21 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

No, but you could it see as your job to realize when you‘re grasping for details to hate on a story that others like, and not trying to destroy their enthusiasm for it.

Barely anyone thinks these movies are flawless, so we definitely do not need you and other posters like you to spew your vitriol.

Maybe the franchise is not anymore what you liked? Maybe your rose tainted glasses on the OT prevent you from realizing how horribly flawed those movies were, too?

Only people being hateful are the movies defenders you are now the 2nd person to get needlessly aggressive and personal with me.

Worse I don't even hate the movie, I don't love it either mind you but I'm certainly not claiming its ruined my childhood or anything.

1 minute ago, GreenDragoon said:

.

The hatred is so irrational - as even admitted - that vitriol is more appropriate than „irritated“, by the way

Yes, the hatred is irrational. Nothing to do with contextual self-contradiction.

5 minutes ago, DirbYh said:

The books could be shoved up Chewie's smuggling compartment, for all I care. Don't you get it?! It's not about the darn books. It's about what's in them. What they represent and symbolize. It's about reverence for tradition and accrued wisdom, and the humility and patience that requires. You're telling me that everything the Jedi ever knew and taught was so worthless you can just forget about it. Burn it. Keep it on a shelf. whatever. just forget about it. Just believe in yourself. No further insight into the nature of the Force is required. All those years of training, meditation, study, screw it.

And I guess the whole Jedi Archive on Coruscant doesn't exist, and those books are all that's left. Maybe it's all explained in a novel that Palpatine destroyed that, too. All those decades of plotting to gain access to it, and, "meh, not important." Guess all those Jedi secrets were just Yoda's way of trolling, too. Turns out to have been Gungan breeding documentaries, all along.

You made the point about the books being burned. Now you don’t care about them. Pick one.

Or are you Rian Johnson trying to emulate what writing this toilet paper of a script was like?

*** SPOILERS ***

The Last Jedi missed the mark from me in character building and definition for a few of the key players.

(1) Kylo Ren to me has missed the mark. I don't feel like he is truly being developed as much as he should.
(2) Finn is kinda the same although I like the cowardice he continues to show when he is not actively protecting the people closest to him.
(3) Poe Dameron.... this one really disappoints me. There is no depth to his character. He comical big moments at the beginning of each movie have been good, but the character seems extremely surface deep at this point. After this latest film, I'm starting to get the feeling it is the actor and not the dialog that is the weakness.

On the positives, I felt that Rey really shined in this film as did Luke and Leia. Having Ackbar killed seemed pointless to me. He's barely a supporting role, but why kill him off at this time? Captain Phasma... I was hoping for more development of her character as well.

I liked the story/plot of The Last Jedi although I felt that the twists and turns could have been so much better. Snoke also was a bit of a disappointment.

I was not impressed with this film. To me, it's the first disappointment after really liking the previous two that Disney put out. It's not terrible, but the "lived in" world was not on display enough for me. The scenes and action were not all that impressive. And leaving the rebels with basically nothing means SOOO much has to happen in the "background," off camera before we see episode nine.

Hopefully Disney impresses me with the film coming up in May 2018... because they have to know how important Solo is to so many fans. It's a lofty goal to take on a film centered around him. Every second of the movie will be more scrutinized than any Star Wars that they have taken on to this point.

1 minute ago, DirbYh said:

Yes, the hatred is irrational. Nothing to do with contextual self-contradiction.

What? You want to sell this point as rational criticism of TLJ? A minor plothole of the previous movie?!

1 minute ago, Sephlar said:

*** SPOILERS ***

The Last Jedi missed the mark from me in character building and definition for a few of the key players.

(1) Kylo Ren to me has missed the mark. I don't feel like he is truly being developed as much as he should.
(2) Finn is kinda the same although I like the cowardice he continues to show when he is not actively protecting the people closest to him.
(3) Poe Dameron.... this one really disappoints me. There is no depth to his character. He comical big moments at the beginning of each movie have been good, but the character seems extremely surface deep at this point. After this latest film, I'm starting to get the feeling it is the actor and not the dialog that is the weakness.

On the positives, I felt that Rey really shined in this film as did Luke and Leia. Having Ackbar killed seemed pointless to me. He's barely a supporting role, but why kill him off at this time? Captain Phasma... I was hoping for more development of her character as well.

I liked the story/plot of The Last Jedi although I felt that the twists and turns could have been so much better. Snoke also was a bit of a disappointment.

I was not impressed with this film. To me, it's the first disappointment after really liking the previous two that Disney put out. It's not terrible, but the "lived in" world was not on display enough for me. The scenes and action were not all that impressive. And leaving the rebels with basically nothing means SOOO much has to happen in the "background," off camera before we see episode nine.

