Movies: What did You Watch Last Night?

[chas]

Justice League: A (No spoilers)

Its good to be retired. Went to a 10 AM matinee today and saw the film with only about 25 others in the theater. I had passed on SVB, but enjoyed WW. I liked this one very much. All of the characters are broken but groping toward the light--and those are the heroes!

I hadn't expected much; thought I'd be lucky to get a B film. Instead, the characters were well written and well played. Well, Joss did step in to finish the film.

Stay for both post credit scenes; one just after they begin and one at the end!

[TheAverageFan]

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a mess of both great moments and terribly embarrassing ones. It kind of reminds me of Revenge Of The Sith in that regard. I still kind of liked that one better though, and unfortunately I can't help but think that the more I actually think about this new movie, the less I'll like it. People'll probably either love this or loathe it, but all I've got is a kind of disappointed "meh".

I brought a flask into the theater and took a swig of Midori every time the word "Hope" was said. Boy that sure ran short fast. Highly recommended for this film.

~TAF

[Dignan]

Originally Posted by TheAverageFan

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a mess of both great moments and terribly embarrassing ones. It kind of reminds me of Revenge Of The Sith in that regard. I still kind of liked that one better though, and unfortunately I can't help but think that the more I actually think about this new movie, the less I'll like it. People'll probably either love this or loathe it, but all I've got is a kind of disappointed "meh".

I brought a flask into the theater and took a swig of Midori every time the word "Hope" was said. Boy that sure ran short fast. Highly recommended for this film.

~TAF

Yeah, The Last Jedi was a mess of action movie tropes and plot holes. I didn't really mind things that they did with the universe, but the movie as a whole just didn't make a lot of sense. Each set piece seemed less thought out and cheesier than the last on ("Hey, at the end of this one let's have 2 ex machinas and then they will kiss with an explosion in the background!!!").

It wasn't all terrible, but it definitely seemed like the bad out weighted the good. Oh well, they can't all be great. I guess I was in for a let down after how much I enjoyed Rogue One.

[vegietarian18]

I like The Last Jedi a lot more than any of the other Disney Star Wars. I've seen it twice now; the first time I thought it was inconsistent too, but on the second watch I started to see how the pieces of the movie fit together and it is actually really clever. I think some of the really weird stuff (Leia flying, Luke's force Projection) will age to be normal in people's mind.

I think Kylo Ren was even better done this time than he was in TFA, both in terms of acting and the storyline he was given. He's probably the best character in Star Wars now imo. I think the door is closed for Rey redeeming Kylo so I'm excited to see where they take him next.

I can sympathize a bit w/ people who are upset w/ how Luke is portrayed, but I think that criticism is misplaced. Luke had a happy ending in Return of the Jedi, and showing him as a perfect person forever is both uninteresting and untrue.

Criticizing a movie for "tropes" is pretty unfair; all movies are composed of tropes. Trope != cliche

[Tornado]

I am with veggie here.

I thought everything I disliked about most of the new characters in FA was addressed and even full out mocked in this movie. I loved the chaos of all the plots and the multiple characters. It flew past and I could have gone another hour or two.

[Dad_Scaper]

No spoilers outside the spoiler but my own review follows. I wouldn't be reading reviews of this movie before I saw it, and I wouldn't even be writing this one, except you guys have already started the discussion. So here goes.

One outer spoiler for people who don't want to read even more about the movie until they see it, with an inner one protecting from the truly spoiler-y bit.

Spoiler Alert!

It was a good movie. I was glad I went. I thought it suffered from some pretty glaring weaknesses in storytelling, and its treatment of Snoke was . . . unfortunate. There were also a couple of truly brilliant moments of foreshadowing, which I will put in the spoiler below. I will also put in what I thought was the storytelling weakness that bothered me the most.

As far as "tropes" go, they are important. Though I use the term somewhat differently from the way you guys have been using it in the preceding few posts. I think of tropes as identifiable moments, actions, or tension in a movie that make it work as one in a genre, or as one in a set of movies. And the Star Wars saga has some very distinct tropes, and Last Jedi messes with them in a noticeable way.

A few more detailed thoughts in here, spoilery, for those who have seen it already:

Spoiler Alert!

There were two brilliant uses of foreshadowing. (1) Snoke using galactic psychic power, which we haven't really seen before as far as I can recall, foreshadows another character using it. (2) The appearance of the X Wing underwater at the island hints at how Luke might, if he wanted, leave the planet. Which plants the seed, which makes the reveal even greater.

