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

[TheMysteriousGX]

Quick Mary Sue round up:

Spoiler

Not Mary Sue- Ray didn't really contribute to killing Snoke apart from serving as a distraction.
Is Mary Sue- Ray sought out the only person in the Universe capable of improving her character and it turned out he needed her to improve him and she didn't even need to even open a book after all.

Spoiler

That was Yoda. Rey didn't change anybody's mind that movie

 

[Dazzle Novak]

Rose and Finn jack themselves off for freeing the rabbit-horses, but leave the children behind in child slavery. This while, as far as they knew at the moment, failing to accomplish their mission in service to the resistance's survival.

That about sums up the moral depth of the film to me.

And no, the corporate juggernaut known as Disney isn't going to be the one who provides a vehicle for any sort of meaningful critique of capitalism. Come on, people... "Let the past die! [Solo: A Star Wars Story coming this May.}"

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

The best way I can describe it is that the film felt like it was made by the member berries from South Park:

"'Member the red guards? 'Member the Emperor's throne room? 'Member Hoth? 'Member AT-ATs? 'Member puppet Yoda? 'Member how a jedi in training went to a place of the dark side? 'Member how Luke tried to get Vader to turn? 'Member when the heroes had to infiltrate the enemy base? 'Member the Millennium Falcon coming to a last minute rescue? 'Member how Yoda dies? 'Member the Leia recording with R2-D2? 'Member C-3PO (why the hell is he in this movie)?"

The thing is, it brings up all those visual and narrative cues so that it can play with your expectations of how they turn out.

So you see the Emperor's cool-looking, red-clad bodyguards actually getting to fight instead of just standing there and looking imposing. The Emperor gets killed by his apprentice, but not because his apprentice seeks last-minute redemption, and the Emperor's death changes nothing rather than resulting in instant victory. The AT-ATs show up and the rebels have to get on old speeders to go fight them, but the sally fails, the AT-ATs are completely unharmed, and most of the speeder pilots die for no reason. Puppet Yoda shows up and surprises Luke with a lecture on the positive aspects of failure, a bit of a contrast to his earlier "do or do not, there is no try." Rey visits a place strong in the Dark Side, but rather than getting some grand and terrible revelation like Luke did in Empire, she simply sees her reflection. She tries to redeem Kylo Ren, but he decides to stick with being evil. The rag-tag team of misfits infiltrate the enemy base, but fail, get caught, and make the situation much worse. The Millennium Falcon comes in and shoots up some TIE fighters, but that achieves basically nothing overall - the Resistance guys are still basically doomed when the laser-ram fires - and the eventual rescue later on would've been impossible if the survivors inside hadn't decided to try and escape on their own. And Luke dies, but not passively like Yoda did - he dies after taking action, re-living Obi-Wan's last stand in an unexpected way. (Seriously, in the lead-up to that my friend was like "ugh, they're doing Obi-Wan," and then when they didn't, he went "oh.")

The Leia recording and C-3PO, I got nothing. I don't know why C-3PO is in this movie. But Luke does call out R2-D2 for shameless exploiting his nostalgia. Overall, the film was working very hard to screw around with all your expectations as to how the film was going to turn out, and it largely succeeded.

It succeeded a little too much in my mind, because while having the characters waste a whole bunch of the audience's time on a casino planet for no reward may be very effective at deconstructing the success rate of the average just-crazy-enough-to-work plan, it does still waste a lot of the audience's time.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

The Leia recording and C-3PO, I got nothing. I don't know why C-3PO is in this movie. But Luke does call out R2-D2 for shameless exploiting his nostalgia. Overall, the film was working very hard to screw around with all your expectations as to how the film was going to turn out, and it largely succeeded.

I think this is the core contention that fans face in regards to TLJ. Whether you like it or not largely seems to come down to whether you are fine with it playing with audience expectations, subverting the traditional Star Wars narrative set up by the previous seven movies and moving the focus and themes in a new direction or not. A lot of the fan criticism seems to be, largely, that the movie didn't give them what they wanted, focused on the wrong things and was and wasn't Star Wars enough (at the same time too).

