Current Events > weekly reminder that The Last Jedi is a fine movie

(+) Yeah! (+)

and probably the fourth best in the series

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Everyone is allowed to their opinion. It doesn't mean it's a good opinion.

-Mark Hamil

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_n5E7feJHw0

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It's the best movie of the sequel trilogy. There's no denying that.


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Wii_Shaker posted...

It's the best movie of the sequel trilogy. There's no denying that.

I deny that lol. I really liked TFA

Even Lucasfilm doesn't care about the ST nowadays

All the new stuff coming out is either OT or PT stuff

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Wii_Shaker posted...

It's the best movie of the sequel trilogy. There's no denying that.

That's like saying a turd with sprinkles on it is better than the turds without sprinkles

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It wouldn't be difficult to be the 4th best, it's between The Last Jedi, The Force Awakens and Revenge of the Sith. Personally I would put it in as

Revenge of the Sith
The Last Jedi
Force Awakens

TFA awakens is probably actually better but it's also just basically ANH with a few twists.

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Here's Slant Magazine's middling review of the movie, from one year and four days ago:

For those hoping that there may have been a substantial uptick in quality between J.J. Abramss The Force Awakens and Rian Johnsons The Last Jediin much the same way that The Empire Strikes Back improved on Star Warsyou may need a new hope. The latest entrant in this now-Disney-owned franchise is largely content to further the themes and narrative strategies of its predecessor: Johnson, a filmmaker who proved capable of crafting individualistic, tightly wound sci-fi with 2012s Looper, too often seems to think that the best he can bring to Star Wars is an amped-up version of Abramss overly reverent tribute to George Lucass original films.
The Last Jedis manically paced first 90 minutes include two lengthy spacecraft battles and at least three independent plotlines. Johnson makes a great effort to leaven the freneticism of this chaos by indulging in a handful of comic set pieces: The films first scene is an extended crank-call joke, and there are several petty disses directed at a new Vader who isnt quite filling his grandfathers oversized helmet. But these moments feel like exaggerations of things Abrams did in The Force Awakenswith the wry self-awareness coming off as more tiresome by comparison, since this franchise should feel less burdened by now with the task of establishing itself and its lineage.

The good news is that Johnson has a bit more of his own plan here than the first half of his film suggests: The Last Jedi becomes essentially bifurcated, thanks to one decisive, unexpected break from this seriess tradition-bound progression that reverberates across the films various narrative threads. But The Last Jedis two-and-half-hour sprawl still includes an awful lot of clunky, derivative, and largely unnecessary incidents to wade through in order to get to its maverick last act. This is especially true when it comes to the plausibility-straining mission of stormtrooper turned Rebel Alliance fighter Finn (John Boyega) and puckish series newcomer Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran).

In order to hack into, what else, a giant battleship, the two young recruits are first dispatched to a nearby planet with a lavish casino run by rich arms dealerswho, it turns out, profit from supplying weapons to both sides of the galaxys seemingly eternal good-versus-evil conflict. Johnson establishes the opulent casino space with a gliding push-in, whizzing past an array of inventive creatures and costumes, in a scene thats very much designed to capture the bustling feel of Chalmuns Cantina, from the original Star Wars (but in a far more socially upscale context). After this shot, though, the setting is largely discarded, as Johnson abruptly refocuses on, and hastily defines, an underground culture of enslaved children and racing llama-like beasts. The film sidles up to an anti-colonialist sentiment but doesnt devote it any time, instead spending its energy on a CGI llama stampede.

Theres a very good 90-minute version of The Last Jedi that strips out the extraneous subplots and zeroes in on the emotionally compelling relationship between self-assured hero Rey (Daisy Ridley) and the vulnerable villain, Kylo Ren (Adam Driver). While Rey spends much of her time in the film with her new master, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill)on that remote planet she landed on at the end of The Force Awakensshe finds herself able to telepathically link with Kylo Ren. The two rivals shared scenes boast a surprising tenderness and intensity, thanks largely to Johnsons careful framing, which puts the viewer just off axis enough from the actors eyelines to avoid the breaking of the fourth wall but still conveys a creepy sense of closeness.

The Last Jedi does pull many of its disparate parts together in its markedly stronger final stretch, which also happens to include the films two best set pieces: a lightsaber duel in a Twin Peaks-like red room and an impeccably paced airship battle through a sprawling, crimson-dyed mineral mine. But Johnsons ambitions here can easily be over-sold: Most of the surprising plot twists and character developments that eventually enliven The Last Jedi walk back their radical implications on the story, and revert to the resolutions weve come to expect from a trilogy beholden to recycling its themes of misplaced hope and heroic sacrifice. Three films into the Disney Star Wars era, there have been enough unique elements introduced to this familiar world to suggest the kind of ways Star Wars could grow and change. But theres also been resistance to letting those elements escape an oppressive sameness.

It reflects many of the criticisms its detractors have, but also comes to the opposite conclusion in other areas. with no interest in certain things, and ultimately criticizes it for being too samey and conservative.

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It's the best bad Star Wars movie.
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There were very fine movies on both sides
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UnholyMudcrab posted...

There were very fine movies on both sides

It's funny cause Revenge of the Sith tittles crawl.
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They should have had Rian Johnson direct all of the sequel movies instead of giving it to JJ Abrams. Dude is one of the worst popular directors out there.
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TC is a man of good taste

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Hippocrates posted...

