The Last Jedi: Official Review and Opinions Thread ** SPOILERS ** — Page 36

bromeo said:

I know most people here probably don’t like AngryJoe / enjoy his content… but his “Top 10 Reasons Why The Last Jedi Made Me ANGRY!” hit the spot for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL5oCP0VIEI

I watched it this morning, I disagree with some of his points but for the most part he knocked it out of the park.

@Hal9000
I agree 100%. When I saw the books on the Falcon, I thought I was just seeing things until my girlfriend said “wait, Yoda just said she didn’t need the what was in those books. He said that she had everything she needed.” or something to that effect.

Hi all. Long time no see.

TLJ is more divisive than I thought. My own thoughts are divided. I enjoyed the film. But I am very disillusioned and disagree with where they have taken Star Wars, in tone and story choices. Disillusionment is practically a theme of the movie. Maybe it’s echoing, intentionally or not, the times we live in; or merely where the generation that grew up with Star Wars is today. I am very curious how this Star Wars movie plays for younger audiences. In many ways this is a weighty movie. The visuals are cool but I can’t imagine what they get out of the story.

I think AngryJoe and many other YouTubers point out how awful it was for Luke to toss that lightsaber like that, but their reasons for not liking it actually work in favor of Luke discarding that saber. They say things like, “THIS LIGHTSABER HAS BEEN PAST DOWN MANY GENERATIONS, IT WAS THE ONE HE USED AGAINST VADER AND WHERE HE LOST HIS HAND!!!”

Whenever that’s mentioned, it’s comical to me to think that’s their reason why it shouldn’t had been tossed by Luke. To Luke, it’s a weapon that is tied greatly to bad memories, so of course he wouldn’t praise it like the Holy Grail as fans do.

However, I do think it’s very odd to have that scene done in that manner. It literally feels like a gag lifted from a YouTube parody video similar to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXlao2KNYjQ

So I’m totally on-board of why TLJ’s Luke doesn’t respect the saber, but surely there could had been a less comedic way of doing so?

joefavs said:

Yoda absolutely knows that Rey has the texts, it’s the whole reason he’s so cavalier about blowing up the tree. His actual line is “yes, yes, wisdom they held, but that library contained nothing that the girl Rey does not already possess”. He’s letting Luke think he means that Rey doesn’t need the books, but he’s actually saying she literally possesses them.

That’s fine, if a little “technical” on Yoda’s part. The problem is that the scene plays out clearly implying one thing, then the end of the movie has a very quick shot (which I have yet to perceive with my eyes; I’m trusting you guys that it really happened) which seems to imply the precise opposite. This film is littered with things like this, and with the example of the Yoda scene, I am still very uncertain what to make of it.

EDIT: This film intentionally sets out to antagonize people like me. I don’t exactly like that as an elected goal, but I can attempt to perceive and accept it for what it is trying to do. The fact that it jerks me around constantly and makes me feel like a monkey is another category of complaint.

I started reading the Aftermath books after watching TFA because I really wanted to like the movie more. I bought all three after Rogue One. Seeing (yes…even a CGI) Tarkin, the Death Star and Darth Vader got me really excited to see TLJ. I know Rogue One had some problems but I had always wondered about why Leia had made a point to bring up the sacrifice involved in securing the plans. I can now say those books are terrible! I held my nose through a book and a half before I saw the TLJ. I am done. The storytelling in those books is very similar to the way these screenplays are being written. It almost feels like Star Trek fans have infiltrated the brain trusts who engineered this Disney mega-deal. The storylines of the new trilogy seem to be following more of the direction of this modern Star Trek vibe. I mean the first JJ Abrams Star Trek movie was IMO a very good movie…for a Star Trek movie. JJ is going to end this trilogy with a bang I am sure. But I could really see Chewbacca babysitting Porgs and possibly going vegan while Rey and Kylo find out that the meaning of balance in the Force is falling in love and living happily ever after in Darth Vader’s castle on Mustafar.

