Star wars the last jedi spoilers ahead.

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Voor
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Re: Star wars the last jedi spoilers ahead.

Postby Voor » January 6th, 2018, 9:32 am

It’s important to remember that this is a bridge movie between TFA and whatever the next one is. So some things that don’t make sense in TLJ May in a few years (like the point of the casino scene).

When empire came out, fans were pretty divided then too....

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ptdebate
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Re: Star wars the last jedi spoilers ahead.

Postby ptdebate » January 6th, 2018, 6:44 pm

Saw TLJ for the second time in theaters last night, this time with my parents and with a much better viewing angle.

The second viewing (aside from the time I rewatched it in low quality on my phone) definitely solidified my opinion that this is one of the best Star Wars movies. Better than VI, better than III, and honestly better than IV.

TLJ made me sad. No other Star Wars movie has done that. Episode III should have made me feel sad, but its dramatic moments are too stagey and operatic to work on such a personal level.

The terrific acting in TLJ is what drives it home. Luke's pain at seeing what his actions caused is almost unbearably palpable. His end is also very bittersweet. It feels right, but there's a tone of mournfulness. This time, I really understood more deeply why people were so upset. It turns out that their hero, who they were probably expecting to return triumphantly, is a real human being struggling with a lifetime of regret.

The conflict in Kylo. You can see in his face that he wants to turn to the light, even if his words say the opposite. Rey, who wants so much to help him, and doesn't disguise her anguish at his refusal to turn good. Compared to this, most of the other conflicts between two people in this series seem so impersonal, so oddly divorced from the way actual human beings interact.

The one thing I really couldn't pick up on is the alleged excess of humor. The number of humorous moments seemed about the same as in other Star Wars movies.

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ptdebate
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Re: Star wars the last jedi spoilers ahead.

Postby ptdebate » January 6th, 2018, 7:07 pm

VideoGameCritic wrote:My friend at work said Luke didn't really die.
He said Luke saw a ship in the distance (in front of the sun) and teleported to it.
Apparently he left his robe behind.
It's going to be an awkward beginning to the next movie when Luke appears buck naked on that ship.


That is hilarious!

I didn't see the ship though...

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Stalvern
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Re: Star wars the last jedi spoilers ahead.

Postby Stalvern » January 6th, 2018, 9:43 pm

ptdebate wrote:The conflict in Kylo. You can see in his face that he wants to turn to the light, even if his words say the opposite. Rey, who wants so much to help him, and doesn't disguise her anguish at his refusal to turn good. Compared to this, most of the other conflicts between two people in this series seem so impersonal, so oddly divorced from the way actual human beings interact.

Kylo is one of my favorite things about the movie until they botch him after the Snoke scene. They set this character up as a mad rebel who's completely out of control, who resents all authority and submits to Snoke only through sheer force, but once he's free, he just turns into Darth Vader and trundles out the old "We can rule the galaxy!" pitch like this isn't the structured, hierarchical type of power he's spent a film and a half seething against. Thankfully, he at least becomes Kylo again for the ending.

ptdebate wrote:The one thing I really couldn't pick up on is the alleged excess of humor. The number of humorous moments seemed about the same as in other Star Wars movies.

Blame the marketing for trying to make tangential stuff like the porgs into an outsized "draw" and running it into the ground before anyone even saw the movie.

ptdebate wrote:I didn't see the ship though...

Well, yeah, it's in front of the sun. You could see it if you were a Jedi like Luke.

ESauce
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Re: Star wars the last jedi spoilers ahead.

Postby ESauce » January 6th, 2018, 10:23 pm

ptdebate wrote:
The one thing I really couldn't pick up on is the alleged excess of humor. The number of humorous moments seemed about the same as in other Star Wars movies.


I think people noticed the jokes more this time because they were actually funny.

Voor
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Re: Star wars the last jedi spoilers ahead.

Postby Voor » January 7th, 2018, 8:47 pm

To me, Star Wars films are filled with campy and cheesy comedy. Or attempts st it. Most are dumb, some are charming.

My theory is that it worked well in the 80s, but clashes more with a modern AAA movie.

Seems like TLJ does a good job of winning people over the second viewing.

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scotland
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Re: Star wars the last jedi spoilers ahead.

Postby scotland » January 15th, 2018, 12:21 pm

So The Last Jedi has like a 90% Fresh on Rotten Tomatos from critics, but only 50% from fans.

I think people are too quick to dismiss the negative feedback. I liked the movie, but I hear and get the complaints over characters like Luke defying expectations about the character. Fans have a say about what a franchise is, not just whoever is funding or making the latest installment.

So, instead of calling people sexist or trolls, I think there is a lot of justified reasons this movie is devisive.

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ptdebate
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Re: Star wars the last jedi spoilers ahead.

Postby ptdebate » January 15th, 2018, 10:20 pm

scotland wrote:So The Last Jedi has like a 90% Fresh on Rotten Tomatos from critics, but only 50% from fans.

I think people are too quick to dismiss the negative feedback. I liked the movie, but I hear and get the complaints over characters like Luke defying expectations about the character. Fans have a say about what a franchise is, not just whoever is funding or making the latest installment.

So, instead of calling people sexist or trolls, I think there is a lot of justified reasons this movie is devisive.


