13 minutes ago, FTS Gecko said:

For the same reason people are giving it 10 out of 10 and refusing to acknowledge valid complaints and criticism, I guess. That's not a reasonable score for a deeply flawed and deeply divisive film either. The light, the dark... the answer lies somewhere in between.

I gave it 2.5 same as I rated in this thread, its a super average movie given a pass because its star wars.

1 minute ago, Hobojebus said:

I gave it 2.5 same as I rated in this thread, its a super average movie given a pass because its star wars.

7/10 for me. Plenty of stuff I enjoyed (mostly Luke, Leia, the Rey/Kylo interplay and the humour), but I won't be in any hurry to sit through it again after seeing how the story panned out. I did appreciate The Force Awakens a whole lot more after watching it though, so there is that.

Anyway, I'm going to bow out of this topic now because I don't see anything good coming from this back-and-forth. It is what it is.

my 2 cents.. just thought it was "OK" It seems like in an effort to be all things to everyone it has become mediocre at best.. Oh and one big nagging thing that really bugged me.. When the First order was chasing the rebel fleet at sub light speeds why didn't they just Jump a ship or two ahead of the rebel fleet??? Isn't space 3 dimensional?? Oh and the Marry Poppins lea thing was Odd.. and personally i think her action was kind of stiff and Forced.. reminded of the The X-files that they just recently re-did and how it seems like David Duchovny forgot how to act... And the whole Failed Jedi Teacher thing has been done before... Yeah i seem to remember this guy called VADER yeah BTDT... Personally i think the Old clone wars cartoons were better and many of the later rebels episodes are far better...

5 hours ago, debiler said:

Good to see you post in a more relaxed fashion, BlodVargarna. For all the issues I have with the movie (which obviously still affected my overall feelings about the film in a negative way), I am finally able to understand your position on TLJ.

I wrote an earlier bit in the Off Topic thread as well.

9 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Rian Johnson is getting a whole star wars trilogy after the current one. So we get a more complete vision next time. I am thrilled about watching that. I just don't know what to do about 9, which is gonna get awkward. °_^

100% Agree. I think in the future it would be smart to approach directors with: "Do you want to do a stand-alone, or do you want a trilogy? Cuz if you take trilogy, you have to do all 3."

8 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

3.5km vs 60km
In Rogue one we had iirc one GR-75 crashing into an ISD, so 100m vs 1600m. 16x3.5km = 56km ;-)

It still only a minor issue, not a problem with the plot, but with the world building. And it was not handled well in RO either.

I had always taken it as the ISD jumped in, and the GR-75 was maneuvering to jump out, but not ready yet. So, it was a "real-world" crash of tiny boat vs. cruise ship.

6 hours ago, Rakaydos said:

So post TLJ, here's my Snoke theory.

Basically evil mirror universe version of the Kyp Durran story. Every place a jedi master sets up has some kind of darkside nexus nearby. Even the Jedi Temple on corusant is apparently built on a goddam darkside verdance. So Luke sets up his academy near exar kun's Snoke's tomb, with an actual Snoke mummy because snoke has a body. Apprentice accidently awakens Snoke without Luke knowing, Luke starts dealing with dark side influence on his students, finds the hooks deep in Ben Solo, and the presence of the darkside makes even a jedi master quick to fear. Luke catches himself, ashamed, but it's too late, as we saw. Kylo, the awakened Snoke mummy, and other dark-influenced apprentices burn down the academy and run away. Luke is overcome with remorse and failure- sends R2 to leia with a final message and vanishes into the unknown regions.

*sigh* I think this is one of the things I liked most about RO. The Force was totally side-lined for a change. Yes, it's there because it's SW, but none of this "destiny of a Force-User" clutter. Regular grunts, doing heroic things in a mundane setting. But Star Wars.

4 hours ago, jocke01 said:

You think it's bad, but here is something that's worse

Therefor TLJ is not flawed

I always love my family's movie review statement that "It doesn't suck."

They act like it's a positive review. For me, I've got better things to do.

15 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

There is a difference between some mysterious character, someone which is actually a mystery for the characters in the movie and something which the audience just does not know much about. Snoke was an unknown to the audience, but not a mystery to anyone in the world, Luke, Leia and other seem to have a pretty good idea about him.

And yeah, everyone uses mystery boxes. But JJ is obsessed with them, it is an obsessive part of his career. You can say something similar about Snyder and how he sacrifices any substance in his movies for his "moments", those slomo scenes which are supposed to have great emotional impact, but lacked most of it because Snyders obsession and over-use with them. Now I could say something about making dumb movies and Boll as well and how all three are very talented in making crowd pleasers without substance ... but actually Snyder seems to have stopped pleasing crowds and it would get off topic anyway.

