But for the sake of not wasting anyone's time, I'm just going to end it here. I'm not going to convince you, no matter how well-reasoned any arguments I might bring up are, but I would really like to implore you to listen to better critics than gaming personalities and alt-right weirdos (Armoured Skeptic? Really? Who's next, Davis Aurini?).
So people on a gaming forum shouldn't respect gaming personalities' views on a movie, and a communist is on a high horse telling us we can't respect people's opinions on a movie because of their political views. All this when Spoon said those views are his own, and is merely using those people as a vehicle to transmit his views to you. Views which you asked him for.
Being a good games critic and being a good movie critic are related, but slightly different skillsets. The only guys from Spoon's list who know how to do film criticism are the RedLetterMedia people, and even they aren't that good at it, especially when it comes to Star Wars.
AngryJoe, who has made his reputation and brand based on being an
angry dude who shouts at games, is someone I cannot take seriously: He does have the occasional good point, but his entire approach to criticism is based on hyperbole and anger. When it comes to Star Wars, he comes at it from the perspective of someone who likely still mourns the death of the SWEU; He's someone who isn't going to be on board with something he would likely see as a betrayal of the old Star Wars films. TLJ is a thorough deconstruction of the SW mythos (just like TFA was a thorough
reconstruction of it), and that's something that people who are die-hard fans of the old movies simply aren't going to be able to accept without significant mental dissonance.
Armoured Skeptic, lastly, is someone who has made his "name" based on his takedowns of creationism, and like a lot of fellow skeptics, has recently transitioned to screaming at "The Left" and feminism; He is not "alt-right", no, but he is a gateway drug into that sphere. Now, a person like that is going to have ~opinions~ about a film that's very much based on socialist, feminist and deconstructionist thought as TLJ is, but those opinions are going to be bad.
Secondly, I asked Spoon for
his views. In response, he posted links to over
4 hours of video content which he agrees with. I'm very sorry, but I really do not have the patience to a) sit through all of that, b) analyze these videos for points where the people making them misunderstood the films or are analyzing them badly and c) type up a response that explains all of this to Spoon. I am not asking you to sit through x hours of content made by people who have similar opinions to me, I am
giving you my opinions directly and hope that you can read and then contemplate them. What Spoon did here (intentionally or not) is a rhetorical technique called the "
Gish Gallop", a technique that the videos he's linking to also employ. I refuse to engage with that, because it's ultimately fruitless: I could refute every single point, and I'd still not be any closer to convincing anyone of my views because I spent ages in refutation instead of building my own arguments.
There is better film criticism out there, better perspectives than endless nitpicking (which is something that the big critic explosion from the TGWTG days promoted as a valid form and which CinemaSins currently is the flagbearer of). People like Lindsay Ellis, Mikey Neumann or Dan Olson can show you how it's done right.
