoned her. Nothing special about her bloodline or heritage, she's apparently completely unremarkable.

Issue number 4: "All power to forward shields!" "But Cap'n, we 'aven't got any!"
Towards the start of the movie, this massive fuck-off dreadnought ship is attacking the rebel fleet and has all of the anti-fighter guns on the top of it taken out by a single X-Wing. Then one bomber manages to dump its payload on a weak spot and blow up the entire ship. My question is why doesn't this dreadnought - described as a "fleet killer" - have any shields? Shields play a massive role in this move, as we're constantly reminded of the shields the rebel cruiser has. And before anyone says "Well small crafts like fighters can get past shields!" (something that I usually accept and is displayed when Kylo is attacking the rebel cruiser from his fighter), the movie provides an inconsistency with this notion. Finn and a new (likely disposable) character Rose have to go on a side-quest to pick up some kind of Master Code Breaker, someone who can lower the shields of Snoke's capital ship so that they can get a craft through and board it. Apparently they needed to lower the shields for Snoke's ship to get a craft in close, but not the dreadnought's.

Issue number 5: Now you see why evil will always triumph...because good is dumb.
There's one major contrivance in the movie that allows the second half to even happen. After Leia does her Superman space walk, she's unconscious and left in the infirmary. Chain of command falls to a vice admiral in the resistance and she decides that the fleet - which is running low on fuel - is just going to cruise away at normal speed for as long as they can while the First Order fleet is chasing after them. This is because the First Order have some kind of new technology that can track a fleet even if it jumps with hyperspace. If the Resistance tries to make a jump, they'll burn up all their fuel and immediately be destroyed when the First Order pops up behind them. This is why Finn and Rose need to go to the casino planet to find a code break so they can hack the shields of Snoke's ship, get on board it, and disable the tracking technology. This is Poe's plan, and he even stages a mutiny in order to make sure that the cruiser is ready to jump once Finn and Rose have accomplished their objective.

But this movie is a story of failure, as everything the Resistance - in particular Poe - tries ends up blowing up in their face. The REAL plan that the vice admiral was enacting was to cruise past a planet that had an old rebel base on it. They'd then launch a bunch of transports fitted with scanner-cloaking technology and abandon the cruiser as a decoy, allowing them to land undetected at the rebel base. This plan goes tits-up because Benicio's character double-crosses the Resistance after being paid-off by the First Order. He provides them with something that allows them to detect the transports, so the First Order begins blasting them to space dust. However the only reason Benicio's character was even there was because Finn and Rose pick him up from the casino planet. The only reason Finn and Rose went to the casino planet was because they needed someone who could get them on board Snoke's ship to disable the hyperspace tracking device. The only reason they need someone to disable the hyperspace tracking device is because Poe believes the vice admiral has no actual plan to get them out of this situation and is just going to keep going until the cruiser runs out of fuel. And the only reason Poe believes the vice admiral has no actual plan is because for some completely unknown reason she decided she didn't want to share the over-all plan of making it to the rebel base with cloaked transports - which genuinely would have worked had Benicio's character not been involved - to anyone at all. Had she simply told Poe what was going on, there would have been no need for Finn and Rose to go to the casino planet and Benicio's character would have been chilling out in his jail cell, completely uninvolved in the movie at all.

So yeah, the only reason the second half of the movie even happens is because the vice admiral doesn't tell the rest of the Resistance what the plan is.

Those are my big issues with the movie, what follows are more nit-picky things.

Issue number 6: Merchandising! Merchandising! Where the REAL money from the movie is made!
The only reason the porgs are in the movie is to sell porg toys/dolls. That is all. They serve absolutely no purpose to the story other than being cute little creatures that Disney could make into stuffed animals and sell.

Issue number 7: Space Wizards don't have magic powers.
There's a scene where Kylo is fighting alongside Rey against all those red guard fuckers that you always see just standing around and doing fuck-all. It's a pretty nice little action sequence...except for the fact that it's two Force users that don't use the Force. I'm not asking for much, but there's not so much as a Force Push used. Kylo's a guy who could stop a blaster shot in mid-air, you'd think he could choke out a fool or two during this fight. But no. They just use their light sabers.

Issue number 8: Fear and Loathing on Casino Planet.
As others have pointed out, this part of the movie does drag on a bit. As I mentioned before: Finn and Rose are sent on a sidequest to some luxury planet with a casino on it where the movie spends a bit too much time and ultimately the conflict that arises on this planet seems a bit forced just to get Benicio Del Toro's character shoe-horned into the movie. Not to mention they just happened to get put in the same cell as his is rather convenient.

