Star Wars The Last Jedi Discussion (tag your spoilers!)

@ares42: @hassun: Maybe the ships can't be remotely piloted to do that? Also, it is possible that smaller ships won't do the same amount damage, you'd need something like a cruiser to do that much damage and since money exists, I can't imagine that it would be cheap to do that when it seems like the Rebellion is kinda just scraping by.

@vashyron: No reason for it to be a Rebel-only thing though. As I mentioned, it's probably a lot cheaper than building all those death stars!

So, the local weed dealer who gets busted by the intergalactic version of the Mystery Machine gang is the new trilogy's most interesting character? Wow, kinda glad I didn't see it. And from hearing from the people I know that have seen it, they were kinda wishing they didn't see it either.

I kinda liked General Hux as a villain. Mainly cause they hired an Irish guy to play a British character actor space Nazi, as a nice call back to the fact that the Empire was all British Character actors back in the 70's and 80's That is the type of bs garbage, I would do.

Well, I guess it is save to say this movie is pretty divisive. Half this thread hates it, the other half loves it.

I just saw it a second time and liked it a bit more than my first time (where I already liked it a reasonable amount). Mostly because I know where the boring or tedious sections are in the movie and I sort of passively watch during those, whereas I enjoyed the good parts a lot more than before.

I noticed some really cool subtleties in the stuff I didn't notice my first time. Like when Luke walks across the battlefield, he leaves no traces of red salt behind, because he isn't actually there.

This new trilogy might become my favorite trilogy depending on that third movie. The Force Awakens received criticism for being similar to A New Hope, but I sure found it to be superior to A New Hope in almost every way. I don't really have a lot of issues with Empire, probably less than with The Last Jedi, but it is also quite a dull movie whereas Jedi is at least very exciting. Return of the Jedi used to be my favorite, sort of. Maybe it still is. I can see it being trumped.

I just wanna say I'm surprised at the amount of people still calling star wars sci-fi. It's very heavily fantasy.

Science Fiction is a particular kind of thing. It's a "what if" scenario on real life as we know it. It shows what if our technology and the state of things advanced far beyond what we have now. Star wars is not even close to that.

It literally takes place a long time ago somewhere nowhere near us

The more I think about the plot, the less it makes sense. So the plan was always to load up the escape pods, and for somebody to stay behind and die with the ship, so why not do that from the get go? Why not load up the ships, then lightspeed into the enemy ship? Then all of those other ships wouldn't have had to sacrifice themselves for nothing....

@michaelferrari: Because they needed time to fuel the escape pods remember? As soon as they were fueled, they executed that plan. They couldn't have done it sooner.

@zevvion: That's a fair enough point, but doesn't that kind of also not make sense? What would be the point of escape pods if you needed time to fuel them up? A long time at that. Heaven forbid they have a serious emergency, they'd die before they could escape.

Dude I don't think anyone knows what in the fresh hell you're talking about.

The majority thinks Kylo Ren is the most interesting new character anyway, like by a mile. You're putting down the most interesting character in a movie you didn't even bother to finish watching and now you're acting like you're shocked everyone disagrees with you on him. and you keep making up dumb elaborate things to call him by. "keyboard player for the emo version of love and rockets" and now this.

It's just pretty childish and doesn't make sense. It doesn't seem like you're adding anything to the discussion

Did anyone think it looked like the cinematography was just... bad? Like, the whole movie had a motion-interpolation/shot-on-video vibe. Especially in composited scenes. The lighting was really visible and fake-looking and it sort of reminded me of a cheesy soap opera or that creepy fps version of the hobbit.

I'm genuinely asking because I can't figure if it is the movie or just that the theater screwed up the projection...

This sums up my take pretty well (spoilers):

@pyrodactyl: I just watched that video a little bit ago and fully agree with him. In fact this video is probably the most perfect representation of the movie's strengths and my feelings towards it.

If you guys don't like the movie in regards to technical stuff, structure, narrative, pacing, etc., that's completely fair but I feel this movie gets what STAR WARS is completely right and it subverts our expectations in aggressive ways to show us this.

@pyrodactyl: Where does that leave everyone that isn't massive Star Wars fans and just wanna watch a good movie though ? Focusing the movie around this core audience seem strange considering how mass market the franchise is. I get that the video is very much a "reply to the mad internet", but if that's how people want to explain what happened with this movie I think they've lost perspective.