Hopefully Disney impresses me with the film coming up in May 2018... because they have to know how important Solo is to so many fans. It's a lofty goal to take on a film centered around him. Every second of the movie will be more scrutinized than any Star Wars that they have taken on to this point.

They killed Akbar because his original actor died recently too,

Just now, FlyingAnchors said:

You made the point about the books being burned. Now you don’t care about them. Pick one.

Or are you Rian Johnson trying to emulate what writing this toilet paper of a script was like?

What they symbolized to the viewer was the entirety of Jedi Tradition. Yoda says, "meh. need it, you don't"

3 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

What? You want to sell this point as rational criticism of TLJ? A minor plothole of the previous movie?!

Was it minor plot hole, or entire contrivance around which plot centered?

1 minute ago, BadMotivator said:

They killed Akbar because his original actor died recently too,

That's not enough reason for me. Particularly because he is a lessor supporting role character that is all mask and makeup.

Just now, DirbYh said:

Was it minor plot hole, or entire contrivance around which plot centered?

Why R2 already had part of the route displayed? Extremely minor

How is that relevant to the thread again?

1 minute ago, GreenDragoon said:

Why R2 already had part of the route displayed? Extremely minor

How is that relevant to the thread again?

Map to Skywalker. Minor part of the film.

Turns out Luke doesn't even want to be found. Not relevant at all to movie discussion.

Touche.

You win.

I loose.

So long, and thanks for all the porgs.

8 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

@defkhan1

But did we really need a Star Wars film to explore the perils of hubris? I mean, this has been a pretty consistent theme throughout Star Wars, and it's been amply explored without needing to hit us over the heads with it for an entire 2.5 hours.


A New Hope: Here, the Empire embodies hubris, most notably through Tarkin but also through Vader and Motti. Vader and Tarkin's plan to let the Falcon escape to be tracked. The minimal threat from the snub-fighters. "Evacuate, in our moment of triumph!?"

Empire Strikes Back: Here, we see lots of hubris from Luke. He is defiant to Obi-Wan's and Yoda's warnings, and walks right into the trap on Cloud City, losing his hand and nearly getting himself captured by Vader.

Return of the Jedi: Again, Luke is bold (Jabba's Palace), but unlike rushing to Cloud City without a plan he's laid a multi-layered plan in place to get Han back from Jabba. He's learned from his hubris and grown. On the other hand, the Emperor personifies hubris, risking himself and his Death Star for a chance to turn Luke as his next apprentice. Luke even says "Your overconfidence is your weakness..."

Prequels: In the prequels, we see (generally speaking) the hubris of the Jedi and most notably Anakin. Qui-Gon's defiance in wanting to train Anakin, Obi-Wan's belief that he could do so despite the Council's warnings. The Jedi becoming generally blinded to the growing Sith presence and believing that they could control the war and maintain the Galaxy during a war (to the dismay of many defector Jedi, including Dooku). Anakin is the personification of hubris, believing that he was the greatest and deserved recognition and reward, and believing that he could embrace the Dark Side without paying the iron price.

The Last Jedi: We gather from the opening crawl that the Republic did not view the First Order as a threat and wouldn't heed Leia's warnings about them, believing they could never truly threaten the Republic. And this gets the entire Republic (somehow) killed by a blast that wipes out five systems. One could also point to Kylo's arrogance as setting him up to fail against Finn and Rey in the forest, I suppose. Or Han's belief that he could sway his son and failing.


I mean, hubris is old, well-treaded territory for Star Wars. I don't think there was anything novel in TLJ that made it's exploration of that topic particularly revolutionary or interesting, and we've seen failure for hubris (for both heroes and villains) throughout the trilogies. And they've typically been able to explore it without such poor plot-lines and violations of the basic premises of the Star Wars universe.

You're absolutely right that the folly of hubris has always been a central theme in Star Wars. A lot of people argue that TLJ is a very different SW movie from the OT, and it some ways it is. But at its heart its covering a lot of the same themes we saw in the OT. The difference is that TLJ is a movie that attempts to bring us beyond where we ended in the OT.

Much like the OT, many of the failures of the Resistance and FO can be tracked back to their own arrogance. In RotJ the Rebellion rushes in to destroy the Death Star II, not even considering that it might be a trap set by the Emperor. But at the end of the day they attain a huge victory, because the Emperor's overconfidence was greater than theirs. They could've easily been slaughtered at the Battle of Endor, but they were saved. In TLJ we have a similar situation but instead the actions of Finn/Rose/Poe cause the Resistance to lose almost all of their number. We see the terrible consequences of their actions on screen and we see them learn from them (Poe most of all). Similarly Snoke falls prey to the very same overconfidence that Palpatine does. He's too full of himself and high on his own power to see his apprentice betray him.

