Matt.F

This has already been discussed - Dre already went through this ‘hyperspace kamikaze’ plothole many pages ago. He got shut down thoroughly and convincingly by Adywan and others at the time. That is why I used the word trolling, by posting up a ‘mocking’ cartoon image (which is about as funny as a funeral) and was just designed to mock and denigrate the movie. Poor show.

DrTroll

ZkinandBonez said:

“WE DEMAND A SHRUBBERY!”

Some really great imagery!

The Star Destroyer emerging out of a cloudy vortex, the ‘stone circle’, the train, the gold cabaret singer, and more. A really nice aesthetic that makes it appear as more of a companion piece with Rogue One than with the ST. The musical refrain at the end of the teaser also sounded very reminiscent of Rogue One.

This looks brilliant, and yes… the last few seconds “Revenge of the Rathtars”!

Mrebo said:

Matt.F said:

Yes, and “very good of its kind” may be damning with faint praise but we all know that’s as good as it gets with space fantasy movies.

I didn’t get that memo. I’m less impressed by the great dramas, perhaps, but I think a movie can be evaluated on its own terms, whatever Blockbuster shelf it would have sat on, whatever box office success it had, and whatever a professional critic had to say about it.

Mrebo can you name me 5 family films from 2016-2017 that you consider to be superior to The Last Jedi? That you personally like more?

Collipso said:

Matt.F said:

ray_afraid said:

SilverWook said:

I wasn’t writing them off, I was trying to say the traditional movie critic who had a journalistic background or came out of the movie industry seems a rare breed these days.

There were plenty of critics I couldn’t stand back in the day. There was at least one who seemed to enjoy trashing Star Wars regularly. Probably pulling their hair out now if they’re still around. 😉

OOH! Have ya seen the video of Siskel & Ebert defending ROTJ against some fool? It’s great! 😄
Here it is

Thanks, I loved seeing that and Siskel says exactly the same thing I just said!

“This is very good of its kind.” He repeats it again and again. “This is very good OF ITS KIND.”

Judge The Last Jedi against its peers. Objectively it is a high quality family film. You can look at the professional critics opinions, aggregated on metacritic and rotten tomatoes. This is very good of its kind. Pirates Of The Caribbean, Transformers, Planet Of The Apes, Justice League. This is not opinion, this is the truth.

Shouldn’t you judge Star Wars vs Star Wars? They’re all Star Wars movies.

No, because if I say to you Collipso ‘what is your fave film of all time?’ and you reply “Empire Strikes Back” - then you are judging this new flick against the highest cinematic benchmark you’ve ever experienced. Nothing should have to attain such an unrealistic stretch target.

But if I say to you, “Collipso, out of the films you saw in 2017, which did you enjoy the most?”… and that film is The Last Jedi then I would say that’s a great success!

Yes, and “very good of its kind” may be damning with faint praise but we all know that’s as good as it gets with space fantasy movies.

This isn’t “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri” or “Darkest Hour”. It’s great that critics have recognised The Last Jedi as being an excellent family flick, and rated it extremely highly, but it’s not the height of the art form or a darling of awards season and probably most of us wouldn’t even want it to be!

ps. Ray_Afraid just go see the movie that we’ve all been discussing for the past 200 pages!! It wont change the world, but it’s a good time at the cinema.

ray_afraid said:

SilverWook said:

I wasn’t writing them off, I was trying to say the traditional movie critic who had a journalistic background or came out of the movie industry seems a rare breed these days.

There were plenty of critics I couldn’t stand back in the day. There was at least one who seemed to enjoy trashing Star Wars regularly. Probably pulling their hair out now if they’re still around. 😉

OOH! Have ya seen the video of Siskel & Ebert defending ROTJ against some fool? It’s great! 😄
Here it is

Thanks, I loved seeing that and Siskel says exactly the same thing I just said!

“This is very good of its kind.” He repeats it again and again. “This is very good OF ITS KIND.”

Judge The Last Jedi against its peers. Objectively it is a high quality family film. You can look at the professional critics opinions, aggregated on metacritic and rotten tomatoes. This is very good of its kind. Pirates Of The Caribbean, Transformers, Planet Of The Apes, Justice League. This is not opinion, this is the truth.

ray_afraid said:

Matt.F said:

Collipso are you the guy who has refused to watch The Last Jedi or is that ray_afraid? I thought I read somewhere back in the thread that one of you guys hasn’t even watched the film?

I haven’t seen it. I haven’t “refused” to see it, I just don’t care to.

Why you crack posting in this thread then?

Mrebo, it’s a false equivalency.

There are those online who have declared The Last Jedi a box office turkey, and yes it has performed significantly worse than The Force Awakens did.

However - this false equivalency fails to note that The Force Awakens was the 3rd highest grossing movie of all time. The Last Jedi has in fact already earned a staggering $1.3 billion and is one of the top ten most successful movies of all time.

