GRcade

Saw it last night. Enjoyed myself and thought it was entertaining.

Sure I could find fault with it if I wanted to, but I don't want to because life's too short and who's got the energy for that?

Frank wrote:Zorii Bliss was basically written in to show that poe was a straight man

Yeah they ‘no-homo’ed him hard

But the shippers were strawberry floating wierd/obsessed though

Rudolphin wrote:

Captain Kinopio wrote:

Rudolphin wrote:Got bored and turned it off just before Leia kills herself to say her son's name, thus reducing her character to one subservient to a male character who'd done nothing to earn it.

That’s a spicy take

Talk about bringing your own politics to it.

Absolutely. Do you think that's an inherently bad idea? (also, it's hardly my opinion alone. It's a commonly held criticism of the film that it reduces every female character to a supportive/dependent role)

We actually pushed on through to the end and it just made me angrier then ever. Should have left it well enough alone.

EDIT: Now I knew to look for it, the final shot is so clearly a static picture of Rey with a floaty cloak. It's the dog from Ace Combat VII all over again!

A mother calling out to her lost son? That's stretching somewhat Taf, usual I agree with you, but here you are way off the mark. If anything it goes to show the power of a mother over her son. In TLJ we know that he cannot kill his mother, here she calls out to him as she dies and thus saving him from himself. Only a mother has that power.

Already gave my thoughts on the film yesterday, so now here's my ranking:

AoTC < ANH < Solo < TPM < TFA < TRoS < RotJ < ESB < Rogue One < TLJ < RotS

I mean, let's be honest here, Taf is entitled to his own opinion on a plot direction. Art (in a general sense, I'm not calling ROS a pinaccle of human achievement) has always been open to interpretation and different readings. Often these can run in direct opposition with other takes on it. We are also fine to disagree with, and offer evidence against, this reading.

Personally though, I think Leia's salvation of Kylo is likely just a product of how much footage and voice recordings they had of Carrie Fisher and what they could do with her. It's not that hard to get a recording of her saying "Ben" and then filming her legs at the end of the bed as she passes away.

It's clumsy and a bit akwward, but I find it hard to be too critical of what they did with Leia. Their hand was very clearly forced and restricted to what material they had, and they were clearly going to have her in a much bigger role had fate not taken a sad turn.

Personally I wouldn't have cared had they killed her off in the opening crawl and started the film at her funeral. It would have felt a lot more real and natural though I understand how fans would have felt short-changed at that.

As it stands, her death is probably the best you could get on-screen given the circumstances. It's similar to what Luke does in TLJ, projecting herself across the galaxy with no other choice facing her. Luke's obviously a lot stronger so can project himself physically, but all she can do is speak to Ben. He's already conflicted, as Rey mentions him being haunted by his father (as we later see), and he's outright wimped out of killing Leia too.

To be honest, if you were going to redeem Ben, then the natural choice would be through his parents. Luke failed him and inadvertently pushed him further to the dark side. Han never gave up hope, even though it got him killed. And just as Luke projected hope across the galaxy in TLJ, so does Leia, except a very individualised, focused hope.

The only jarring point is that Leia does say something like "I know my son is gone" at the end of TLJ and seems to accept that the last spark of light has gone. But this is again a problem of the patchwork approach to the film making for the seuqels.

Kylo could have been the big bad had JJ wanted him to be. I didn't really mind that he got redeemed (I liked Driver's visablw physical differences as KyloRen and then Ben Solo, it was very good) but again, we had two different directors seemingly doing two different things.

Hexx wrote:

Frank wrote:Zorii Bliss was basically written in to show that poe was a straight man

Yeah they ‘no-homo’ed him hard

But the shippers were strawberry floating wierd/obsessed though

The shippers got what they wanted with the out of nowhere Rey/Kylo Ren kiss.

Who the strawberry float are the shippers?

Merry Christmous Everyone wrote:Who the strawberry float are the shippers?

Google ‘Stormpilot’

I’m not going looking for you

I saw this yesterday afternoon.

I found it very underwhelming and felt that it really dragged. It probably didn't help that I had been up since 3:50am for work so that may have contributed to my feelings for it as I nearly fell asleep a few times. A second viewing may change my mind but I certainly won't be paying to go and see it at the cinema again.

Hopeully for any future Star Wars films they do something more like Rogue One than the new Trilogy or Solo. I'm not building my hopes up though.

