Star Wars: The Last Jedi - Episode VIII

According to the 315 Million bucks made globally and Scientists Man’s financial math regarding “Solo” nobody was enthusiastic after “The Last Johnson”.

Sure, but it’s a bit hard before you knew the movie was going to go in a direction you didn’t want. And it seems the part of the blowback is happening now with Solo.

Telling someone not to buy a ticket to a movie they haven’t seen yet and have tried like hell to avoid spoilers about is pretty damn stupid.

Hey, I was going to try that beer but since it obviously is terrible (I don’t know that as I know nothing about the beer other than the brewery that makes it) I will not try that beer and wait for the next beer I will not try to come along.

I can only guess you defend Indiana Jones 4 as well.

This is the type of accusations you get thrown at you for trying to be reasonable.

The Solo ticket sales don’t have much to do with TLJ. I loved TLJ but I could give a crap about Solo. I would have watched the Lord/Miller one, but once they got cut out, I figured it would be another safe studio retread, not to mention putting out a non-trilogy movie so close to another one? Not a good idea. At least Rogue One had its own year.

Obviously you can’t judge something until you’ve seen it, but you surely cannot go back to see another one then, that would be hypocritical, Stop giving them money then, you have learned.

When you taste a craft beer you don’t like, you don’t go to the bartender and complain that this beer isn’t enough like another beer you like, and cyberbully the people that made the beer online. You say, boy IPA’s sure aren’t for me, I won’t buy another one.

I will agree that anyone who was disappointed in The Force Awaken maybe should have thought twice about going to see TLJ. Personally I enjoyed TFA. I am just kinda meh about TLJ though. Although, I will pay to see the final movie. And yes, I will go into it with my eyes open and my wallet lighter.

The analogy isn’t quite perfect, more like the people who make the beer decided to change the recipe, from one you like to one you hate.

But I agree, the answer isn’t to bully people, it’s to inform the makers that their new beer isn’t to your taste and start buying somebody else’s beer. Fortunately, this isn’t the 70’s anymore, lots of beers to try, and wine and liquor, no lack of beverage options now…

OTOH, the people who like the new beer can stop trying to convince people that they’re wrong for not liking the new flavor. :D

The analogy sorta ran away from me…

Made me think of the old new coke and coke classic debacle from 20-30 years ago.

Except I don’t recall a harassment campaign to drive one of the actresses off social media for that one. My have things have changed.

Huh, the opposite for me.

Urge to mute thread… rising…

Saying “…does not make it bad” implies some kind of objective measure of quality, when we’re really talking about opinions here. I’ve seen movies that were good, even though they didn’t do what I expected. I’ve seen movies that were good, even though they made me uncomfortable. I’ve seen movies that were good, even though they put their characters through the wringer and didn’t have a happy ending.

I don’t feel like The Last Jedi did any of these things in a way that made for an enjoyable movie experience. In many ways (and a lot of fan interpretations support this), it feels like the writer was saying, “Here’s why you shouldn’t enjoy those things that you enjoyed in the previous movies.”

  • Retreating to a dead-end base doesn’t seem like a good plan (and in fact, it wasn’t). But again, if fuel is a rare and precious resource (and the fleet only has enough for one jump), how do Rose and Finn have enough to jump away AND back again? Why didn’t they take everyone with them, or in one or two ships?

  • Yes, people making mistakes is a viable storytelling tactic. But when the movie makes people act out of character (like high-ranking Rebel Poe Dameron disobeying a direct order), or when people fail over and over again, it stops being enjoyable.

  • I don’t know how a parking ticket implies class warfare. And again, they could have just had BB-8 autopilot the ship into orbit or something. It just seems like an unnecessary plot contrivance.

  • It’s been a while since I’ve seen it, but I believe that Rose and Finn break out with BDT, then turn a corner and find the guards already tied and gagged. But maybe I’m completely misremembering. Replace this complaint with “BB-8 fires coins at people” or “BB-8 single-handedly drives an AT-ST.”

  • I’m fine with a story being depressing, but hopefully it’s still entertaining along the way (Empire being the prime example here). I felt like The Last Jedi just killed off thousands of rebels to say, “See? Look how dark we are! Look at how depressing things can get!” while 9/10ths of the ships get destroyed, but Our Heroes remain miraculously unharmed. I would have found it more effecting if they had let Finn die (for example) than by killing off numerous unseen Rebels.

I still think it’s a stretch to draw a conclusion of “people don’t like The Last Jedi because they’re Trump fans who hate minority females in their movies.”

I wanted the movie to be enjoyable. It wasn’t. And I could hardly know that before I bought the ticket.

