LA premier is Thursday the 19th .
Anybody see it yet? Official reviews are not allowed until Friday.
Spoilers? Take these with a cubic light-year of salt, as no one is going to say anything bad at this point
Brian
This really bugs me. Cats is also review-less at RT as of Tues. pm.
Even if it’s an embargo rather than not pre-screening for reviewers, it makes people think that the movie is a bomb.
What difference does a few days make? Only a tiny fraction of all viewers will see it on Thursday night “previews”. Let the reviews roll whenever they are ready.
Sheesh.
Not true. They are allowed to be published tonight. 12AM PST or 3AM Eastern.
We should get a RT score pretty quick with all the reviews hitting in the middle of toight. I am predicting that JJ Abrams made a:
Confusing, packed, satisfying, mess of a movie that did its best with what Rian Johnson gave him after Episode 8. Positive reviews, but I bet it is a bit of a mess as well.
Honestly, they should have had Lawrence Kasdan write all 3 and JJ Abrams film and direct all 3 back-to-back so they could release them annually and have it all planned out.
I will be seeing it tomorrow morning, 11:30am Australian Eastern time, 19th of November. That’ll be about 7:30pm US Eastern on the 18th. Once I get home, I’ll put up my initial reactions. That’ll be sometime after 2pm my time, if anyone’s interested.
I keep thinking “Oh, it’s premiering Friday, so I’ll go see the first showing Thursday at midnight, with all the cosplayers in line.”
Yeah, I’m old. Was out of college when I stood in line (no such thing as the internet or advance tickets then) for “Star Wars”…
So I was surprised that showings started Thursday at a decent hour. But I didn’t decide to go until yesterday, so I’m going late and by myself, in 3D. As I mentioned in the Number Nine Appreciation Thread, I’m excited that I snagged the last non-first-two-rows ticket in town.
I don’t know if this’ll be a spoiler-free thread, but I’ve got to highlight this from the other one:
59% is the current score on Rotten Tomatoes with about 90 reviews in.
They are being pretty strict. A number of the “rotten” reviews are not entirely negative. Still, I think the mess created by Episode VIII may have been too much to overcome.
I blame Kathy Kennedy more than JJ Abrams(and company) if it ends up being less than great. I still think Force Awakens is as good as the original trilogy(shocking to some maybe?).
59% is the current score on Rotten Tomatoes with about 90 reviews in.
They are being pretty strict. A number of the “rotten” reviews are not entirely negative. Still, I think the mess created by Episode VIII may have been too much to overcome.
I blame Kathy Kennedy more than JJ Abrams(and company) if it ends up being less than great. I still think Force Awakens is as good as the original trilogy(shocking to some maybe?).
Why does London get the premier (seemingly all the time)? Now that its a Disney production I’d have put money that LA would get it first.
Ever since the first movie they have done a lot of filming in UK studios/stages and I think that is still true today. I remember someone asking why all the bad guys had British accents and the answer was they filmed there. 
That might be why they get the first premier.
Right, no Friday embargo for SW:QWERT or whatever it is.
To make keeping track easier, here’s an RT link.
104 total as of Wed. AM. 32 among top critics who are split 50-50. Still no review from Ebert :(.
(Cats still has no reviews listed at RT or Metacritic but there are some out there. Is this part of RT’s embargo deal with certain studios???)
I think the Star Wars movies have always officially been joint British-American productions.
It has nothing to do with RT. For whatever reason, Variety and Hollywood Reporter always publish reviews for Hollywood movies before anyone else. The two publications haven’t posted reviews for *Cats *yet, so we can assume the studio embargo is still in place.
Actually, from what I’ve read, most of the critics seem to be complaining that it’s too much like Episode VII and not enough like Episode VIII, and that the film mostly ignores the new directions TLJ took the series into.
I bet if someone at the studio had given all three films to J.J. we’d have had a solid (if frustrating from a writing standpoint) trilogy by now. I bet if they’d given all three films to Johnson… well, we’d have at least had something new in this trilogy and it might well have been great. If they’d given the trilogy to any one competent director, right now I think we’d all be talking about how wonderful and fitting this film is as an end to the Skywalker Saga.
But they didn’t, so we’re not, and whoever made the decision at the studio to give the trilogy to more than one director, and yet failed to demand a pre-established arc for all three films to follow, within boundaries, is the real culprit in my mind.
Which was the right decision, though probably too little, too late. The damage Johnson did is hardly fatal, since I am sure The Rise of Skywalker will make at least a billion dollars, but it’s still going to cost them money they would have otherwise made. I saw the original Star Wars movies in the theater and I even went and saw every prequel movie in the theater, though my expectations went lower with each movie, and I really liked The Force Awakens. I liked the new characters and I was interested to see where they would take them. I enjoyed Rogue One, though it was a bit dark for a Star Wars movie. But after TLJ, I didn’t bother to see Solo and I won’t be bothering to see this one, either. Change for the sake of change isn’t a good thing, particularly not in the 8th movie in a series.
Personally, The Last Jedi was my favorite SW movie since Empire, and the first time since I was 9 years old that I found myself watching Star Wars without having any idea what was going to happen next. It seems, though that TPTB have decided to veer away from originality and back into fanservice. At least Abrams is good at that. Nobody is a bigger fanboy and curator of others’ ideas than J.J. Abrams.
curious why it is part British? Just the filming locations?
Lucasfilm , Fox and Disney are not British companies as far as I know.
Just something I vaguely remember from my childhood Leonard Maltin guide - the films’ country of origin was always listed as “US-UK”.
This pretty much mirrors my feelings, though I’ve been mostly avoiding reactions to the latest one to try and see it “cleanly”.