Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Post-release)

What did you think of Star Wars: The Last Jedi?

  • It was great. Loved it. Don't miss it at the theaters.

    Votes: 154 26.6%
  • It was good. Liked it very much. Worth the theater visit.

    Votes: 135 23.4%
  • It was okay. Not too pleased with it. Could watch it at the cinema once or wait for home video.

    Votes: 117 20.2%
  • It was disappointing. Watch it on home video instead.

    Votes: 70 12.1%
  • It was bad. Don't waste your time with it.

    Votes: 102 17.6%

  • Total voters
    578
Mark knows this story provided him with an acting tour de force. It's understandable some fans will be angry but he was great in the film.
Mark is great, period. The role of Luke he was provided with in TLJ is where the problem lies. And Rian is "always right" to the tune of 700 million off of TFA? No, he delivered the most polarizing SW movie ever, and now it's time to sell some blu rays. The criticisms Mark had were absolutely on the money and echoed what anyone who had issues with this movie had been saying, but you can't speak freely and keep cashing that Disney check.
 
alienscollection.com, Apollo, egosheep... and even Bryancd... A little information can be dangerous. Here's a much more thorough breakdown of that Q&A with Rian and Mark, rather than the cherry-picked accounts I've seen elsewhere. And, because I know a lot of folks won't bother risking undermining their position that Mark hates TLJ, I'll make it a bit harder to ignore by quoting it in its entirety behind a spoiler tag (for space):

Following the world premiere of The Director and The Jedi, a comprehensive two-hour documentary about the making of the latest Star Wars film, South By Southwest Film Festival attendees got a Last Jedi double-whammy. After the curtain raised at the Paramount Theater, director Rian Johnson and actor Mark Hamill took the stage for an impromptu Q&A.Hamill unsurprisingly opted for jokes and openness in his answers, and in particular, he offered his most robust comments yet about that spicy bit of news ahead of Episode VIII's launch: that he didn't much care for how the character of Luke Skywalker had been written.

The topic bubbled up with a question about Star Wars' mythical and heroic scope as a long-running series, and Hamill explained how he prepared for the role: "When you get down to it, it's not Mark Hamill in a blockbuster film. It's Luke. I had to do a wild reimagining of the character. Like, hey, what happened between the last one and this one, where the most hopeful man in the galaxy becomes a cranky old suicidal man telling people to get off his lawn?"

"Here I am going home again," he later added, "but it was a house I didn’t recognize at all."

Another fan pressed Hamill about this and about the brief mentions of disagreements between Hamill and Johnson during the film's production, which he opened up about widely.

"It's not distaste at all," Hamill said, partially quoting the question. "It just wasn't a Luke I understood." He described "backstories" that he had to invent for himself, including how Luke, in mentoring Kylo Ren, "picked the new Hitler to be the next hope" and "how I justified cutting off my telepathic communication with my sister." He even had a conversation with Johnson about the fact that Episode VII ended with Luke wearing Jedi robes. "What do we say about that? To make sure there was a flow."

"In the context of how this has all been framed, you have to snap your head back and remember that with every single movie, with characters, it's always a dialogue between the director and actors," Johnson added. "That's a healthy thing. You always butt heads with actors."

The same fan asked a follow-up question: how, Mr. Hamill, would you have written the plot if you could have? (Johnson immediately interjected and drew a huge laugh from the audience: "I wanna hear this. What would you do, mother****er?")

Hamill admitted that he had "lots of really terrible ideas" for Episode VIII, at which point he shifted the question with an interesting tidbit: he had similar beef with George Lucas and Return of the Jedi's plot before that began filming. "I read [the script for] Jedi and thought, 'Wait a sec! I thought I was heading toward the struggle of heading to the Dark Side. I'm in black. I have a glove. I see a trend here.'"

After offering a cooking analogy about actors and directors, Hamill expressed a rare bit of regret, which he explained by way of his own Star Wars fandom.

"I'm like a lot of you. I feel an investment in it, a certain sense of ownership, which is a joke, because I don’t own it, now Disney does. But you care! That's what happens with these films. I'm sorry I lowered my guard and expressed my misgivings about it. That belongs in the [filmmaking] process. That doesn't belong to the public. I feel bad because I made that statement before I saw the finished film."

He went on to compliment the film—"probably the most complex Star Wars film since maybe Empire"—and even acknowledged how Johnson found little ways to get him on board with the acting role while the film was in production. He referenced a scene in which Luke threatens to burn down the Jedi library, then acts startled and sad when Yoda calls his bluff to do it instead. "Not only is [Luke] a broken man, he's certifiably insane? I can play that."

