It's a shame The Last Jedi is receiving negative backlash for not catering to low expectations but was instead a great, well written and thought provoking Star Wars film that can compare to The Empire Strikes Back. I've seen reviews slam it for the characters showing emotion. For showing emotion!

Even the often criticised Canto Bight scenes set up important underlying themes.

49 minutes ago, Shadow345 said:

It's a shame The Last Jedi is receiving negative backlash for not catering to low expectations but was instead a great, well written and thought provoking Star Wars film that can compare to The Empire Strikes Back. I've seen reviews slam it for the characters showing emotion. For showing emotion!

Even the often criticised Canto Bight scenes set up important underlying themes.

Disney rarely makes a bad movie and this isn't one of those times. The problem is this movie wasn't what everyone was expecting. It was something very different. It wasn't a George Lucas movie (he is retired and there won't be anymore of those). It wasn't a movie about Darth Plagueis or a cloned Palpatine. It wasn't a movie about Luke's daughter. They actually have to tell you in the movie to let go of the past. I guess that is Disney's way of letting us know the old star wars is part of history. That is fine. I rather Disney not remake A New Hope and call it the Force Awakens. I rather them make new movies with new characters and let the old characters go and be part of history as they were. Sadly the next star wars movie is bastardized Han Solo. I am sure that will be a well made movie as well. It won't be Harrison Ford circa 1980 in a George Lucas film. We will never get that again and we should just let it go and enjoy what we have now.

So yeah, TLJ was not a bad movie and people shouldn't hate it for what it wasn't rather just try to enjoy it for what it is. With that said, maybe when we rank star wars movies, we shouldn't include the new ones. They are not George Lucas films and don't belong in that list. They are now something different.

Yeah, saw it, not a fan.

First of all, the whole "We will just run away and they can't catch us... they can shoot at us, but for some reason the range makes their weapons not powerful" 16 hour thing was just terrible. TERRIBLE. I got SO bored by it.

Didn't like the whole "Oh, this planet that we are on for twelve minutes? Its oppressive. Let's strike one for the common folks!" story... was dumb.

Snoke not having a backstory DOES suck. Sorry, at this point we are all well-versed in Star Wars lore. We know Palpatine's entire backstory. So Snoke just... shows up? We don't know who his master was? He brings back the dark side, corrupts Ben Solo, and we don't know anything about him? There BETTER be some explanation in there, or that sucks.

The BB8 on the walker thing was just straight idiotic, as was the whole "Phasma will just stand there and prepare for a one on one duel!!1!!" I hate that "Let's pose and then fight and nothing will interrupt us!" movie nonsense; it is completely unnecessary.

The whole "light speed cutting every ship in half" thing was incredibly stupid as well. As someone said, just do that to the Death Star. ****, do that to a planet! Why not?!

Just stupid that a huge Imperial fleet had no anti-fighter firepower that could deal with a single X-Wing. Okay, I get it, he closed fast. Still. And then they belch out a fleet of TIEs, and they cant handle him? And then the payload of a single bomber destroys that thing?

The Luke-force-projection thing... didn't like it at all. At ALL. There is no precedent for it. Wish they had just had a straight up fight, and let him disappear like Ben Kenobi did. You know... strike me down, and I'll come back more powerful than you can imagine? How did he hand Ben the dice if they were just an illusion? Huh?

Are we going to see Kylos ship again? Or was that a one off "Oh look, cool bad guy ship! Okay, it served its purpose..."

Leia flying through space was brutal.

Oh, and fanboy complaint... Ackbar barely got a sendoff! Wtf?!

On the positives...

I enjoyed seeing Yoda, although he was a bit too hamming-it-up.

I LOVED the whole Rey-Kylo psychic interaction thing. To me, that was the most interesting part of all of the new movies... it gave the two characters a connection, and a way to have dialogue without being interrupted by light sabers or whatever. It gave "good" and "evil" a chance to connect on an interesting level. I really wish that had been played out more, and had had a payoff of Kylo turning. I thought there was some emotional meat to that whole thing, and I'm sorry that they did away with it.

In the first battle scene, loved the callback to WWII bombers, even down to the uniforms.

Daisy Ridley is just such a joy to watch. I thought Adam Driver was also a LOT better. Oh, and glad they got rid of his helmet.