But let me point something out for you: The mystery box metapher is NOT an image for leaving the audience wanting for me, it is a metaphor how you can fool the audience into wanting more without having ANY substance. JJ literally stated that he rather has an empty box, an empty secret with no answer, than giving away an actual answer to the audience. And that is how he is constructing his scripts. No answers, just questions. Applies to TFA as well, because you would have thought that at least JJ 'definitely not Khan' Abrams would have the answers to all those questions, but we have Johnson in an interview clearly stating that JJ had no answers at all for him and that he was completely free to move the plot along and find those answers for himself. So he just opened all those empty mystery boxes as quickly as possible and started to tell a story with actual substance.

Besides, you know nothing Jon Snow, there was nothing to understand about the ending and that's the point. You thought you have it figured all out and than Johnson comes and tells you: Nope! Most people don't like this one bit, no wonder JJ did not want to make the follow up after TFA. °_^

Mystery: anything that is kept secret or remains unexplained or unknown.

Did we know anything about Snoke prior to TLJ? Was there much information about him in FA? No. Was he an intriguing character? Thats a matter of opinion but again based on how fans were theorizing about him before TLJ, i think the answer can be yes for many of us.

You talk about mystery boxes because its JJ who made TFA and you have knowledge about him (or a biased opinion, see below) outside of the movie parameters. Would it have been almost any other director, you probably would not have mentioned them at all. Yes it turned out to be a let-down after watching TLJ. But based solely on the information from FA, there was no way to know for sure if it was an empty box or not. We just saw a character with potential and we had no information about him. If thats not an aura of mystery, i dont know what is... A mystery is a mystery, be it from a box or not. Saying there is no aura of mystery around a mystery box makes no sense at all...

Finally i would invite you te read this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/magazine/filmmaker-j-j-abrams-is-a-crowd-teaser.html?_r=1&ref=magazine.

Your definition is off the track or biased. The mystery box is not about whats inside. The goal is to make people want to open it, to tease the audience. It being empty COULD be a possibility. But if it was empty all the time there wouldnt be any reason for the viewers to get excited. You gave the best example with Lost. You might not have liked what was at the end of the road, but there was something...

I think you are confusing elements you dislike with emptiness.

I dont read SJW old media like the NYtimes, fake news holds no interest for me.

1 minute ago, Thormind said:

Mystery: anything that is kept secret or remains unexplained or unknown.

You talk about mystery boxes because its JJ who made TFA and you have knowledge about him (or a biased opinion, see below) outside of the movie parameters. Would it have been almost any other director, you probably would not have mentioned them at all. Yes it turned out to be a let-down after watching TLJ. But based solely on the information from FA, there was no way to know for sure if it was an empty box or not. We just saw a character with potential and we had no information about him. If thats not an aura of mystery, i dont know what is... A mystery is a mystery, be it from a box or not. Saying there is no aura of mystery around a mystery box makes no sense at all...

Finally i would invite you te read this article: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/29/magazine/filmmaker-j-j-abrams-is-a-crowd-teaser.html?_r=1&ref=magazine.

Your definition is off the track or biased. The mystery box is not about whats inside. The goal is to make people want to open it, to tease the audience. It being empty COULD be a possibility. But if it was empty all the time there wouldnt be any reason for the viewers to get excited. You gave the best example with Lost. You might not have liked what was at the end of the road, but there was something...

I think you are confusing elements you dislike with emptiness.

You Sir are a very mysterious character. Because I know **** about you. Is that your argument? ;-)

Speaking of knowing **** about someone, I actually have not watched the ending or the middle or much at all about Lost, so excuse me if that something was not nothing, but nothing of substance and enraging all the fools who actually got invested into that show. Sure, I dislike JJ, but I don't dislike mystery boxes because of JJ, but because they are a **** concept, as mentioned I stopped watching Lost long before it got all the hate, exactly because of mystery boxes, I was familiar with the concept, before I was familiar with the name popularized by JJ … it's a good name, a catchy one and I can assume everyone is familiar with it, so I am using it. And indeed the mystery box is not about what is inside, but all the teasing turns to ****, rage and disappointment when you open them and whatever your imagination told you would be in it is 10 times for awesome than what you are actually getting in that **** box. Which makes clear how ******* hard it is to pull off this feat in a movie without disappointing your audience.

