Star Wars: The Last Jedi - seen it thread

Cafe Society
501

So the mixed divisive reaction to The Last Jedi has hit the domestic box office returns, with a drop-off in its second week of almost 70%. Though a lot could be said about this time of year, the Christmas week, being a factor, and the international audiences propping it up, the money is not the point. It’s the negative reaction that will matter going forward.

Rian Johnson took some bold risks in his episode, and it seems they didn’t pay off the way Lucasfilm would’ve wanted, which may affect how JJ Abrams approaches his Episode IX script. Even though I loved the movie, it doesn’t leave many threads to resolve. There has to be a time jump, and somehow Rey and Kylo need a final confrontation that will be a conclusion to their storyline, but aside from that what else is there left for Poe, for Finn, for Rose? Aside from the Resistance rebuilding, which would be a slow process, and not very cinematic, what is there left to see? How do you make that film exciting and compelling for fans left disillusioned by The Last Jedi?

It’s only two years away before we find out, but a lot can happen in that time. And we have the Han Solo prequel to watch in between (only a few months away, it releases in May 2018).

I don’t think this will affect Rian Johnson’s new trilogy he has been handed the keys to. I hope not, anyway. His style would work better having full control of a storyline rather than what he has done with a middle-episode, I think.

It may be that Lucasfilm are not worried. But considering the messy director swapping they’ve had to do so often in the past few movies, things are not exactly running smoothly there as it is. Panic may be on the cards, so I hope they don’t do anything rash.

502

Saw it last night. As a standalone movie I thought it was good, not great, mostly for the good and bad reasons that everyone has already talked about it. As a Star Wars movie, I thought it should have been better, but, between this and The Force Awakens, I think this is about the quality level they are shooting for going forward.

This is almost exactly the description I would write for myself, though I did like this latest movie more than you did apparently. I put it slightly above TFA in that I at least thought there was more originality in this one. But I don’t think the writing in either of the new sequel movies has been particularly tight, certainly not to the level one would imagine a franchise like Star Wars merits. Rogue One, on the other hand, I was pretty pleased by.

503

I think the box office drop is way overplayed in the media.

Actual exit polls showed people liked the movie–ninety percent positive opinons. The rotten tomatoes audience rating is skewed towards diehard fan types and, you know, just, generally those who like to register opinions on the internet.

I think the drop wasn’t because people disliked the movie, I think it’s because everybody who was going to see it saw it that first week. It’s just a front-loading of viewership, not an egregious drop in interest.

504

sigh

I was a kid when the original trilogy first came out. While TFA was a lightly-massaged re-telling of A New Hope, as far as I’m concerned The Last Jedi is probably the best one yet. It is honestly the most emotional and the one which makes the most use of its characters.

honestly, while I have a soft spot for the original trilogy, they just weren’t all that great. Yeah, they were amazing because we first saw them when we were kids, but if it wasn’t for Harrison Ford the acting would probably have been almost as wooden as the prequels. A New Hope had plot holes you could drive a truck through ("You can’t win, Darth.)

the original trilogy were good Star Wars movies in 1977-1983. They’re cheez-ball in 2017. The story needs to move on. TLJ is the start of that.

and the fact that the second weekend was Christmas weekend, when a hell of a lot of people had other shit to do.

I saw it on the 26th, and the theater was reasonably full.

505

I agree. With a few caveats, this is still the most fun I’ve had at a Star Wars movie. I loved all the humor; the action sequences made more visual and choreographic sense to me than any of the ones in the last 20 years; the subversion of cliches is something I love.

I saw it my my brother (his second viewing), and immediately afterward I said to him, “But the movie would’ve been exactly the same if Finn and Rose had stayed home, right?” I’d been hoping that they’d come away with something --BB8 may’ve found some key piece of data, or Phasma may have let something slip, or anything.

He said, “Nope. If they’d stayed home, DJ never would have betrayed the cloaking plan, and most of the Rebellion would have escaped.” Which, you know harsh.

But there’s one difference they made. They sparked hope on the casino planet.

Which, by the way, I really liked. Take that, haters! Reason I liked it was the different perspectives of Finn and Rose and DJ. Finn thought it was beautiful. DJ thought it was a machine. But Rose thought it was corrupt to the core, and fantasized about putting a fist through it.

AND THEN SHE LED A FUCKING STAMPEDE THROUGH IT. That was so ridiculously cathartic, watching the race animals tear shit up. It made the whole detour worthwhile.

And in the end, when the kid wears his rebel alliance secret decoder ring? That’s Finn and Rose at work: not especially skilled at military, not heirs to the throne, not all that brilliant, but just normal schmoes working in the Alliance and inspiring others to join the cause.

But I thought The Force Awakens was uninspired Star Wars rehash, and it did nothing for me. The thought of JJ Abrams coming along to finish this trilogy is mildly depressing, and if I cared any more about the Star Wars universe, I’d be a lot more depressed by it. I fully expect him to take this, the first inspired entry in the series since ESB, and smooth down the ruffled feathers and return everything to business as usual.

Keep in mind how he came to her, as a flight jock demanding to know what the plan was. From her perspective, he was the disgraced motherfucker who had ignored Organa’s direct order and gotten a significant chunk of the rebellion’s ships destroyed, not to mention allowing the slaughter of a significant chunk of her comrades. He came through unscathed, but so many others didn’t, thanks to him. It’s very possible that Holdo counted dear friends among the dead. And Poe swaggers up demanding she take time to explain herself to him.

It’s possible she was pissy to him because she was PISSED.