Like in other interviews, Hamill again reflected on the fact that all three original-trilogy actors came back to the series. "Within seconds [of our first meeting], Carrie [Fisher] slapped the table and said, 'I'm in.' Later, I said, 'Carrie, pokerface!'" He said that he found out about Harrison Ford returning to the series via the press, at which point he said to himself, "Oh my god, I've been drafted. If Larry and Moe come back, Curly's gotta sign. Or I'll be the most hated man in nerd-dom."

When talking about the pressure of starring in a new Star Wars film, Hamill admitted he insulated himself by thinking about Johnson as a smaller-fry filmmaker. "It was almost too high-profile for comfort. I said to Rian, 'I'm just... I'm terrified.' You know what he said? 'I am, too.' That's when I bonded with him deeply. I said, 'I have to pretend that this is a small, arthouse film that critics will rave about and the public will roundly reject. If I thought intellectually, like, 'camera this far from your face, it's forever, I can't go back and change it,' I'd be in a fetal position in the corner."

Hamill also admitted that he physically trained for 12 months, twice a week, before even reading the script of Episode VII, just to be prepared for a possible intense role in that 2015 film. He later learned that JJ Abrams' vision for Episode VIII included a description of "floating boulders to show off my Force powers," which didn't match Johnson's vision of how Luke would be portrayed. (This Abrams suggestion made him hopeful in part, however, that he'd have a simpler time in terms of exertion while filming Last Jedi: "I'll have the Force oozing out of my every orifice in VIII. I'll be knocking down AT-ATs like dominoes, and I won't have to train very hard.")

For more on Hamill and Johnson's insights on the process of making The Last Jedi, and on other revelations from that film's gestation and production process, stay tuned for our review of The Director And The Jedi (subject to embargo). The film does not currently have an announced release date.

Please, for self-edification's sake, read...

--Jonah
 
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Sad Luke.gif
 
@Alienscollection.com, @Apollo, @egosheep... and even @Bryancd... A little information can be dangerous. Here's a much more thorough breakdown of that Q&A with Rian and Mark, rather than the cherry-picked accounts I've seen elsewhere. And, because I know a lot of folks won't bother risking undermining their position that Mark hates TLJ, I'll make it a bit harder to ignore by quoting it in its entirety behind a spoiler tag (for space):

Please, for self-edification's sake, read...

--Jonah
I appreciate you posting the article, it's a very interesting read. I don't feel like it changes the crux of the issue though. The many comments Mark has made in the past were just replaying what we are saying in our own heads. I'm not saying he secretly hates Rian or hates the movie. He can walk his comments all the way back, but it doesn't change the fact that what he said rang true, and even in this article the examples he cites(Leia, Yoda etc) are still problems today. And I don't need Mark to validate my feelings about the film, which were palpable on opening night. If people love this movie, more power to them, but there will always be a passionate debate about the merits and flaws of TLJ.
 
Yeah, I dunno - had a chance to revisit this one and for me personally, the movie isn't getting any better with time... It just feels like a daisy chain of missed opportunities at the expense of being too clever and subverting expectations. [Yeah, yeah, I just "don't get it."] Someone somewhere, maybe here, said, "The Last Jedi feels like a movie that knows it has an audience" - I get that. Again, I'm glad people enjoyed it, I get what the filmmakers were trying to do, but it just didn't connect with me...

[ RY-an Johnson, more like RU-in Johnson, amirite??? KIDDING ;) Put down the torches. Hugs to all ]
 
....and that changes the film not one iota.

Don’t believe everything you read, as not all is cozy at Lfl OR Disney on this film.

If the digital and Blu-ray sales tanks you can bet a lot of people will be thrown under the bus by the mouse



@Alienscollection.com, @Apollo, @egosheep... and even @Bryancd... A little information can be dangerous. Here's a much more thorough breakdown of that Q&A with Rian and Mark, rather than the cherry-picked accounts I've seen elsewhere. And, because I know a lot of folks won't bother risking undermining their position that Mark hates TLJ, I'll make it a bit harder to ignore by quoting it in its entirety behind a spoiler tag (for space):

Following the world premiere of The Director and The Jedi, a comprehensive two-hour documentary about the making of the latest Star Wars film, South By Southwest Film Festival attendees got a Last Jedi double-whammy. After the curtain raised at the Paramount Theater, director Rian Johnson and actor Mark Hamill took the stage for an impromptu Q&A.Hamill unsurprisingly opted for jokes and openness in his answers, and in particular, he offered his most robust comments yet about that spicy bit of news ahead of Episode VIII's launch: that he didn't much care for how the character of Luke Skywalker had been written.

