[gevatter Lars]

I just saw the movie and it felt like picework or a checklist of "things to show" with lots of interesting stuff lost because it wasn't shown or explained. Like there was stuff in for two or three movies as if lots of people had written their idea/vision and then they took a bit of everthing and didn't smoothed out the parts that should connect.

While "The last Jedi" had parts that didn't make sense storywise I was emotional invested. Something that didn't happend here for some reason. I think it might have been to do with the paceing of the movie. They constantly bombarded you with either new stuff/characters/places or there was some action going on. Even the jokes placement, something JJ normaly does right...nothing and it wasn't just me. There was a joke and nobody laughed.
Speaking of things JJ normaly does well is nice scenes with interesting camera angles. This movie....nope. Nothing that wowed me.

I also see the movie as a missed opportunity. TLJ tried to cut off old stuff so that a new director could have done something new but no they just got back to the old formular.
Like with the Jedi and Sith where Kylo wanted to sever himself from the past and Ray was kinda in the middle with a bit of Jedi teachings but emotionaly a bit more on the Sith side of the force. Luke talking about the Jedi have to end. That was the perfect oportunity to either revive the Je'di (the predesesors to the Jedi) or create a complete new order of force users.

There was also stuff that seamed unfinished/half done? Like the space battle. They build up to the fleets arrival and then they don't realy do something with it? That just feels so....unsetisfying.
Speaking of the ships. Superlasers on just upscales SD1s ? Beside that beeing a lazy way of doing things (why no new design) was it realy neccessary to introduce another superweapon? Was a giant fleet not enough of a threat on its own? I mean when Starkiller base took out the planets along with the orbiting fleets and only left such a skeleton force of the New Republic that the First Order alone was able to overthrow them then surely such a large Sith fleet of double the size standart StarDestroyers would be enough to force the rest of the galaxy into surrendering.

Speaking of the New Republic forces. There surely was something left of it. IIRC there was a mentioning in some of the novels/comics that there was still someone. Why didn't they got into contact with the Resistance? Why where they not the first ones to respond when the Resistance asked for reinforcements?
Sure the giant fleet of random ships looked cool but I think they should have been the third wave to arrive. First the Resistance, trying their strike on the com towers, then they would be reinforced by the New Republics forces for more coordinated strikes but leaking the firepower to shoot down all the Sith StarDestroyers who wouid throw back the New Republic and Resistance forces and then you could bring down the rest of the galaxy on the Sith fleet in a show of the force of a united Galaxy.
Hell maybe you could have even brought into the mix an unlikely ally like the ex-Imperial Warlords that should exist and now fear that a Sith empire would threaten the "balance" they had with the New Republic. **** let them be commanded by Thrawn for all I care, that would have been way better.

Also speaking of another thing that movie didn't need...Palpatin. Why not focus on the conflict between Ray and Kylo? Resistance / New Republic and First Order.

Overall I was quite dissapointed with the movie but luckly there was the finaly of the Mandalorian the same day and that was much better. I realy like the series and the way it explores some new parts of Star Wars and gives some more details to the Mandalorians and some other species and places and that not everything is centered around the Jedi/Sith.
Even going so far that to some people the force users are just myth and legends. Giveing you a sense of how big the galaxy must be that even such powerfull people that influanced the history and shape of the galaxy are just lost to the general public.

[Scourge of Ages]

I also see the movie as a missed opportunity.
[...]
There was also stuff that seamed unfinished/half done?

I think this sums up this movie and the whole new trilogy as a whole.

[Mongoose]

I haven't seen this, but right from TFA the "Resistance" makes no sense. Why does there need to be a separate resistance movement from the New Republic? Shouldn't the latter be far larger? It made perfect sense in ANH to have an established autocratic Empire opposed by a ragtag bunch of Rebels, but Abrams tried to re-use that same dynamic in a way that didn't make any sense.

[Trivial Psychic]

As I understand it, the New Republic wasn't taking the First Order seriously as a threat, and perhaps felt that getting in their business could be seen as denying their freedom, something the New Republic was built on.  Leia understood the dilemma but still felt that something needed to be done, so she formed what amounts to militia or terrorist group, specifically to fight the First Order.  She still had connections with people in the New Republic Navy, which is how they managed to get their hands ships & fighters, and occasionally get recruits.

One thing that many people expected was that elements of the New Republic Navy would join up with the Resistance and fill their ranks somewhat, as not all of them would likely have been taken out when Hosnian Prime and the rest of the planets hit in TFA were destroyed.  On the other hand, the First Order likely had spies keeping tabs on elements of the New Republic Navy that weren't in the home system, and when their command and support system was taken out, they would have launched calculated ambushes on these elements to eliminate them.  The resistance being secret and separate from the New Republic Navy, meant that their fleet asset locations (the few they had) were unknown to the First Order and thus not hit.