I mean, if my brother asks me if I recommend watching the new Star Wars movie I'm not gonna say "no, because Leia floats in space and Luke is portrayed in a strange way", I'm gonna say "no, because it's fairly boring at times and it has a lot of stupid shit in it".

I suppose Empire is still first for me merely by exxecution, but I don't think I've ever been as pleased with Star Wars as these last two movies. Even under the corporate Disney fist they finally seem to be taking steps outside their comfort zone. The Rey/Kylo Ren stuff was surprisingly compelling and methodical. Luke/Rey stuff was also intriguing. I kinda wished they went with the whole throwing everything away and starting anew like Kylo Ren and Yoda/Luke suggested, but I guess Kylo Ren was just too far gone and corrupted to do any good with it. I loved the amount of Leia and even though the flying through space was silly and the whole coma thing a fakeout I'm still happy we got more of her and it was probably the best send off in the end. Her and Luke together got me a touch teary eyed. I think this movie's a success merely for the fact it got me to care about Kylo Ren and (mostly) brought him back from the brink of complete douchiness. Humor was a little much, the characters a little jam packed, finn/rose/dj subplot probably shouldnt have been 100% cut but retooled maybe? But overall pretty little to complain about and has me pumped for the future unlike ep7

Saw this last night. Don't quite get all the hate - this was different and I think a pretty good take on it all.

The movie had weaknesses, dragged in parts, some elements that were meant to be emotive came off fairly cheesy, but overall I think the strengths of the film outweighed the weaknesses.

In my opinion:

Strengths:

• Kylo Ren and Rey snapchat
• Luke having been the one who initially tried to kill Kylo, thus causing Kylo
• The notion of getting rid of the force
• Porgs were surprisingly adorable
• The imagery/scenery in this was freaking cool
• The whole sequence with Snoke, Rey, Kylo and bodyguards

Weaknesses:

• Too long - one too many battle sequences. First battle sequence with the dreadnought, while cool to open a movie with a battle, wasn't really needed. That dreadnought looked freaking cool but it was gone straight away. Alternatively, they could have ended the film earlier and started the next film with Hoth 2.0 (it's salt, not snow this time!)
• Leia's flying sequence was thematically cool, but practically looked kind of dumb
• Finn charging at the battering ram, then getting knocked away, then Rose loves him, then he drags her all the way back to the base and none of the AT-AT commanders think to shoot at them? Finn did not have much to do in this film
• Luke and the sea cow milk

I'll need to give this another viewing further down the track, but I mostly liked it.

@ares42: Your comment as a fan is as subjective as your comment as a regular movie goer. Some people thought the movie was bad. Some people thought it sucked because it's not enough of Star Wars movie. Whatever that means to them. I happen to think all those people are wrong. Opinions.

Just look at it this way: there's no way the 93% of critics who thought the movie was good were all die hard Star Wars fans. ''Normal people'' can also enjoy this movie! And who could blame them. The cinematography is beautiful and flashy. The action scenes are thrilling and well shot. The characters are layered and grow as people over the course of the film. It's thematically consistent and particularly resonant in the year of our lord 2017. The second act might be too long and a few scenes might be a bit unwieldy or unnecessary but those are minor nitpicks from where I stand.

That's a definite strength in my book

Same.

I thought it was okay. Definitely better than TFA, but that's not a high bar. I liked the Snoke dying twist, Benicio Del Toro's character and the scenes with Luke. I really didn't like that Leah in space scene and the how they decided to keep their actual escape plan from the pilot mutineer guy. Was there a reason for that? It was like those bad romcoms where a big plot point could be solved with a short conversation. Also, the humor was terrible. That first joke early in the film really felt like something that would be in a cell phone commercial.

Also, the end was so silly. Not the Luke part, I liked that. But the whole big siege weapon they dragged down there. They made such a big deal about it that I thought it was going to blast through the entire base, but instead it just made a hole through the door. And then like the remaining 12 rebels follow random crystal foxes to the Falcon.

I dunno. I wouldn't be surprised if there's a very heavy "our Madden reviewer reviewed Madden" factor as far as reviews goes. Ofc anyone can enjoy the movie and it's all opinions. What I'm trying to say is that if someone's trying to defend the movie based on the fact that "it did Star Wars right" they're missing the forest for the trees.

The problems with the movie isn't all the nitpicky stuff you see, those are just all the things that are quick and easy to point out for people who just came out of the theater disappointed. If you start to look deeper into why so many people are dissatisfied with the movie it's because it fails to deliver on many of the core aspects of what makes a good movie experience. To use your own argument, there's no way so many people dislike the movie just because it got a few details "wrong" here and there.