The rebels always seem to make major decisions at meetings. For no discernible reason, the Laura Dern character does not do so, and allows Poe to think that she is plotting the inevitable destruction of the entire rebellion. That is out of character for a rebel leader, and but for that action, leading to a split in the leadership inside the rebel community, Finn and Rose have no reason to leave the ship, other than Finn's desire to find Rei. The visit to the casino is a whole second level of unnecessary ornamentation by the storytellers, too.

I wasn't bothered by Luke's internal conflict. His self-aware humor, though, is something that has never been done before in the Star Wars universe. We've all been waiting for him to take the light saber, and he tosses it. That's a shot at us, the audience, for our expectations in the moment. Similarly, when he brushes his shoulder later in the movie, that feels a little too much like a contemporary colloquialism. As does the depiction of a descending steam iron as a spaceship.

One feature of Star Wars movies is their studious avoidance of messing with the fourth wall, and with self-aware humor, and this movie was the first in the series to do so. Unless it happened in episodes 2 or 3, which I still haven't seen.

I want to be clear that I enjoyed this movie. I have no great love for the franchise, and I think I've always kind of just thought about each one as its own little (or massive) work of art.

To my mind, Rogue One was the best of all. On the other hand, it wasn't bound to some of the storytelling requirements of the tropes of the larger saga, including child-friendly stories and one-dimensional heroes and villains, so it had a head start there. Ben Mendelsohn's chief engineer (or whatever) character in Rogue One was the most interesting Imperial/First Order villain the franchise has ever known, and Forrest Whittaker's complex rebel/terrorist character was similarly wonderful. Jyn and Cassian were more complex and interesting than similarly lead characters in Last Jedi.

After Rogue One, I liked this similarly to how much I liked TFA. They were both fun space-opera romps, with TFA being a little too derivative, and LJ having the weaknesses I discussed above, for me to think of either as "great." Just good, and fun.

[Soundwarp SG-1]

Originally Posted by Tornado

I am with veggie here.

I thought everything I disliked about most of the new characters in FA was addressed and even full out mocked in this movie. I loved the chaos of all the plots and the multiple characters. It flew past and I could have gone another hour or two.

Huh, you must have gotten the secret deluxe version of the movie then. I was bored and ready to leave by the thirty minute mark, easily my least favorite movie of the year. I actually disliked it more than Force Awakens, which was quite the achievement.

[quozl]

While there were weakness in the movie, I loved the humor. It seems a lot of recent action movies avoid humor, which disappoints me.

[Lazy Orang]

Originally Posted by quozl

While there were weakness in the movie, I loved the humor. It seems most a lot of recent action movies avoid humor, which disappoints me.

That's half the reason I love the MCU so much, honestly.

[vegietarian18]

I agree with DS on the self-aware humor being a problem and I think he articulated it really well. Previous Star Wars films have had humor, but it was always humor within the context of the world, and here it seems like some of it is winking at the audience humor. I think all of the Disney Star Wars movies have this, although TLJ did it more often than the others. It's similar to how Disney Marvel does their humor, but it's more appropriate there.

I still like the movie a lot though.

[Dad_Scaper]

Originally Posted by Lazy Orang

That's half the reason I love the MCU so much, honestly.

I like the use of humor in action movies, too, but I disagree we don't see much of it. On the contrary, most big action movies have too much for me to take them seriously as stories. Thor was funny, but it was so funny that it was hard to take the stakes seriously (though as a film I thought it was better than LJ). Logan had moments of humor, but they were relatively few, and the stakes felt real. That was a wonderful action movie, and my favorite of the year.

The thing is, the Star Wars saga seems to me to be defined, in part, by its own space opera thing, and the space opera thing does not touch the fourth wall or make fun of itself. It's a departure from a well-worn path, and therefore a bit distracting.

[Yodaking]

I enjoyed The Last Jedi, it really only had one big plot hole that jumped out at me that I will discuss later, other than that I was mostly happy with everything that went on. A few minor quibbles here and there maybe but nothing really egregious. Not my favorite SW movie, but also not my least favorite.

Generally speaking, it doesn't bother me one bit that the humor in this movie branched out into new territory. I've come to accept the fact that the magic that was created in the original trilogy will not ever be repeated and I'd prefer if they just stop trying. Even George Lucus himself tried to with the prequels and failed. Abrambs went overboard trying to in Force Awakens, and while it was closer in feeling to the original trilogy than the prequels, it actually suffered overall from the over borrowing from those films. Star Killer base is just a bigger, badder Death Star! A son and father have a confrontation on a cat walk and one of them goes over the edge! etc. etc. etc. So branching out into new directions seems like a good idea to me. Rogue One is actually my favorite of the non-original trilogy films and the director was given some latitude on tone and such. So let directors play in the SW sandbox and give us different looks as what a SW movie could be, it will certainly keep me more interested in returning to the theater to see each one that if they just keep on doing the same thing over and over again.