[theperfectdrugsk]

All that may be true... But not a single but of it was established, mentioned, or even hinted at within the movies. If you have to rely on that much exposition (and is all that stuff about the New Republic just what you think, or actually stuff that Disney has put out?) outside of the movie to make the background of the movie make any sense, then I'm sorry... That's just ****ty writing.

[Det. Bullock]

All that may be true... But not a single but of it was established, mentioned, or even hinted at within the movies. If you have to rely on that much exposition (and is all that stuff about the New Republic just what you think, or actually stuff that Disney has put out?) outside of the movie to make the background of the movie make any sense, then I'm sorry... That's just ****ty writing.

But ye see, that stuff was in the prequels! And we can't have any of that!

[gevatter Lars]

As I understand it, the New Republic wasn't taking the First Order seriously as a threat

I am not certain how much time passed by between the fall of the Empire and the rise of the First Order but IIRC it wasn't that much time. So who would have thought that a complete new faction could actualy build a new fleet of superior ships AND rebuild an entrie planet into a giant space gun.
If this would have been 50 years later, okay but building such a big fleet and even bigger Deathstar, let alone train all those soldiers, develop the tech needed, build shipyards, etc. etc. When someone said the Empire did that, okay. The Empire could fall back on everything the old Republic build up for the clonewars and had vast amounts of resources but the First Order, somewhere in the unknown regions that are next to not developed and in that short amount of time.
Yah I would also properly not taken the First Order seriouse because its just so unbeliveable...what was also my biggest problem with the first movie. I like the movie because action, jokes, nostalgia and paceing where pretty spot on and made me forget bout logic while watching but this time....
Its allways a bad sign for me if I start analysing a movie while watching it the first time.

One thing that many people expected was that elements of the New Republic Navy would join up with the Resistance and fill their ranks somewhat, as not all of them would likely have been taken out when Hosnian Prime and the rest of the planets hit in TFA were destroyed.  On the other hand, the First Order likely had spies keeping tabs on elements of the New Republic Navy that weren't in the home system, and when their command and support system was taken out, they would have launched calculated ambushes on these elements to eliminate them.  The resistance being secret and separate from the New Republic Navy, meant that their fleet asset locations (the few they had) were unknown to the First Order and thus not hit.

I agree that its to be aspected that the First Order made some strikes against the remaining New Republic forces after the destruction of the Planets BUT I doubt that they could have taken out all of the Navy, someone allways will slip through and for those who remained there wouldn't be any reason not to join the Resistance. I mean one of the last "Generals" and hero of the New Republic (Lea) was in charge so when you just lost your command structure...I think that would be the next best thing I would be looking for. A save port to fly and organise at.


On a more realworld note...why did Disney even thought it would be a good idea to give the 3 movies to 3 different directors to beginn with? That basicly asked for problems, like to many cooks for one dish (or however that saying goes in english).
Have one person in charge with others helping out and create a consistante vision. Also have the story done before you start shooting for the entire thing.

Oh well. Sadly, unlike games, movies can't be fixed by modding ^_^

[Det. Bullock]

It's pretty much certain that the rush of Star Wars movies was mostly Iger's doing with KK opposing it.
If anything it's a bit of a miracle that the only one that came close to be a bad movie was the last.

[theperfectdrugsk]

Hah, I think you and I have different definitions of what a bad movie is. TLJ was pretty bad. I can give it points for ambition maybe, but ambition poorly directed and horribly executed doesn't accomplish much. TFA was...fine. I found it somewhat boring, spent most of the movie waiting to care about any of the new characters...but it wasn't awful by any means.

[Det. Bullock]

Hah, I think you and I have different definitions of what a bad movie is. TLJ was pretty bad. I can give it points for ambition maybe, but ambition poorly directed and horribly executed doesn't accomplish much. TFA was...fine. I found it somewhat boring, spent most of the movie waiting to care about any of the new characters...but it wasn't awful by any means.

TLJ was the best of the bunch, greatly directed and executed.
TFA was fine as were the others to various degrees, though epIX is dangerously close to being bad.

[gevatter Lars]

People definitly have different tastes. To me they where:

Ep 7 = Good entertainment but storywise quite boring as it felt like Ep 4. Still kinda liked it.
Ep 8 = Nice shots, stupid sidequest, had to potential to become very importend by cutting old ties and freeing up the characters from just repeating EP 5+6. Feelt somewhat emotionaly bound.
Ep 9 = To rushed in paceing, didn't take up the chance to make something new, feelt like set pieces not fitting quite well together. Overall didn't liked it because I felt like it was going nowhere. Would prefere to watch 7+8 again over 9.

