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
Point A: the part where I stated that "THAT is a big reason why this divide exists" is certainly my opinion. Absolutely.
However, where I stated "What is undeniable is that many care more about asserting their own opinion as fact rather than remember that i is just an opinion and not fact "
That has been demonstrated over and over again in this very thread. That does seem objective to me.
Well, that's just your opinion. :lol

Point C: I think The Room is so bad that in a way it is good.
THIS is the thing I'm blabbering on about. Enjoyment does not necessarily have anything to do with quality. There are rules and a language to every art form. Sure, to be a real artist you'll have to bend them and break new ground. In order to do that you also need to know the rules and the language expertly to know how and where to bend them to birth something new. Calling The Room a good movie is a mistake and a deconstruction of any quality and aesthetic standard just because it gave you (and admittedly me) many a happy times and laughter.
Everything is susceptible to criticism. This vehement dismissal of criticism stating that "well that's you know just your opinion" baffles me. I mean fine, like the movie, good for you. But it seems to physically hurt people here to acknowledge any criticism and there's the shield of "SUBJECTIVE OPINION" on every argument. I've never in my life encountered a movie being defended this vehemently, not acknowledging that there might even be a frame that's not 100% right there.

As I'd stated before, the line is crossed when someone states their opinion (subjective) and touts that view as objective. THAT is disingenuous...and I think you know that as well as any.
So what are facts then? What is objective? Is everything an opinion?
I mean I'm not sure now, but I think that I'm wearing an in my opinion black I think a shirt as I'm probably sitting at the I think a PC...maybe...circumstantially...personally?
 
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So what are facts then? What is objective? Is everything an opinion?
I mean I'm not sure now, but I think that I'm wearing an in my opinion black I think a shirt as I'm probably sitting at the I think a PC...maybe...circumstantially...personally?

I dunno, is your shirt an artistic choice made by a director somewhere behind you to the left? Was your PC placed by a set dresser?

There is nothing in TLJ that screams of technical incompetence or shoddy workmanship. It is not OBJECTIVELY bad. There are artistic choices made for the film that have caused a wide variety of subjective opinions to sprout up though.
 
Erm...ESB anyone?
To a degree Raiders of the Lost Ark and LOTR...?

I'd say that ESB is the standout there in that the heroes basically "lose" in the end. In the rest, they all win. It's also not made abundantly clear that they have royally screwed up in Raiders or LOTR, or at least that they've screwed up beyond something that just impacts themselves. And the final victory tends to erase all the screw ups that led up to it.

Basically, my point is this: people say the Holdo stuff -- both Poe's mistakes and Holdo's unwillingness to talk to him -- are "stupid" and "don't make sense" and therefore the film is objectively bad. I'm saying that doesn't make the film objectively bad at all, and that characters making mistakes is part and parcel to creating drama. If anything, I would argue that the more objective failure with Holdo is that we aren't given enough information on who she is and why she functions this way. She just...does stuff and we're left to fill in the blanks as to what makes her tick. She just pops up, starts giving orders, and we're left kind of bewildered. It's only at the 11th hour that you start to understand what her plan was, and by that point, Poe has basically screwed things up for the Resistance.

Now, it's my guess that this is done on purpose, because it essentially grounds the audience in Poe's experience of the events. The audience views everything from Poe's point of view. As a result, the audience is meant to look at Holdo as a weird, arbitrary, peremptory superior who dropped in out of nowhere, who has no prior relationship with Poe (unlike Leia), and who has no time or inclination to clue Poe in on the plan. Poe is accustomed to having the boss' ear and being accorded a degree of respect that (arguably) exceeds his rank, so it's jarring for him (and us) to suddenly have this purple-haired woman telling him to sit down and shut it. We're meant to think she's inflexible, that her plan sucks, and that it's gonna get everyone killed...precisely because she doesn't tell Poe what the plan is. When the plan is revealed, it actually seems like it would have worked. Holdo has realized they can't shake their pursuers, and they can't outrun them, and she's unwilling to sacrifice more of the Resistance to save it. It seems (to me) that Holdo prizes personnel over materiel, so she's willing to sacrifice a few ships if she can save the bulk of the people on the ships, and then sneak off to a deserted outpost where they'll be passed over and ignored.

