I don't like it.

Born in 79, I grow up in a village in a 3rd world country - so I did't catch the Star Wars craze. Even though I'm a fan of computer graphics, I tend to move towards Tron, etc.

When the prequel came out, I didn't understand the craze either. Although I do respect the fan, just like fan of other movies/mini-series. The only prequel I watch at cinema (by then I was already an adult and moved to the city) is the one where a member of Fett family has his head cut off and his son/clone pick it up. As a subscriber to 3D World magazine (I bought it since #1 when it feature the 3d animation Dinosaur) for me the 3D was like other big budgeted movie, and the storyline so-so.

When TFA came out, I decided to give it a go, for the reason of Ford, as I like a lot of his film (when I was a teen, I like his quotes from the Patriot Games). By then, of course, the original SW has been shown on TV/cable numerous times already. Even at that time I was sketchy about the movie, because I think the trailer was bad, and they added Ford 'we're home' at the end of it, basically saying 'give us money because nostalgia!!!'. And yes, as other mentioned about 'yet another death start and yet another trench run' so for me it was meh. Worse than the originals. I didn't went for the Rogue One - plan to rent the DVD. But due to ITunes, netflix, iflix, online rental by cable channel Movie on Demand, the shop closed. After watching an online review, couldn't be bothered.

So came The Last Jedi. Even though I didn't catch the craze, I kinda like the original trilogy. And Luke character. I liked the fact Mark Hamill voiced a character in the Full Throttle. So I went to the movie having read reviews, including the one with spoilers. I can watch movie in that regard (with spoilers) and still respect the twist and turns.

When the movie start, that Huck/Poe scene was cringe-worthy. When Poe landed, Finn scene with water all over the place, I can sense that scene of such quality will keep on coming. And that scene of Jar Jar Binks toungue  get  electrocuted comes to mind.

The whole movie is cringe worthy. If it all was chase, why didn't the First Order (?) send all of their Tie Fighters? Anyway, just add what other online reviews here as I doesn't plan to write the same stuff.

This describe my feeling toward the movie.

Anyway, so long Luke Skywalker, may the force be with you.

Maybe for some people, Star Wars is about spaceship, light saber and aliens.

But in reality, at least for me, (and it seems that some others also thinks the same) that Star Wars is about Luke, Leia and Hans.

Anyway,  a funny tidbit (or maybe to see this  from different perspective, as I said, I didn't catch SW fever as a kid) : In my country, Jumanji beats The Last Jedi.

http://says.com/my/entertainment/jumanji-welcome-to-the-jungle-has-already-made-rm11-5-million-in-malaysia

Also, something that I realized later after reading above article, the reason I actually went to see TLJ because the ticked was priced at RM 10. I felt that was strange, usually it was RM 17. And when I want to buy Jumanji, it was RM 17. So it seems it didn't generate enough traction in my country even the ticket price was reduced.

It was interesting reading the comment.

regardless of what you think of this movie you cannot claim the critics are reviewing this fairly. Clearly, whether through side contracts for advertising/marketing deals or because critics don't want to be "that guy" or because they don't want to lose their premier passes - Disney have weight to throw around. Professional critics are just not that wedded to honesty, they would rather not make waves for their employer.

It is even more a slap in the face that the media is claiming that sexism is why many fans don't like it and there have been bots/trolling. This is demonstrability false (rotten tomatoes have stated it looks like normal review/voting behaviour) - how they managed to drum this up I don't know. Having watched countless youtube reviews there are clearly some big F-in problems with this movie (and no one is mentioning sex/race)  that most of professional critics have just glossed over. Captain phasma + casino while not the biggest problems with this movie should have been enough to bring the average down to 7-8ish. 

You would probably enjoy this movie if you don't care about internal consistency or believable characters.

1 last point: Stop saying things will be explained in the next movie. The 3rd movie hasn't been written or planned, it is being written and directed by someone else and there is no planned story arc - they are literally making it up as they go along. "It might be explained in the next movie" is bs. As of this moment no backstory for any of the new characters exists beyond what you have seen on the screen.

as requoted by the bbc.

Empire's Helen O'Hara explains: "There were many more characters in this instalment that weren't white men, and that has been a shift that some fans have found unconsciously upsetting or alienating. They've felt excluded by that.