PS: Does anyone else has the feeling that the Ep 1-3 did something that was missing in 7-9? Where is the world building? Also characters feel so unmotivated, espacialy in 9. Going back and forth and be nowhere in the end.
**** I liked 3PO nearly the most. Po nearly had character development but then they throw that smuggler thing in for no reason as it dosn't add anything to the character and when he was told he has to become general his moment of realisation feelt so....flat? Like "Yes that is logical that he realises what that means" but there was no weight to it.
Frankly I liked Kylo the most with his constant struggle and I think the actor actualy did a greate job in playing him and I wouldn't dropped a tear if Ray would have died and he survived. I mean what an awesome journey would that have been? Kinda like Revan going from beeing a Jedi Padawan to falling to the dark side and then working his way back, redeeming himself.

[Black Wolf]

You can't appease Star Wars fans, might as well go with what worked best with the public that actually spends money and it seems it's turning out that TLJ is what that audience wants.

That's... I was going to say optimistic, but in actual fact, it's just incorrect. There's no particular evidence that the general moviegoing public enjoyed The Last Jedi more than other Star Wars movie, and plenty that it didn't.

Frankly, at this point, I think pandering to the vocal minority that liked The Last Jedi would be the worst thing Star Wars could do right now. Let the past die, right? Get rid of Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy, move on to John Favreau, Dave Filoni and Deborah Chow. We can put this whole sorry mess behind us as a fandom and maybe  get back to good movies.

[Det. Bullock]

You can't appease Star Wars fans, might as well go with what worked best with the public that actually spends money and it seems it's turning out that TLJ is what that audience wants.

That's... I was going to say optimistic, but in actual fact, it's just incorrect. There's no particular evidence that the general moviegoing public enjoyed The Last Jedi more than other Star Wars movie, and plenty that it didn't.

Frankly, at this point, I think pandering to the vocal minority that liked The Last Jedi would be the worst thing Star Wars could do right now. Let the past die, right? Get rid of Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy, move on to John Favreau, Dave Filoni and Deborah Chow. We can put this whole sorry mess behind us as a fandom and maybe  get back to good movies.

The very vocal ones seem to be the ones that disliked it, I always find them around social media ranting like someone killed their firstborn child or something which reminds me a lot of how Clone Wars by Filoni himself was first received.
The thing is a lot of what makes The Mandalorian more acceptable is that is a relatively small sidestory, if Filoni dared do something like the Mortis arc on a major movie people would want his head on a pike.

[Grizzly]

You can't appease Star Wars fans, might as well go with what worked best with the public that actually spends money and it seems it's turning out that TLJ is what that audience wants.

That's... I was going to say optimistic, but in actual fact, it's just incorrect. There's no particular evidence that the general moviegoing public enjoyed The Last Jedi more than other Star Wars movie, and plenty that it didn't.

Star Wars: The Last Jedi grossed $620.2 million in the United States and Canada, and $712.6 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $1.333 billion.[4] It had a worldwide opening of $450.8 million, the seventh-biggest of all time, including $40.6 million that was attributed to IMAX screenings, the second biggest for IMAX.[107][108] It was estimated that the film would need to gross $800 million worldwide to break even;[109] Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit of the film to be $417.5 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues, making it the most profitable release of 2017.[2]

On December 31, 2017, its 17th day of release, it passed the $1 billion threshold, becoming the fourth film of 2017, the fifteenth Disney film, the fourth Star Wars film and the thirty-second film overall to pass the mark.[110][111] The film was the highest-grossing film of 2017, the second highest-grossing film in the series (behind The Force Awakens), the fourth highest-grossing film released by Walt Disney Studios, the sixth highest-grossing film in North America, and the ninth-highest-grossing film of all time.[112][113][114][115]

Audience reception measured by scientific polling methods was highly positive.[154][155][156] Audiences randomly polled by CinemaScore on opening day gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale.[119][155] Surveys from SurveyMonkey and comScore's PostTrak found that 89% of audience members graded the film positively, including a rare five-star rating.[117][157][158]

There is evidence that people liked The Last Jedi. TROS's cinemascore is lower then the score of The Last Jedi. CinemaScore gives that one a B+.
And Cinemascore talks directly to people coming out of a film, so it's far harder to game then, say, an online service where anyone can sign up to.

Let the past die, right?

aaaa there's a reason the villian says that

[MP-Ryan]

Honestly, had 7 and 8 been written to set up what transpired in 9, 9 would have been among the best of the Star Wars films.  Instead, we're left with a bit of a mess that really stands apart from its immediate predecessors.

I actually enjoyed quite a lot of 9 (and 8 as well), but the problem that these new releases suffer from is an utter lack of story arc continuity.  And frankly I blame ****ing Abrams for that - the mystery box bull**** in 7 set the followups up to fail.  Instead of laying meaningful foreshadowing and plot threads, we got his typical bull****, and when Johnson tried to correct it (albeit by also adding a bunch of extra crap no one needed nor wanted) we got fanboi rage, followed by Abrams again who actually did a reasonably serviceable job.