There is a lot you can complain about the Disney trilogy because it didn't fulfil the promise of the continuation of the high adventure of original characters Han, Leia and Luke, but ultimately its biggest failure is that it didn't tell its own story cohesively. Snoke and General Phasma had potential as baddies and seeing them in the final episode would have meant the establishment of this new generation of Star Wars and characters.

JJ Abrams in the Rise of Skywalker has tried to fix the story by retconning it showing that Leia had been a Jedi and that she had trained Rey - that does explain the story but it doesn't fix the previous movies not making sense whilst you watch them for depicting Rey as being so powerful. Imagine how great it would have been if in The Force Awakens we see evidence of Leia being a Jedi and flashbacks of her and Luke (full scenes with talking, not with leftover footage).

Also, making Rey the Emperor's daughter (for all its other faults) makes the story a little too contrived. A long time ago I remember reading a comment by comedian and writer Simon Pegg in Empire magazine about how in The Phantom Menace it was revealed that C3PO and R2D2 were Anakin's droid - he said it made the universe smaller by linking everything together, and I feel it's the same here.

I'm on the same page really — the fundamental issue with this trilogy is that it had no reason to exist as a Skywalker saga. Unfortunately, the executive producers, particularly in their Disney uniforms, wouldn't have signed off on a non-Skywalker cohort story in a million years.

I'd have rather gone pre-prequels, if anything.

That's the core problem. They didn't have a story to tell. They sat down and said right lets make 3 films after Return of the Jedi. And got 1 bloke to write the first film without thinking about 2 and 3 until later. It really is bonkers when you think about it. Anyone could have predicted it being an incoherent mess by the end based on the decisions they made, and these are meant to be the most successful studio executives in the business.

I guess The Force Awakens being a borderline shot for shot remake of A New Hope should have been a bit of a warning on what was to come.

I'm also annoyed at the Forest Moon of Endor now no longer having a single strawberry floating tree in sight.

Lagamorph wrote:I guess The Force Awakens being a borderline shot for shot remake of A New Hope should have been a bit of a warning on what was to come.

I'm also annoyed at the Forest Moon of Endor now no longer having a single strawberry floating tree in sight.

What? They showed the Forest Moon with Wicket and there were trees everywhere. The bit with the crashed Death Star II wasn't the Forest Moon.

Lagamorph wrote:I guess The Force Awakens being a borderline shot for shot remake of A New Hope should have been a bit of a warning on what was to come.

I'm also annoyed at the Forest Moon of Endor now no longer having a single strawberry floating tree in sight.

I don't think The Force Awakens playing on A New Hope so heavily would necessarily have been that bad a thing had it setup the rest of the story for TLJ and RotS. I think a lot of us enjoyed TFA in the cinema on release and while it doesn't stand up to closer scrutiny it would have been forgivable had the trilogy gone on to greater things.

Qikzmas wrote:

Lagamorph wrote:I guess The Force Awakens being a borderline shot for shot remake of A New Hope should have been a bit of a warning on what was to come.

I'm also annoyed at the Forest Moon of Endor now no longer having a single strawberry floating tree in sight.

What? They showed the Forest Moon with Wicket and there were trees everywhere. The bit with the crashed Death Star II wasn't the Forest Moon.

Wasn't it?
Endor itself is a gas giant, and the Death Star was orbiting the Forest Moon when it was destroyed. Where did it crash if not there?

It's another moon of Endor (Kef Bir, I think?)

Not sure why they needed to make another moon, but ah well.

I got round to watching it today after work. I have mixed feelings. There were things I liked, a lot more that I didn't and things that just fell flat for me. I think the most frustrating thing for me about the whole trilogy is that they had the ingredients for something good. Good actors, the whole Star Wars universe to play in. But, as others have said, the patchwork way in which it was put together and the way the third film ignores stuff set up in the second which in turn ignores things that were set up in the first means we have 3 films that range from entertaining in parts to bad. I think the worst thing for me is they created a Star Wars film that was boring (The Last Jedi). I shouldn't be bored watching a Star Wars film.

It has also made me revelaute my view on the prequels. The prequels had a good story (at their core) that was told badly. The sequels? I just don't feel they have an identity of their own and, again, it's down to not having a single person guiding the story and just allowing each writer to throw out whatever they wanted from previous films with no thought as to how that would affect things. I'm genuinely surprised Disney dropped the ball on this. Oh well, at least I got to enjoy Rogue One and Solo

Lagamorph wrote:Not sure why they needed to make another moon, but ah well.

This was me for about 60% of my Super Mario Odyssey playthrough