But here's the important thing: we're getting all of this in the second film of the series. TLJ feels very much like a mashup of ESB and RotJ, but it attempts to bring us beyond that. It's leading into an Episode IX that's going to feel nothing like we've seen before (at least I hope). As Kylo put it, they're trying to "kill the past." In a lot of ways this movie felt like the swansong of the OT. Luke overcomes his own legend and lets the Resistance live to fight another day in exchange for his life. Kylo kills Snoke, the evil mastermind behind the FO, before we ever get to the real climax of the series. Poe and the Resistance learn from their mistakes and taste defeat before going into their final battle against the FO in IX. My take on this film is that Rian Johnson is trying to evolve the series beyond the tropes of the OT. No more overconfident evil mastermind, no more lapdog Sith apprentice, no more needless heroism on the side of the Rebellion. Rian tried to resolve all these tropes in this film and have the characters learn from them to lead into a truly interesting setting for IX. We'll have a wiser Resistance, a more developed Rey, and a truly unique villain in Kylo once that film hits. I like to think that Luke's confrontation at the end was his final lesson to Kylo, and I really hope Kylo learns from it.

The question is whether JJ can pull it off. There's one criticism about the ST that I forgot to mention in my original post, and that's the lack of a visionary. JJ started us off with TFA but that film was sorely lacking in any sort of worldbuilding. On top of that, JJ left and Rian took over for TLJ. Now Rian is also leaving to make his own trilogy and we have JJ coming back for IX. Never thought I'd say it, but the ST really needed someone like George Lucas. The man may be a bad writer and terrible director, but he is an excellent worldbuilder and visionary. Without someone like him I fear the ST will end up feeling disjointed. I don't think JJ had the same themes in mind as Rian did when he made TFA. And if he doesn't we might end up with an Episode IX that undoes everything Rian tried to build up. That's my biggest fear. I hope it's unfounded.

4 minutes ago, DirbYh said:

Map to Skywalker. Minor part of the film.

Turns out Luke doesn't even want to be found. Not relevant at all to movie discussion.

I get that this is your level, and clearly you beat me with experience there, but for the off chance that you honestly are believing this and not just using it as a cheap, rhetoric trick:

R2D2 never had the map to Skywalker. He had a map where he and BB8 managed to fit in the part that was the plot of the movie and that was the map.

And for all we know the map wasn't made by Luke, but rather from a tracking device that was on his Xwing that he was unaware of. So when they were looking for him they were tracking down the data from the tracking device and the part they found in the movie was the last piece.

35 minutes ago, BadMotivator said:

They killed Akbar because his original actor died recently too,

Yes, although his death was extra pointless and worse yet no one even reacted to it, which is weird given that he's been the Admiral of the Rebellion/Resistance for over 30 years of loyal and dedicated service... that was the worst part. I'm fine with characters having less plot armor and characters unexpectedly dying to add some more stakes to the universe, but for neither the film nor the characters to bat an eye when one of the most iconic background characters dies is almost disrespectful.

It doesn't help that the manner in which he died (two TIE Fighters destroying an entire bridge of a shielded warship) made no sense within the world of Star Wars. Sure, "one A-Wing" took out the Executor... but at least we see a concerted effort by the Rebel fleet (with so much more planned yet ultimately left offscreen) to make that possible, including the effort of no fewer than eight MC80s and two Fighter Wings to bring down the SSD's shields. Here two lone TIEs literally solo the command bridge of the Resistance's greatest warship, while it's at full shields, all so we can get some cringe-worth Superwoman Leia scene... Why did we need Vice Admiral Holdo at all? She was a rather pointless character, and didn't offer anything to the story Admiral Ackbar couldn't have. Like couldn't they have let Admiral Ackbar suicide the Raddus into Snoke's ship? Although it's also a bit preposterous some lowly helmsmen (or, uh, a droid) wouldn't volunteer for the suicide run and allow a key leader of the Resistance to survive...


I guess all I can say is at least Ackbar didn't fall into a Sarlacc pit... so maybe we should be thankful since it could have been worse?

56 minutes ago, DirbYh said:

What they symbolized to the viewer was the entirety of Jedi Tradition. Yoda says, "meh. need it, you don't"

Yeah, that's what Yoda was trying to express to Luke. From my interpretation of his statements, the dogma of the Jedi Order wasn't important to Yoda anymore. Maybe he came to learn this after the fall of the order and over his years of exile on Dagobah. He believes that a Jedi Master needs to rely more on their own way, their own intuition and experience, rather than those of the previous Masters. This is also echoed in Rebels in how Yoda explained things to Kanan Jarrus, how he was expected to train Ezra Bridger, even though Kanan had never even become a Knight, let alone a Master.