Disney thinks that movies like Rogue One, Solo and Kenobi will keep the purists happy. I believe that they will have that semi-Star Trek crossover appeal going into whatever new saga they plan post-Ep IX. Disney will proceed to make the Force into a magic that virtually anyone can find in themselves based off what we saw with the boy Force sweeping. I mean…really where is this all going? I have watched TLJ 3 times now and tried to be as objective as I can be. I really wanted it to work but it is worse than Episode I.

Yo Captain, Needa apology?

-sincerely Disney-Star-Trek-hack-frauds.

Hal 9000 said:

My early experience with The Force Awakens was somewhat disappointing, as what I was really hoping for was Luke. The film did well capturing the tone and atmosphere of the original trilogy, though without a great deal of mythical substance. However, the film was a fun ride, if not wholly original, and it ended with the promise of a whole lotta Luke in the next movie.

Now that The Last Jedi has come out, after effectively four years or so of building up Luke Skywalker for me, this new film feels like a slap in the face. I do not mean in terms of the film’s quality, but as a deliberate thematic gesture. I question whether this was the right move to make, as it seems obvious Mark Hamill has, though the film is more or less successful in what it seeks to do in this regard. However, it comes across as deeply incongruous with the films that came before, most strikingly with The Force Awakens itself. It is baffling to me, and seems to betray the story that film was trying to set up. I don’t care about Rey’s parents being nobodies; I rather like that decision. I would have liked to see Snoke be tied into the saga at large in some way, but I don’t really have a problem with him being axed, aside from the incongruity with the storytelling of TFA.
Basically, the Luke stuff is very hard to swallow and feels very wrong for a variety of reasons. And the rest of the movie is dominated by SNL-level humor and ‘Droids’ cartoony silliness. Finn and Rose are grating, and BB8 commandeering an AT-ST is almost on the level of C-3PO in the Geonosian droid factory. The pacing and plot structure is all over the place. If I could edit apart the film into Rey’s story and everyone else’s story, I might be able to digest it a little easier. As much as I dislike Yoda’s visuals, his scene is touching, and goes the furthest to help Luke grow in this film. I still do not really understand how the lesson about accepting and learning from failure leads to Luke’s confrontation at the end. Does anyone else? It seems like he is sacrificing himself so the Resistance can escape, but I am straining to connect the dots to form a throughline with Luke.

Also, this movie suffers greatly in my mind by having several too many fakeouts or misdirections. Having what looks like a spaceship turn out to be an iron in the laundry room is one thing, but the movie contains so many of these that it honestly made me feel like a fucking idiot by the end, and left me almost giving up on trying to understand it. After Kylo Ren’s dialogue about letting the past die and the ship being rammed, the clear implication seemed to be that all the main characters aboard were killed in a stunning narrative mood. (Just kidding; here’s BB8 in an AT-ST.) Finn is about to sacrifice himself to save the Resistance. (Just kidding, you silly goose.) Rose dies. (Just kidding, I guess… I honestly forgot she didn’t die until I saw it again because there’s too much of this going on!)

There’s several of these even in the Yoda scene alone: Luke says he’s going to burn the tree down, then hesitates and seems to feel remorse about having wanted to. Then Yoda blows it up and laughs, confirming to Luke that, no, he was actually right in the first place to burn it down. Luke appears to accept this from Yoda, then becomes very defensive for a second about the Jedi texts. Yoda seems to tell Luke that the texts are better off gone, implying Rey already has what she needs without them. (JUST KIDDING; the Jedi texts are aboard the Falcon at the end in a shot I completely missed after seeing the film twice. What does this shot suggest about the Yoda scene, and Luke’s dialogue ABOUT Rey becoming a Jedi??? Does Luke KNOW she has the texts? Does Yoda?)

This movie makes me feel like I am locked in the house of mirrors and the Joker is laughing at me. They won’t even let me read the novelization until late March. Even if someone explains all these things to me in as best a way as can be done, this movie will always be a problem.

