LogFAQs > #902514648

Okay, I caved.

From last topic:

ParanoidObsessive posted...

The Wave Master posted...

PO if you have seen The Last Jedi I would be interested to hear your opinions

I haven't, and may not for a while (while I saw Rogue One in theaters, I actually waited until DVD/On Demand to watch Force Awakens last time around). Though I am sort of making at least somewhat of an effort to avoid spoilers - for example, I mostly skipped over any post in this topic so far that I saw mentioning it - so I have no idea what most of you think about it or said about it (other than Knives and Cyborg, their stances seem pretty obvious). But I'm also not super-bothered about it, so if I wind up accidentally catching some here or there I won't be overly annoyed or anything.

That being said, it might be worth noting that I'm about 97% sure that the Internet is childishly overreacting to the movie, and that most of the people whining about how terrible it is are probably wrong, because I have a very low opinion of fandom and the Internet in general. I suspect I'll probably enjoy it well enough when I finally watch it, mainly because the franchise as a whole has long since fallen off any pedestal I might have once put it on. All I really ask from my mediocre space fantasy at this point is to not be as terrible as the prequels (and I suspect that the people rabidly screaming that The Last Jedi is worse than the prequels are being hyperbolic and insane, because it is almost scientifically impossible for anything to be worse than The Phantom Menace).

So while I tend to instinctively think Knives is probably right in that particular tete-a-tete with Cyborg, I can't actually say anything definitively until I actually bother watching it.

So, commentary now that I've seen it:

I kind of still think that most of the backlash is manchildren being manchildren, but I can also see the flaws in it.

The main problem with the movie seems to be that it's uneven as fuck (a flaw it shares with Return of the Jedi). Most of the Rey scenes with Luke I actually kind of liked, and the Snoke/Rey scenes were pretty good (but also somewhat derivative... though Ren's unearned turn - whoops, surprise! Still Dark Side, tee hee! moment, which I really liked), and I liked the Luke/Ren stuff at the end... but most of the Finn scenes feel like they have the grim taint of the prequels on them, and that is very, very bad. The overall tone of the movie feels off, but I kind of feel like that's entirely due to the fact that it's 2018, not 1977. If anything, there were parallels in there to how the Marvel movies are structured (and the problem is that it works better in those, less so in this, especially if you're expecting a different tone going in).

I think a lot of the backlash comes from Luke being a bitter old fuck, but not only do I kind of think that was almost inevitably where the story HAD to go, I find it far more interesting and worthwhile than if Luke was just Yoda 2.0.

I'm also not a huge fan of some of the casting (Laura Dern and Benicio del Toro springing to mind - though it's hard to say if my issues with them are more their own acting or how they were directed, and Carrie Fisher combines the same problem with feeling way too old), but nothing was so hugely jarring that it pulled me out completely, and I think Rey/Finn/Poe/Kylo are all well-casted for the roles they're playing, which helps immensely.

Oh, and Phasma was completely wasted, but then again, it feels like her reason for existing is to be completely wasted, so that's nothing new.

In the end, it's not the worst Star Wars movie I've ever seen, but it's also admittedly nowhere near the best. Middle of the road, maybe. #5 or #6 out of 10, probably.


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
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