Which brings us to the problem with JJs use of them: He does not give a **** about the disappointment, he literally left this part to someone else in this case. With not the slightest idea about any answer about the questions raised in the movie.

5 minutes ago, Hobojebus said:

I dont read SJW old media like the NYtimes, fake news holds no interest for me.

I really hope this is satire.

6 minutes ago, Hobojebus said:

I dont read SJW old media like the NYtimes, fake news holds no interest for me.

That is the literally best trolling in one sentence I have ever seen. You Sir are a mad genius … though I am using genius here very liberal.

10 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

We get her presented as leader of the rebellion. The organisation which fights from the outer rim and support of some core worlds against the galactic government to restore the old order.
Meanwhile Snoke is the leader of the First Order, the organisation which fights from the unknown region and with support of some core worlds against the galactic government to restore the new order.

I mean... here's a few differences between Snoke and Mothma:

• Mothma runs a rag-tag Rebellion that hides in the shadows. Snoke runs an organization that has re-seized control of the Galaxy using the spent cinders of a defeated Empire, all the while having the financial and material resource to build the bigger-badder ships, vehicles, armor, and weapons. The latter requires a heck of a lot more explanation than the former. If Mothma had shown up in RotJ and been like "'sup y'all, we've now taken control of most of the Galaxy and we've got all these giant ships, some literally as wide as Death Stars, now let's go obliterate the Empire!" I'd similarly be like WTF?!?!?
• Mothma doesn't shoot lightning out of her hands, nor does she demonstrate Dark Force powers that make even Palpatine's powers look like a joke. All without any explanation as to how or where she learned these masterful abilities. All we know about Snoke is that "he's not a Sith."

So, no, Mothma doesn't bother me, the viewer, in the same way Snoke/FirstOrder does.

4 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

I mean... here's a few differences between Snoke and Mothma:

• Mothma runs a rag-tag Rebellion that hides in the shadows. Snoke runs an organization that has re-seized control of the Galaxy using the spent cinders of a defeated Empire, all the while having the financial and material resource to build the bigger-badder ships, vehicles, armor, and weapons. The latter requires a heck of a lot more explanation than the former. If Mothma had shown up in RotJ and been like "'sup y'all, we've now taken control of most of the Galaxy and we've got all these giant ships, some literally as wide as Death Stars, now let's go obliterate the Empire!" I'd similarly be like WTF?!?!?

Yeah, about that …

And btw, the much better question would be how the new republic became demilitarized … now we get answers to that in the expanded universe, so I don't have a big problem with that, even when it strikes me odd, but it really is a much better question than how the first order was able to build ships in a time span of 30 years in a galaxy with over 400,000,000,000 stars systems to hide in, and a plan setup by the Emperor about sending resources into the unknown regions, having a project rebirth running for all those 30 years and knowing about an extremely powerful dark side entity in the unknown regions with even more power than himself.
It even makes sense that they did send Grand Admiral Thrawn into the unknown regions in this context. Oh Gosh, I might forgive JJ if he brings Thrawn in 9 and let Filoni deal with his arc in 9

3 hours ago, Swedge said:

When the First order was chasing the rebel fleet at sub light speeds why didn't they just Jump a ship or two ahead of the rebel fleet???

As I said in another thread: Don't look for logic in Star Wars. Otherwise, it would still be the Empire ruling over the Galaxy. Just have fun and enjoy the ride. Don´ t hink too much.

14 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Yeah, about that …

I'm sorry, so having your ENTIRE fleet at one battle, drawn from every bit of your support across the galaxy, is the same as having the naval resources to reclaim the galaxy in a couple of days (which is exactly what the opening crawl of TLJ has told us has happened).

Every ship in the entire Rebel fleet wouldn't even fill up the volume of the Snoke-class destroyer. Seriously, it would take FIFTY MC80s (1.2km) lineed up end-to-end just to stretch the wingspan on the Mega Star Destroyer (60km), and the mega-destroyer would still have so much more total volume than those 50 ships. Let alone all the Dreadnoughts and Resurrgence-class star destroyers of the First Order. Oh yea, the Rebel fleet didn't also build an entire DSIII using a planet.

I mean, at this point, I just feel like you're being contrarian...

4 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Yeah, about that …

Yeah his point still holds though, as that was literally the Rebels entire fleet and it was still ridiculously outnumbered by the Imperials. We even find out later that the fleet outnumbering them so much isn't even the Empires whole forces (Battle above Jakku still has loads of Star Destroyers).

Yep - @AllWingsStandyingBy is correct on this point. That is a flaw that didn't need to be there. There was room for explanation, advancing the timelines, something that could have better had the audience arrive to this point.