Just like ESB before it, it moved the series in a different direction from its' predecessor, introduced a bunch of new plots and themes that weren't there before (in AHN Luke and Vader were not related, the Emperor was never seen and mentioned just once and Han and Leia were not hot for each other) and dared strike out on its' own instead of remaining in the mold. Whether TLJ will be vindicated by history like ESB or will remain the divisive movie that overstretched remains to be seen.

 

[Hawki]

I think this is the core contention that fans face in regards to TLJ. Whether you like it or not largely seems to come down to whether you are fine with it playing with audience expectations, subverting the traditional Star Wars narrative set up by the previous seven movies and moving the focus and themes in a new direction or not. A lot of the fan criticism seems to be, largely, that the movie didn't give them what they wanted, focused on the wrong things and was and wasn't Star Wars enough (at the same time too).

I get that, but surely one can accept that the movie has flaws in it regardless of expectations. Off the top of my head I can name:

-The power structure is just weird at this point, how the Republic apparently has no navy whatsover now, yet the First Order apparently has enough manpower to size control of the galaxy in a matter of weeks (I know the EU kinda explains this, but if your film needs to rely on external materials...) Also, if they do have such a large fleet, why can't they send another group of ships to intercept the Resistance from another angle?

-The Canto Blight arc feels superfluous, or at the least, goes on far too long (seriously, what was the point of the horse stuff? And what was DJ's plan, if he could leave the cell at any time? Just wait for a client to be thrown in with him before he uses the key card?)

-Holdo has no reason to keep Poe in the dark. I get that it's part of Poe's arc (less trigger happy), but it's a case of character stupidity being used to drive the plot.

-The humour. Honestly, I was fine with it (I even liked the porgs), but I could get why someone would find it grating.

-Subversion aside, the film feels weird structurally in the context of a trilogy. If anything, its ending kind of reminds me of Revenge of the Sith, of ending a trilogy, with the promise that in the next trilogy, things will get better. This could be lumped in with the subversion of Star Wars idea, but in terms of overall story structure...this film is kinda weird.

There's other little things that bug me (e.g. Luke tells Rey that he has three lessons for her, but only gives her two - apparently the third was cut from the final version), but those are the main ones. We could debate this all day, but I think it's fair to say that the film has its share of narrative problems, regardless of whether they're subverting Star Wars or not.

 

[Catnip1024]

-The power structure is just weird at this point, how the Republic apparently has no navy whatsover now, yet the First Order apparently has enough manpower to size control of the galaxy in a matter of weeks (I know the EU kinda explains this, but if your film needs to rely on external materials...) Also, if they do have such a large fleet, why can't they send another group of ships to intercept the Resistance from another angle?

See, my understanding (albeit possibly missing some of the lore) was that the Alliance is not the Republic. They are a faction within it. The Republic would be fractured and bickering in the power struggle that follows the fall of the Empire.

As for the intercept, I guess it takes time to travel through hyperspace, and they weren't expecting to need more ships. You'd probably be talking a good couple of days even if a fleet was at a convenient position to start with, judging by some of the hyperspace sequences. That, or they didn't feel they needed it, what with the limited fuel and complete inability to fight back.

-Holdo has no reason to keep Poe in the dark. I get that it's part of Poe's arc (less trigger happy), but it's a case of character stupidity being used to drive the plot.

You could justify that by assuming that Holdo kept everyone in the dark because they don't know if there is a traitor in the ranks. Having been chased across the galaxy, including through hyperspace, it's not an unreasonable precaution.

The rest I pretty much agree with, though.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I get that, but surely one can accept that the movie has flaws in it regardless of expectations. Off the top of my head I can name:

Absolutely, it is not a perfect movie (which movie ever is?). However, the outrage against it can not be chalked up only to its' weird pacing, few weird character moments (Holdo's adamant refusal to tell Poe, Rose and Finn's joy over crashing a casino etc.) and attempt at including humor at least every other scene. As far as editing goes it could absolutely stand to shed at least 15 minutes of running time without feeling rushed or cramped. On the other hand it is better edited then Rogue One, which has an incredibly messy and unfocused first act that does first time viewers no favors in its' breakneck pace through multiple scenes that lack context and only become understandable once you reach the much better structured second act about 40 minutes into the movie.