I agree with a lot of this, especially the scatterbrained tone. Star Wars has always had a very specific tone and editorial style, and TLJ is definitely the furthest removed from this style. All of the films have a noticeably passive, even documentary style at times. Abram’s filmmaking is somewhat removed from this in his use of quick cuts, closeups and dynamic camera movement, but TFA is still quite restrained in this regard. The Last Jedi by comparison is frenetic in how it slices up scenes to ratchet up the tension, and it breaks the illusion of watching events in a faraway galaxy and instead forces the viewer to confront the film as merely an assemblage of shots intended to show (or even worse, tell) the audience what to feel.

Canto Bight is the most egregious example of this style. I remember during filming how leaked photos showed elaborate streets built on location and a vast game floor filled with a breathtaking array of stunning aliens. I had an immediate sense of place with these photos, a location that promised to linger in the mind just as Cloud City, Dagobah, or even Coruscant lingered long after the movie ended. However, when I saw the finished product I had forgotten this lush environment the moment our heroes left. This is entirely a problem with the style of filming and editing these sequences.

The Luke stuff on the other hand I appreciate. Luke is a disillusioned old man who was failed by the dogmatic Jedi religion and held up as an impossibly godlike figure by the rest of the galaxy; no wonder he left. The beautiful thing about his disillusionment is that it both humanizes him and makes him more like a Zen spiritual guru. His ‘reach out’ joke might have been motivated by a cynicism of everything Jedi, but it also functions as a genuine lesson on not taking one’s teachers too seriously.

TV’s Frink said:

Mrebo!

Love the avatar.

Hi Frink 😃

Thanks.

TavorX said:

Yo Captain, Needa apology?

-sincerely Disney-Star-Trek-hack-frauds.

The whole scene with Leia moonwalking like Michael Jackson only dreamed of. Dear Lord…I loved Carrie Fisher, God rest her soul. That was worse than a pod race and the pod race in TPM was like 15 minutes of the movie. I think this movie was written to shake off the purists of the OT and it has been largely successful in doing just that. History will judge these films just as they have judged the previous trilogies. I just don’t believe there is any way these movies will stand up after 40 years the way that IV, V and VI. Ultimately I don’t think they will hold up well against the prequels. But I could be wrong.

dahmage said:

FWIW, that Yoda thing was one of my favorite things in the whole film once I figured it out. I didn’t think it was actually contradictory, just some classic “certain point of view” Jedi Master trolling that got Luke to snap out of his funk and focus on what was important in that moment. Of course Yoda doesn’t actually advocate burning books.

Doesn’t he? If you left the theater before the end of the movie, or have less than superhuman focus like I do, wouldn’t that be exactly what you’d conclude? That scene, to the best of my ability to read, wholeheartedly says it’s time for the old Jedi to end and Yoda vindicates Luke’s desire to burn the books after he hesitates.

What I’d like to know is: does what makes you read that scene differently come from later in the film, or can you support it from that scene (and what came before) alone?

And how does that relate to why Luke does what he does at the end? And honestly, does Luke know Rey has the texts and he is counting on this as he tells Ren he won’t be the last Jedi? Or would he be surprised to learn this and say, “Hey, Yoda destroyed those!”?

If a split second shot toward the end of the movie that I missed when seeing the film twice is supposed to carry such interpretive weight necessary to understand themes intimately connected to Luke’s character and story, that makes me a little irrationally angry. Maybe it’s too far removed from how Star Wars films have always done things, especially after TFA tried so hard to match that style.

ChainsawAsh said:

Captain Needa said:

I started reading the Aftermath books after watching TFA because I really wanted to like the movie more. I bought all three after Rogue One. … I can now say those books are terrible! I held my nose through a book and a half before I saw the TLJ. I am done.

For the record, the Aftermath trilogy won’t do shit to help you understand the context of the sequel trilogy. Claudia Gray’s Bloodline is what you’re looking for.

I will give it a shot. I am really thinking about finally reading that Thrawn series.