I saw the new Star Wars... and I am so relieved!  Being Star Wars and everything, and with her character getting what I thought was a great start, I had been very concerned that Rey was going to be cooler than my Cindy "Fallen Angel" McAllen.  It was as if I could hear a horse track announcer in the background saying "...and it's Fallen Angel by 20 lengths!!!"

Thank you JJ Abrahms!!!

I really enjoyed it, despite making the questionable decision to see it in a 4DX cinema. The 4DX track was simply terrible, including punching you in the kidneys every time someone took a tumble.

Admiral Holdo catapulted to be perhaps my favourite character in the entire cannon. She's a great analogue to Leia in the early films, takes no shit from the junior officer mansplaining tactics to her, shoots first when she has an opportunity to recapture her ship, and does whatever she has to do to ensure victory...

I wish they'd be a little more holistic in writing the technologies they unleash in these films. That little hyperspace-weaponisation trick invalidates everything we thought we knew about how warfare works in Star Wars - the bad guys sure wasted a lot of cash building Deathstars and Starkiller base if that trick works reliably.

5 hours ago, Kavik Kang said:

I saw the new Star Wars... and I am so relieved!  Being Star Wars and everything, and with her character getting what I thought was a great start, I had been very concerned that Rey was going to be cooler than my Cindy "Fallen Angel" McAllen.  It was as if I could hear a horse track announcer in the background saying "...and it's Fallen Angel by 20 lengths!!!"

 

If there was a horse track announcer saying that it's only because Cindy McClichedName is a horse and everyone else was watching Star Wars.

In space.

In the future.

Where no-one still knows or cares about Fallen NameThatWouldSoundCoolToA12YearOld.

4 hours ago, swiftcoder said:

I wish they'd be a little more holistic in writing the technologies they unleash in these films. That little hyperspace-weaponisation trick invalidates everything we thought we knew about how warfare works in Star Wars - the bad guys sure wasted a lot of cash building Deathstars and Starkiller base if that trick works reliably.

 

Yep, it's totally against all the rules of how hyperspace works, etc, but it gets a pass by virtue of how unbelievably cool it was. Probably the best moment in the entire movie and without doubt, THE single most visually stunning moment in the entire series.

Besides, this isn't Star Trek. Star Wars has never really been consistent in its technology. Its approach to AI is all over the place for a start. 

6 hours ago, ChaosEngine said:

Besides, this isn't Star Trek. Star Wars has never really been consistent in its technology. Its approach to AI is all over the place for a start. 

Star Trek isn't exactly consistent, either.  Every time a Romulan ship is seen it's as if it is the first time they have ever seen a cloaking device, and every time they discover a whole new way to track cloaked ships.  The cloaking device is, apparently, practically useless.  The ships are said to fight at warp speed, many times the speed of light, and yet the bridge crew functions like a WWII ship.  By the time the captain says the "F" in the word fire, the target is a million miles behind them.  I won't even get started on transporters, one of the most powerful weapons ever conceived and yet they never use them that way.  You can go on and on about all the things in Star Trek that don't make any sense.

EDIT: OK, just one of an almost infinite ways of using a transporter;-)  If I was the captain of the Enterprise I would move all the photon torpedoes too the transporter rooms.  With their flawless pin-point accuracy of being able to place people with their feet on the floor, shooting them out of the launch tubes would pretty stupid thing to do.  They are also facing independent, you can transport one against any shield you want.  Once a shield is down you just start putting them inside of the ship, which makes the Borg seem pretty harmless considering they don't seem to care if hostile species transport things onto their ships.  Star Trek isn't nearly as consistent as most people like to think it is, and from my avatar you can see that I am a fan and not trying to tear it down.

On 12/18/2017 at 9:51 AM, JulieMaru-chan said:

I thought it was a cash-grabbing pile of garbage. The plot didn't make any sense in context with The Force Awakens, and not only the whole thing, but multiple scenes seemed to be predicated on copying the OT. I swear there was even a point where they did shot-for-shot recreations of Yoda scenes from The Empire Strikes Back.