"And some men have openly complained that there are too many girls running around the Star Wars universe, which I personally think is crazy."

http://www.bbc.com/news/entertainment-arts-42424445 

given that princes leia has been a hero to most of the star wars fans its a real stretch - journalists quoting journalists quoting a journalistthat read 1 fan say that they didn't like the female roles. How about some evidence (is mentioning ghostbusters evidence?)?

Critics are quick to mention the exit polls despite the questionable accuracy one would get from mildly tipsy / tired viewers trying to enjoy their evening. There is something wrong when the critics are the ones inventing conspiracy theories about the audience.

more of the same nonsense in here: https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/12/18/16791844/star-wars-last-jedi-backlash-controversy

52 minutes ago, deltaKshatriya said:

@RivieraKid: I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying I hadn't read those particular articles about sexism etc.

no problem, i wasn't directing it at anyone specifically. Just throwing out some sources.

10 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

It's been out on Bluray for a while man.

Good to know... gotta check my usual online store then. I only buy bluerays seldomly so I kinda miss the dates when they come out.

10 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

Just want to point out one thing on that: some people have been trolling that site. Not sure how much it swayed the score, but there are reports of people voting repeatedly.

Well...

Lets analyze this:

Sure, I have seen the usual anti-SJWs up in force against the Movie. With some going pretty far with their "reviews" (calling the died hair chick "Admiral Gender Studies" and such, which while amusing, is obviously going too far), and at least one of them actually admitting to having made a joke of the whole movie review afterwards.

(Kinda funny how some anti-SJWs start to become just as dogmatic as most SJWs at some point... where the latter see sexism and racism everywhere and the patriarchy and nazis behind everything, its the same with the anti-SJWs seeing feminism and far left collectivism everywhere, and the SJWs behind everything.

Funny when its much simpler to explain everything with mistreatment of the franchise by Disney, mediocre writers and directors not interested in star wars instead of some "SJW conspiracy")

So I am sure that Rotten Tomatos got somewhat played.

But: according to some sources its the same with other sites showing pretty bad audience values. So the trolls would have to tamper with multiple sites.

And then when you read the actual text reviews you see a lot of negative ones, and they all make consistent points, with quite a lot of words. Clearly not the work of trolls.

And while its true that you always will find more negative feedback than positive, when you go through the first few pages and hardly find a positive text review... well, then its more than just Trolls.

And then there is the fact the 54% (last time I checked) came from over 120k people (last time I checked).... unless someone REALLY played rotten tomatos (which I cannot rule out), that explains maybe 10% of the bad reviews. And it does not explain the many bad text reviews which I don't think a troll did...

So maybe the actual score, minus the anti-SJW trolls would be 65%... maybe more. Still a long way from a great movie for the average audience member, and still a long way from the clearly biased critics score.

Of course, this is also just speculation on my part. Let me just say I was more swayed by the many negative text reviews people left on rotten tomatos, and how bad the score still was when adding some points to make up for the bad actors always present on such sites

10 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

I mean, Episodes 1 and 2 were pretty bad, like hard to get worse than bad. Episode 1 had Jar Jar, and some pretty stupid stuff in it. Episode 2 had that cringe-tastic love story...afaik and IMO neither TFA nor TFJ have that. Episode 3 was alright IMO, since it was the conclusion and all the dumber plot threads were minimal.

On this we can agree. As said, I have no idea if I could watch those movies again.

But when you forget Jar Jar and Kid Anakin, the whole podrace nonsense (and luckily the brain has that tendency of only remembering the good), the actual story that happened in the movies, minus the gibberish (pod race, Anakin being a d*ck as a kid, JarJar being just a slap in the face in general, cute robot nonsense, Anakin being a d*ck as a youngster, hard to remember redshirt characters being shoved into the meatgrinder), is really gripping and good. A fascist empire forged by political intrigues and the incompetency of the republic, and the rise of Vader and the Emperor.

Now, that is mostly the first trilogy, and the original story notes of George that set that one up. If whoever has directed the abominations that where episode 1 and 2 (was it George?) had to come up with an original story at the time... I guess the movies would have even been worse. This way, I am still standing by my prior word: At least the background story was good. Something I cannot say from TFA. Maybe the full trilogy, taken together, will serve a good and meaningful story. Given we have seen 2/3, I doubt it.

