I’m ashamed to admit I thought BDT was Brad Pitt for a minute.
I blame the haircut.
I agree. It still used to bother me anyway. But this movie cured me of that. I finally let that go.
No shame in that. That’s exactly how it came off. Except, not as good.
I think the joker is Hamill’s best achievement. His high water mark.
To me, Hamill the actor does not have the gravitas/skill to pull off a wise and deliberate man. He does not have the stature of someone like Alec G. I think this failed him immensely in the third film (Jaba scene very cringe-worthy), and likewise in this film. He should never of been asked to play either wise nor deliberate. He shines when he does not.
My feeling is that when the new Jedi finds him on whatever North Atlantic island he is living on, Luke should not be a wise Jedi master, but a broken man, possibly a drunk. and he should never get better, he should simply hang on by his finger nails, and his comments peppered only by the wisdom of one that knows how dark bruises can get when you keep banging your head against a wall.
And then in the end, why have him die in some peaceful Yoga pose on his island? It seemed a cheesy way out. The shining moment would have been him coming to face the evil, and taking the lumps one last time for the Order to live on. And when the bad guy runs him through, he should have disappeared just like Obi Wan did when Darth killed him…followed by Yoda appearing to his spirit and saying something grammatically incorrect and wise.
This is probably controversial, but Leia should have somehow been left behind as well. Perhaps she should have been the one to destroy the cruiser at warp speed. The old members of the Order gone, and its fate left to the new heroes (and villains).
I caught this a few days ago, and I finally caught up on this thread. I… am pretty sure I liked TLJ? It tried to do a lot of different things, and it probably failed at a third or half of them, but there were also some things I really liked about it (most of the Rey/Kylo/Luke stuff, some of the Poe stuff, maybe a thing or two in Finn/Rose) and for me those outweighed what I didn’t like (Leia in space, most of the Laura Dern stuff regardless of how delightful I find her personally, the vast majority of the Finn/Rose arc). If nothing else, I am more interested in what happens next now than I was after TFA: Rey and Kylo in particular are much more interesting characters for me at this point, and some of the most stupid/useless elements of TFA (hi, Snoke!) have been wiped off the board.
(Disclaimer: I was really sour on TFA, to the point where it turned me from someone who got super-hyped over new Star Wars movies into someone who caught TLJ on a Friday afternoon two weeks after release. I re-watched TFA a couple of months ago with my wife, who had missed it in theaters, and if anything I found it even more useless the second time around.)
This is way too long but i certainly liked it more than TFA. I can see why they gave Rian the green light to do more. But while there are a ton of huge plot hole sized mistakes they can drive a Star Destroyer through at least there is a consistent-ish tone it’s aiming for and tries to actually add to the franchise rather than regurgitate it. TFA was just JJ Abrams doing his reliable franchise management bullet pointing and not giving a toss about self-consistent world building at all.
I finally saw this tonight and my reaction was exactly this. Cut about 40 minutes out of this movie and it would be just fine. Nothing about the actual characters or plot bothered me…“woe is me” Luke seems perfectly in character to me, and I liked how they kept twisting things just enough to be different from the old films. The rogue’s crazy plan works…oh wait, not quite. Redemption for the twisted dark lord…oops, maybe not. Leia flying in space? Sure, just good old space wizardry. All good fun. There was just too much of it.
As the movie started, my son leaned over to me and said “this better not start on an ice planet.”
But it does end in a siege on a chilly salt planet.
Completely different.
I actually thought the same thing.
Was it chilly? I don’t remember frost or anything.
They all seemed pretty bundled up. If it wasn’t brisk, I guess they all just liked heavy coats and cloaks for style.
They didn’t really change their clothes from the space ships to that planet. I was just wondering if it was a real comment or just a it’s a salt is white so it felt similar thing. Real meaning… actual reason to think that’s a cold planet.
I have no idea honestly. I’m sure some ancillary piece of Star Wars media clears it up, but I haven’t seen it.
Just got back from seeing this. During the first half I kept thinking, “Wow, I’m liking this more than TFA!” But, at around the time of the casino planet, I just kind of gave up and turned off inside.
Pros:
- I liked Ridley/Rey a lot more in this movie. I think the parts where she and Ben are on screen together worked pretty well, and were some of the high points of the movie. I was surprised.
- I like Adam Driver. I liked Ben as a character… up until he betrayed Snoke and Rey and went off to do his own little retarded thing.
- Harrison Ford was not in the movie to phone in his Han Solo performance.
- Mark Hammil was in the movie. Luke and Rey together made for some good scenes that featured actual character growth, which was sorely missing in TFA.
- Rose was cute. <3
Cons:
- Snoke? Backstory? Where? “Oh, hi! Nice to meat you Mr. Snoke! Oh, sorry, you’re dead already.”
- Just like in TFA and RO, the spaceship/vehicle battles were lame.
- Choreographed fights not as interesting to look at as in the OT or Prequels.
- The double twist where Ben betrays Snoke and later Rey. I mean, why bother? Why not just keep him loyal to Snoke through the whole movie? By the end Ben ends up looking like a total moron.
- Finn had zero meaningful impact in this movie. He was just there for laughs I guess?
- Rey’s parents are who? Did they really need to tease this across two movies? Couldn’t they just tell us? I mean, Luke learned who his father was by the end of movie #2.
- Endless slow spaceship chase.
Meh.
Saw this New Year’s Eve and don’t have much more to add. Stupid plot, lots of stuff that made no sense at all, but hey, it’s Star Wars I guess. My wife’s way more excited about the next Avengers movies.
We should be post-KotOR2 mentality. An aging of the force. The Jedi need to die to make way for something new. Let it die. Please. The stoic emotionless old order hubris doesn’t work any more in the galaxy far far away.
Luke already said as much. Yoda enforced it.
The more I think about it, the more I agree in that the betrayal to Snoke could have been better. I would have preferred an even bigger twist: Rey turned into the Dark Side (so we have Finn vs Rey in the last film) or Ben turned into the Light side (so we have Rey + Ben vs Snoke in the last film). What we had in the end was just the facade of a big plot twist.
That’s what a lot of us wanted, to make things interesting, but just think of all the little girls dressed up as Rey in the theater if that were to happen. The franchise would be dead as fast as their moms could whip out their phones.
That’s the trouble with Disney Princesses.