@Dezzy The Netherlands. Today is premiere day. I believe it's coming out later tonight officially, but some theaters already show it during the morning/afternoon as well. But yeah, I do believe that I'm one of the first people who got to watch it. There were only like 20 other people watching it, but tonight's going to be busy for sure.
@iKhan Not from what I've seen. It's more like this film tries to corporate both films into a conclusion that makes sense. If anything, this is the one that tries to tie the ends together.
The person who should be blamed is the one who decided not to have an agreed upon roadmap for the story ahead of time. That's an absurd way to do something like this. I dunno who made that call. Either Kathleen Kennedy or Bob Iger probably.
It's left it feeling more chaotic and dislocated than the original trilogy did, even though the original trilogy wasn't planned ahead of time (in that the first movie was just a standalone but they added 2 more afterwards due to its success)
If either of the directors/writers should be blamed, I'd be more willing to blame Rian Johnson, because he came second, and therefore had a story that was already formed, and yet decided to ignore or derail so many parts of it (snoke, knights of ren, rey's parents). From what I've read, JJ basically comes back to all 3 of those and tries to tie them back up, which suggests he probably disliked the fact that Rian just ditched them.
The person who should be blamed is the one who decided not to have an agreed upon roadmap for the story ahead of time. That's an absurd way to do something like this. I dunno who made that call. Either Kathleen Kennedy or Bob Iger probably.
It's left it feeling more chaotic and dislocated than the original trilogy did, even though the original trilogy wasn't planned ahead of time (in that the first movie was just a standalone but they added 2 more afterwards due to its success)
If either of the directors/writers should be blamed, I'd be more willing to blame Rian Johnson, because he came second, and therefore had a story that was already formed, and yet decided to ignore or derail so many parts of it (snoke, knights of ren, rey's parents). From what I've read, JJ basically comes back to all 3 of those and tries to tie them back up, which suggests he probably disliked the fact that Rian just ditched them.
I agree it's probably Kennedy's fault first.
However, I have a very strong suspicion that JJ did not have any specific plans for the things he introduced in TFA. Based on his past work he's not a very intentional storyteller. I don't think Johnson necessarily derailed the elements JJ introduced, but rather used them as a means of further developing the characters and themes he wanted to emphasize, rather than as "mystery boxes" like JJ likes to do.
So that goes back to the higher ups at Disney for not only not having a roadmap for the series, but also for hiring writer/directors who have drastically different styles. Changing the director on the fly is honestly a bit safer than changing the writer like they did. The first 6 movies all had pretty coherent overarching stories, despite the fact that only one of them has truly great direction (Empire).
Currently Playing: Steamworld Heist, The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, Tales of Graces F
Right from the outset, there's no subtlety to it at all, it feels clumsily and hurriedly written, and kind of a kitchen sink affair. 'Preposterous' came to mind more than once. I was prepared for boundaries to be pushed, but this film just says "F*** boundaries!" It's a good job this is the last one, cos you couldn't ever progress a compelling story that follows this.
This one isn't really a story. It's just a whole load of stuff. The structure feels all over the place.
Such a shame, because I was reminded again tonight just how good The Force Awakens is - I really like that film and it has a deserved spot in my 'forever Star Wars' list, or at least it did until I saw how badly they've dropped the ball since then, which kinda renders Force Awakens a bit pointless from the story perspective.
And while I have issues with The Last Jedi, I feel like it works better than this one.
Admittedly, the answer to the main question in this trilogy did not go the way I hoped and that disappointed me a lot, but I don't think it's just that disappointment that's influenced my judgement here. It's the sad realisation that they genuinely didn't put as much thought as this saga deserves into planning it.
I have to give them a bit of leeway, because Carrie Fisher's death obviously hindered things significantly, but the way they've rushed it all is pretty tragic to me, as invested in the saga as I was.
This ending should damage Disney's investment, and I can't help feeling 'serves them right' at the moment. I wanted this trilogy to succeed; Force Awakens got my hopes up that it would succeed, but...
It's not terrible, there's some fun stuff, some interesting stuff, but that's how I feel about The Phantom Menace too. I just never felt onboard with it from the first minute and nothing that came after that was enough to change my mind.
Well I saw the first 10 minutes online in a cam recorded version.
Lol I was thinking the one good thing about this movie is that they'll come up with an elaborate explanation for how Palpatine is still alive and how Snoke wasn't just a pointless character all along.
However, I have a very strong suspicion that JJ did not have any specific plans for the things he introduced in TFA. Based on his past work he's not a very intentional storyteller.
According to an interview Daisy Ridley gave, JJ wrote a vague outline for what he thought would happen in Ep8 and 9, and then Rian Johson just ignored it because he was told he could do what he liked.
@Dezzy I really didn't like EP8, but I feel EP9 made the events of the sequel trilogy make sense (even if the whole story is kind of rediculous). I stopped caring about Star Wars after Last Jedi, but thought this one was fun (no masterpiece). I liked it about as much as The Force Awakens (minus the optimism of where the story could lead). That's all I'll say for now.
