Star Wars: The Last Jedi (spoilers)

[Byron]

Spoiler alert

Just been to see The Last Jedi. I have mixed feelings about it. I think there was a lot of great stuff in this movie but there are quite a few things in it that weigh it down.

For context I had never seen any Star Wars until two weeks ago, then my best friend invited me to see this one so over the past two weeks we've watched all of the movies.

On with the spoilers

I was personally very disappointed with the way they handled Snoke as a villain. He was supposed to be the supreme chancellor but he essentially does nothing then dies. I appreciate it was all done to make Kylo a greater villain however they could have done more to make Snoke relevant to the plot.
Another irrelevant thing is Finn and Roses entire storyline. My issue is that they spend and inordinate amount of time on the planet not accomplishing much and then they finally achieve something and get double crossed right at the last second which makes all their time useless. Even at the end when Finn is charging forward in his Snow Glider to his death but then Rose saves him... it just didn't make much sense to me.
My last major issue with the movie is that it doesn't take itself seriously enough. There's far too many cheap jokes that spoil the experience for me.
Again though I enjoyed the movie but the aforementioned issues are things I wished they fixed

 

[Nathaniel3W]

I didn't care for The Last Jedi either. I definitely agree with how pointless the whole Finn-Rose storyline was. They literally did nothing but waste time. But that was part of a bigger issue that plagued the whole film: The Last Jedi did not deliver on its promises to the audience.

It's OK for a film to make a promise to the audience, and then twist the plot. A well delivered plot twist, like in The Sixth Sense, makes the story that preceded it still relevant but we now understand the events differently. A poorly delivered plot twist, like in The Last Jedi, makes the preceding story irrelevant. The Last Jedi tells the audience, "Finn and Rose are going to rush off to rescue the remaining survivors!" And then after the twist, TLJ just says "Actually... no." The Finn-Rose storyline ends up being time-wasting spectacle and irrelevant filler.

The previous film, The Force Awakens, promised the audience that the next film would reveal Rey's history. She was drawn to Luke's lightsaber, had a vision of Luke's misfortunes, and relived her own childhood trauma of being abandoned on Jakku. All of that hinted that Rey would have some connection to the Skywalker family, or at least the Skywalker legacy. The audience wanted to see that connection. The audience wanted to say, "Of course Luke had to abandon his poor daughter! It was for her own safety." Or they wanted to be surprised and say, "Oh! Obi-Wan's daughter! I hadn't thought of that." But instead we learn nothing. There's nothing to learn. Rey is the orphaned daughter of space junkies. The end.

The opening scene promises an exciting getaway, as the survivors of the Republic flee from the First Order, while Poe holds off the enemy with his starfighter. And instead, the Republic ships limp away, conserving fuel, while Poe is grounded, demoted, and his starfighter destroyed. Instead of exciting space battles and chase scenes, we watch the Republic ships run out of fuel and get abandoned one by one. You can still create a fantastic space-getaway movie, full of tension, even if your capital ships aren't dodging asteroids and incoming missiles. The first episode of Battlestar Galactica (2004) followed that exact premise, and it was amazing. But with TLJ we get the Star Wars equivalent of watching someone dying slowly after being removed from life support.