You can reckon all you want. You are the guy who decided on a poll with 5 answers, when a simple “did you watch and like Star Wars yes/no?” Would have sufficed. As it is now about 70 percent of responders to your straw poll liked the movie. Sorry that doesn’t jibe with your hypothesis that everybody hates it.

Oh, so you actually have one...cool, you can stay in this thread.

I’m all for people disliking the movie, I didn’t love it myself. I’m just disappointed in the “this movie sucked, must be because of the gross lady fingerprints all over it” angle.

InifiteLives, you started a post that has received a ton of discussion. While I think the poll choices require more accurate wording, it has brought a polarizing subject to the front. I enjoy coming back to read it.

Some of you guys have made excellent posts: Good opinions, defense of the film, research, ideas, valid criticisms etc.

Then we have that exacerbating thread after thread "You're wrong" guy, lurking around trolling like a smart ass endlessly. Thank God for the ability to ignore individual users.

Ask yourselves this; If the entire plot of this movie was exactly the same, and you removed any connotation of Star Wars whether it be the legacy characters, vehicles or name and just made it a standalone sci-fi movie....How well would it do in the box office?

I do not honestly believe it would have succeeded.

I have zero problems with strong females. In fact, I WANT strong females for my daughter’s sake. I have a problem with ZERO strong males. I have a problem with all males being evil, dumb, or just arrogant jerks. They even made Finn an oaf! What character are boys supposed to relate to? I guess the stableboy force pulling the broom? LOL! The princess (I mean, Rey) doesn’t even go through any adversity. She is just naturally awesome at EVERYTHING! She doesn’t learn from any mistakes or even train much. She is just instantly a badass. That is dumb. I’d say the same if they had a golden boy instead of girl. It’s bad writing at best.

Corrected.

I agree with your post, I don't give 2 shits if a film is made by a team of pygmies if the film is good. If the film sucks we should question the people behind it, especially if you paid almost 40 bucks to see it. I'm willing to wager after Solo bombs at the B.O. you will see a change at Lucasfilm. 75 thousand people panning this film is no fluke.

Who cares.

Either the movie’s good or it’s not. Men have been producing Hollywood dreck with dubious social messaging for more than a century, now women get a chance to show they can churn out crap too. Big whoop.

As far as the quality of the male characters, I’ll go out on a limb and guess that most boys still want a Poe or Finn action figure more than a Rey, despite the fact that they learn a lesson or whatever in the new movie (no one wants an old man doll so Luke is SOL). My boys both still love the droids best of all, so at least that remains constant over 40 years of Star Wars.

Is that what they’re charging for 3D IMAX these days? No wonder you’re pissed.

Two thumbs up on this.

Yes, just the price of tix for 2.

https://movieweb.com/star-wars-last-jedi-fans-petition-rotten-tomatoes-shut-down/

Also, I just found out Disney put a moratorium in place for critics wanting to review the movie. The other controversy was certain critics were hand-picked by the studio for the invitation to get wined and dined to preview the movie. Can you see how they put their finger on the scale, they must think we're a bunch of idiots.

Marcus theater does $5 Tuesdays. Two medium popcorns, two large drinks and two tix were $25 bucks! Plus heated recliner chairs.

I paid $12 at Alamo Draft House, with beer and food service to my seat. Makes even a dull movie much more tolerable!

I wish this thread would be more about why we liked or disliked the movie versus trying to convince the other side why they are stupid morons. No one is going to change someone’s mind in a Pinside debate.

haha wow...wow. I was amazed at how much I liked Force Awakens; but this one felt like you had to purposely try to a make a movie that bad.

EDIT: I'll give them this much, they give you a SHITLOAD of "Star Warsy" stuff; It's packed with it.

My biggest problems with the movie:

1) How do bombs "fall" in space where there is no gravity?

2) If Poe hadn't blown up the devastator or whatever it was called, the Rebellion would have been toast after their first hyperspace jump. So he was right to "be a hero".

3) Almost zero character building. All advancements are done in a 360 fashion where they end up back where they started. Tell me who is really different at the end than at the beginning other than Luke (which is a whole different problem)?

4) The plot points of 7 don't mesh with the explanations in 8. The lightsaber scene in Moz's place and Luke leaving a map to where he is hiding for example. Why did the lightsaber call out to Rey and why the big speech about Anakin and Luke and how it calling to Rey was significant. Why did Luke leave a map to find him if he didn't want to be found?

5) Why does someone need to stay on a ship to "fly it". No autopilot? No droids?