I've been a star wars fan since i could walk and as someone who likes all the movies I'm sure I'll like this one. It seems like the disney ones get dogged even worse than the prequels and i really never understood it. Even the original trilogy isn't perfect. I know people like to pretend they are mostly due to nostalgia i bet! Then again if it wasn't for nostalgia the force awakens wouldn't have been so popular. I heard J.J. in an interview talking about how at the time it felt right to make that movie feel familiar to lure back audiences who bailed after the prequels but now he sorta regrets it. He said if you like TFA he questions your sanity. As for TLJ well I'm not going to go on a big rant about how i disagree whole heartedly with the haters but I'll say to me that one at least didn't try to pander to nostalgia and it didn't play it safe.
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@Zeldafan79 The Force Awakens works well as a standalone film narratively. The way they introduce the new characters at the start works well and the flow from there is logical and balanced. How much it borrows from the original film doesn't bother me because it's done well and there are no clangers anywhere that I can think of.
The Last Jedi starts off ok-ish, but it's not exactly clear how the First Order has so quickly gathered themselves together to attack the Resistance base. We get that sequence, and then jump back to Rey and Luke, which seems a bit out of step, but no big deal. But what we then get is the riduliculous Holdo situation where she refuses to share her plans, and Finn & Rose getting broken out of jail by a random that just happens to be equipped with the expertise to hack First Order security (if he's so **** hot at hacking, what was he doing sitting in a jail cell by himself? Why didn't he break out earlier?) These two issues, and the whole Canto Bight diversion, really jar and affect the credibility of the story.
Onto The Rise of Skywalker and the credibility goes out of the window completely. From the first minute the viewer is whacked over the head with blunt exposition and badly delivered fan service. If you don't like nostalgia pandering then you'll hate TRoS, because there's loads of it, delivered right on the nose. And the film just lacks narrative structure.
The most obvious flaw with the sequel trilogy to me is that it clearly had no plan. Lucasfilm didn't sit down and plan out an entire trilogy, they planned TFA, and said that they'd worry about the rest when they got to it. Because of that, everything feels... disconnected. TLJ constantly retcons and disregards important details from TFA. For example, at one point in TLJ, Luke asks Rey how she found him, despite that the entire last movie was about finding the map that Luke himself left behind so the Resistance could find him. From everything I've heard about RoS, it seems like most of the movie is spent disregarding TLJ and makes the whole movie feel like two episodes in one. TFA was a good movie on it's own, and this trilogy might have actually turned out to be alright if JJ Abrams had directed all 3 movies. That's because JJ knew what he wanted to do with this trilogy. Rian Johnson wanted to do something different, and it messed with the flow of the trilogy. Now JJ is trying to play catch-up to make the rest of his trilogy in a single movie, which means it doesn't flow with TLJ, and is a narrative mess because of it.
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Watched it yesterday and enjoyed it. My advice: don't think too much the plot etc - just go in end enjoy. You don't need everything explained - they didn't do it in the prequels or original trilogy. Just have fun - I know I did. I think that in all Star Wars movies are things you like and dislike - this one is no exception. For me - after watching the new trilogy in one week - I like the new trilogy even though everyone would have done something different with character x or y.
Ok I've seen it! This might be a long message, Lol. I'll start with the.....
Positives
-It was quite enjoyable to watch just as an action spectacle. Lots of entertaining scenes and cool little audience-pleasing moments. It does overly-pander to the fans in quite a few places but overall I found those moments worked more often than they didn't.
-The best part by far (ignoring visuals and music, cos those are always good), was the use of the 4 main characters (kylo being the 4th). They were all really good in this. In hindsight, the one thing that the whole trilogy manages to turn into a cohesive and satisfying story arc is the Rey and Kylo relationship, which was the best part of this film. I genuinely didn't know where it was going to go. The acting was all top-notch too.
-It does manage to tie up some of the earlier questions in a fairly satisfying way. The explanation for Rey's parents really works quite well. He also explains why she's so powerful (Although I have mixed feelings about that because the claim that she was way too powerful was entirely a criticism from the fans. Neither director had actually acknowledged that was a problem and Daisy Ridley herself had said calling the character a Mary Sue was sexist. I guess she has to retract that now given that JJ felt like it did need a big explanation).
-It completely ignores or retracts pretty much everything that happens in the Last Jedi (so this is only a positive if you disliked that film). I can't help feeling JJ was getting revenge on Rian Johnson for ignoring so much of the ideas in the first film. Rose is just dismissed into a side-role with no explanation and Finn moves onto another girl. It even comments on the light-speed weapon move that Holdo used and says something like "Almost no-one knows how to make that work, it's a 1-in-a-million maneuvre". That was hilarious. Like JJ was pointing out to Rian Johnson that his dumb idea kinda undermines every other space battle in the series.