If you look at some of what RJ's been saying about the backlash, it seems that they knew the film was going to be divisive (albeit still hugely financially successful). If you look at the task they were given, which is basically to wrap up the stories of the old heroes every one knows and loves (read: kill them off) to make way for the new generation, there was never going to be an easy way to do this.

Luke being a broken, regretful individual makes good narrative sense, and imbues his character with a level of humanity that the series has never shown. I wrote about this and praised the film's somber tone in an earlier post so I won't go on and on about it. I was debating TLJ with a college friend of mine via facebook. Big film buff - posts reviews of everything he sees. Hated TLJ - gave it one star. He posted a comment in which he talks about Hamill's own initially tepid reception of the film's portrayal of Luke. My reply was "there's a reason the actors aren't the directors. If you read further, Hamill's vision of Luke is a boring do-gooder. A hero with no moral complexity." My friend's reply was "but I like Luke as a boring do-gooder."

Therein lies the core of many people's rejection of the film. My friend, who is a super intellectual guy, should have been able to pick up on and appreciate what the director was trying to do, but instead it was a "near walkout" for him because he just couldn't stomach such a beloved character being portrayed in that way. It made him sad too, but also keenly disappointed to find that one of his childhood heroes is also deeply flawed. It's hard for some to overcome that feeling enough to appreciate the role these necessary developments play in the larger narrative. And even harder to accept the inevitability of it all. Ben was probably savable, up until the very moment his master, the only hope he had of turning away from Snoke, in an impulsive moment locked that door and threw away the key. The impact of Ben's subsequent actions made reality outside of his island unbearable for Luke. It's all his fault.

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ptdebate
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Re: Star wars the last jedi spoilers ahead.

Postby ptdebate » January 15th, 2018, 10:24 pm

scotland wrote:So The Last Jedi has like a 90% Fresh on Rotten Tomatos from critics, but only 50% from fans.

I think people are too quick to dismiss the negative feedback. I liked the movie, but I hear and get the complaints over characters like Luke defying expectations about the character. Fans have a say about what a franchise is, not just whoever is funding or making the latest installment.

So, instead of calling people sexist or trolls, I think there is a lot of justified reasons this movie is devisive.


I also forgot to mention - the audience score is statistically less significant than the tomatometer because the samples are self-selecting - people voluntarily offer their opinion, and they can do so as many times as they want with no screening process. The tomatometer is based on data that is pulled from known, reliable sources.

By the way - this film is also interesting in that the Top Critic score is even higher than the All Critics score. At 96%, it's a full 47 percentage points higher than the audience score at the time of writing!

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Stalvern
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Re: Star wars the last jedi spoilers ahead.

Postby Stalvern » January 16th, 2018, 12:49 am

I'm more likely to trust critics when they say a movie's bad than when they like it. Time after time, I see Tomatometer scores skew high because a movie plays to critics' political sensibilities, regardless of other elements or even how well it executes that element (look at Zootopia, which got rave reviews for allegedly saying that racism is bad despite saying it in possibly the most idiotic way ever imagined), or in the case of sci-fi specifically, makes a show of being "ambitious" or "thoughtful" (Prometheus, one of the most profoundly stupid movies I've ever wasted a ticket on, has hordes of positive reviews praising its purported intelligence because it acts like it's intelligent). Movie critics go by first impressions, and these first impressions get biased in pretty reliable ways.

The Last Jedi is a movie that wears both liberalism and ambition on its sleeve, along with being easily the most visually striking film in the series. It makes big, obvious passes at critics' first impressions, and they go along with it enthusiastically. Never mind that all of these things actually end up getting in the film's way at various points. The first two come to a head in the worthless detour of the casino sequence, which contributes nothing to the story (though much to the running time) but takes the brave stance that rich people are bad and poor people and animals are good, the kind of insightful social commentary you might expect from a high school creative writing assignment (and especially rich coming from this franchise and this studio). The latter gives us that absolute joke of a final battle, where the good guys struggle mightily to break 60 miles per hour in the series's most contrived vehicles yet, deluged by the bad guys in torrential lasers that connect about 1% of the time - but everything leaves pretty red trails on the ground, so the reviews all applaud the film's "bold, kinetic vision" in that scene.

Now, I like the movie; I'm only focusing on the negative qualities here because they're relevant to my points. At its best, I think it's genuinely brilliant. I'm not even against its ideals, ham-handed though their delivery might be. And I think that a lot of the fanboy rage is undeserved (particularly regarding Luke, for whom they appeal to Mark Hamill's dissatisfaction while glossing over his childish ideas about how The Force Awakens should have handled the character). But it's far from a masterpiece, with lumpy, circuitious plotting and an absurd sense of pace (producer Ram Bergman said in an interview with Vanity Fair that the script was "about 90 percent of the first draft", and I have no trouble believing him), characters that exist to sanctimoniously show how righteously progressive the filmmakers are, bizarre thematic inconsistency (Why have Luke and Yoda blow up that tree if it'll just turn out that Rey already had the books with her? How can I take Rose's BS about stopping Finn seriously when Holdo is a heroine for doing the exact same thing that he tried?), and just general sloppiness. The Last Jedi should have been the masterpiece that the critics really, really, really want it to be. But masterpieces don't shoot themselves in the foot like this.


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