There are those who have declared that The Last Jedi is a bad SW movie, nowhere near as good as Empire Strikes Back.

However - this false equivalency fails to note that Empire Strikes Back was recently voted the best movie of all time by Empire magazine. Naturally, comparing any movie to the best movie of all time is always going to result in it appearing second rate.

Compare like for like. Compare The Last Jedi (2017) to the other films released for family audiences in 2017. That’s fair, that’s sensible, that’s equivalent. It doesn’t ‘skew’ the results to create a false narrative. It gives a genuine picture of the quality when measured against its peers (which are exactly the like of Pirates Of The Carribean, Justice League, and Transformers The Last Knight).

This is one of the reasons why we still need professional critics. People who can be trusted, unlike youtubers, to have seen a lot of films and possess an understanding of where the benchmark line is set.

Collipso are you the guy who has refused to watch The Last Jedi or is that ray_afraid? I thought I read somewhere back in the thread that one of you guys hasn’t even watched the film?

I’m actually far from mad - I really enjoyed the film! I don’t much like reading whining though. Maybe it’s from being British, where complaining is somewhat frowned upon culturally (that’s not to say it doesn’t go on), but the sort of whining and nitpicking that has accompanied the release of TLJ from “fans” is hard to listen to.

I didn’t think Snoke was a great character though. I far prefer ‘tangible’ in camera where possible and the Snoke CG fx in TFA was a lowpoint. The CG was superior in TLJ but still I’m not sad to see the character gone, and the throne room sequence for me was superb - really well delivered by Rian Johnson. He pulled the Game Of Thrones trick of killing off a character at a moment that none of us anticipated.

Mrebo said:

Matt.F said:

Collipso said:

https://youtu.be/9eJXB0FQPD0 - good analysis on why Snoke in the ST doesn’t work like Palpatine worked in the OT.

Just what we all need, another no-name youtuber giving his reasons why nu star wars sux.

In all honesty the constant comparing is what’s killing any chance of enjoyment for these people. For goodness sake judge the new movies on their own merits without the constant, endless comparisons to a trilogy of films made 40 years ago.

If you want to compare The Last Jedi to other movies then judge it against its 2017 contemporaries… comparable films made with a high budget and targeted at family audiences; such classics as ‘Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales’, ‘Kong: Skull Island’, and ‘Justice League’. The bar is set so low and thank goodness that we are still getting films at the high quality level of The Last Jedi - stop whining, get some perspective, and appreciate how rare that is in the family film category.

Who cares if it’s a “no-name youtuber,” an article, a podcast or whatever. You don’t have to click but it can provide insight. The video was a response to those who compare TLJ to the OT; the youtuber explained it is a false comparison. However, I’m not quite sure what your objection is to comparing TLJ to the OT, since you seem focused on quality. Are you saying that TLJ cannot compare favorably in terms of quality to movies made 40 years ago? Must we really compare TLJ to some of the worst recent movies in order to argue it is good? The ultimate point of the youtube video was about storytelling and character development.

The point is that with these ‘no name you tubers’ that seem to get a lot of links from the anti-brigade its typically an exercise in axe grinding. They care enough - or should that be, they hate enough - to bother making a video. Plus controversy gets them more clicks and more comments, so they are rarely what I would consider level or balanced in their opinions.

Plus what’s wrong with comparing The Last Jedi with other high budget family genre movies that were released in 2017? It’s a like for like comparison and entirely valid.

Collipso said:

https://youtu.be/9eJXB0FQPD0 - good analysis on why Snoke in the ST doesn’t work like Palpatine worked in the OT.

Just what we all need, another no-name youtuber giving his reasons why nu star wars sux.

In all honesty the constant comparing is what’s killing any chance of enjoyment for these people. For goodness sake judge the new movies on their own merits without the constant, endless comparisons to a trilogy of films made 40 years ago.

If you want to compare The Last Jedi to other movies then judge it against its 2017 contemporaries… comparable films made with a high budget and targeted at family audiences; such classics as ‘Pirates Of The Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales’, ‘Kong: Skull Island’, and ‘Justice League’. The bar is set so low and thank goodness that we are still getting films at the high quality level of The Last Jedi - stop whining, get some perspective, and appreciate how rare that is in the family film category.

Yawn, what a load of tedious waffle.

Dre, you realise that these are movies made to entertain 8 year olds right?

Thank god the ‘deconstructing Luke Skywalker’ imaginary movie you wanted in your head wasn’t made!

I am afraid the simple solution for you Dre is to either walk away from the series, as watching TLJ has appeared to trigger you into hours upon hours of wasted time poured into expressions of regret and bitterness, or to dial down your lofty and unrealistic expectations and enjoy the movie on its own merits - as a film made to entertain 8 year olds.

NeverarGreat said:

chyron8472 said:

Mrebo said:

tere are good explanations for most of them anyway.