So when people complain about the movie being bloated, it is also telling that they get hung up on things the movie doesn't do, like give us the origin story of Snoke, more scenes with Holdo explaining her deal or an elaboration on the Resistance's place in the Republic (something which was covered by a tie-in novel to TFA by those that absolutely have to know and is covered by at least half a dozen youtube videos, by the way). That tells us that the problem is not so much with what the movie does poorly as much as it is about what the person complaining wished the movie did.

Roger Ebert once said that he never judged a movie based on what he wished it was, but on whether the movie managed to do what it set out to do. That's a useful guideline both in watching movies and understanding where other people's criticism of movies comes from.

 

[BrawlMan]

I get that, but surely one can accept that the movie has flaws in it regardless of expectations. Off the top of my head I can name:

Absolutely, it is not a perfect movie (which movie ever is?). However, the outrage against it can not be chalked up only to its' weird pacing, few weird character moments (Holdo's adamant refusal to tell Poe, Rose and Finn's joy over crashing a casino etc.) and attempt at including humor at least every other scene. As far as editing goes it could absolutely stand to shed at least 15 minutes of running time without feeling rushed or cramped. On the other hand it is better edited then Rogue One, which has an incredibly messy and unfocused first act that does first time viewers no favors in its' breakneck pace through multiple scenes that lack context and only become understandable once you reach the much better structured second act about 40 minutes into the movie.

So when people complain about the movie being bloated, it is also telling that they get hung up on things the movie doesn't do, like give us the origin story of Snoke, more scenes with Holdo explaining her deal or an elaboration on the Resistance's place in the Republic (something which was covered by a tie-in novel to TFA by those that absolutely have to know and is covered by at least half a dozen youtube videos, by the way). That tells us that the problem is not so much with what the movie does poorly as much as it is about what the person complaining wished the movie did.

Roger Ebert once said that he never judged a movie based on what he wished it was, but on whether the movie managed to do what it set out to do. That's a useful guideline both in watching movies and understanding where other people's criticism of movies comes from.

Agreed. I enjoyed the Last Jedi and I put up there with Empire Strikes Back. Like any film it has flaws, but nothing to make me go ape shit crazy like everybody else seems to be doing. Even Maximilian and his pals are mixed about the film

Oh and that is the only ever useful advice Rodger Ebert ever has done.

 

[Silvanus]

However, the outrage against it can not be chalked up only to its' weird pacing, few weird character moments (Holdo's adamant refusal to tell Poe [...]

I thought this was odd while I was watching the film, but after thinking about it, I don't think it was terribly strange after all. Holdo is a commander; Poe is a pilot, not an adviser, vice-admiral, or commander. It is not his job to know the broader strategy behind decision-making-- it's his job to fly an X-Wing.

Military commanders in the real world do not tend to inform soldiers of broader strategy.

[...] Rose and Finn's joy over crashing a casino etc.)

Well, a casino full of arms dealers who helped to make Rose's life very miserable indeed.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I thought this was odd while I was watching the film, but after thinking about it, I don't think it was terribly strange after all. Holdo is a commander; Poe is a pilot, not an adviser, vice-admiral, or commander. It is not his job to know the broader strategy behind decision-making-- it's his job to fly an X-Wing.

Military commanders in the real world do not tend to inform soldiers of broader strategy.

Agreed. I was like "Yup, that's what my military service was like" when Holdo kept telling Poe to shut up and wait for orders. The one thing I wanted was a short scene or exchange that really made it explicit, by linking it to a fear of spies, Poe's reckless behavior at the start of the movie or anything. As is, the movie makes Holdo seem rather unreasonable to people who doesn't expect Star Wars to suddenly hold to actual military logic (remember in RotJ when 3 generals all go covert to attack a forest moon with like half a platoon of soldiers?).