But because Poe sent Finn and Rose, who found DJ, and DJ sells them out when Poe broadcasts the plan, Holdo's plan fails, too. So, in the end, nobody's plan works -- neither Holdo's nor Poe's -- and that's...frustrating. Moreover, the screw ups cost the lives of a significant portion of what's left of the Resistance. It's not just a personal failure for Poe; it's a failure for those around him, and that's something quite different from what we usually see. Most of the time, the impact of character failures are limited to the character and maybe their immediate circle. It's rare that the character's failures have a cost beyond that, at least where the toll is really brought home for the public. In Man of Steel, Superman and Zod trash Metropolis, but we don't really see the cost of that for the citizens. (Not until Batman v. Superman, anyway.) In TLJ, though, you know exactly what Poe's (and Holdo's) mistakes result in: the deaths of their comrades, which could have been prevented.

Precisely. So unless someone can irrefutably present an objective review it's kinda disingenuous to caveat that "their review is not objective".

There's nothing disingenuous about it at all if your point is to note that people bandying about their opinions are doing just that and nothing more. You've been pretty clear that your position on the film is your opinion. You may not agree with my interpretation of the film, and you didn't share my experience of it, but you recognize that we're both just coming at it from different perspectives and that we're mainly talking about our subjective opinions on the film.

That's different from saying "TLJ sucks, it's a ****ing trainwreck, and this is objective fact!" which is the position that a lot of people have taken, both implicitly and in some cases explicitly.

All due respect to Roger Ebert but he has no more objectivity than Redlettermedia. That's my subjective opinion only of course.

It's been a while since I read his stuff (what with him being dead and all...), but my recollection was that Ebert would talk about both his own subjective experience of the film, and also about things that struck me as being more grounded in objective criticism.

The way I see it, objective criticism is like discussing math, where you're saying "but the math doesn't add up." If you can point to the bad math, then yeah, you're engaged in objective criticism. Most people don't talk about movies like that. People who study film criticism and film structure and literary structure do, but average folks don't. Hence all the discussions of "plot holes" or whathaveyou. Most people discuss surface level issues with the film that don't really matter in terms of the story's construction itself; they matter more to the person's personal enjoyment of the film. But that doesn't stop people from saying a film is bad (as opposed to saying they found it boring or it didn't entertain them or whathaveyou).

Like, I could say that I think Memento is a bad film. But it's more accurate to say that I just...wasn't that impressed with it (probably because it had been hyped up beyond what it was). I get it. The story is told backwards. The main character is a terrible person. And this comes as a big surprise at the end. Super. But I don't sit around trying to convince people that Memento is a bad film because the main character should've come up with a better way to communicate with himself than tattooing random, mysterious snippets of information on his body because "That doesn't make sense" or "his plan was stupid" when he could have just, say, recorded a video of himself explaining what he knew up to that point. What I can say is that, while I find it an inventive exercise in storytelling, once you see past the basic conceit of telling it all backwards...there ain't a ton else there that I find particularly engaging. An objective flaw would be something like a character doing something totally out of character with no explanation purely to move the plot along.

I'll put it into another context. An objective critique of TFA might focus on the characters' relationships with each other. It makes sense why Rey connects so much with Han. It also makes sense why she and Finn become close friends. What doesn't make a ton of sense is why Finn and Poe seem like best buds. They meet for about 10 minutes at the start of the film, then Poe apparently dies, and then they don't reunite until the very end of the movie at which point we're supposed to just...accept that they're best pals for life. But the film has done nothing to establish that level of friendship. Friendly acquaintance, sure. But best pals? No, it's just cutting to the chase to establish that relationship because that's the position the two characters are "supposed" to be in. I don't think that makes TFA a bad film, either, but it's a weak point in the film and one which I think is objectively weak. The film hasn't done the work to establish the relationship and simply trusts the audience's recognition of "These guys are supposed to be friends in a story like this, so they are" to make the leap. Now, maybe someone with better grasp of film and literary criticism may want to clarify for me why I'm wrong, but I think that's an objective flaw in TFA. Not a critical one, but one where the math just...doesn't add up. It's the film trying to say that 5+7=48.

So according to your subjective assessment it's objectively good. Therefore people who claim that it's objectively bad are biased by their subjective assessments. Makes perfect sense. :lol

I'm not saying it's objectively good. I'm just saying that I don't think that what people have pointed to as evidence of it being objectively bad is actual evidence thereof. I think it's evidence of the things they found subjectively disappointing or not entertaining in some other way.
 