So, am I completely disqualified from complaining about a movie because I expected to enjoy it but I didn’t? Under what circumstances AM I allowed to be unhappy with a movie experience? Because it sounds like you’re basically invalidating any criticism of any movie, and I’m sure that’s not your intent.

I think there’s a connection between these two statements that you aren’t seeing. A lot of people (including me) were unhappy about The Last Jedi, and that led a lot of people (including me) to not rush out and see Solo opening weekend.

Yeah. Thematically, TLJ is just bizarre for a Star Wars movie.
“Relying on acts of heroism is wrong.”
“The universe is indifferent to your suffering.”
“The good guys are just as bad as the bad guys .”

(It’s especially weird for the middle part of a trilogy that was otherwise very much in the original spirit)

“You shouldn’t want to be special, because anyone can be special.”
“If you run away from your bad thoughts, it could just make you even worse.”
“Get rid of the past. Kill it if you have to.” (spoken by the villain of the movie, but seems to fit with the theme of the movie)
“Hey, did you like that mask that Kylo Ren wears? You should grow up. That mask is dumb. You’re dumb.”

I can’t speak for anyone else but I skipped Solo because TLJ was terrible for me. Maybe I am the only special unicorn who feels that or maybe I’m not and it bore out in the sales for Solo. Either way you guys spend way too much time debating this Star Trek show.

Enjoyment is subjective, yeah, but there’s “objective” in terms of writing, cinematography, performance, etc working together to express themes.

A lot of the blowback towards The Last Jedi is because it is well made, coherent, and saying something a large part of the audience does not want to hear.

It’s not that everyone who dislikes The Last Jedi is a nazi scumbag – it’s not a perfect movie by any means – it’s that there are enough people who hate it because they’re scumbags who hate women and minorities getting in “their” stuff to shit up the conversation.

And when those themes are “you shouldn’t like the other Star Wars movies, everything you liked about them is wrong, oh and all your favorite characters were failures too”, then yes, that’s not enjoyable. A movie with a coherent and consistent theme can still suck, if the theme sucks. You don’t get partial credit for having good cinematography.

And no, I don’t think the The Last Jedi has a good or interesting theme. The theme seems to be tearing down everything people liked about Star Wars, and replacing it with nothing. The Jedi are failures. The Rebellion is filled with people who disobey direct orders, end up risking their lives and failing, and getting 9/10ths of the fleet killed. Oh, and it also has commanders who won’t share their plans, because those under their command don’t need to know. Great themes: “Everything you believe is wrong, and everyone is stupid.” And don’t forget, “You shouldn’t sacrifice yourself to save other people, so I’m going to sacrifice myself to save you.”

If by “shit up the conversation” you mean having a minority opinion thrown in the face of the people who DON’T hate women and DON’T hate minorities, then I agree completely that it shits up the conversation. So if you don’t want those opinions shitting up the conversation, maybe you should stop bringing them up.

Pretty sure that was Yoda’s point, too.

The cynical part of me figures it’s to make room for – the all new “Heroes of the Force” line from Hasbro, coming soon in time for Episode 9! There will be limited stock in your local mall’s Disney Store, so get there early!

I can’t fault the cinematography, set design, effects work, or costuming. The editing could have been much tighter. It was not a coherent story, nor was it consistent with prior Star Wars lore.** Nor was a good sequel to TFA, it was at war with almost every idea it established. It’s as if Johnson wanted to abandon or “fix” everything he thought was wrong about this $4 billion franchise and they let him because auteur. This is not to say there weren’t interesting ideas in play, it was just executed poorly and with no respect for the franchise’s history and fans.

But if the fans didn’t like it, that’s on them being unsophisticated and possible Trump voters so fuck 'em.

**Hey kids, “space gas” is a thing now (check out Solo to see where it comes from, it’s kind of like dilithium crystals), and if you run out you slow to a stop or something. Also, we have to assume that gravity works in space now because bombers seem like a cool thing, even the smallest spacecraft don’t actually need hulls to keep air inside them, and every space ship travels at the exact same sub-light speed except for some reason fighters. Oh, and the resistance is down to less folks than can fit into a stadium and they are all in one place and facing complete extermination, but for some reason we can’t tell ANY of our subordinates about our plans to not die so they don’t panic. Additionally, the bad guys are simultaneously all-powerful and incompetent, and the light/dark, good/bad paradigm we have based the entire franchise on is now inoperative because good’s not that good and bad’s not that bad except love conquers all. And the force doesn’t require training anymore if the plot needs something cool to happen.