506

Forbes take on the handwringing of its only making metric shitload.

I think what is not happening is many people feeling the need to see it again. At least yet. Measuring it against TFA’s, the long awaited sequel’s, box office numbers, it falls short. Measured against pretty much any other box office metric it has kicked ass. Only TFA and Jurassic World hit the $400 million mark faster than it has.

If Episode IX should box office fail the same way as this one is Disney will be very pleased indeed.

507

I wonder how much weather is affecting box office numbers. Wildfires, snow, record-breaking cold… there’s a lot that could change if you go or not. I’d consider going a second time, but it’s not practical with the holidays and my personal schedule.

508

One more comment, to all the folks talking about the movie’s message of “Kill the past”: You’re aware that’s what the archvillain is advising to do, right? And that his philosophy of kill the past is the engine driving the suffering in the trilogy? I hardly think Johnson is asking us to nod along knowingly and say, “Yup. Yup, we should kill the past, just like Kylo Ren tells us to.”

509

I took it more from Luke.

510

Okay, but think how his angst ended: with Yoda laughingly setting the past on fire and calling it dullsville and saying stop stressing so much about it, while Ren spirited the past away on the Falcon.

It’s a bit more complicated than that.

If I’m gonna try to draw a directorial message out of that (and I’m not convinced I should), it’d be something like, “Take the past movies as a resource, but stop trying to build your entire existence around them. It’s okay to reference them but not be bound by them, to make your own thing.”

511

Pet Peeve: Forbes has very little actual Forbes produced content online. It pretty much sold its online presence out to freelance bloggers with no editorial oversight. You might as well say “This is WordPress’s view…”

When we saw it, the theater was full but we were at the IMAX at Smithsonian Air & Space in Washington DC. Which also has Rey and Luke’s costumes on display as you enter.

512

FWIW, we saw it at a second tier theater in an out-of-the-way shopping center at 1 pm on the day after Christmas. The theater wasn’t completely full, but we got the last six seats that were next to each other; I’d say it was about 75% full.

513

Possible. If so, the fact that so many people had the same reaction of frustration at the entire sequence suggests that the filmmakers didn’t clearly convey the character’s intended motivation.

That entire character is just weird:
-why is she famous enough that Poe has heard of her battles, but has no idea what she looks like (and, it kind of seems, that she’s female)
-why is she the only person in the resistance wearing fancy evening dress
-and of course why she treats Poe the way she does

Btw, for anyone saying that the original trilogy had plot holes as big as those in TLJ, what are they?

(And bear in mind that I really enjoyed the movie. But MAN did it contain a lot of stuff where the storytelling was either unclear or seemed to make no sense at all.)

514

I’m gonna go with “for the same reason Mon Mothma wore a toga all the time”. :slight_smile:

515

First, a couple positives: unlike others who aren’t super into this movie (including my son), I didn’t mind the humor. In fact, I kinda liked it. But as I admitted to him, it’s partly because I couldn’t take even the “serious parts” terribly seriously, so I appreciated having those lighter moments.

I loved the scene of Rey being duplicated out to infinity, as well as some of her communications with Kylo Ren.

Also, although I also didn’t like TFA a ton, I did argue even at that time (and if I really wanted to, could probably go find a comment to this effect) that it seemed silly to me to speculate on who Rey’s parents are. Why couldn’t she just be a random person, I wondered.

And one complaint I’ve seen from some quarters that I don’t understand at all is that this movie is “too different” from previous Star Wars films. Okay, it’s not just a rehash of one movie’s plot like TFA; but we’ve got scenes super reminiscent of the Hoth battle scenes, training stuff that reminds us of Dagobah (even that great scene I mentioned above is like Luke going into the tree), lots of pursuing scenes that call to mind the pursuit of the Millennium Falcon in ESB; and many others I noticed at the time that can’t call up right now.

But wow: Rose is a terrible character. Her casino subplot with Finn was pointless, and her whole seeming death scene was cringeworthy (and even worse when we discovered she wasn’t dead). Actually, what was the point of almost anything that happened in the movie, except for killing Snoke (who remains a total mystery, RIP I guess)?

How did we jump from Rey being in that throne room with Kylo, to she’s on the Falcon whooping it up with Chewie? If there were scenes cut, couldn’t they have put them back and ditched all that casino nonsense?

And OMG, the scene of Princess Leia going Mary Poppins through space? Again, cringeworthy.

Luke’s saying, basically, “Haha, I faked you out” and then actually saying “See you 'round, kid” was cool. But then he does die? WTF

BTW, what did Snoke do when he wasn’t taunting his victims or apprentices? Was there a TV in there or anything? Did he chat with the red-suited bodyguards?

Also, this:

Laura Dern can be great (the little-watched HBO series *Enlightened *was awesome), but this was a swing and a miss.

ETA: People can zip across the galaxy and come back to the rebel fleet, but the First Order ships can’t just jump in front of the rebels and surround them? And that “battering ram” had to be arduously dragged across the desert? Why didn’t they just land it right in front of the door?

516

Oh shit I just realized we may have scenes of Luke visiting Kylo as a force ghost in the next episode. That would be hilarious.

517

Elite stormtroopers can be defeated by teddy bears with slingshots?
Hey Yoda…how about cluing Luke onto Force Lightning??

518

And how long exactly did Luke spend training with Yoda in Empire Strikes Back?

519

For about as long as Rey spent on Ahch-To with Luke, would be my guess.

520

Right, but she didn’t undergo any real training there - it was more of an extended confrontation. Luke, OTOH, was shown actually learning stuff.