 

[Silvanus]

Agreed. I was like "Yup, that's what my military service was like" when Holdo kept telling Poe to shut up and wait for orders. The one thing I wanted was a short scene or exchange that really made it explicit, by linking it to a fear of spies, Poe's reckless behavior at the start of the movie or anything. As is, the movie makes Holdo seem rather unreasonable to people who doesn't expect Star Wars to suddenly hold to actual military logic (remember in RotJ when 3 generals all go covert to attack a forest moon with like half a platoon of soldiers?).

Well, Holdo does chew out Poe for his behaviour during the bombing raid, saying it cost them their bombers. She does this just after Poe tries to introduce himself.

I'll concede, though, that after Poe starts actually mutinying, it would've been easier for Holdo to just bloody tell him.

 

[Gordon_4_v1legacy]

However, the outrage against it can not be chalked up only to its' weird pacing, few weird character moments (Holdo's adamant refusal to tell Poe [...]

I thought this was odd while I was watching the film, but after thinking about it, I don't think it was terribly strange after all. Holdo is a commander; Poe is a pilot, not an adviser, vice-admiral, or commander. It is not his job to know the broader strategy behind decision-making-- it's his job to fly an X-Wing.

Military commanders in the real world do not tend to inform soldiers of broader strategy.

[...] Rose and Finn's joy over crashing a casino etc.)

Well, a casino full of arms dealers who helped to make Rose's life very miserable indeed.

See I got the impression that Poe wasn?t just a pilot, but the section commander of the fighter wing so while he?s no admiral he still had a legitimate seat at the big kids table. Now since he was very publically demoted for being a wanker, he shouldn?t have expected to be told the whole shebang but he should have been told something that he could tell his own subordinates who were clearly as dissatified with Holdo as he was. While I?m sure there is military nuance I don?t see, to the untrained observer it looked for all the world that Holdo had her thumbs up her arse and was doing sweet Fred Astaire about the massive capital ship taking potshots at them. Hell I thought she was a traitor who was broadcasting their hyperspace location to the First Order.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

While I?m sure there is military nuance I don?t see, to the untrained observer it looked for all the world that Holdo had her thumbs up her arse and was doing sweet Fred Astaire about the massive capital ship taking potshots at them. Hell I thought she was a traitor who was broadcasting their hyperspace location to the First Order.

The military nuance is that need to know is really strict and when you have a wing commander (or senior air officer after Poe's demotion) who lacks a wing to lead, they will be left out of the loop as to minimize leak potential. But as you point out, the movie fails to make Holdo's actions seem justified and instead makes her come off as a vindictive asshole (though considering the consistent portrayal through multiple scenes, maybe it is intended). This ultimately makes Poe's arc less resonant with the viewers, because we are likely to think that Poe was right to do something when the commander seems to be doing nothing instead of feeling that he learned an important lesson when he didn't listen to the competent and reasonable commander.

As an aside, Holdo's interactions with Poe makes her come off as uncaring and not listening to Poe's legitimate concerns, which is something that's all too common in bad real life bosses. Since most of us are likely to have had a boss like that at some point, it resonates really badly with a lot of us to see the protagonist in a situation that's so relatable, which just further amplifies the feeling that Poe's doing the right thing and Holdo's the one being stupid.

 

[bastardofmelbourne]

-The power structure is just weird at this point, how the Republic apparently has no navy whatsover now, yet the First Order apparently has enough manpower to size control of the galaxy in a matter of weeks (I know the EU kinda explains this, but if your film needs to rely on external materials...) Also, if they do have such a large fleet, why can't they send another group of ships to intercept the Resistance from another angle?

The only explanation I've seen was that the Republic had actually abolished its military, which I find completely absurd given that they're maybe a few decades out from a galaxy-wide civil war and remnants of the Empire are still out there.

-The Canto Blight arc feels superfluous, or at the least, goes on far too long (seriously, what was the point of the horse stuff? And what was DJ's plan, if he could leave the cell at any time? Just wait for a client to be thrown in with him before he uses the key card?)