Actually, timelines and scale seems to be an ongoing problem I have with everything in this new Star Wars canon. The Aftermath books, I'm looking hard at you at this point...

8 minutes ago, KellenC said:

Yeah his point still holds though, as that was literally the Rebels entire fleet and it was still ridiculously outnumbered by the Imperials. We even find out later that the fleet outnumbering them so much isn't even the Empires whole forces (Battle above Jakku still has loads of Star Destroyers).

His point holds not at all, considering that he did not read the opening crawl properly. (Major Systems, not entire galaxy) and more importantly that all those rebel ships come out of nowhere alike. We go from 30 rebel fighters to a large fleet in 5 years, meanwhile the first order is building up forces for 30 years and is facing a almost completely de-milizared new republic, which again would be a much better thing to complain about.

The core remains absolutely that both things mirror each other, even when everything got turned up to 11 with the star killer base, twice as large star destroyers and 30 times as large command ships, etc

Just now, LagJanson said:

advancing the timelines

The timeline has been advanced by 30 years. The first order is building up for longer than the whole empire existed. And they were ready the moment they fired the first shot at the republic and destroyed the pitiful rest of the republic fleet in one strike.

Just now, SEApocalypse said:

His point holds not at all, considering that he did not read the opening crawl properly. (Major Systems, not entire galaxy) and more importantly that all those rebel ships come out of nowhere alike. We go from 30 rebel fighters to a large fleet in 5 years, meanwhile the first order is building up forces for 30 years and is facing a almost completely de-milizared new republic, which again would be a much better thing to complain about.

The core remains absolutely that both things mirror each other, even when everything got turned up to 11 with the star killer base, twice as large star destroyers and 30 times as large command ships, etc

Oh, don't get me wrong, I've complained about the stupid disarmament thing a lot and vocally all throughout here. I also think if we accept the weird disarmament then StarKiller Base is an even worse idea when they could have just walked in at any time.

Most balanced review I've seen so far, I think it really looks it over comparing it fairly to the originals.

7 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

His point holds not at all, considering that he did not read the opening crawl properly. (Major Systems, not entire galaxy) and more importantly that all those rebel ships come out of nowhere alike. We go from 30 rebel fighters to a large fleet in 5 years, meanwhile the first order is building up forces for 30 years and is facing a almost completely de-milizared new republic, which again would be a much better thing to complain about.

The core remains absolutely that both things mirror each other, even when everything got turned up to 11 with the star killer base, twice as large star destroyers and 30 times as large command ships, etc

Major systems in days in rather tough to believe though, considering those same systems are likely to be the ones that have their own militia ships and fleets. No, I don't buy the timeline. Either the scale is wrong or the timeline is or there is some vital bit of information lacking to explain it. While it could be the latter, the story group thus far has proved inadequate at getting the first two things right. They'll likely have to fluff it over in some secondary source of information later.

11 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

The timeline has been advanced by 30 years. The first order is building up for longer than the whole empire existed. And they were ready the moment they fired the first shot at the republic and destroyed the pitiful rest of the republic fleet in one strike.

I wasn't referring to this particular timeline. I was referring to the timeline between start of TFA to end of TLJ. Or the fall of the Empire in Aftermath - seriously the chain of command isn't not so incompetent that the whole thing implodes that fast even if there's some stupid self-destruct protocol.

It's an issue. To me, a nitpick that bugs me but I've still been enjoying the ride. I can see how it can bug others more

19 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

His point holds not at all, considering that he did not read the opening crawl properly. (Major Systems, not entire galaxy) and more importantly that all those rebel ships come out of nowhere alike. We go from 30 rebel fighters to a large fleet in 5 years...

Nope. As the ending shots of Empire Strikes Back clearly show,there's much more to the Rebel fleet than "30 fighters".

I was literally considering if I should post the ESB or ROTJ fleet. Both stand for the same point.

41 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

I really hope this is satire.

It is, because it's literally fake news that the NYT is fake news.

I'm not saying all journalism doesn't have its biases, but it would be like saying North Korea offers the real world point of view and everyone else is fake.

Anyway, back to The Last Jedi. Finn and Rey I believe have no better equal in carrying the series to an awesome completion. Poe Dameron gets props too for being a total hothead and showing all the faults associated with it, while staying as a character to be liked. Rose, too, is awesome. I'm solid on that this thing is in the absolutely right direction.

What happens after the next movie is anyone's guess but I'm sure Disney didn't spend $4 billion to stop making good movies.

Oh, and this applies:

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