All that said, I still enjoyed the movie. The action sequences were pretty nice and it's still an entertaining ride, but it's got a number of pretty glaring flaws when you think about it.

In the end, I think that most of these issues came from them taking the criticism of The Force Awakens being way too similar to A New Hope and overcompensating for it. It seems like this movie goes out of its way to completely separate itself from any other SW movie, and in doing so a lot of things come across as being forced and/or rushed.

ok, i'll go into spoiler territory too for that

Spoiler

issue 2 : i dont know, i mean, if you are going to kill snoke anyway, why bother give him time to explain his background. it will be irrelevant when is cut in half anyway.

issue 3 : i think everybody went nut around the whole linage thing, but why she should have a lineage ? i mean, Jedi are not supposed to have kids anyway, so the skywalkers are suppose to be litterally the only jedi legacy in the galaxy. every other very powerfull jedi must have pop from nowhere... and why the force sensitivity should be heriditary anyway ? that would imply that the force is genetic, which is worst that the medichlorian explanation... You dont have to be somebody to be good with the force. that the whole point of the finale scene with the stable boy getting his broom with the force...

issue 4 : i have the impression that the shields in star wars in most case does not stop kinetic attack, but only energetic attacks. so any objects goes through, but an energy blast from distance will be stopped. and i have the impresson that the code break is more to get inside snoke ship without being detected.

i kind of agree on the others points.

the casino scene is... i actually dont see anywone saying on the internet that they liked this scene. seems to be univerally disliked.

Other than that, the rebel capital ship zipping through snoke's ship at light speed was crazy, and one of the most impressive scene i've seen. it was very cool.

i wonder why Yoda burn the tree and act like the books are gone when Rey have them. did Yoda knew they were gone when i burn the tree ?

i really think there will be a 10 years gap in the story between 8 and 9. you cannot go anywhere in the story when all the rebels left in the galaxy fit in the millenium falcon. so i really think that leia death will be mentonned only in the next movie opening crawl...

But, i really enjoyed the movie. probably in my top 4 out of 9 star wars.

 

[Dango]

Beware incoming "Rey is a mary sue" arguments.

It's not as egregious in this movie, fortunately, though...

Spoiler: Spoiler from the movie!

...of course she has to best Luke in a duel.

Other than that they toned down the Mary Sue thing.

Spoiler

Really? I thought the Mary Sue criticism in the first movie was pretty hogwash because of how emotionally brittle Rey was. I was expecting them to play off that in The Last Jedi and they did nothing substantial with it. I actually thought she was much more poorly written in this. That's a criticism I levy towards the whole movie though-- the story felt incredibly bloated, introducing too many characters with not enough care given to any of them or the returning cast. No character felt particularly solid or believable because no one got enough screen time or had clear enough motivations. Kylo Ren felt like a plot device more than anything else. Rian Johnson needed to be reigned in; his narrative was somehow more convoluted yet more simplistic than Episode VII, and the answers to the questions brought up in VII were frankly insulting. I thought it was good but still very, very disappointing, with overall not as tightly wrapped a narrative as The Force Awakens.

 

[Neverhoodian]

Right, I'm just going to copy-paste my post from the WW because I can't be arsed to rewrite it all over again:

Sheesh, what a bunch of jaded cynics we have in here. I just got back from the theater, and I think The Last Jedi is great. It doesn't reach Rogue One levels of excellence and it certainly won't dethrone Empire as my favorite Star Wars film, but it has enough going for it to give it a respectable position in the pantheon for me.

I think part of the backlash in some circles can be chalked up to preconceived notions that turned out to be wrong...gloriously wrong in some cases. I'm not going to mention particulars here, but let's just say there's lots of butthurt fans right now that their precious character theories have been brutually eviscerated...and their tears are delicious.

Anyway, here's my initial impressions (spoilers follow, ye have been warned):

Spoiler: THE GOOD

-Opening with a pitched space battle was very nice for a diehard starfighter jock like me...and with actual new ship designs to boot! I particularly liked the Resistance bombers, how they're clearly inspired by World War II aircraft like the B-24 yet still retain a distinctive Star Wars flavor. Too bad they were all blown to smithereens

-Luke tossing his saber over his shoulder was great. Lots of people are bitching about it, but I think it's perfectly in character. He was just offered an object that in his eyes represents his greatest failure and everything he hates about himself. Makes sense to me that he'd want no part of it.

-Luke's sullen, uncooperative demeanor in the first act. Again, people seem to dislike it because it's not "in character," but I'd disagree. Isolation changes people. You try living on a remote island for years with just distant caretakers and local wildlife for company and see if you can keep a chipper demeanor.

-Kylo Ren's Tie Silencer is rad. It's like a canon version of the Tie Avenger, one of my favorite Imperial ships from "Legends."