I liked the grey-ness of the arms dealer who dealt to both imperials and rebels. Wish they had chased that down the rabbit hole a bit. Nice seeing the interceptor and bomber schematics too:)

I really wish these movies were turning out better. As of right now the kid's show "Rebels" feels both more Star Wars AND more original than any of the new movies.

Rankings? Best to worst...

Empire, New Hope, Jedi, Rogue One... not sure between Force Awakens and Last Jedi... then a HUGE gap to third one, second one, and first one. Man, those three were unwatchable garbage... tried to watch them again recently, thinking maybe I was too harsh on them. Nope, wasn't harsh enough.

1 hour ago, Mep said:

The problem is this movie wasn't what everyone was expecting. It was something very different.

This. Exactly this. What makes it even more amusing is many of the same people complaining about how different this movie was are the same people complaining that TFA was too much like ANH. There's just no pleasing some people.

5 hours ago, Zrob314 said:

Yeah the very clear shot of his lifeless torso on the ground with tongue lolled out on the floor immediately folled by being on an exploding **** kinda seals it for me. They showed the body.

Phasma could come back but I really hope that they did her like Jango and Boba.

Here's how they can do it. At some dramatic time in the movie... Andy Serkis walks out in his gold Snoke robe and confronts Kylo. Telling him he was testing his loyalty and he knew Kylo would betray him, and when he did he transferred his life force to a new clone body. Because apparently there is nothing you can't do as long as you can attribute it to a force power.

December 2015: Meh, TFA is too similar to Episode 4, that sucks, they should have done something much different from the OT!

December 2017: Meh, TLJ is too different from the OT, they should have done something more SW'ish than it is.

37 minutes ago, Ritalbringer said:

December 2015: Meh, TFA is too similar to Episode 4, that sucks, they should have done something much different from the OT!

December 2017: Meh, TLJ is too different from the OT, they should have done something more SW'ish than it is.

Star Wars fans as a whole will never be satisfied. They'll whinge on and on as Disney grinds out great movie after great movie.

I wish we had access to the universe where Lucas did the EU movies instead of the prequels just so people could see themselves ******* about how terrible and disjointed the EU plot is on screen. We'd all learn a powerful lesson that some people can never just be happy with what they have.




The Last Jedi was great, it told an excellent story about the power of perspective, the dangers of foresight, and upheld the idea that legends are only ever as powerful as the people they inspire.

38 minutes ago, Ritalbringer said:

December 2015: Meh, TFA is too similar to Episode 4, that sucks, they should have done something much different from the OT!

December 2017: Meh, TLJ is too different from the OT, they should have done something more SW'ish than it is.

I don't think the fact its "too different" is why its not being liked. Rogue One was in many ways very different than what we've seen before, but I don't hear as much criticism of it. I think its more the fact the story was really poorly done. Things like a single fighter taking down a capital ship's point defenses, FO warships without fighter cover, A FO dreadnought apparently without shield generators, FO commanders unwilling to deploy fighters to engage the fleeing Resistance vessels, flying princesses, force projection, Finn's subplot that went nowhere, and so forth. All these thing could have been fixed in the final drafts of the script, but they didn't bother to, Lazy writing is the flaw with this movie. IMHO.

54 minutes ago, Ritalbringer said:

December 2015: Meh, TFA is too similar to Episode 4, that sucks, they should have done something much different from the OT!

December 2017: Meh, TLJ is too different from the OT, they should have done something more SW'ish than it is.

My complaint: they didn’t go different enough

Why have Kylo go on and on about “killing the past” and moving beyond the Jedi and the Sith JUST to say “let’s rule the galaxy together”?

They had something there, and they let it go just to slide back into the usual themes of Empire vs Rebellion, light vs dark, typical Star Wars themes.

Rey and Ben should be working together to balance themselves and the force, pushing past everything we’ve seen before into something truly new.

Such a waste

10 minutes ago, SnowWulf said:

, A FO dreadnought apparently without shield generators,

I'm pretty sure that TFA had the same issue - Poe & Finn blowing up turrets easily without any signs of shielding trying to prevent them.

Possibly, shields are extended (like on the Raddus) and fighters/bombers can simply fly right through them - with shields only protecting against "gunfire" from ships some way away.