8/9 are the closest the Star Wars films have been to the much more interesting portrayal of the Force present in the KOTOR series and are all the better for it; the problem is that those concepts have largely been left unexplored in any satisfying way.

[Grizzly]

So people are now shouting to release the "JJ cut" and

oh no

oooh noooo

[Scourge of Ages]

So people are now shouting to release the "JJ cut" and

I thought the main problem was that this WAS the JJ cut?

[BlueFlames]

How does the ninth entry in the main series need to start with a solid hour of expository dialogue? 

Jesus Christ.  Show; don't tell.  You'd think a veteran writer-director would be able to get something that basic right, but apparently not.

Also, when a movie needs a seizure warning posted right upfront, that should be a red flag.  Even if you don't have photosensitive epilepsy, full-screen flashing like the early scenes with Palpatine is still ****ing obnoxious.

[Su-tehp]

How does the ninth entry in the main series need to start with a solid hour of expository dialogue? 

Jesus Christ.  Show; don't tell.  You'd think a veteran writer-director would be able to get something that basic right, but apparently not.

Yeah, this is why I think JJ Abrams is highly overrated as a storyteller. I haven't seen much of his stuff, but all of his work that I have seen (Star Trek 2009, TFA and now TRoS) didn't impress me. JFC, I was livid for years after seeing Star Trek 2009 because of the whole "black holes do not work as alternate-universe gates" thing, but I eventually forgave Abrams for that when I heard Neil deGrasse Tyson say in Cosmos that black holes theoretically can be used to travel to other universes. The rest of ST 2009 didn't really wow me; I thought it was ok, but not great. So yeah, Abrams didn't impress me here.

When I saw TFA, I walked out of the theater disappointed because it seemed too similar to ANH without really going anywhere new. (There were early hints back then that JJ Abrams really didn't understand how the Star Wars universe worked. Han Solo's hyperspace skip to Starkiller Base to get past its shields would have required timing the lightspeed exit to less than a friggin picosecond or something, but I could forgive it because, well, it's friggin' Han Solo, (one of) the best pilot(s) in the galaxy.) Great, so JJ Abrams basically told ANH with a bigger budget and differently named characters. Again, not impressed with Abrams' storytelling skills.

And now comes TRoS. JFC, where to begin? Poe hyperspace skipping from planet to planet at the very beginning of the movie when it was already established in TFA that the odds of doing that successfully even once is infinitesimally low? And the FO TIE Fighters being able to follow Poe when it was already established that the tech to track through hyperspace can only fit on a Star Destroyer? That whole scene was completely unnecessary, not to mention totally contradictory to how hyperspace travel is supposed to work. That scene right there told me that JJ Abrams was just completely clueless about the verisimilitude of Star Wars.

And Hux getting killed off just a third of the way into the film? Well, great, now all of the original villains of the Sequel Trilogy (save for Kylo Ren) are dead and they didn't get any real development or evolution as characters. (Of course, it didn't help that the Big Bad and one of his Dragons (Snoke and Phasma, respectively) get killed halfway through the trilogy, but that's more a gripe about TLJ than TRoS.) I was kinda hoping that Hux would break out of his Butt Monkey status in TRoS, but no, after doing the one thing (becoming a spy for the Resistance to get revenge on Kylo Ren) that might have made him an interesting character, he gets unceremoniously killed off at the end of the first act. 

Great, so now all of the ST villains, except for Kylo Ren, are dead. What happens next? Well, seeing as how TFA was JJ Abrams' rehash of ANH, what can we expect of the great Abrams' never-equalled (but often surpassed) storytelling skills? Why nothing less than a rehash of Return of the Jedi, of course! One reason why Adam Driver took the role of Kylo Ren was because he was assured that Ren's journey would be the opposite of Vader's. Instead, with TRoS, Ren winds up getting redeemed just as his grandfather did. I even remember mentioning in the Rancor Pit forum about a year or so ago that I considered Kylo Ren irredeemable after he ordered the execution of all the civilians at the Jakku village and especially after he murdered his own father, so the last thing I would want to see would be Kylo Ren getting redeemed. Sure enough, that's what happened.

I won't even get to all the plot holes in TRoS, like how did Ben Solo get to Exogar in a TIE fighter without a hyperdrive? If you want more on that, go here. All that perfectly encapsulates just how Abrams doesn't understand the aforementioned verisimilitude of Star Wars.

[Det. Bullock]

The black hole thing and the bad science in itself weren't what completely turned me off from Star Trek 2009, it was the sheer contrivance of the plot and the stupidity of having a cadet promoted to Captain. That was the kind of thing that happened when promotions happened because of social status, connections and recomendations.