I'll put it into another context. An objective critique of TFA might focus on the characters' relationships with each other. It makes sense why Rey connects so much with Han. It also makes sense why she and Finn become close friends. What doesn't make a ton of sense is why Finn and Poe seem like best buds. They meet for about 10 minutes at the start of the film, then Poe apparently dies, and then they don't reunite until the very end of the movie at which point we're supposed to just...accept that they're best pals for life. But the film has done nothing to establish that level of friendship. Friendly acquaintance, sure. But best pals? No, it's just cutting to the chase to establish that relationship because that's the position the two characters are "supposed" to be in. I don't think that makes TFA a bad film, either, but it's a weak point in the film and one which I think is objectively weak. The film hasn't done the work to establish the relationship and simply trusts the audience's recognition of "These guys are supposed to be friends in a story like this, so they are" to make the leap. Now, maybe someone with better grasp of film and literary criticism may want to clarify for me why I'm wrong, but I think that's an objective flaw in TFA. Not a critical one, but one where the math just...doesn't add up. It's the film trying to say that 5+7=48.

I'm not saying it's objectively good. I'm just saying that I don't think that what people have pointed to as evidence of it being objectively bad is actual evidence thereof. I think it's evidence of the things they found subjectively disappointing or not entertaining in some other way.

This seems to me like one of those things where the suspension of disbelief is heavily relied on. It varies in degree from one movie to another, but things happen at the speed of plot oftentimes and this feels like one of those times where the audience is expected to go along with it because... movies!
 
There is nothing in TLJ that screams of technical incompetence or shoddy workmanship. It is not OBJECTIVELY bad.

That's purely your subjective opinion. Could you please stop presenting it as a fact?

I'd say that ESB is the standout there in that the heroes basically "lose" in the end.
PoC: Dead Man's Chest comes to the list. I haven't seen it but apparently Infinity War didn't end up too well. Where's the rift in the fanbase caused by people not wanting to see their heroes lose there?

In the rest, they all win. It's also not made abundantly clear that they have royally screwed up in Raiders or LOTR
Practically almost everything Indy does is foiled or doesn't work out and in the end he makes it out alive. That's his final victory in Raiders.
LOTR to a much lesser degree but eventually (and even more in the end) Frodo fails at the last step and the ring is only destroyed by Gollum's intervention. Again as said to a degree, but hardly your usual hero's journey.

IN MY OPINION OF COURSE!!!

There's nothing disingenuous about it at all if your point is to note that people bandying about their opinions are doing just that and nothing more. You've been pretty clear that your position on the film is your opinion. You may not agree with my interpretation of the film, and you didn't share my experience of it, but you recognize that we're both just coming at it from different perspectives and that we're mainly talking about our subjective opinions on the film.
But for chrissake, nobody has ever stated that a review is not a subjective thing. So why is it such a huge surprise and exclusion of any validity that the review is not objective? Of course it ain't. IN MY OPINION OF COURSE!!!

It's been a while since I read his stuff (what with him being dead and all...), but my recollection was that Ebert would talk about both his own subjective experience of the film, and also about things that struck me as being more grounded in objective criticism.
Well that's the very definition of a critique. Ebert, RLM and tons of other critics do just the same. But then again, in this sea of subjectivity what can then be objectively criticised? The scene is badly lit? Ah that's just artistic choice. Actors hamming their performance? Conscious artistic choice. Lens not in focus and half the scene is blurry? Groundbreaking artistic decision!

IN MY OPINION OF COURSE!!!


I'll put it into another context. An objective critique of TFA might focus on the characters' relationships with each other. It makes sense why Rey connects so much with Han. It also makes sense why she and Finn become close friends. What doesn't make a ton of sense is why Finn and Poe seem like best buds. They meet for about 10 minutes at the start of the film, then Poe apparently dies, and then they don't reunite until the very end of the movie at which point we're supposed to just...accept that they're best pals for life. But the film has done nothing to establish that level of friendship. Friendly acquaintance, sure. But best pals?
Obligatory TFA/JJ bash bit..:rolleyes
I don't know why this Poe/Finn thing is a new whim, it's not the first time you cited this but the two of them spend like 15 mins together in TFA? They escape, have a bit of a banter, then get separated. Then they meet at the base, have a hug, good to see you're not dead, keep the jacket, off I go, not even a word anymore. I never thought that they were suddenly bestest buddie. It was TLJ that deepened their relationship and jumped into "ah they're really cool and the crowd loved them together". Oh wait, Rian actually wrote the script before even seeing the completed TFA allegedly...
IN MY OPINION OF COURSE!!!
 
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This seems to me like one of those things where the suspension of disbelief is heavily relied on. It varies in degree from one movie to another, but things happen at the speed of plot oftentimes and this feels like one of those times where the audience is expected to go along with it because... movies!

Right, but that's kind of my point. It's the film lazily establishing a new baseline for the characters' relationship (and for their relationship moving forward) without doing the ground work for it. It's playing off of the audience's meta-knowledge of "how films like this work" to infer the relationship at that level.

