demagogue on 25/12/2019 at 18:26
The review that spoke to me was that ROS was like a person on ADHD reading a Wookiepedia article. It could hardly catch its breath scene to scene. I think others already covered the major issues and plot flops. As a movie it was ridiculous, but the same brand of ridiculous of all big movies lately and particulatly characteristic of JJ Abrams. I can't really expect a series like this not to be carried away by that trend.
That said I went in expecting the worst, coming off the last movie, but I can at least say it wasn't unwatchably awful. Some of the moments were, I won't go so far to say appropriate, but fitting and sentimental (cloying really) but still better compared to the previous movie that was openly dismissive. And some, even most of the visuals were great. Better for a wallpaper than a movie, but cool art is cool art.
I was going into it to have a family Starwars experience, so I'm just happy it allowed that without being an embarassing cringefest. So it could do that much. Icemann mentioned the one thing this trilogy offered, which is the connection between Rey and Kylo Ren, and I'd agree the most (only?) authentic scenes that really worked (not everything, the force-space-sharing thing was kind of eh) and offered something was their scenes together.
icemann on 26/12/2019 at 01:50
I kinda liked the force connection thing. Luke and Vader in TESB had one as well, though not to the same level. So for that reason I didn't mind it.
Renzatic on 26/12/2019 at 02:12
You know, I'm one of the few people who kinda liked The Last Jedi. I enjoyed that it subverted so many expectations, that Rey was just a nobody sold by her parents to scavangers for booze money, that Luke wasn't a supreme Jedi badass, but a burnt out old man sporting a bitter, hard won kind of wisdom. It tried doing its own thing instead of giving everyone what they expected. For that, I have to pay it some respect.
...but as a movie, it was about all over the damn place. It's like the writers had all these great ideas they refused to leave on the cutting room floor, so instead of trying to writing a bunch of interconnected scenes designed to flesh out an overarching plot, they wrote a plot around all these isolated scenes. The end result was what we got from TLJ: a bunch of really cool bits and pieces in a movie that barely has any narrative cohesion.
Jason Moyer on 26/12/2019 at 09:26
I thought TLJ was great, and a lot of that was because it seemed to have some heavy meta-critique of franchises and fandom in it.
I think most of my favorite bits from RoS were things that he built on from the previous film. The weird bond between Rey and Kylo was awesome. I thought Poe was still massively underused, but his character arc was basically a direct continuation of the last film ("she's showing us how to get there" and the "what should we do?" "survive" stuff was straight TLJ). I laughed the first time Rey and/or Kylo floated through the air like Mary Poppins; with all the retconning, it was funny that they kept that bit. There was a surprising bit of dialog basically copy/pasted from TLJ that I can't recall offhand because so much shit was moving so fast.
The thing I hated was that they went back to the CHOSEN ONE bullshit again. I read something recently (can't remember where) about how young George Lucas, fighting the studio system and creating his legacy, created an every man character (Luke) that showed that anyone could succeed, then slowly turned the series into a story about destiny when he got rich and became part of that system. Rey being nobody was, in some respects, a nice callback to the way Luke was portrayed in the original Star Wars.
rachel on 26/12/2019 at 19:03
Quote Posted by Renzatic
It tried doing its own thing instead of giving everyone what they expected. For that, I have to pay it some respect.
I totally get that. My gripe with TLJ isn't for trying something new, it's for the utter failure at achieving anything that made sense.
Breaking molds for the sake of it isn't enough, you actually have to come up with good stuff to replace what you're leaving behind. I don't think Johnson did a good job at it, and since JJ's action-fest doesn't follow that, it tries to drown all the course corrections behind a barrage of special effects.
It's all so inconsistent, and for what? Ending exactly where RotJ ended? The entire thing feels like a massive missed opportunity...
Renault on 26/12/2019 at 20:28
Quote Posted by Jason Moyer
Rey being nobody was, in some respects, a nice callback to the way Luke was portrayed in the original Star Wars.
Not really accurate though, as Luke's father was always someone of significance and power, and with a lot Jedi history, as established in the first half of ANH.
icemann on 27/12/2019 at 18:03
Just watched the season 1 finale of the Mandalorian and this show is near perfection. Absolutely love it.
Renault on 29/12/2019 at 01:11
(Don't click on my spoiler below if you haven't finished Season 1 of the Mandalorian)
So I bring up the site tvguide.com, to look up something for my local TV listings, and I see the front page headline "The Mandalorian Season 1 Finale Kills Off Its Best Characters."
I mean, not a big deal for me personally, but that's some pretty irresponsible reporting/publishing considering the episode was first available only yesterday. What the heck were they thinking? Sheesh.
icemann on 29/12/2019 at 06:24
Er that's completely false of the outcome of the finale.
Renzatic on 29/12/2019 at 09:38
Well, it's sortakinda but not really totally true. It was just one character, and he wasn't the absolute best of the bunch, but he was still awesome, and I wish he lived.