The topic bubbled up with a question about Star Wars' mythical and heroic scope as a long-running series, and Hamill explained how he prepared for the role: "When you get down to it, it's not Mark Hamill in a blockbuster film. It's Luke. I had to do a wild reimagining of the character. Like, hey, what happened between the last one and this one, where the most hopeful man in the galaxy becomes a cranky old suicidal man telling people to get off his lawn?"

"Here I am going home again," he later added, "but it was a house I didn’t recognize at all."

Another fan pressed Hamill about this and about the brief mentions of disagreements between Hamill and Johnson during the film's production, which he opened up about widely.

"It's not distaste at all," Hamill said, partially quoting the question. "It just wasn't a Luke I understood." He described "backstories" that he had to invent for himself, including how Luke, in mentoring Kylo Ren, "picked the new Hitler to be the next hope" and "how I justified cutting off my telepathic communication with my sister." He even had a conversation with Johnson about the fact that Episode VII ended with Luke wearing Jedi robes. "What do we say about that? To make sure there was a flow."

"In the context of how this has all been framed, you have to snap your head back and remember that with every single movie, with characters, it's always a dialogue between the director and actors," Johnson added. "That's a healthy thing. You always butt heads with actors."

The same fan asked a follow-up question: how, Mr. Hamill, would you have written the plot if you could have? (Johnson immediately interjected and drew a huge laugh from the audience: "I wanna hear this. What would you do, mother****er?")

Hamill admitted that he had "lots of really terrible ideas" for Episode VIII, at which point he shifted the question with an interesting tidbit: he had similar beef with George Lucas and Return of the Jedi's plot before that began filming. "I read [the script for] Jedi and thought, 'Wait a sec! I thought I was heading toward the struggle of heading to the Dark Side. I'm in black. I have a glove. I see a trend here.'"

After offering a cooking analogy about actors and directors, Hamill expressed a rare bit of regret, which he explained by way of his own Star Wars fandom.

"I'm like a lot of you. I feel an investment in it, a certain sense of ownership, which is a joke, because I don’t own it, now Disney does. But you care! That's what happens with these films. I'm sorry I lowered my guard and expressed my misgivings about it. That belongs in the [filmmaking] process. That doesn't belong to the public. I feel bad because I made that statement before I saw the finished film."

He went on to compliment the film—"probably the most complex Star Wars film since maybe Empire"—and even acknowledged how Johnson found little ways to get him on board with the acting role while the film was in production. He referenced a scene in which Luke threatens to burn down the Jedi library, then acts startled and sad when Yoda calls his bluff to do it instead. "Not only is [Luke] a broken man, he's certifiably insane? I can play that."

Like in other interviews, Hamill again reflected on the fact that all three original-trilogy actors came back to the series. "Within seconds [of our first meeting], Carrie [Fisher] slapped the table and said, 'I'm in.' Later, I said, 'Carrie, pokerface!'" He said that he found out about Harrison Ford returning to the series via the press, at which point he said to himself, "Oh my god, I've been drafted. If Larry and Moe come back, Curly's gotta sign. Or I'll be the most hated man in nerd-dom."

When talking about the pressure of starring in a new Star Wars film, Hamill admitted he insulated himself by thinking about Johnson as a smaller-fry filmmaker. "It was almost too high-profile for comfort. I said to Rian, 'I'm just... I'm terrified.' You know what he said? 'I am, too.' That's when I bonded with him deeply. I said, 'I have to pretend that this is a small, arthouse film that critics will rave about and the public will roundly reject. If I thought intellectually, like, 'camera this far from your face, it's forever, I can't go back and change it,' I'd be in a fetal position in the corner."

Hamill also admitted that he physically trained for 12 months, twice a week, before even reading the script of Episode VII, just to be prepared for a possible intense role in that 2015 film. He later learned that JJ Abrams' vision for Episode VIII included a description of "floating boulders to show off my Force powers," which didn't match Johnson's vision of how Luke would be portrayed. (This Abrams suggestion made him hopeful in part, however, that he'd have a simpler time in terms of exertion while filming Last Jedi: "I'll have the Force oozing out of my every orifice in VIII. I'll be knocking down AT-ATs like dominoes, and I won't have to train very hard.")