@lifejuice: I honestly didn't see the thing about Snoke being a twist. When it happened, I was very unsurprised as that whole scene up to that point is very reminiscent of Return of the Jedi. That isn't to say that I thought it was bad, I'm very happy it did. Just wasn't shocked by it, is all.

@hassun: True, though I guess the Empire/First Order just love their big-planet-destroying-toys.

The people that say 'it isn't a real Star Wars movie'. Care to explain what that actually means? Isn't that just your expectations from seeing the first films as a child? Every Star Wars movie is different than all the others. This one cuts away just as much as any other; it still sticks true to what makes Star Wars, Star Wars. Good versus evil, the constant struggle of being good or evil and the temptations of both, the mystery and importance of the Force, lightsabers, jedi, sith, sacrifice for others, fantasy in the past.

This is a true Star Wars movie. If you didn't like it, that's fine. But try to articulate why instead of just dismissing the entire thing as 'not real'. That just makes it seem like you don't have any arguments.

To expound on what others are saying, I think what has many "normal" people disappointed is that TLJ didn't actually grow its characters, and didn't advance the narrative much. For all the faffing about between Kylo and Rey, they both pretty much end the movie in the same state as they began it. Poe and Finn actively regress as characters. It's precisely because the movie is thematically all about failure. Since nobody succeeds in anything in this movie, as a result it doesn't feel like anything is accomplished. The mystery box is empty, and even though there might be a lesson there, of course it's disappointing to viewers. We just want our stories to be interesting, and "it was all nothing" subversive misdirection isn't necessarily interesting.

Think about Empire when it was new. "No, Luke, I am your father" recontextualizes everything you knew about the story and characters up to that point. "No, Rey, you are a nobody" just doesn't have the same impact. It's a letdown, not a reveal. That's the essence of why I think Empire felt like a productive entry into the last trilogy, while TLJ feels like it's just spinning its wheels.

Sorry for the interjection, but I've been thinking about the movie a lot over the past couple days, and my opinion has been souring the further I get from it. I'm really interested to see if a second viewing changes my mind.

IGN posted a pretty interesting theory that has enough going for it that JJ could possibly run with it in Episode IX...

Rey's "parents" are nobodies...

...because she has none...

He doesn't need to though.

I was expecting them to go the whole midichlorians route while watching it. But even then Anakin had a mother.

@shiftygism: they need to come up with basically any sort of reveal to one up Last Jedi.

Do they/ does it really though? What exactly was Poe's great character before this movie? I admittedly have only seen both of these once, but I remember him being in all of about 20 minutes of TFA, and in this movie he goes from careless hotshot to leader of the new resistance pretty dramatically I thought. Finn went from "I'm a stormtrooper but I don't wanna kill anyone" to "I'm a former stormtrooper but now I kinda love this mechanic and I'm willing to sacrifice myself to save my friends." Not exactly amazing character development, but he gets his moments

And other than being a cool, memorable, and misquoted scene, what exactly does Vader's reveal really change? Makes Luke a little more leery about drifting to the dark side, and makes him want to try to turn him back instead of just kill him, but I wouldn't really call that a dramatic reconceptualization exactly.

@cornfed40: Poe goes from super-ace pilot in TFA to traitorous mutineer in TLJ, for basically no good reason, and then is just handed command of the rebellion without any real redemption. Finn spent the last film growing out of being a coward who runs away, and he's right back at it at the start this movie. He's still doing it when he tries his senseless sacrifice. They also throw away his entire relationship arc with Rey to have this diversion with Rose, only to have him rebuff her at the end when he finally reunites with Rey for a nice friendly hug. Empire is where Han and Leia's relationship was established. Finn is still stuck in a holding pattern.

And, yeah, the father reveal in Empire is a big deal. The mentor becomes a liar; the villain becomes family. The entire conflict becomes morally greyer and more nuanced. Does Luke stand with the rebellion or his blood? Will he be able to kill his father for the good of the galaxy? He's far more than "a little more leery" of the dark side. Yoda and Ben already start talking about a backup plan (the sister). Before RotJ, it was entirely conceivable that Luke could fail or go evil and Leia has to save the galaxy. It only looks cut and dry with the benefit of hindsight.

I've seen a really outlandish theory floating around that Rey is a clone made from Luke's severed hand, which establishes the basis of her seemingly prodigious power, her deeply personal connection to the Skywalkers' lightsaber, and justifies Kylo's statement about her parents.