13 minutes ago, SnowWulf said:

FO warships without fighter cover, A FO dreadnought apparently without shield generators

Well, the captain literally says they should have deployed the TIES 5 minutes ago, and when talking of the single fighter they also say how it won’t manage to penetrate it’s shield or something like that, I think it’s more a question of the bomber payload being very damaging to shields and hull (and there’s a lot of them too!) and we can see how that payload is huge by how slow the ship goes, I think it’s more about the bombs than the shield or hull

My other complaint is that they killed off too many physically attractive female support characters.

”Hey, that ball turret gunner is cute.”

Dead

”Whoa, is that a stunning A-wing squadron leader?”

Dead.

Seriously, these two events almost caused me to walk out of the theater twenty minutes into the movie, but I don’t tell people that because it makes me look shallow

58 minutes ago, Visovics said:

1 hour ago, Flavorabledeez said:

Why have Kylo go on and on about “killing the past” and moving beyond the Jedi and the Sith JUST to say “let’s rule the galaxy together”?

They had something there, and they let it go just to slide back into the usual themes of Empire vs Rebellion, light vs dark, typical Star Wars themes.

Rey and Ben should be working together to balance themselves and the force, pushing past everything we’ve seen before into something truly new.

Think there's any chance at foreshadowing there?

I haven't really discussed it with anyone, but the theme of this trilogy likes to touch heavily on balance. The fact that Kylo seems to be attached to Rey seems to hint that they're going to proceed somehow. The fight Rey and Kylo have in the throne room proves that at the very least, when the light and dark have them same goal, they can work together. It makes me curious if that's where they're headed.

Hux has never really liked Kylo, even had the instinct to finish him while he was down in TLJ. I wouldn't be surprised if they made the big twist in IX be the FO turning on Kylo and beginning a hunt for all force users. (Especially if Hux learns that Kylo killed Snoke). That seems the type of all or nothing threat to unify Kylo and Rey.

Maybe not, but it wouldn't surprise me.

3 hours ago, SnowWulf said:

Here's how they can do it. At some dramatic time in the movie... Andy Serkis walks out in his gold Snoke robe and confronts Kylo. Telling him he was testing his loyalty and he knew Kylo would betray him, and when he did he transferred his life force to a new clone body. Because apparently there is nothing you can't do as long as you can attribute it to a force power.

And that would be stupid lazy writing and defeat the purpose of an earlier character defining moment. Just like every single time the did it in the EU.

52 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

Think there's any chance at foreshadowing there?

I haven't really discussed it with anyone, but the theme of this trilogy likes to touch heavily on balance. The fact that Kylo seems to be attached to Rey seems to hint that they're going to proceed somehow. The fight Rey and Kylo have in the throne room proves that at the very least, when the light and dark have them same goal, they can work together. It makes me curious if that's where they're headed.

Hux has never really liked Kylo, even had the instinct to finish him while he was down in TLJ. I wouldn't be surprised if they made the big twist in IX be the FO turning on Kylo and beginning a hunt for all force users. (Especially if Hux learns that Kylo killed Snoke). That seems the type of all or nothing threat to unify Kylo and Rey.

Maybe not, but it wouldn't surprise me.

Man, I hope it’s foreshadowing for that, but that really felt like the best time to start moving forward with that plot line. Instead they had Ben take a giant leap forward in thinking with “kill the past” and then seconds later retract it by quoting his grandfather.

It’s even worse with Luke saying he’s not the last Jedi.

Of course I’m super biased though. I’ve been saying for years that the Jedi have it all wrong with their doctrine and their concepts of balance without embracing emotions. To see them touch on that and then (maybe) ditch it was like peeking at a Christmas gift you always wanted and then getting caught looking at it so your parents make you take it back to the store yourself.

8 minutes ago, Flavorabledeez said:

Man, I hope it’s foreshadowing for that, but that really felt like the best time to start moving forward with that plot line. Instead they had Ben take a giant leap forward in thinking with “kill the past” and then seconds later retract it by quoting his grandfather.

It’s even worse with Luke saying he’s not the last Jedi.

Of course I’m super biased though. I’ve been saying for years that the Jedi have it all wrong with their doctrine and their concepts of balance without embracing emotions. To see them touch on that and then (maybe) ditch it was like peeking at a Christmas gift you always wanted and then getting caught looking at it so your parents make you take it back to the store yourself.