Negatives
-The general plot and pacing is completely ridiculous. They spend most of the time hunting for random magical items that we've never heard of before, and therefore don't care about. This was obviously used as a justification for squeezing a lot of cool different settings into the film, because he wanted it to feel epic. Some of those settings were great so I can forgive a lot of the terrible pacing.
-I don't think a single person who watches this will believe that Palpatine was planned from the start. There's absolutely no good reason for him to be in this movie except they needed a new bad guy. If Snoke hadn't died, he could've been swapped into this role with hardly any changes. I genuinely think JJ probably considered just reviving Snoke for this role. Why Palpatine's actually alive is not explained at all and his relationship to Snoke isn't clear. They may have been the same person all along, but it's not clear at all.
It's also quite annoying that the main achievement of the prequels was to turn this very mysterious and interesting, but generically evil, villain into an interesting character. And now this film just goes back on that entirely. He's not actually Sheev Palpatine here. He's just a very simplistic version of Darth Sidious from the original trilogy.
-It continues the trend in this trilogy of completely wasting the old characters. There was really no good reason to get Leia, Han and Luke (or Lando) in this trilogy at all, beyond wanting to appeal to the older fans. I hoped maybe Luke's awful appearance in TLJ would somehow be undone and his force ghost would save the day (given that they can use force powers now), but nope. He's barely in it. And Leia's death is not particularly convincing or well conceived, but I'll let them off on that one.
Overall
An average/good movie with a lot of big flaws. Most of those are due to the Last Jedi derailing the story though so I give JJ credit for doing an OK job of tying everything back together. I think a lot of the negativity from the critics is mostly down to the fact that it really felt like a rejection of the Last Jedi and how Rian Johnson had messed up the arc of the trilogy with his treatment of Luke and Snoke.
My final ranking of the saga is:
1. Empire Strikes Back.
2. A New Hope
3. Return of the Jedi
4. The Force Awakens
5. Revenge Of The Sith
6. Rise of Skywalker
7. Phantom Menace
8. Last Jedi
9. Attack of the Clones
I think a significant factor in my pretty big disappointment after first seeing it was how it forced me to accept that Disney has ****ed the one opportunity it had to do this trilogy properly. That mistakes made since 2012 made this conclusion so rushed and jumbled. No doubt they'll redo the whole saga in 20 years or so, maybe as an animation, but this one chance I had at seeing a satisfying conclusion to Luke Skywalker has gone.
Luke's finale at the end of TLJ was great, so I'll just have to make the most of that, but Luke in TRoS was disappointing - even his epic delivery of the line used in the trailer, "Confronting fear is destiny of a Jedi" was replaced with a much blander version in the film. I absolutely hate that. And was it me, or did Hamill's performance not seem quite as invested as it did in the brilliant job he did in TLJ, like he just doesn't GAF anymore? IDK.
In an ideal world, Lando would have re-appeared in TLJ, maybe he could have been on Canto Bight or something. It's great to have him back, but the way [spoilers] he wasn't in it much, then turns up near the end with a ridiculously sized fleet out of nowhere [/spoilers] kinda stretched the bounds of plausibility.
I'm taking the kids to see it later, so I'm hoping now I know what I know I can be a bit more forgiving and just go with it a bit more easily.
You guys had me at blood and semen.
What better way to celebrate than firing something out of the pipe?
When George was still in charge of star wars during the prequel era nobody wanted him near the franchise anymore. Now that disney has it the bashing has shifted from him to them and everybody wants george back. Ugh! If the internet had existed during the originals oh what fun online rants there could have been! I personally have never seen a star wars movie i didn't like. Some i like less than others but if you're really that big a fan it seems like hate would not compute. Also now i guess we know why rey is so powerful. Maybe that'll stop at least some of the rediculous Mary sue talk! Speaking of which why aren't guys who are good at everything called Marty steves or something? Who came up with that crap anyway and who the hell is mary sue?
Speaking of which why aren't guys who are good at everything called Marty steves or something? Who came up with that crap anyway and who the hell is mary sue?
They are. The term "Gary Stu" is used for men. It's just less common because that particular flaw is less common with male characters.
The whole point is that people respond to the fact that good female characters used to be under-represented in most types of fiction (Star Wars OT being a pretty good example), by massively overcorrecting and making the new characters unrealistically capable and dominant, almost as if they're trying to make up for past deficiencies in the real world rather than just make a character that is good within their own fictional context.
So the type of criticism doesn't tend to apply to males as much because no-one is trying to over-correct for anything.
@Dezzy I was wondering how big the chance was that they would allow Rey getting a hand or leg chopped off by a light saber, but of course they weren't going to do that
Yep that's a perfect example. You just know that neither Abrams or Johnson have the guts to beat the crap out of a heroine in that way. They certainly wouldn't have the guts to end the movie with her losing like that, as they did with Luke in episode 5. There would be all kinds internet activists saying they're "normalizing violence against women" or some such brain farts, and they'd be forced to like make a public statement to make it clear that they don't support cutting women's arms off in real life, Lol.
But without that same kind of adversity, you'll never really believe the character earned their skills as much.
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