6) Why was there no sound in the jump to hyperspace to tear through Snoke's ship and if it is that easy to get through shields, why not just do that to Death Stars instead of all the BS they had to go through?

7) What a waste killing Admiral Ackbar the way they did. It would have been better for him to fly the vessel into the enemy instead.

Too many political speeches in the movie for me.
a) Women are strong and can lead.
b) The rich abuse the poor.
c) Animals are abused.

9) Almost every situation felt contrived as hell and almost every serious moment had a three stooges moment added for comedic affect. This movie couldn't figure out the tone it wanted to portray and I found myself shaking my head and asking what I was looking at.

I'm not the biggest fan of Ep. 7, but at least it built characters up and gave me some partially believable situations. Ep. 8 is just a mess.

This 100%. Didn't Disney learn from that great move by Sony. Making the Ghostbusters all women to be all women and making all men in the movie evil and/or stupid is not a way to get the viewers. Women can be powerful without being forced on the public. Please Hollywood, stop trying to force us to agree with that agenda.

How anyone's list cannot involve Leia pulling a Hulk Hogan in space is beyond me. That was the single worst moment in SW history bar non. Worse than Jar Jar, worse than "NOOOO!," worse than speeches aboot sand, worse than the blind guy in Rebel one.

Oh, I left that out as I figured everyone and their mother had mentioned it. I felt the Disney magic. Bleh!

The character of Rey sucks. A real character needs to undergo change, adversity and hardship, to come out the other side as a better person. They could get away with it not happening in TFA but something should have happened in this middle movie (think of all the crap Luke goes through in Empire).

Imagine a Terminator movie where Sarah Conner starts out as a badass and doesn't grow at all? Oh wait you won't have to imagine that - it was called Terminator Genysis and it sucked.

You guys act like a bad Star Wars movie is something new. The only good Star Wars were the first and second ones. TESB sucked, with the silly carnivorous teddy bears, and so did the 3 prequels. TFA was pretty good but this last one just fucking blew. It was as if the previous movie didn’t exist. In the end it was just a movie. I would have seen it just like a Star Trek or another Terminator, which have all blown except for the first and second ones.

What I liked...

Character Development

I thought they moved the characters forward. They did seem to focus on Rey and Kylo Ren most. There was a lot of interaction between them when they were Force-modem connected by Snoke. Their relationship grew as they communicated and wrestled (mentally) with each other (much like this thread) to convince the other side that they could slide over. This was a key theme. Luke saw that Rey was teetering on the edge of the dark side (ie, the dark hole).

Meanwhile, Kylo Ren also struggled with his light-side demons as he chose not to kill his mother. We saw Poe's character develop as more of a headstrong, anti-authority character. Meanwhile the director tried to start this Finn and Rose relationship as they introduced Rose as a love interest character for Finn - I think the Rose/Finn relationship was the least successful character development - no spark there for me.

Luke's character had changed. He had made mistakes. He had become cynical, old, curmudgeonly. He had become a shadow of his former self; disconnecting from the force that had brought him both glory and pain.

The scene between Luke and R2-D2 was special. Luke and R2 had come a long ways from their chance meeting so long ago. R2-D2 let's Luke know that he's being an ass. When R2-D2 shows Luke the video message from Leia it really brought the story full circle. Luke decides to train Rey. Brilliant moment by the director/writers in my opinion.

The Battles

The battles kicked ass! The opening bombing scene on the Dreadnought was awesome. I'm not going to let a little thing like space physics get in the way of a fun battle. I mean come on people, nearly every sci-fi flick asks you to suspend physics!!! Clearly the scene was inspired by WWII bombers.

The lightspeed jump through the other dreadnought was crazy! The silence was very jolting as Holdo rams the Rebel cruiser through Snoke's ship. It was a great moment. At the end of the day, Star Wars is about "space war" and the battle sequences were pure Star Wars! Huge ships, overwhelming odds, etc. It delivered for me.

BTW, I hated the Laura Dern character keeping a secret about the ultimate plan. Upon reflection, it did make sense. Poe had been demoted, disregarding the chain of command and wasn't acting trustworthy. Why would they share the plan? that would be kept as secret as possible. Just my take.

I also thought the final battle with Kylo Ren kicked ass. The shot from behind Luke as he faced the M6-ATs that was chilling. Ren opens fire on Luke in a massive barrage of fire power. Freaking awesome scene with Luke brushing the dust from his shoulder. Luke is BACK and badder than ever!