At the start, I was thoroughly confused at the premise. Since when was the First Order winning? Since when was the new Republic dissolved? Did the entirety of the Republic live on those few planets that the Star Killer destroyed? It doesn't make any sense. Now all of a sudden the First Order has inexplicably, after having a major planet-sized base destroyed, you're telling me they're ruling the galaxy? The only reason I can think of for this circumstance is that the writers wanted to copy The Empire Strikes Back, which kind of had the same sort of thing, but the difference is that the Empire was a well-established official governing body, ruling over the galaxy for decades. In The Force Awakens, that would be the new Republic; the First Order was just a terrorist group. And in the last movie, this terrorist group lost. Sure, they blew up a planetary system, but they lost a massive stronghold. What follows should be mass civil unrest or possibly a civil war because of the carnage, not a sudden regime change.

Most of the movie was centered around that chase scene where the rebels are running out of fuel. All the leaders die; fair enough. What doesn't make sense, though, is what the new leader does. It's made clear later on that she has a solid plan. Why doesn't she tell anyone? Why does it have to be a secret? If she had just opened her mouth and told that guy what the plan was, he and the other guy wouldn't have gone off and ruined the whole thing.

The movie's recurring theme is challenging what good and evil are... and yet, it just randomly drops this at some point in the movie, returning to the simple good and evil story of the original trilogy. What was the point of that?

And most importantly, the only good characters are Luke and Leia. Everyone else is poorly developed and not very relatable.

I'll give it one thing: it's better than The Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones. It's not any better than Revenge of the Sith, though.

Man, you hate everything! Is there nothing that you don't hate?

I saw it.  Yes, I watched the last jedi...

...IN GLORIOUS 4DX!  AND IT WAS AWESOME!!!

Ahem.  Last Jedi made the effort to be its own film this time, and the result is something like a melding of Phantom Menace( A rather pointless road trip ) and LOTR: The Two Towers( the last remaining pocket of resistance is about to be exterminated when cornered into a dead-end ).   The latter is the saving grace of the film.

There are a lot of "disappointments" in this one, but I have a strong feeling they are meant to be resolved in Episode 9.  Rey was far too powerful in Force Awakens to be just "nobody",  and Snoke is too god-like to not have noticed Rey's lightsaber...

It was nice to have Luke back,  and Mark has a lot of fun with the role.  Carrie Fisher put in a much better performance this time too.  In Force Awakens, she obviously had taken the pay-check and just played along.  Here, she is actually invested in her role.

The newcomers were quite welcome too!   Rose and Admiral Holdo are quite fun and interesting, respectively.  "DJ"...shades of Hondo from Clone Wars and Rebels, and I look forward to more of him in Episode 9.

Rey and Kylo are force-texting each other, and Finn is still having issues with his boot-camp bully, Captain Phasma. Quite frankly, they deserve their own spin-off movie, as I was more interested in their showdown than the actual Jedi stuff!  As for Snoke he is well performed, but its hard to care about a character we know nothing about besides hes super-dupa-mega-powerful in the force.  My hat off, once again to Andy serkis and the team bringing him to life...but...hes just "supreme leader" to us the audience,  just because he is.

Overall, the Last Jedi is the longest episode so far and feels like a Peter Jackon take on the Star Wars saga.   Unlike Force Awakens, I actually liked it and came away looking forward to the home video release in May.  Not a patch on Empire, Sith or Rogue One, but where its own trilogy is concerned, its an improvement over the previous "episode".  So yes, thumbs up!

Oh! And you will never look at your ironing in the same way again! 

**Moving Star Trek related comments to a more general thread to avoid temptation of derailing.

Man, you hate everything! Is there nothing that you don't hate?

Quite a bold statement given that your sample size is 2, and I don't hate either of them.

Luckless, Kavik, this isn't the place to discuss Star Trek - start a new topic if you want to continue that line of discussion.