The Other Worlds Shrine

Your place for discussion about RPGs, gaming, music, movies, anime, computers, sports, and any other stuff we care to talk about... 

  • Star Wars: The Last Jedi

  • Your favorite band sucks, and you have terrible taste in movies.
Your favorite band sucks, and you have terrible taste in movies.
 #170367  by Eric
 Thu Dec 28, 2017 4:15 pm
So who here saw it? I personally wasn't a fan.

I thought Force Awakens was a safe movie, but it set up a lot of potential things to look forward too, and I went in with the understanding that the future movies would be something to look forward to. Last Jedi kinda gives the finger to everything that movie sets up and wipes the slate clean, so I felt it was a rather unsatisfying movie overall. I get why critics might like it, I just didn't. Keep in mind I liked Rogue One(The 3rd act of that movie is amazing), so I'm not exactly hard to please, but this movie just left me with a... "eh".

I know I went back and watched Rogue One for the 3rd Act alone quite a few times. I watched Force Awakens a few times too just because of the little hints they were dropping for the future to look forward to. I have no desire to watch Last Jedi again, maybe if Star Wars IX somehow retroactively does something to make this film better I'll go back and watch it, but this movie just kinda left me with a "Well that just happened" feeling when I left the movie theater.
 #170368  by Shrinweck
 Fri Dec 29, 2017 12:16 am
I thought it was the best new Star Wars so far but I disliked all but the last several minutes of Rogue One and as much as I liked TFA I liked it less than every original trilogy movie.

I think JJ Abrams is a master of setting up a series but the answers to his questions (even when handled by others) are always disappointing in comparison to their promise. My expectations for the answers were lowered accordingly.
 #170369  by Don
 Sun Dec 31, 2017 12:44 am
I thought Last Jedi was alright but I don't know how Luke Skywalker went from a living god in the EU to a scrub that gets beaten by any random guys who had two days of Jedi training. He should at least do some walking on lava like he did in the Jedi Academy, which I think is the second major series in the books.

There seems to be foreshadowing stuff that went to nowhere, like how they can't find the legendary code breaker so just grabbed a random one instead. Or that they blew up a dreadnaught which seem to have no impact on the actual fight anyway because they're doomed. Not sure why they need a Jedi to lift the rocks at the final scene when it looks like something you can just blow up with a blaster. It's not exactly big rocks we're talking about here. Heck, I'm sure a few normal guys can eventually moved all those rocks out of the way.
 #170370  by Shrinweck
 Sun Dec 31, 2017 4:24 am
TLJ spoilers (duh)
Spoiler: show
One of the things the writers talked about having an issue with was any story that included Luke Skywalker was instantly a story ABOUT Luke Skywalker. They're trying to pass off the torch to Rey and not having him be ultra powerful was part of that, I suppose. Also with Jedi ghosts he can still be in the series quite a bit but without the ability to actually fuck up the story. Honestly his death is what I have issues dealing with. Without Luke Skywalker is the series worth caring about for me? Rey has some slack to pick up. Obviously she'll never hit on the same nostalgia as Luke Skywalker, but if anything that puts even more pressure on her/the writers.

I really had no idea Mark Hamill had gotten so good at acting. His voice acting had gotten amazing, sure, but he really blows just about everyone out of the water with his performance in the movie. As for him getting housed by a child with limited training, I buy that he dropped his guard in his moment of mercy. The rocks thing was pretty dumb, though, yeah. Considering they're pulling things out of their ass like Kylo Ren stopping laser fire mid-air and Luke/Snoke projecting themselves/connecting people and shit they could have done something better than rock lifting.

So I guess the next movie is about them getting the galaxy to start another rebellion and Rey killing or turning Kylo Ren. Disney is obviously going to milk the shit out of the franchise considering with TLJ they finished making their money back from buying LucasFilms. If they continue doing one a year I wonder how long it'll take people to stop caring lol. I suppose they'd have to make a truly awful Star Wars first. Maybe we'll get 2-3 years off after the Solo and trilogy ending episodes
 #170372  by Julius Seeker
 Sun Dec 31, 2017 1:53 pm
Rogue One is the only Star Wars film that I like all the way through. It's definitely much more my type of movie than a typical Star Wars.

Most of the main series I partially like, but find myself not enjoying anywhere between 50% and 80% of any one of the other films. Although I have REALLY warmed up to the original Star Wars film (A New Hope) since Rogue One. If the goal of that movie was to elevate the original franchise, it worked for me.
 #170375  by kali o.
 Tue Jan 02, 2018 4:31 pm
It was enjoyable enough as a film, if I turned my brain off. As a very minor SW nerd, the departure from canon was annoying and the film seemed full of dead ends and plot holes.

Now, that said, it was light years better than anything current Lucas could have done; so I'm not sure how I should feel.
 #170382  by Oracle
 Thu Jan 04, 2018 12:32 pm
I liked it, and I mildly enjoy how it's pissing off the fanboys.

They are trying to punt their dependency on nostalgia, and it's completely understandable. Disney doesn't want to just re-establish the franchise with all the people who worship the originals and were disgruntled with the prequels. They want the franchise to establish a foothold in the younger generations so they can continue to milk the IP.
 #170437  by Julius Seeker
 Mon Feb 05, 2018 5:00 pm
I still enjoyed the new cast, but felt the old cast were kind of dragged out and felt out of place. Luke and Leia have felt off in this current series; it seemed like a bad goodbye to his character, and his presence otherwise stunk it up a bit. None of that bothered me too much, I felt Luke was still less of a drag than Harrison Solo in the first one.

My biggest issue was how small scale the final act felt. It seems like the First Order shrunk in size considerably from the first film, and it lacks the grand scale of the Empire and the Republic from the two earlier series. It was even smaller scale feeling than Attack of the Clones.

I really dig the new supporting cast. Benicio Del Toro as a Setzer style character was an interesting addition. I like the new crazy ex-slave girl too, reminds me a bit of an anime character. Weakest character is Oscar Isaac (pro damerung, or whatever), he sticks out like a gangrene thumb as a cardboard cutout rebellious hero archetype. He’s like the boring and safe version of Cassian; who I thought was more interesting with his unsettling murderous villain hero role; he also had a better story with some actual depth without diving much into back story exposition. The female general seemed like she could have been interesting, but ended up just being a character whose purpose was to create conflict, I don’t remember her name, only her hair.

I have heard the plot described as contrived, but the first one was FAR more contrived with the plot structure basically glued together with convenient coincidences and convenient shifts in character (like Fin jumping from gun shy coward to blood lusting Rambo in a 5 minute period).