For more on Hamill and Johnson's insights on the process of making The Last Jedi, and on other revelations from that film's gestation and production process, stay tuned for our review of The Director And The Jedi (subject to embargo). The film does not currently have an announced release date.

Please, for self-edification's sake, read...

--Jonah
 
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Back in 2002 or whenever Attack of the Clones came out I was excited to see it because I loved the Phantom Menace (I was only 10). But I remember leaving the theater feeling suddenly disinterested and deflated about Star Wars as a whole to the point where I didn't even see Revenge of the Sith. Exact same thing happened when I saw the Last Jedi. I enjoyed both the Force Awakens and absolutely loved Rogue One so naturally i was eager to see this. But like Attack of the clones before it this film kind of killed my enthusiasm for the rest of the trilogy and Star Wars as a whole.
 
I never got into the Dave Filoni Clone Wars, or Rebels and so never bought them.

I bought TFA. I enjoyed it. It was the only Star Wars film since Return of the Jedi that came close to the OT (I mean let's be honest it was a soft reboot of ANH.) but it was fun. Not perfect, but fun and introduced us to characters that I was excited to get to know and perhaps even love. It had a lot of potential.

I saw Rogue One once. I wasn't all that impressed, though there were parts I enjoyed and the space battles were pretty cool. I didn't feel the need to own it so I never bought it.

I saw The Last Jedi once. Never again. I will not be buying it either. I'm voting with my wallet. If all Disney wants is my money then they won't be getting it. I won't even get it to complete the 9 series trilogy of trilogies. I sincerely doubt I will bother buying 9 either and not very likely I would buy Solo when it gets released.

As much as I hate the prequels I would take any of them over The Last Jedi any day. I would take horrible forced love stories, boring political dialog, and unclear character motivations, all acted lifelessly in front of a bluescreen over The Last Jedi. At least they had an overall plot, some great production design and best of all, they didn't ruin Luke Skywalker, one of my most beloved cinema heroes since I was five years old.

I know I said I would quit this thread but I think I'm just still in shock as to what this has come to. With every new article I read, it's evident how much disdain they truly have for their fanbase. I don't know about all of you fine folks here but I don't like being talked down to. I know Kathleen Kennedy and company are likely going to explain the dip in DVD/Bluray's, digital downloads, toy sales, and such on the fact that TFA was the first new Star Wars film in 10 years since ROTS, but that won't be the whole truth. If the sales dip it will be because they allowed Rian Johnson to make a bad film and they have tried to play it off as if audiences are either too dumb to get it or they must be sexist/ racist. I don't take to kindly to accusations like that for having a valid opinion about a bad movie.
 
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One thing TLJ proved is that brand matters over content.

Star Wars didn't need a reboot. TFA did so well at the box office because it was Star Wars. Period. It had the OG characters.

Rogue One also - everyone knew what was going to happen, and it still brought in $$$.

TLJ only backs that up. It deconstructed and demolished Luke, the Force, and everything else about the franchise right before our eyes. And it also brought in the bucks.

It doesn't matter what the story is, as long as Star Wars is slapped on it = $$$$.

Only now, a portion of the fan base is getting wise to it. Watch Solo tank, and watch Disney blame fans for that too.

DVD sales of TLJ will be interesting to see



Sent from my SM-J727V using Tapatalk
 
I agree with you to a point. Those rules don't apply in China for instance where TLJ did so bad that they pulled it from theaters. In fact they changed the name of Solo: A Star Wars Story to Ranger Solo to try and trick audiences into seeing it. They didn't even have the Star Wars name attached to it for fear that people there would avoid it like the plague.

Whatever Star Wars movie soured our collective experience, be it TPM or TLJ, it was our love for the series that always brought us back in the hope that the next one would make up for that bad one. For some it became morbid curiosity, just to see how they wrapped it all up.

I'm not sure even morbid curiosity can save them financially. If changing the name of Solo isn't clue enough....
 
TLJ only backs that up. It deconstructed and demolished Luke, the Force, and everything else about the franchise right before our eyes. And it also brought in the bucks.
It brought in bucks, sure, but it's 736 million off of TFA. That's not in keeping with the narrative of it being a masterpiece delivered by the best director Lucasfilm has had the pleasure of working with. Disney and KK can keep up their maniacal grins, but how can this be seen as anything but a lukewarm success at best? If it had made another 500 million I could see them possibly standing by Rian but as it is now, he's toxic to the brand and his movie not only underperformed, it bitterly divided the fanbase. I think once the smoke clears off the blu ray release, RJ will exit stage left. It's not like there aren't 7 other SW movies being developed for them to hype.
 
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