I deny that lol. I really liked TFA

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Bananana posted...

the fourth best in the series

Given that there are less than 4 good films in the series, that really isn't saying much.

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Smashingpmkns posted...

They should have had Rian Johnson direct all of the sequel movies instead of giving it to JJ Abrams. Dude is one of the worst popular directors out there.

this

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It could've been a good movie if it had paid off the Rey darkside turn teasing and actually done something substantial to shake up the trilogy. Instead it awas a boring slog with bad plots everywhere, some of the worst individual scenes in all of Star Wars, and it either doubled down on or ignored all of the problems that started in TFA.

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It was awful, but not for the reasons most of the haters like to go on about.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars%3A_The_Last_Jedi

Star Wars: The Last Jedi grossed $620.2 million in the United States and Canada, and $712.6 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $1.333 billion. It had a worldwide opening of $450.8 million, the seventh-biggest of all time, including $40.6 million that was attributed to IMAX screenings, the second biggest for IMAX. It was estimated that the film would need to gross $800 million worldwide to break even; Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit of the film to be $417.5 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues, making it the most profitable release of 2017.

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 90% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 473 reviews, with an average rating of 8.09/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Star Wars: The Last Jedi honors the saga's rich legacy while adding some surprising twists and delivering all the emotion-rich action fans could hope for." At Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 84 out of 100 based on 56 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

Audience reception measured by scientific polling methods was highly positive. Audiences randomly polled by CinemaScore on opening day gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale. Surveys from SurveyMonkey and comScore's PostTrak found that 89% of audience members graded the film positively, including a rare five-star rating.

Nothing the haters say will change these facts.

It actually won by a lot!

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TC likes Yo Momma jokes and flying Space Leias.

that movie was fine if you were 12 years old.

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DeadBankerDream posted...

It's funny cause Revenge of the Sith tittles crawl.

https://i.redd.it/tw8p6x0a1q321.png

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It is the only film that really looks at the long lasting emotional impact that this universe would have on our heroes on a substantial spiritual level. Revenge of the Sith does have the heroes losing, but quite frankly it just kinda happens and then the good guys go away.

Seeing the impact of what has happened to Luke in his life actually weigh heavily on him and in particular how his teachers reacted to failure and the impact it had on him was AWESOME!

The parts I liked I felt were the most compelling and interesting the films have ever been. It just has some stuff happening in there that I just find middling.

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ALIEN_WORK2HOP posted...

TC likes Yo Momma jokes and flying Space Leias.

that movie was fine if you were 12 years old.

I was nine years old when I, previously, had last saw a Star Wars I like (it was Return of the Jedi), and The Last Jedi made me feel like I was nine again, so, good guess.

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i know this is about star wars, but what i read is "banananananrama is going out of his way to offer a weekly reminder that you can ignore his opinions about the quality of media(s) and probably lots of other things" and honestly that's helpful so thank you

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How are the pacing and writing not issues though? like fine movie how? The plot-foundation doesn't even make sense in-universe or narratively

It's fine in that it's better than the prequels though, for sure

SSJ2GrimReaper posted...

That's like saying a turd with sprinkles on it is better than the turds without sprinkles

A turd with sprinkles is better by a large measure compared to a turd without.

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When are TLJ defenders gonna get tired of having bad opinions?

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HOW DARE YOU

caps

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Veggeta X posted...

HOW DARE YOU

caps

I wonder if Greta Thunberg likes The Last Jedi.
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If people like TLJ, then hey, salud. I don't get it, but sure, whatever floats your boat, enjoy. My only problem is many fans of it call all of us who didn't like it a bunch of spoiled, bigoted, manchildren.

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Southernfatman posted...

If people like TLJ, then hey, salud. I don't get it, but sure, whatever floats your boat. My only problem is many fans of it call all of us who didn't like it a bunch of spoiled, bigoted, manchildren.

I really don't get it. Like, I wanna say it's out of spite because of how badly the alt right reacted to it. But there's no way that many people like something out of spite. And then you got tons of people here who say it's easily their favorite star wars movie. Like, huh?

Fan edits of TLJ make it a lot better.

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Does anyone actually like The Rise of Skywalker though? I've never seen anyone defend that film.

Trelve posted...

Does anyone actually like The Rise of Skywalker though? I've never seen anyone defend that film.

Didn't even see it, cuz TLJ made me straight up not interested in Star Wars lol

tote_all posted...

This sounds interesting. I assume it removes a lot of the bullshit?

It would've been a fine movie without the whole casino plot and the salt planet thing.

Well you can't really remove the salt planet lol but there are quite a few edits that cut out the casino plot.

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Hot take: People just hate on TLJ because it didn't adapt their own personal fan fiction headcanon

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Doom_Art posted...

Hot take: People just hate on TLJ because it didn't adapt their own personal fan fiction headcanon

And then you got baseless crap like this, it's just insulting. I don't know anyone who has this complaint except for that RikuTheMighty guy here who always melts down every post

tote_all posted...

You absolutely can.

If you cut out the salt planet then how does the movie end?

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Is taking issue with contrived character decisions and bad pacing part of headcanon?

Yeah. It has some dumb shit and Canto Blight was a waste of time, but the core movie was overall fine.

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tote_all posted...

They escape when Holdo (who should have been Leia) sacrifices herself?

I just don't see how you can do that without it being a really abrupt ending

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