Yoda no longer cares for temples, books, and the old ways of the Jedi. They are just trappings and window dressings.

6 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

It doesn't help that the manner in which he died (two TIE Fighters destroying an entire bridge of a shielded warship) made no sense within the world of Star Wars. Sure, "one A-Wing" took out the Executor... but at least we see a concerted effort by the Rebel fleet (with so much more planned yet ultimately left offscreen) to make that possible, including the effort of no fewer than eight MC80s and two Fighter Wings to bring down the SSD's shields. Here two lone TIEs literally solo the command bridge of the Resistance's greatest warship, while it's at full shields

Maybe the writers subscribe to "all warships are like the Death Star and have shields that can be flown through".

4 hours ago, debiler said:

AAAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Sorry, I just had to! Yes, the 1.21 gigawatts he shot from his hands were awesome!

No offense, I have to apologize. But the idea of Doc Brown as a Star Wars villain is priceless.

Lee. Shame on me, for being so horrible at remembering actual actor names.

11 minutes ago, Ironlord said:

Maybe the writers subscribe to "all warships are like the Death Star and have shields that can be flown through".

Certainly not the planetary shields which - as depicted in Return of the Jedi and Rogue One - were lethal to ships that tried to pass through them.

Now there was a good example of internal consistency between films in both the Lucas and Disney eras...

8 minutes ago, Ironlord said:

Maybe the writers subscribe to "all warships are like the Death Star and have shields that can be flown through".

Except the whole point of one-third of RotJ was to drop the shields to the DSII so that fighters could get through...

And it's pretty clear that the shield over Scarif could not be penetrated by physical objects (ships/warheads) either.

So it's basically just Rian goin' "uh, uh, I want Leia flying through space... how do I make that happen...BAZINGA! I'm a genius!"


Seriously, Rian Johnson is the worst thing to happen to Star Wars. Even worse than Jar-Jar Binks. And mesa-no say dat lightleee!

8 minutes ago, Ironlord said:

Maybe the writers subscribe to "all warships are like the Death Star and have shields that can be flown through".

could it be argued that Kylo did some serious damage to the shield generators or hull before that torpedo attack? And I don't think it was the greatest warship...thing looks a lot smaller than an MC80.

Still... RIP Tallie.

1 minute ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Except the whole point of 1/3 of RotJ was to drop the shields to the DSII so that fighters could get through...

And it's pretty clear that the shield over Scarif could not be penetrated by physical objects (ships/warheads) either.

So it's basically just Rian goin' "uh, uh, I want Leia flying through space... how do I make that happen...BAZINGA! I'm a genius!"


Seriously, Rian Johnson is the worst thing to happen to Star Wars. Even worse than Jar-Jar Binks.

Or, bear with me, there is more than one type of shields?

1 minute ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Seriously, Rian Johnson is the worst thing to happen to Star Wars. Even worse than Jar-Jar Binks.

Even though I enjoyed the movie the second time... I agree. Rian was not good. I put him above Jar-Jar, but below Ewoks.

Die Hards are going to be die hards about what they care for, and Star Wars here, anywhere is no different.

I personally liked the entire movie. Results are in and pretty much the movie is extremely well-received.

Having said that, not everybody is going to like everything.

But this is no different to me than people arguing about which of the Star Wars movies is the very best, or what order you really are supposed to watch them in or you'll ruin it forever, etc. etc. etc.

I love the new Star Wars movies. Far more than the game balance of FFG or what they pick to put in their game, that's for sure!

Just now, GreenDragoon said:

Or, bear with me, there is more than one type of shields?

Of course there are, we even know the Death Star port is only "ray shielded," which meant lasers couldn't penetrate it but a warhead could.

Though we know warship shields are not mere ray shields, since for instance we see Piett only concerned about approaching fighter-collisions with his bridge after the shields had been lost. There's also the fact that firing a warhead into a full health shielded starship has never been a go-to strategy yet before in 9 films ... And I feel like if ship shields were only ray shields, we'd see fighters being armed with slug-rounds instead of blasters. Way more energy efficient and could pop your foe in a dogfight even through their shields... so why muck around with lasers at all?

Heck, even in the opening sequence of TLJ, why didn't Poe just shot a torpedo into the Dreadnought's bridge if that's all he had to do? Why didn't Han fire a concussion missile into the bridge of the Avenger instead of docking-claw attaching to it? etc etc etc...