I feel disappointed that I didn’t get the legendary Luke, and the movie actively wants me to feel that way, so I can’t fault it for that. I was someone who, when they announced they’d be doing 7, 8, and 9, ventured into the post-ROTJ EU to take in the broad strokes of the continuing adventures of the legendary Luke Skywalker. (This trailed off when they announced the EU was no longer canon at all, not that I was expecting them to be beholden to it. I figured they’d probably ignore the EU and contradict whatever they happen to contradict, leaving the EU to deal with it.) Luke is a different character here and the film deliberately thwarts everything that I went into this moving looking forward to. And… it did so in a series of 9 movies with only one left.
If your small town has an apple pie baking contest, and someone submits the best peach cobbler in the world… what do you do? I don’t know, this movie more than any previous one is hard to swallow, by design, which is good and bad which is good. I’ll have to chime in later after a week or more once I can sit with this.
Hal, Mad Max 2 was (and still is) one of my fave ever films, as a kid I wore out the video tape. When Mad Max 3 was released I went along with high expectations. I remember walking out of Mad Max 3 thinking WTF? It didn’t feel like a Mad Max film at all, it didn’t feel right.
However… repeat viewings have softened my stance, and I really enjoy the film now. It’s the old saying of “appreciate what it is, rather than what you wanted it to be”.
ps. Happy ending we did eventually get Mad Max: Fury Road, which was awesome from the first viewing!