Agree with that 100%.

-Holdo has no reason to keep Poe in the dark. I get that it's part of Poe's arc (less trigger happy), but it's a case of character stupidity being used to drive the plot.

100%.

-The humour. Honestly, I was fine with it (I even liked the porgs), but I could get why someone would find it grating.

When a friend of mine made the same criticism - about how Star Wars films had never really been "funny" before - I was like "well, what about Jar Jar Binks? What about the droid soldiers? Or C-3PO and R2-D2? Or Yoda's senile-old-puppet act? Or the Ewoks?"

Star Wars has always had comic relief characters tagging along the protagonists to perform physical comedy and deliver one-liners. TLJ just cut out the middleman and had the protagonists deliver the one-liners personally.

-Subversion aside, the film feels weird structurally in the context of a trilogy. If anything, its ending kind of reminds me of Revenge of the Sith, of ending a trilogy, with the promise that in the next trilogy, things will get better. This could be lumped in with the subversion of Star Wars idea, but in terms of overall story structure...this film is kinda weird.

It does feel weird. Then again, Empire always felt weird once I thought about it, too.

There's other little things that bug me (e.g. Luke tells Rey that he has three lessons for her, but only gives her two - apparently the third was cut from the final version), but those are the main ones.

I can't decide if that was a deliberate anticlimax, or if they were trying to do a thing where the third lesson was actually for Luke and it was when Yoda showed up to lecture him about failure.

I was expecting Luke to be telepathically reaching out to Rey at the last minute to give her the third lesson. Or maybe the third lesson was, like, interstellar astral projection 101. Who knows? Maybe his force ghost might show up in the next film. That'd be neat, actually. A little more Mark Hamill to tide over the absence of Carrie Fisher.

 

[Saelune]

-The humour. Honestly, I was fine with it (I even liked the porgs), but I could get why someone would find it grating.

When a friend of mine made the same criticism - about how Star Wars films had never really been "funny" before - I was like "well, what about Jar Jar Binks? What about the droid soldiers? Or C-3PO and R2-D2? Or Yoda's senile-old-puppet act? Or the Ewoks?"

Star Wars has always had comic relief characters tagging along the protagonists to perform physical comedy and deliver one-liners. TLJ just cut out the middleman and had the protagonists deliver the one-liners personally.

Cant speak for anyone else, but my problem wasnt that it tried to be funny, hell I prefer bits of comedy in anything I watch. The problem was that it failed on actually being funny most of the time. Alot of the humor it had, did not feel like Star Wars humor. Like, what was up with that "its an evil ship or something, jk its a clothing iron" joke? That felt odd and out of place.

 

[Rangaman]

Okay, I'm gonna go a bit more in depth.

I've actually found myself comparing this film a lot more to Return of the Jedi than any other Star Wars film, because when taken as a whole I find it has the same high points: there are some awesome visuals, it goes interesting places (sometimes) and the emotional depth of the film is fantastic. By the same token it's brought down by the forced (geddit?) levity and filler content, both of which are painfully and obviously added in to pad the runtime and fulfill the studio's requirements.

Spoiler: More Specific Thoughts

Rose/Finn's Sidequest and Arcs: I'm gonna start off by saying that I don't hate Rose Tico. Watching her grow out of her sister's shadow into a confident soldier and pilot is a decent, if fairly run-of-the-mill character arc and there's nothing about her that made me want to punch someone.

On the other hand Canto Blight and that action sequence felt like George Lucas took over filming for a few weeks. It would've been much cooler to have Rose and Finn sneaking around Snoke's ship for the majority of the film, and could've lead to some awesome, tense scenes, better character development and a shorter runtime (or at least a less overstuffed film). What we got isn't enough to make me hate the film, but it's like when the Ewoks turned the Battle of Endor into a Charlie Chaplain film. Or when Han, Leia, Chewie and 3PO hid in a space worm until the "A" plot of Empire caught up. It's one of those moments that just made me question "why is this even in the movie?" and more worryingly "why am I watching this?"