-Speaking of Kylo/Ben, his character is fleshed out a whole lot more here, particularly in his interactions with Rey. These are easily some of the best moments in the film as they try to get into each others' heads and understand one another.

-The showdown with Snoke. I loved how Kylo managed to trick Snoke into letting his guard down by masking his intentions towards him under the guise of supposedly killing Rey. It's just different enough to distinguish itself from Vader/Anakin defeating Palpatine in RotJ, and it indicates that the so-called "Supreme Leader" wasn't as powerful as he wanted others to believe. Besides, Kylo's a far more compelling villain than Snoke ever was. I for one am glad to see him gone.

-The lightsaber brawl with Snoke's guards. It was fun seeing all the different weapon types and fighting styles at play, from standard pikes and swords to whips and daggers. It felt like the best elements of duels from previous trilogies, with the flashy choreography of the prequels mixed in with the weighty, purposeful swings, blows and dramatic clashes from the classics.

-The reveal that Rey's parents were not in fact Skywalkers, Solos, Kenobis or any other famous family line. Nope, they were just a couple of nobodies who sold her for drinking money. It was as if I could hear millions of Rey theorists crying out in terror before being suddenly silenced. It. Was. Glorious.

-Luke's grand send-off at the end. I'm normally of the opinion that the series should stop trying to milk nostalgia and forge new paths, but that callback to the twin suns scene...goddamn.

Spoiler: THE BAD

-Was the gross-out scene of Luke chugging unpasteurized sea-cow milk necessary? First it was the rathtars in TFA, then Bor Gullet in RO, now this. What is it with modern Star Wars films and their obsession with adding stupid shit that involves unconvincing CGI beasties?

-The Porgs. They were tolerable in small doses, but by the time they had boarded the Millennium Falcon I found myself wishing Chewie had cooked up the lot of them...and this is coming from someone who didn't mind the Ewoks and Gungans.

-Leia's now-infamous Superman scene. On the one hand it was nice to see her finally using the Force in a proactive way (I still think not making her a Jedi was a huge missed opportunity). On the other hand, did it have to be such an extreme example? I don't care how Force-sensitive you are, surviving explosive decompression in the vacuum of space stretches credibility even by Star Wars standards. I half-expected her eyes to blow out of their sockets or instantly freeze over when she opened them. It also just felt awkward overall in the light of Carrie's passing.

-They killed Admiral Ackbar off way too early and in too subdued a manner. He should have been the one who covered the transports and went out with a bang spearing Snoke's star destroyer, not some broad we hardly know.

-The Finn/Rose subplot fell rather flat compared to the rest of the film. Also, Rose's apparent affections for Finn at the end came out of left field. I hope this doesn't turn into an awkward love triangle for Episode IX.

-The Canto Bight casino setting had potential, but it oddly felt too ordinary, like they just took a real world casino and threw some weird aliens in, hoping that would be enough. Hell, Dex's totally-not-50's-diner in Episode II was a more convincing Star Wars locale than whatever the hell that was supposed to be. Also, why do the (presumably orphaned) kids working the animal stalls look like they came straight out of a Charles Dickens' story? I mean, one of them was sweeping with a goddamn straw broom. Couldn't they have at least made it a futuristic repulsor-broom or something else that doesn't scream "19th century?!"

-Yoda appearing as a ghost, specifically the part where he destroys the tree and Jedi texts when Luke hesitates. It robbed Luke of his agency, forcing the decision out of his hand. This clashes with the way Force ghosts have been portrayed in the past, as passive spirits merely providing guidance and/or warnings. Even when Luke would disobey their wishes they never tried to take matters into their own ethereal hands like that. It just felt...wrong, to the point where I initially thought it was the work of someone like Snoke using Yoda's likeness to disguise his actions.

 

[Kolby Jack]

Question how did Han and Finn jump with the falcon into atmosphere if it is now established that real-space effect objects in hyperspace? Shouldn't they be burnt up or worse? Not to mention the awesome capabilities of having ftl cannons and how that would shit upon any fleet.

IIRC Han says of the shield that it blocks anything slower than light speed, so FTL would bypass it, physical or not.

And yeah, this movie was fantastic. Not perfect, but it's probably my new favorite Star Wars movie. Seeing people say it's "bad writing" feels like they're trying to cover their subjective-as-fuck dislike for the direction of the story with something more concrete so they don't come off as raging fanboys/girls. It wasn't jumping around like crazy, I had no trouble following it at all; I can recall pretty much everything about it and so far I've only seen it once. If you don't like it, fine, but I really don't believe anyone who tries to blame the pacing.