Humor

I loved the humor. I guess I wasn't married to all of the set-up from TFA. When Luke tosses his ligh saber over his shoulder, the theater exploded with laughter. It was one of many very funny moments. Star Wars has always had its humor. I think RJ added his stamp to the series by cranking up the humor a notch. I thought the Porgs were hilarious but not integral to any plot line like the ewoks. Porgs became tension-releasers during the battle sequences. The scene with Chewy trying to eat a porg was hilarious. The audience in my showing seemed to love the porg humor.

Twists on old SW devices

So many of the traditional SW ploy devices were used in TLJ. However, they weren't always used in the same way. Snoke was the new Emperor, the new super villian. Except he was killed unexpectedly. Nice twist. I think director was trying to get us to think Kylo Ren was going "good" on us but the twist was he sought to be the Supreme Leader. Snoke did sense resolve in Kylo Ren but it was his undoing. People complained that Snoke was never developed but neither was the Emperor in the first three movies.

The other old device re-deployed was the Obi-Wan, "if you strike me down" moment. I'm really surprised that some people didn't get the ending. You may not have liked it but it was consistent with the SW universe. The twist was that when he let Kylo Ren strike him down, he wasn't really there at all. Yet it has the same effect... like Obi Wan and Yoda before him, it was his time to move on and become a Force Ghost. The scene of him silhouetted against the dual suns was the book-end to his life. It hearkened back to when he first started his journey on Tatooine where he stood against the backdrop of the dual suns and made the decision to fight the empire.

TLJ was a dense story with a lot plots and sub plots going on. Relationships were forming and other characters were coming to an end. For me, the movie made many mistakes. For example, continuity editing could have been better. It was hard to piece together Rose "dying" and making it back to the bunker. A simple shot of Finn struggling to pull her through the ensuing battle would have explained that. Rey goes through training with Luke but we see very little indication of the amount of training... was it really 3 lessons? How long did it take? A few extra moments on film could have cleared up a lot. Overall, the good exceeded the bad and the pace was fast enough for me that I didn't linger on the absurdity of space physics and other non sequiturs.

The "Character Development" was like erecting a building only to knock it down. Nothing was really different at the end than the beginning other than Luke and Snoke are dead. The "rebellion" is even weaker now, but tell me what else has really changed?

Are you being deliberately obtuse? Did you not read the article?

The first priority was hiring women writers, not THE BEST writers but women writers. I don't care if the writer is a man or woman, you want the best for the job.

They actually state that which is a tad stupid.

As a former manager of a dept full of male and female employees this was (last I checked) against the law, as in discrimination.

The Last Jedi clearly engages in very poor storytelling which logically you do a root cause analysis as to why if you are interested in writing and filmmaking.

Which leads you to Kathleen Kennedy and Rian Johnson.

Some interesting points and opinions.

Only one i really object to is Luke training Rey. Yes that scene with him and r2d2 was great... one of the best parts of the movie. But Luke didnt really do any training...Luke didnt do... shit! He whined for a bit went for a fish then agreed to train her... did that for 2 minutes whilst throwing in a dumb joke then got pissed off again. Then... frigged around on the island again (the secret island where he wanted to never be found and die but left a map in tfa wtf) for a while till he decided to force peoject himself which was just a crap idea all round.
I dont for a second buy this Johnson idiots reason for even killing off Luke. To further develop the other characters apparently... which didnt really happen.

It does seem consistent to me. Holdo just didn't take the precaution Han did in episode 4. She pointed the cruiser at the other ship and rammed through it at light speed. Han had to take the time to plot a safe course... Holdo didn't have to calculate a safe path. Isn't that the point? Maybe I'm not understanding the problem with the scene.

I actually did like the Mary Poppins scene. In hindsight, they should/could have killed Leia off at that point. But I ran with the story. The only thing I didn't understand...and here is the continuity error again... when they opened the door to get Leia they should have gotten sucked out. Maybe there was an airlock there but I didn't see it. Again, I ran with it and enjoyed the overall story arc.

The question I would ask to the people that were distracted by every continuity error is how MUCH explanation do you expect the director and editor to provide to the viewer? Is it their responsibility to make sure that the audience has no discontinuity at all? Or would all of those extra shots slow the story telling down? I'm not sure there is a right answer for everyone. If you show every little detail...like adding a scene showing Finn dragging Rose across the salt field you risk slowing the pace down and end up with a 4 hour movie (ala LOTR). The point of continuity in film making is for the viewer to piece together a story line without having to show everything "in between."