Now on to the spoilers.....don't click if you have not seen the movie yet.

Spoiler Alert!

Minor Quibbles
I loved the use of 'hope' in Rouge One, it perfectly fed into the 'A New Hope' title of EPIV and gave that name more meaning after all these years. Quite brilliant in my opinion in its use and execution. That being said, I agree that they seemed to overuse the word 'hope' in this one and if felt a bit out of place. Cut the number of uses of 'hope' in half and it would have been a nice light touch without going overboard.

When they go to the casino looking for help from someone who would be sitting at a high stakes card table I was really expecting it to be Lando, or even Lobot (since his implants would make him a great 'slicer'), and was rather let down when it wasn't. I thought one of them showing up was one of the spoilers/surprises they didn't want people to leak. Also the allegation that everyone there at the casino was a weapons dealer was bogus. Considering the size and scope of warfare that takes place in the SW universe, weapons manufactures would certainly be a large contingent of those who have the most wealth in the galaxy but they wouldn't be the only ones. Someone has to supply the galaxy with light bulbs and such, droid makers make non-combat droids, energy producers sell energy for non-combat uses, etc. Seemed like some one just wanted to toss in an unneeded class warfare political attack
line into the movie.

Made no sense why the newly installed leader of the Resistance would keep Poe out of the command loop, he has been well established as a long time 'hero' of the movement with high levels of confidence and trust from the previous leadership. Considering the current size of the Resistance, turning him away in favor of your own people doesn't seem very smart.

Things that really stood out for me
I actually really liked the fact that Rey's parents ended up being nobodies. In the prequels we saw that the Jedi were made up of random individuals and force powers were not a birthright. Then in an effort to remove the 'random' nature of the force lotto, a Sith used the force to create a baby that would be force powerful. That baby grew up to fulfill the prophecy and bring 'balance' to the force, resulting in just two Jedi and two Sith. Now with the prophecy being fulfilled, moving forward the force once again manifests itself randomly again for the next generation and things have come full circle.

Chewbacca trying to eat in peace and not being able to will stick with me. That was entertaining as was Luke's source of milk.

While I'm a little disappointed we didn't get more backstory on who Snoke was, I really liked how he was taken down. A traditional Sith transfer of power where the apprentice eventually betrays and kills the master. The mirroring of his two actions to hide his true thoughts from the mind reader was pretty clever. Then the back to back Rey & Ren battle with the guards was really cool. I liked how each guard seemed to have a different melee weapon and fighting style rather then all being the same generic guard.

Thought when Rey went into the 'dark side cave' was pretty neat. Really liked the long row of images off set in time by a fraction of a second and her not being freaked out by it at all. Then once she gets to the front of the line, she only finds herself looking back at her just as Luke found his own face looking back at him from the Vader helmet in ESB.

I actually really liked the idea of Luke as the 'hero of the Rebellion' went on to later become a crabby, disillusioned old hermit. After recently watching the Punisher series and how it takes on the issue of PTSD I felt it really echoed as more true to life than most people want to admit. Had Cassian from Rouge One survived to old age, I could see him having gone through a similar transition over time as people called him hero while he suffered from nightmares filled with all the people he killed in the name of the Rebellion.

When Dad Scaper mentioned 'fore shadowing' I thought he was going to talk about how Luke says to Rey something along the lines of "What does Leia think I am going to do, show up and take on the whole New Order by myself?" Then he later does just that. Really like the whole scene. Also the line he says to Rey about the Force not being about moving rocks, then she has to move rocks with the Force to save the Resistance.

Luke struggling with his desire to destroy the last Jedi temple, then Yoda showing up and just casually destroying it was neat. Yoda, the wisest of all the Jedi, was not burdened by a need to cling to the past and understands that things must evolve and move forward in new directions (plus I suspect he already knew Rey had taken the texts out). That combined with the whole Ren 'kill the past if you have too' stuff (followed by the death of Han, and now Luke) is some nice commentary on fans who want to resists the SW franchise's need to evolve beyond the Skywalker family arc.

Huge Plot Hole
How could the 'slicer' sell out the Resistance and reveal their super secret escape plan to the First Order? Finn certainly didn't know anything about it, Poe didn't know about the plan until after he woke up on the transport ship and Finn had already been captured. Would have been better if Phasma had done something to figure it out, after two films I still don't know why Phasma gets to wear the chrome armor. She hasn't done anything to warrant a special status.