But what's more annoying is Finn's arc. Finn goes from being afraid of the First Order to confident war hero. So much so that he's willing to sacrifice himself to save the Rebellion. But, instead of giving us a fitting ending to that arc, Rose comes in and saves the day, because Disney doesn't know if Rose is marketable to children/nerds yet, whereas Finn is a popular character of a love story only slightly more forced than the one in Jurassic World.

And what's annoying about this subplot in general is that the "A" plot about Luke, Rey and Kylo and the "C" plot (seeing as how the movie spends less time on this plot than any other) about Poe and Holdo's rivalry in the absence of Leia and their conflicting ideologies are far more interesting than terrible-looking space horses. Yet the movie keeps cutting back to Canto Blight. It doesn't ruin the film but it isn't great either.

Forced Levity: The humor (at times) felt a bit forced. Sometimes it's funny, other times it's just..."eh". Nothing ever reached Jar Jar levels of obnoxious (the Porgs, mercifully enough, have no impact on the story). I feel like the other films handled humor a bit better.

Though having said that, I'm aware the Star Wars is, primarily, made for "teh kidz" and shouldn't be self-serious. And I'll take "slightly forced but still mostly fun" over "joyless, pretentious prequel slogfest" thank you very much.

Leia Poppins: This scene was just super weird and awkward considering the fact Carrie Fisher was one of the many casualties of 2016. Watching Leia's corpse fly across the screen only to reanimate and fly back to the ship was deeply uncomfortable to watch, and it makes me wish Johnson had cut her from the film. Or have her killed off in a somewhat respectful manner.

The Good News: That's really all I didn't like about the film. Everything else was brilliantly well done. The writing, the visuals, the music...everything fulfilled my every expectation. Luke gets redeemed and is given a peaceful, respectful send-off (but come on, you know JJ is gonna stick Ghost Luke in the next movie), Puppet Yoda returned to be awesome for five minutes, I have yet to see someone say the Lightspeed Suicide Ramming wasn't awesome...when this movie is on a high, it's amazing.

On the whole, I liked more than The Force Awakens. TFA just did what Star Wars does well, and was a basically good movie for it. The Last Jedi is more experimental, and I like that. It doesn't always work, but when it does it's some of the best Star Wars has to offer. I hope JJ can stick the landing with Episode IX.

 

[twistedmic]

-The Canto Blight arc feels superfluous, or at the least, goes on far too long (seriously, what was the point of the horse stuff? And what was DJ's plan, if he could leave the cell at any time? Just wait for a client to be thrown in with him before he uses the key card?)

I got the impression he was (trying) to sleep off a hangover/drinking binge when Rose and Finn woke him up.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

The thing is, it brings up all those visual and narrative cues so that it can play with your expectations of how they turn out.

So you see the Emperor's cool-looking, red-clad bodyguards actually getting to fight instead of just standing there and looking imposing. The Emperor gets killed by his apprentice, but not because his apprentice seeks last-minute redemption, and the Emperor's death changes nothing rather than resulting in instant victory. The AT-ATs show up and the rebels have to get on old speeders to go fight them, but the sally fails, the AT-ATs are completely unharmed, and most of the speeder pilots die for no reason. Puppet Yoda shows up and surprises Luke with a lecture on the positive aspects of failure, a bit of a contrast to his earlier "do or do not, there is no try." Rey visits a place strong in the Dark Side, but rather than getting some grand and terrible revelation like Luke did in Empire, she simply sees her reflection. She tries to redeem Kylo Ren, but he decides to stick with being evil. The rag-tag team of misfits infiltrate the enemy base, but fail, get caught, and make the situation much worse. The Millennium Falcon comes in and shoots up some TIE fighters, but that achieves basically nothing overall - the Resistance guys are still basically doomed when the laser-ram fires - and the eventual rescue later on would've been impossible if the survivors inside hadn't decided to try and escape on their own. And Luke dies, but not passively like Yoda did - he dies after taking action, re-living Obi-Wan's last stand in an unexpected way. (Seriously, in the lead-up to that my friend was like "ugh, they're doing Obi-Wan," and then when they didn't, he went "oh.")