I loved the sci fi series Dark Matter. Anyone else? But every episode I cringed because they short circuited so much of the story line. Nature of the beast.

Positive stuff about TLJ..

The interaction with Luke and the droids was great. Although it was too brief on screen, I was really happy to see that friendship again. And I would say, that was the best part of the movie!

Luke's end battle scene with the Imperial Walkers was very visual and fun to watch. That long camera lens scene (compressed) with the sun low and the back lit walkers firing everything at Luke, that was just cool. Like Empire..

empire (resized).jpg

I think we'll see Luke in episode 9. Luke said he is going to haunt Kylo Ren and "see ya round." Unless JJ Abrams wants to do a RJ move on RJ.

I read the following in the article you’re talking about: “Today, the Lucasfilm story group is a diverse outlier in Hollywood: five of its members are people of color, and the team includes four women and seven men.” So I’m not sure what to make of the “all women team” comments in the article. Doesn’t sound to me like that’s who produced TLJ.

Agreed that you look to the creative team if you don’t like creative choices. Like I’ve said, if you’re right and they lose money on this movie (or significantly underperform expectations), people will be fired. Not clear that’s what’s happening at the box office though.

Looks to break the $1 billion take by year end. Maybe that doesn't prove it's a great movie but it doesn't make it a financial success for Disney. Doubt anyone's getting fired yet. I would hope they do take the criticism at face value, fix the storytelling flaws and make the final movie epic.

Star Wars is not science fiction, it never has been. Star Wars is fantasy. It has always been fantasy. The only movie to even hint at science fiction aspects was TPM.

As an aside, good science fiction doesn’t toss physics aside either, it usually just bends a couple rules of physics and the rest is supposed to be possible. The most recent Star Trek movies have moved away from science fiction and towards fantasy as well, I’m not sure where to qualify the last Star Trek movie with the ship bouncing off rocks and then going into outer space...certainly not science fiction, probably fantasy...but even fantasy tries to stay within whatever rules it has created.

Yes!!! Loved that series. Haven’t watched season 3 yet, super disappointed it is canceled.

Love the android on that show. Ended with major cliff hangers and then canceled.

This was my single biggest issue with the movie as well.

Anyone remember what they're fighting about?

Taxation without representation?

Currently under performing projections by 28%

I think we've pretty much established that in the Star Wars universe human pilots are preferred, perhaps even needed. Otherwise, all of the fighter scenes would be done with droids. I don't remember, but perhaps that is discussed in Attack of the Clones. Badically for any space battle in Star Wars you have to think WWII.

PS: I didn't really think about it in the theater, but I assume Rose saving Finn was there way of showing the audience they were not going to just start ramming ships.

Rick and morty did it first when Rick teleported the citadel into the space the prison was in.

Nah, they were flipping the narrative.

Strong, independent womyn saves the stupid, reckless male.

Never mind it would have doomed them all to certain death if Skywalker and Rey had not shown up.

I was touched at the time, it looked like Flynn was going to have an actual character arc from cowardly space janitor to hero of the rebellion/resistance and then they took it away.

5a44ca64e1ecf (resized).png

This film was ok at best. Save your money...wait and rent it.

The only thing I learned from this thread is that I'd rather have my nuts bit off by a Laplander than direct a Star Wars movie: impossible to please !

It is impossible to please EVERYone, but really? Maybe write a better script and your movie won't be such a mess?

I don't hear any(?) actual criticism of the "directing" on this film, it seemed competently made. The complaining has had to do with the writing.

I actually had a hard time believing they didn't at least vaguely plan out this trilogy before filming a single scene from TFA.

Apparently the plan was:
- retread A new hope for movie 1
- make up some bizarre new stuff for movie 2
- try to make up some more stuff for movie 3

That is just preposterous and amazing for a multi billion dollar franchise, where a trilogy is planned from the get go. I mean how does something like that even happen, unless writing is about the last thing on your mind when milking your franchise to death?

You are correct, I’ve been criticizing the director but my complaints are really more with the story itself than the directing. I guess I’m unclear on who is in charge of the story: writer or director. I know for Episode One Terry Brooks (Shannarah Chronicals author) said George Lukas walked him through the plot that he wanted, Terry had little creative direction.

Almost anything can be explained in a fantasy universe. There are scenarios all over the net. Here's one.
https://www.quora.com/In-Star-Wars-why-isnt-hyperspace-ramming-a-standard-weapon