55% User Score on Rottentomatoes... vs. 93% critic score. I am thinking on passing on this one after the force awakens really pissed me off, I passed on the surprise that was the good Star Wars movie Rogue One (besides the retcon-complains and some plotholes according to online reviews) because of the huge disappointment that was TFA, and after hearing so much bad about the new SW movie online, I think I will now concentrate on the side-story movies like Rogue One...

Seems like these are the only ones that Disney allows being a cohesive story instead of a hard to follow mish-mash of subplots and sub-sub-plots, and they seem to be more into actually getting into the lore of universe instead of delivering shallow popcorn entertainment and a platform for toy-sales.

Kinda interested in the Solo Spinoff movie, will certainly watch Rogue One on Blueray when that is out, but I don't think I can force myself to sit through another pile of boring subplots served by mary-sue-ish nobodies, cool character ideas badly executed (how incredibly cool would it be to have a big, 2h story about how a Storm Trooper slowly shakes off his brainwashing, and driven by guilt starts acting against his former comrades... but no, no time for that, lets drop all deep characterization to make room for more shallow characters), and old fan favorites brought back just to be killed off in lame fashion one after another.

Really, I HATED episode 1 and 2 with a passion, and episode 3 was only saved by having darth vader in it, as brief as those scenes were. Darth Vader makes everything bearable.... one a more serious note, as soon as things got dark and Anakin wasn't such an annoying brat anymore, the story got almost interesting...

But after having sat through TFA, and reading up on the apparent clusterf*ck the last jedi is to some of the audience, I can finally say this: I still prefer episodes 1-3 to TFA, and maybe even TLJ, if I believe some online reviews.

Episodes 1-3 were bad movies with a great background story.... after all, the political trickery that led to the creation to the empire, and how Anakin turned to the dark side was an interesting and engaging story. Told differently, it would have made for one good movie. Maybe two.

TFA had a non-existant story. A story that was so clearly just rehashing the existing content, so badly written, that the movie was doomed from the start.

Don't get me wrong... great effects. Certainly some of the sequences entertain. But with such a crappy story, even that leaves a bad taste.

Don't know if I could sit through episode 1 and 2 again for the full runtime, but after time clouds the memories of Jar Jar and young anakin, the memory of a very gripping story about how the empire rose to power stays.

When I no longer remember the bad characters and all the events from TFA... I don't think much will stay in my memory. Early online reviews generally promise more of the same fron TLJ, sadly.

I might still watch the last jedi when it runs in TV.... until then, I will concentrate on the Spinoffs. Hope Disney is not also screwing these over. Hope Rogue One was an indication of what is to come, not an outlier.

One thing that I keep pondering since having seen TFA... How would these movies look if the original Ideas from George Lucas for Parts 7-9 would have been used by Disney, and the directors of the movies? Or if at least George would have been more involved in the process as originally promised by Disney?

George has given us the atrocities that were episode 1+2... and he shot from the hip very often, especially when it comes to technology in his universe. But at least he had a will to keep the backstory consistent, and to build up characters and give them room to shine in his movies. I still believe his original ideas were better than the parts 7 and 8 we have been served by Disney until now.

I saw the new Star Wars... and I am so relieved!  Being Star Wars and everything, and with her character getting what I thought was a great start, I had been very concerned that Rey was going to be cooler than my Cindy "Fallen Angel" McAllen.  It was as if I could hear a horse track announcer in the background saying "...and it's Fallen Angel by 20 lengths!!!"

Thank you JJ Abrahms!!!

I really enjoyed it, despite making the questionable decision to see it in a 4DX cinema. The 4DX track was simply terrible, including punching you in the kidneys every time someone took a tumble.

Admiral Holdo catapulted to be perhaps my favourite character in the entire cannon. She's a great analogue to Leia in the early films, takes no shit from the junior officer mansplaining tactics to her, shoots first when she has an opportunity to recapture her ship, and does whatever she has to do to ensure victory...

I wish they'd be a little more holistic in writing the technologies they unleash in these films. That little hyperspace-weaponisation trick invalidates everything we thought we knew about how warfare works in Star Wars - the bad guys sure wasted a lot of cash building Deathstars and Starkiller base if that trick works reliably.

5 hours ago, Kavik Kang said:

I saw the new Star Wars... and I am so relieved!  Being Star Wars and everything, and with her character getting what I thought was a great start, I had been very concerned that Rey was going to be cooler than my Cindy "Fallen Angel" McAllen.  It was as if I could hear a horse track announcer in the background saying "...and it's Fallen Angel by 20 lengths!!!"

 

If there was a horse track announcer saying that it's only because Cindy McClichedName is a horse and everyone else was watching Star Wars.

In space.

In the future.

Where no-one still knows or cares about Fallen NameThatWouldSoundCoolToA12YearOld.

4 hours ago, swiftcoder said:

I wish they'd be a little more holistic in writing the technologies they unleash in these films. That little hyperspace-weaponisation trick invalidates everything we thought we knew about how warfare works in Star Wars - the bad guys sure wasted a lot of cash building Deathstars and Starkiller base if that trick works reliably.

 

Yep, it's totally against all the rules of how hyperspace works, etc, but it gets a pass by virtue of how unbelievably cool it was. Probably the best moment in the entire movie and without doubt, THE single most visually stunning moment in the entire series.

Besides, this isn't Star Trek. Star Wars has never really been consistent in its technology. Its approach to AI is all over the place for a start. 