Maybe, but I don't think they could have progressed that kind of plot so long as Luke was alive. He was clearly scarred to the core about Ben. I could see Rey disregarding a force ghost Luke's advice about Ben just like Luke did with Obiwan's advice about Vader.

It would make for a very interesting story at the very least. lol I'm hopeful.

One theory I have - and this isn't meant to be dismissive of anybody - is that a lot of the people who saw this movie are huge Star Wars fans, but not huge fans of movies in general (like I happen to be, for instance). And so the theory goes, people who don't watch a lot of movies tend to knock movies a lot for plot holes.

And TLJ certainly has an above industry average number of plot holes, ergo, the people that aren't really passionate movie fans but went out to see TLJ, because Star Wars , came away with a much more negative perception of the film than a more traditional audience of reliable theater-goers.

In terms of data - the Metacritic / Rotten Tomatoes / IMDB audience scores are pretty bad. But the critic reviews, the movie's Cinemascore, and ratings on more cinephile-oriented sites like Letterboxd or Criticker, are much higher.

My explanation for this is sort of like recency bias. During a movie, most cinephiles are running their brains the entire time, analyzing the film (down to technical stuff, like lighting or set design) in real time. But more casual moviegoers are instead simply engrossed in the action. (And I'm not there's anything wrong with that!)

But as a result, I think, distracting plot holes become the most memorable moments of the film, because they're the only times casual watchers were consciously thinking about the movie on a meta level. And so, when thinking back on the movie, those are the things they remember most, and so rate the movie poorly accordingly.

That's my guess for why there's such a disconnect between critic and fan scores at the moment. If I'm right, I think the fan scores will improve as "core" moviegoers make it to the theaters, and as people sit down for repeat viewings and warm to the film.

Just to remind people since they seem to forget but people are entitled to like or not like something for their own reasons.

As much as people like to complain about people piling on to disliking something there's an awful lot of piling on to liking something in this thread.

Let people like it or dislike it as they want to. No need to criticize people here or elsewhere for liking or disliking a film.

My "meh" reaction to and dislike of this film or my opinion that the storytelling was lazy despite some good character development should not diminish your own enjoyment of the movie in the slightest.

R1, 6, 4, 5, 7, 3, 1, 8, 2

2 minutes ago, Eggzavier said:

R1, 6, 4, 5, 7, 3, 1, 8, 2

At least we can agree on the important parts ;D

Just now, Darth Sanguis said:

At least we can agree on the important parts ;D

If only I could lop off the last 20-30 minutes of 2 and put it in the Clone Wars series ;D

But for real I think that everyone likes Star Wars for their own reasons which colors our reactions to the new films.

I for one loved Rogue One and thought it was the SW film I had always been waiting for. An honest to god war movie.

TLJ had some great parts, but I did not leave the theatre with the same 'wow' that I had after seeing R1 or that I get when I watch the OT.

To each their own I suppose. I'm not gonna criticize people for liking it, just let me eat my sour grapes in peace also

8 hours ago, JJs Juggernaut said:

My SW rankings: 3,2,R1,1,4,6,8,5,7

Hang on, you had better be numbering them in order of release, not episode number otherwise one of the two of us is going to have to change their avatars and I’ve liked the Hacan since 1st edition TI.

Speaking of the whole "balance" issue, we could have really use a Revan-like character or secondary antagonist. Someone who is truly grey or wants to escape this constant/endless cycle.

1 hour ago, Eggzavier said:

Just to remind people since they seem to forget but people are entitled to like or not like something for their own reasons.

As much as people like to complain about people piling on to disliking something there's an awful lot of piling on to liking something in this thread.

Let people like it or dislike it as they want to. No need to criticize people here or elsewhere for liking or disliking a film.

My "meh" reaction to and dislike of this film or my opinion that the storytelling was lazy despite some good character development should not diminish your own enjoyment of the movie in the slightest.

R1, 6, 4, 5, 7, 3, 1, 8, 2

My issue is that most of the bad fan rating is due to fake accounts created by neo Nazi trash. Rotten tomatoes needs to make sure the fans have some sort of proof they actually went to the movie. Maybe you should have to scan your ticket’s barcode in order to leave a rating or something.