It sounds crazy, but it's been done before.

Wha? Kylo kills Snoke and becomes Supreme Leader of the First Order, and seems to have fully embraced the Dark Side (btw a huge win) Rey started down the path of the Jedi, tried to save Kylo but failed as it was a trap by Snoke and now she has no Master to return to and only the Books to guide her way. Poe learned to stop being a reckless shit that gets people killed. Finn did stuff? His character probably has the most issues in this movie, unfortunately. However, to say that characters didn't grow or the narrative didn't move is kind of silly. The thing about failure is that it happens. I mean, look at Empire Strikes Back. The good guys get the shit beaten out of them. Luke's Universe is shattered by Vader and Han gets frozen in carbonite and taken to Jabba, not to mention the Rebels starting that movie by getting kicked off of Hoth. Like, the good guys did not win in that movie and it is VERY BELOVED. So, to label this movie sucking because it's about failure is kind of silly.

Along with that, EVERYONE expected Rey's parents to be somebody. Fan theories where going nuts trying to relate her to the Skywalkers in some way (either through Han and Leia or through Vader or Luke), and if it wasn't the Skywalkers, it was Palpatine. So, to find out that her parents are nobodies is, actually, kind of perfect. How much of a let down is that? Probably a lot and I think that is what people are having an issue with. They expected it to be something and it was nothing, so they are upset. But take a second and think about how Rey feels. She has been wondering about her parents and why they left her. Then she finds out she has a rather strong power and the first thought, I'm sure, that went through her head is "My parents were probably pretty powerful." And much like the audience, she is probably trying to figure out if she is related to one of the legends she's heard so much about. And then, to be forced to face the truth, that her parents are nothing. Degenerate gamblers (or whatever) that sold her and are dead; and to have that followed by an asshole telling her she is nothing too. On some levels, she is probably fairly gutted by that, but she does the heroic thing and pulls her shit together so she can save her friends and further serves to show that it doesn't matter what came before, it matters where we are going. Should people lose their shit over it? No, but honestly, no one was going to lose their shit no matter who her parents were. People were always going to be either elated or pissed about it, since you always knew the reveal was coming. The only reason why it worked in Empire is because you NEVER SAW IT COMING. There was no question to Luke's parentage. As far as Luke and the audience knew, his father was dead and killed by Vader. Luke probably really hated Vader, for killing Obi-Wan and his father. There was ZERO indication that Vader was Luke's father, which is why everyone (including Luke) lost their shit. Having Rey's parents be a mystery from the get go means you absolutely can not have a surprise reveal, because you know that is a plot point that HAS to be resolved.

Poe goes from arrogant super-ace pilot "hero" (which is why he thinks he's justified in his mutiny), and through the lessons of Holdo and Leia realizes that sometimes it takes sacrifice and swallowing your ego (i.e. losing ships and "running away") to ultimately succeed. He has to learn humility to be a better leader - that it's not about him.

Finn spent the whole first film learning not to be a coward and to face danger to protect people he cares about and who care about him. However, he still has much to learn because in this movie, he abandons "the cause" to selfishly protect a person he cares about and who cares about him. He's learned courage, but not how to use it intelligently and rationally when he tries to senselessly sacrifice himself. He doesn't rebuff Rose, and while he happily welcomes back Rey, he goes back to care for Rose by putting his jacket over her while she sleeps, which Rey bittersweetly notices, happy for him but a bit disappointed. Finn has clearly chosen Rose as his love-interest, and Rey sees it too. Finn fought in The Force Awakens for people he cared about, but thanks to Rose in The Last Jedi, he now believes in a cause, too.

And yeah, the father reveal in Empire is a big deal, and so is the parentage reveal in Last Jedi, in what it says about Rey, and what it says about the franchise. It retroactively affects Rey's relationships with all of the Original Trilogy characters, and adds more shade to her character and what the Star Wars franchise has stood for up to that moment. It's not a twist that the next movie will hinge on, but it is a meaningful bit of information that the series as a whole (and her character) hinges on. It reinforces what Star Wars began as, and refutes what it became. It's a recalibration of the franchise, and in fact, it's core to who Rey is. Kylo Ren even says, egotistically, that Star Wars isn't Rey's story, but he's willing to let her be a part of it, since he has inherited it as a Skywalker descendant. The three main characters all learn to redefine what it means to be a hero and move forward with that newfound knowledge.