6 hours ago, ChaosEngine said:

Besides, this isn't Star Trek. Star Wars has never really been consistent in its technology. Its approach to AI is all over the place for a start. 

Star Trek isn't exactly consistent, either.  Every time a Romulan ship is seen it's as if it is the first time they have ever seen a cloaking device, and every time they discover a whole new way to track cloaked ships.  The cloaking device is, apparently, practically useless.  The ships are said to fight at warp speed, many times the speed of light, and yet the bridge crew functions like a WWII ship.  By the time the captain says the "F" in the word fire, the target is a million miles behind them.  I won't even get started on transporters, one of the most powerful weapons ever conceived and yet they never use them that way.  You can go on and on about all the things in Star Trek that don't make any sense.

EDIT: OK, just one of an almost infinite ways of using a transporter;-)  If I was the captain of the Enterprise I would move all the photon torpedoes too the transporter rooms.  With their flawless pin-point accuracy of being able to place people with their feet on the floor, shooting them out of the launch tubes would pretty stupid thing to do.  They are also facing independent, you can transport one against any shield you want.  Once a shield is down you just start putting them inside of the ship, which makes the Borg seem pretty harmless considering they don't seem to care if hostile species transport things onto their ships.  Star Trek isn't nearly as consistent as most people like to think it is, and from my avatar you can see that I am a fan and not trying to tear it down.

On 12/18/2017 at 9:51 AM, JulieMaru-chan said:

I thought it was a cash-grabbing pile of garbage. The plot didn't make any sense in context with The Force Awakens, and not only the whole thing, but multiple scenes seemed to be predicated on copying the OT. I swear there was even a point where they did shot-for-shot recreations of Yoda scenes from The Empire Strikes Back.

At the start, I was thoroughly confused at the premise. Since when was the First Order winning? Since when was the new Republic dissolved? Did the entirety of the Republic live on those few planets that the Star Killer destroyed? It doesn't make any sense. Now all of a sudden the First Order has inexplicably, after having a major planet-sized base destroyed, you're telling me they're ruling the galaxy? The only reason I can think of for this circumstance is that the writers wanted to copy The Empire Strikes Back, which kind of had the same sort of thing, but the difference is that the Empire was a well-established official governing body, ruling over the galaxy for decades. In The Force Awakens, that would be the new Republic; the First Order was just a terrorist group. And in the last movie, this terrorist group lost. Sure, they blew up a planetary system, but they lost a massive stronghold. What follows should be mass civil unrest or possibly a civil war because of the carnage, not a sudden regime change.

Most of the movie was centered around that chase scene where the rebels are running out of fuel. All the leaders die; fair enough. What doesn't make sense, though, is what the new leader does. It's made clear later on that she has a solid plan. Why doesn't she tell anyone? Why does it have to be a secret? If she had just opened her mouth and told that guy what the plan was, he and the other guy wouldn't have gone off and ruined the whole thing.

The movie's recurring theme is challenging what good and evil are... and yet, it just randomly drops this at some point in the movie, returning to the simple good and evil story of the original trilogy. What was the point of that?

And most importantly, the only good characters are Luke and Leia. Everyone else is poorly developed and not very relatable.

I'll give it one thing: it's better than The Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones. It's not any better than Revenge of the Sith, though.

Man, you hate everything! Is there nothing that you don't hate?

I saw it.  Yes, I watched the last jedi...

...IN GLORIOUS 4DX!  AND IT WAS AWESOME!!!

Ahem.  Last Jedi made the effort to be its own film this time, and the result is something like a melding of Phantom Menace( A rather pointless road trip ) and LOTR: The Two Towers( the last remaining pocket of resistance is about to be exterminated when cornered into a dead-end ).   The latter is the saving grace of the film.

There are a lot of "disappointments" in this one, but I have a strong feeling they are meant to be resolved in Episode 9.  Rey was far too powerful in Force Awakens to be just "nobody",  and Snoke is too god-like to not have noticed Rey's lightsaber...

It was nice to have Luke back,  and Mark has a lot of fun with the role.  Carrie Fisher put in a much better performance this time too.  In Force Awakens, she obviously had taken the pay-check and just played along.  Here, she is actually invested in her role.

The newcomers were quite welcome too!   Rose and Admiral Holdo are quite fun and interesting, respectively.  "DJ"...shades of Hondo from Clone Wars and Rebels, and I look forward to more of him in Episode 9.

Rey and Kylo are force-texting each other, and Finn is still having issues with his boot-camp bully, Captain Phasma. Quite frankly, they deserve their own spin-off movie, as I was more interested in their showdown than the actual Jedi stuff!  As for Snoke he is well performed, but its hard to care about a character we know nothing about besides hes super-dupa-mega-powerful in the force.  My hat off, once again to Andy serkis and the team bringing him to life...but...hes just "supreme leader" to us the audience,  just because he is.

Overall, the Last Jedi is the longest episode so far and feels like a Peter Jackon take on the Star Wars saga.   Unlike Force Awakens, I actually liked it and came away looking forward to the home video release in May.  Not a patch on Empire, Sith or Rogue One, but where its own trilogy is concerned, its an improvement over the previous "episode".  So yes, thumbs up!

Oh! And you will never look at your ironing in the same way again! 

**Moving Star Trek related comments to a more general thread to avoid temptation of derailing.

Man, you hate everything! Is there nothing that you don't hate?

Quite a bold statement given that your sample size is 2, and I don't hate either of them.

Luckless, Kavik, this isn't the place to discuss Star Trek - start a new topic if you want to continue that line of discussion.