10 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

IMO when it comes to all the negative backlash there's a couple of things I'd like to offer in return:

1): Star Wars has never ever had internal consistency for technology logic

2): Backstories haven't always been explained (Palpatine, for example, is an unknown in the original trilogy, and we don't know his origin until the prequels, and even then, we don't know much about where he's really from)

3): We've seen things like TFJ's supposed failings in all the films before

4):  there's still one more movie, as @Anri. Things that seem like loopholes now may actually be explained in the last film.

This is my opinion, and considering I don't think the originals are super special films, after rewatching them now, it's just that, an opinion

 

 

1) True. Still not an excuse to continue to make sh*t up as it fits the story, instead of fitting the story to a consistent tech. But agreed, the original trilogy started that nonsense.

2) The Backstory of the Emperor wasn't important in the originals. The movies, and the character were/was set up that you knew everything you needed to know... he was evil, and corrupted to the core.

For me, the problem is not that a lot of story threads are kept hanging, or a lot of characters and things are badly introduced in the movies. The problem is that its often things that actually would matter that are just handwaved away (only speaking for TFA here).

If you have a sinister, darkrobed, sickly and evil locking space wizard talking in an evil voice to his underlings, you kinda get the drift. More story would be interesting, but not mandatory at that point. When you have a storm trooper killing civilians left and right that turns against the empire just because of seeing his friend die, without any kind of mental conflict... that is just bad character development. Maybe the movie skipped the part where Finn would fight with his own concience... maybe the movie skips Finns backstory which might explain it (which might be delivered in the third movie, who knows)... but at that point, in that movie, its simply bad writing to jump over such inconsistencies... because its not clear from the context.

3) True. Still doesn't make these failings less of an annoyance to fans. If I may theorize, what would be simply a general "MEEEH" by fans of the classic Marvel Comics in a Marvel Movie causes a huge uproar in Star Wars because the fans are just that little bit more crazy about the universe.

4) Granted, maybe the third installment will blow us all away. Maybe, seen back to back, TFA is no longer such a sh*tshow, and TLJ not such a divisive expierience thanks to the information the third movie delivers us. That would still show how much they ****ed up the first two movies... if I need another movie or background books to actually enjoy a movie, then the story is badly written and presented.

Now, the thing that makes me a little bit sceptical about the third movie being better is the thing that made the first movie suck in my eyes, and the second in the eyes of many others:

Obviously they do the movies movie by movie. According to some information on the web, they write the movies as they go along. Not only are the original scripts by George not used, but nobody took the time to sit down and actually write at least the skeleton of a trilogy before starting with the first movie.

Add to that that with every movie we get a new director, and these are big names directors, thus most probably selected for their "brand name" by Disney and not because they were the best for the job...

Thanks to all of this, the third movie is a total wildcard. Disney could completly throw the steer around and move into a completly different direction (which I would welcome)... but I doubt that is going to happen. TFA made them good money, even if the Movie sucked. TLJ will make them good Money, even if the Movie will not be remembered as fondly as the original trilogy.

They will produce another Star Wars lookalike that tries to be different without swaying to much from the old recipes set up by the original trilogy. Trying to satisfy everyone yet pleasing no-one completly.

No, I think the spinoffs are the biggest hopes I have for getting good, different Star Wars movies that are not rehashing the galactic conflict versus space nazis yet again, instead of showing us something new in the universe we all love.

7 hours ago, deltaKshatriya said:

There is one more movie. Even if they are making this up as they go, we can't really judge a trilogy until we've seen all 3 films. I get it that people are really disappointed with this movie, and that's fine, since it's an opinion, but that's the only reason I mention that there's one more movie is because one can't really judge a trilogy without all of the films. 

Well, I would love to be proven wrong. I would have said the same thing with only TFA behind us. I think rescuing a trilogy with just one movie left that pleases MOST fans, its going to be hard to achieve.

Anyway, I guess one day I will have to watch the Movie when its running on TV. I will reserve my personal final judgement on TLJ for that day.