The only issue is that these characters only really come into their own in The Last Jedi, at the end of the 2nd of 3 movies, and THAT is because the first movie had to pay so much lip service to Han and Luke that the characters had less room to grow, something, again, that the parentage reveal puts a lampshade on.

@vashyron: I saw the movie, man. You didn't have to recap the plot for me. Poe didn't start being a 'reckless shit' until this movie; that's what I'm talking about with him. When people say nothing happened, what they mean is that Kylo and Rey end the movie just as good/evil as they began it. Their motivations didn't change; they didn't learn anything new about themselves. Of course things happened. The Jedi/Sith cycle is restarted anew, and all that talk about letting old things die and their supposed personal connection mid-movie is complete misdirection and evaporates in the climax. Rey didn't pull herself together in this movie. Kylo says it himself, "admit what you already know." Snoke dying had about as much impact as Darth Maul dying. He was about the same amount of a character. What really disappointed me the most was that Disney offered the taste of a different kind of Star Wars story, but they were unwilling to commit. They were too caught up in pulling 'twists' on the fans.

It's okay to be in the roughly half of the audience that was satisfied with the all the subversive non-reveals, but don't dismiss the rest of us by acting like we weren't paying attention. The movie isn't disappointing because it's about failure. The movie was disappointing because it doesn't have any narrative payoff, and that's partially because everybody fails. Empire is a perfect foil of a movie where the protagonists primarily suffer setbacks but still manages to build on the previous movie. TLJ is only about tearing stuff down.

Saw this earlier today. I have to say I was rather bored with it. Where Force Awakens made me mad/frustrated because it was just A New Hope again, Last Jedi just felt.. blah. It felt like 3 hours and I was not invested in it at all.

There was only one moment where I was like.. "Oh sweet. That was awesome"

The lightspeed ship attack.

Also, because I see people mentioning the Rey parents thing:

I guess it isn't widespread knowledge? I remember people discussing it when Force Awakens came out. Essentially saying that she was likely born from the Force and has no parents thing. Religious overtones or whatever.

No, I think you misheard. Kylo Ren tells Rey that her parents are nobodies, not "nobody". She has parents, and they were drunks that traded her away and died alone in some random part of the Jakku desert. And he also reveals that she probably remembers that, and was just HOPING to have some secret origin that made her special -- but she doesn't, and because of that, it kind of MAKES her special, in the Star Wars universe. She's not some prophecy, she's not a descendant. She's just an idealistic nobody that happens to be strong in the Force, hoping to make the galaxy better and wishing she was special (like we originally thought Luke Skywalker was).

@inevpatoria: yep, that's what I was referring to with the pics. That mirror scene cou!d be hinting at something much different for Rey's background and they've already started to incorporate some of the old extended universe into the Canon on Rebels, so who knows? The twist isn't necessary, and kinda dumb, but it may give some fans a grander explanation to the mystery they set up.

@wrighteous86: Its hard for me to believe that because nothing is set in stone. That's just a thing an "evil" guy was saying.. who knows if it's true. I watched that scene and interpreted it as him trying to make her feel even more crappy and miserable, sort of telling her she amounts to nothing.. but if you come with me you'll be/have everything, thus turning her. She also goes to whatever that mirror wall trippy thing was, she asks it to show her her parents, and it just shows her. I think she literally has no parents. It would probably make for a really great twist assuming you didn't see it coming.

At this point there are only two big twists that I could see happening. 1. She is revealed to be a literal Force being or whatever you want to call it. The Force itself created her as a means to bring balance. Twist option 2, which I think would be more fun and maybe actually cool, is Rey and Kylo switching sides. She gets pulled into the dark side because of her emotional bs, thus making this potentially incredible, bad ass female villain, and Kylo is still conflicted and shows signs of hope and for whatever reason comes to the Light side. Probably too late for option 2 though as the plot in Last Jedi here gave the opening for it but it didn't happen. They were also telling each other that they saw the other changing sides.

If nothing else, these new Star Wars entries go out of their way to take reactionary measures against the sins of their fore-films. The Force Awakens is a repudiation of the prequels, a regression to the mean. The Last Jedi is a repudiation of The Force Awakens' debt to the original trilogy, or rather, the widespread reaction that it was too similar to A New Hope.

I am certain beyond all else that JJ Abrams will come back around to address Rey's origin. Not because it's right for the story, but because it's become this monolithic talking point.