The Leia recording and C-3PO, I got nothing. I don't know why C-3PO is in this movie. But Luke does call out R2-D2 for shameless exploiting his nostalgia. Overall, the film was working very hard to screw around with all your expectations as to how the film was going to turn out, and it largely succeeded.

It succeeded a little too much in my mind, because while having the characters waste a whole bunch of the audience's time on a casino planet for no reward may be very effective at deconstructing the success rate of the average just-crazy-enough-to-work plan, it does still waste a lot of the audience's time.

The problem is that by the time I saw the film I already knew all the big spoilers (Luke and Snoke die, Rey's parents aren't special), as well as had heard it to be "different" in some way. And honestly I didn't care, since I don't go to Star Wars movies to see plot twists on par with the Red Wedding or The Sixth Sense. So I don't think it was unreasonable to expect to see something actually different, and I basically had no expectations whatsoever for how the story was going to go. So suffice to say I was quite disappointed to get yet another movie with Jedi training in the middle of buttfuck-nowhere, another battle with AT-ATs on a bright white planet, another scene in a throne room with red guards where the main villain shows the protagonist her friends are on the ropes etc. The outcomes or reasons behind them may have been different, but we don't get to see how those even pay off until a year from now. Which I frankly don't have high hopes for, considering how many plot points and characters from TFA this movie completely disregarded.

We also seem to have different standards for playing with audience expectations and narrative deconstruction. Because I don't think "do the exact same thing as before, but change the ending" counts as "deconstruction". Neither is an offhanded line about rich people playing both ends bringing shades of moral grey into the franchise. And having a 30-minutes long, utterly pointless sidequest that doesn't affect the narrative in any way is definitely not subversion, it's just bad writing. Getting to see the red guards fight, or any other plot points you mentioned for that matter, could only be "subverting expectations" to someone if they expected TLJ to be a carbon copy of "Empire" to the same degree The Force Awakens was of A New Hope. So IMO calling TLJ "deconstructive" or "subversive" in any way is a pretty tall order.

 

[Jamcie Kerbizz]

-The humour. Honestly, I was fine with it (I even liked the porgs), but I could get why someone would find it grating.

When a friend of mine made the same criticism - about how Star Wars films had never really been "funny" before - I was like "well, what about Jar Jar Binks? What about the droid soldiers? Or C-3PO and R2-D2? Or Yoda's senile-old-puppet act? Or the Ewoks?"

Star Wars has always had comic relief characters tagging along the protagonists to perform physical comedy and deliver one-liners. TLJ just cut out the middleman and had the protagonists deliver the one-liners personally.

Cant speak for anyone else, but my problem wasnt that it tried to be funny, hell I prefer bits of comedy in anything I watch. The problem was that it failed on actually being funny most of the time. Alot of the humor it had, did not feel like Star Wars humor. Like, what was up with that "its an evil ship or something, jk its a clothing iron" joke? That felt odd and out of place.

In regards to humour my biggest gripe is complete disregard to pacing and 'tones'/emotions. It's like in one scene they try so sooooo hard to depict melodramatic, sacrifice scene to the point they imo go overboard with pathos. Next scene. Space equivalent of fart jokes. Like wtf?
Director and script writer must have snorted cocaine out of eachother buttholes while procuring this, ie. they created twisted bond in which to them these irrational mood swings felt juuuuust riiiiight. Not so much to normal people.

Next thing is what you mention. Most of this humour feels like created by people who feel disdain for 'geeks and nerds' and all they find dear to them, so 'jokes' are overflowing with thinly veiled resentment to the fact it's ok now to like such things openly. End result: this humour was directed at and actually funny to people that loath Star Wars or just don't care and enjoy lowbrow sense of humour but completely lost on actual Star Wars fans who loved this sci-fi universum.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

I wasn't big on some of the humor either (but the fish maids were brilliant, fite me), but just because humor didn't land for you doesn't make it an attack on Star Wars fans, sheesh.