There are explanations now that we’ve had ages to ponder them. Conversely, the novelization for TLJ isn’t even out yet.

The TFA novel straight up explains how the Starkiller beam could destroy a planet on the other side of the galaxy from where the base itself is located. It just depends on it you want to accept that explanation.

That is to say, you like the movie or you don’t, and that’s your choice. But holding ST and OT up to different yard sticks isn’t exactly fair.

We shouldn’t need novelizations to justify the events of a movie.

But as for different yardsticks, the Death Star was a moon sized space station with essentially a big version of a blaster that could blow up rocky planets. It required the resources of a galaxy-spanning empire to build.

Starkiller Base is a piece of construction many times larger than the Death Star, with a primary weapon requiring seemingly universe-breaking technology that has never been previously hinted at or explained, built by an organization that by all indications is a fraction the size of the Empire.

These are not two yardsticks.

Iteration is your answer.

The German Empire was defeated in WWI, the Nazi’s “rose from the ashes” and 20 years later the Third Reich invaded Poland and WWII began.

The engineering iteration upon the previous weapons, saw the war machine now employ cannon that could span the English channel, unmanned V2 bombs, U boats, and any number of other more advanced hardware (including ultimately nuclear weapons).

Pretty obvious that the First Order is based upon the hardware of the Empire (TIE Fighters, Star Destroyers, Stormtrooper armour, Starkiller Base, etc), and so iteration is your answer to why they are more advanced.

RE: The scene where Leia as Boushh gets caught by Jabba and she says “you’ll regret this, we have powerful friends”.

When the Gamorrean Guard pushes her forward closer to Jabba, his fingers on her shoulder look wobbly rubber and very fake. Perhaps a tweak could be applied to improve this small detail?

Evil in Star Wars…

I was just reading this months Empire magazine and they did a ‘top 20 movie villains’ article which Darth Vader won (Kylo came 7th). In the article they describe Darth Vader as “pure evil”.

For me, Vader isn’t even close to pure evil. If anything he is ‘lawful evil’, he only ever kills with good reason and seems quite rational. At one point in the carbonite scene when Chewie assaults a Stormtrooper Vader even prevents Boba from shooting the unarmed Wookie.

Vader had The Emperor, who really appeared to take glee and pleasure from being evil, which made Vader appear less evil by contrast. Kylo had Snoke, which did the same. We’ve seen this in Game Of Thrones. Characters like the Hound and Jamie Lannister are not good people, but by contrast to Joffrey and Ramsey they are saints, and so the audience can back them.

Would you say, Kylo is already more evil than Vader? And without Snoke in the next movie will the story necessarily have to present Kylo as more of a pure evil character? He will have to be ‘the big bad’, and so the story might have to abandon the shades of grey and present Kylo as a more hate-worthy villain?

[DrDre said:](It’s certainly more articulate and respectful than your reponse to my post.

Okay, back to your usual ‘passive aggressive’ self.

Dre, oh dear. What an awful ad filled bit of clickbait crap!

“Understanding how the new movie went off the rails” Really?!

And then the guy spends the whole article comparing it to Tolkien.

If you really want an insightful deconstruction then listen to the Empire podcast, with Rian Johnson getting much deeper into the decisions, the story and the characters.

joefavs said:

FYI, there’s a great interview with Rian on the most recent episode of the Empire film podcast.

Yep, I listened to it on a long drive. I’d heard him speak at Celebration, where he seemed quite quiet but he proved a really good interviewee on this podcast, and they cover in-depth a lot of the ground that this discussion thread has also covered. Fascinating stuff, he doesn’t evade or duck any questions, everything gets a thoughtful answer and it’s well worth a listen.

“A question for Rian Johnson. In Episode 8 The Last Jedi, Yoda’s force ghost makes lightning strike from a storm cloud. I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of MAGIC force ghost? Boy, I really hope someone got fired for that…”

Warbler said:
Sure seems like Obiwan could have lent a hand now.

That’s a bit insensitive, poor old one-handed Luke…

I still cant believe that for many years “WEEESA FREEEE!” was the final spoken line of the Star Wars Saga.

I hadn’t even clocked it was that same Bail moment, must have been too busy looking at Jar Jar!

I just rewatched your deleted scene and I have to say, for a bit of ‘fun’ that wasn’t intended for proper release, you did it really well!

A lot of people like movie series ‘box sets’ because they don’t have time or patience in an evening to watch a full length movie so I can see the logic.

But couldn’t you just watch about half of the film and then watch the next half another night?
I’ve done that before with the Extended Editions of LOTR, which came on two discs and so lent itself to taking a break.

For the original trilogy how about…
Stopping Star Wars after the Falcon takes off from Mos Eisley seems like a good spot.
Stopping ESB after Luke takes off from Hoth.
Stopping ROTJ after Jabba’s sail barge explodes.

I don’t see why it needs to get much more complicated than that?