When I first came out of Force Awakens, I thought it was the worst Star Wars film because my thought process was while the prequels are bad at least they were original and not copy and pasting from a previous film. As time has gone on and I've watched it more times I can appreciate it more but I still don't love it and wish it wasn't as safe as it was. After seeing this movie, I think I'm back to not liking the Force Awakens (though I can't make an argument they are worse then Menace & Clones) but it's because I've kind of had enough of the JJ Abrams mystery box.

So for The Last Jedi Rian Johnson could have done one of two things: attempt to try to find the most profound answers to the questions he could think of or answer the questions as simply and as unceremoniously as possible so the story can move on from it. The second option is what Johnson did and I personally think this is the right call because more often then not the answers are not as good as the questions. If you think of the Sequel Trilogy like Justice League Snyder/Abrams had this grand design that went over several different movies and then he didn't get to finish it and then Whedon/Johnson got a look at things and said this is a mess lets make this a lot simpler. I have to imagine based on how he resolves everything in The Last Jedi if Johnson was doing 9 it would be a much more straight forward movie. So for me the idea of a 150 minute episode 8 that is basically about undermining Force Awakens, I'm personally in favor of. But at the same time I could see if you liked Force Awakens, how The Last Jedi resolves things would be very disappointing. I just hope that the people who don't like The Last Jedi win out and I hope JJ Abrams' Episode 9 isn't about retconning the hell out of everything Episode 8 did.

There were a few things that definitely bothered me and the casino part was kind of boring. I also don't like Ren's arc. But it was better than I expected. I was actually genuinely thrilled at a few points, which I haven't been for a long time watching Star Wars. The cinematography was great. It made me aware that I need to get a giant television and sound system at some point. If I had to score it, right now I'm thinking 7/10.

That sounds like a thing JJ would do *barf*

A weird thing happened to me as the music came in and the opening scrawl desperately tried to explain how The New Order had an upperhand for reasons that weren't just "Shut up, we're doing the second one now." I didn't feel excited for Star Wars. This feeling dogged me for the whole movie as more and more stuff happens, and the stakes are supposed to keep rising, but I just didn't get a tiddly-fuck about what was happening. Also the plot of this movie goes basically nowhere and all the characters end up in basically the same place as they start.

The only prediction I got right was that Ren and Rey would team up and fight the Knights of Ren. But I thought that would happen in Episode IX. It was a nice fight.

This is just wrong across the board. It's what I've seen in this thread over and over again. People saying they disliked the movie and then completely misrepresenting it to justify their opinion. Every single character in the movie has an arc. Some of them are even multilayered and intersect with the themes and the meta narrative of the new Star Wars trilogy.

Again

As for the twists: what about Kylo kills Snoke and then turns? That was pretty good. Followed up by the ''nobody'' scene it's a fantastic combination of twists that might not be equal to one of the most iconic movie twist of all time but were nonetheless impactful and resonant.

I watched it, and it was pretty dumb, reminded me more of a Guardians of Galaxy film.

@ezekiel: Those weren't the Knights, those were just Snoke's Praetorian guards.

i need to see this thing again- but i'll wait till home release. mostly because the longer i sit with it, the more inconsequential it feels in my mind. and i'm not some lore-zealot that feels letdown or anything- i just don't have the slightest clue how they build to a interesting climax and resolution.

kylo and rey will fight again. kylo will be 'saved,' or die (or both). rey probably stays more or less the same (alignment/motivations-wise). finn and what's-her-face make out.

aaand SCENE?

i guess i was hoping for some deeper character work- and i really feel as though i didn't get that with this one.

I was afraid of what I was going to see coming into this thread. Turns out, rightfully so. Good God, some of you people.... the reactions to this movie are hilarious and fascinating to me.

I'm not gonna say it was perfect or amazing. I think it had pacing issues since the first half is very slow, and the movie feels curiously small-scale with how it barely explores most of its characters. I also wasn't a fan of every major story beat. But DAMN IT if I didn't have a good time. There are enough individual moments that stand out to me to make this movie worth it. And at the very least, I came away being very intrigued with where the next one will go, because after what happens in TLJ, it's very hard to say for certain. Anyways, good movie.

This was largely my takeaway. The reaction has been a little weird to see, considering I think that the movie ranges from fine to good on the whole, and I'm happy with the chances it took. The Finn/Rose sidequest is largely my biggest critique because I feel like it was disjointed to begin with, and then kind of retroactively rendered as bloated and an excuse for something for the characters to do considering it all could have been prevented if character's didn't seemingly decide to teach Poe a kind of bad and poorly timed lesson in leadership.

I left happy and very curious about where things will go. It was fun, and I thought that the end was really entertaining.