That's different (to my way of thinking) from the contrivance of things "moving at the speed of plot." Like, we don't know how long anything takes to happen in ESB, but we accept the sequence of events and don't sweat the "Wait...how long did that actually take?" because...movies. It's the same reason why, when you're counting down the timer for the bomb in Goldfinger, you aren't actually counting the number of seconds, you're just watching the counter tick down (which takes longer than the time actually showing on the counter). Again, that's fine because...movies.

But a film simply creating a relationship between two characters out of thin air where no relationship previously existed...I think that's objectively weak storytelling. It ends up not really mattering a ton because audiences "know" what's "supposed" to be the case. They already are primed to accept Finn and Poe as buddies because we know that these characters are stepping into the rough position the OT heroes once occupied, and the OT heroes were all friends (or more). But the film takes two guys who escaped a Star Destroyer together and establishes an apparently deeper friendship based solely on that brief interaction which lasts all of maybe 10 minutes. This is also different from implying a previous connection that the audience simply hasn't witness (e.g., Han and Lando in ESB). We've seen the total interaction between the characters prior to them meeting again at the Resistance base, so other than saying "Well, yeah, but...that's how movies work, I guess," there's nothing within the film itself to establish why/how they've become such close friends.

And again, it's definitely not a critical flaw in an objective sense, but it is an objective flaw. It works because audiences are ready to infer a relationship where there's no reason for one to exist.

That's purely your subjective opinion. Could you please stop presenting it as a fact?


PoC: Dead Man's Chest comes to the list.

I honestly don't remember enough about that movie other than thinking Davey Jones' CGI looked pretty cool to say. :lol

I haven't seen it but apparently Infinity War didn't end up too well. Where's the rift in the fanbase caused by people not wanting to see their heroes lose there?

Not so much a rift in the fanbase, but people have definitely latched on to blaming Star-Lord for things ending poorly. Of course, we're pretty sure that it will all be undone, given the meta-knowledge of who's been cast in what movies that have yet to be filmed.

Practically almost everything Indy does is foiled or doesn't work out and in the end he makes it out alive. That's his final victory in Raiders.
LOTR to a much lesser degree but eventually (and even more in the end) Frodo fails at the last step and the ring is only destroyed by Gollum's intervention. Again as said to a degree, but hardly your usual hero's journey.

IN MY OPINION OF COURSE!!!


Right, but again, in neither do the actions of the characters end in a sense of futility or crushing failure. Indy succeeds in keeping the Ark from the Nazis, even though the Nazis end up destroying themselves by meddling with it. Granted, Indy "succeeds" only in the sense that he survives, and it's fair to assume that the Nazis would've ultimately destroyed themselves anyway with the Ark, but audiences ignore that because Indy retrieves the ark in the end. He "wins" and therefore all sins are forgiven, so to speak.

In LOTR, Frodo fails at the end, but the ring is destroyed, and so, again, all is forgiven.

Side note: I also don't think that "the hero's journey" necessarily applies in all of these cases, nor is it even necessary. People sometimes want to treat Campbell's breakdown as a road map -- as if deviating from it means a story doesn't work anymore -- and that's not really the case.

But for chrissake, nobody has ever stated that a review is not a subjective thing. So why is it such a huge surprise and exclusion of any validity that the review is not objective? Of course it ain't. IN MY OPINION OF COURSE!!!



Some people have approached reviews as if they provide the final word on a given subject. Within this thread, even. RLM comes out with its review and someone in this thread literally posted "Plinkett has spoken. Suck it, TLJ defenders." In the past 9-ish months, I've seen the same from other folks. Definitive statements that the film sucks, is a piece of crap, there's no denying how bad it is, etc. If you press them for examples of stuff that's wrong with the film, it usually either boils down to something that they just didn't care for, rather than something that's genuinely bad writing. In some cases, they seek to equate "bad writing" with "stuff I don't care for."

There's nothing wrong with stating one's subjective opinion. Nor is there anything wrong with having a negative view of TLJ. I do think that it's incorrect, however, to make blanket statements that suggest the film is objectively bad, especially when the people making that claim can't actually seem to support it. Go ahead and dislike it. Talk about what you disliked. But don't claim that it's objectively bad as if there's no other legitimate way to view the film.


Well that's the very definition of a critique. Ebert, RLM and tons of other critics do just the same. But then again, in this sea of subjectivity what can then be objectively criticised? The scene is badly lit? Ah that's just artistic choice. Actors hamming their performance? Conscious artistic choice. Lens not in focus and half the scene is blurry? Groundbreaking artistic decision!

IN MY OPINION OF COURSE!!!

Far from being purely a relative matter, I think you can point out objective flaws in films or storytelling when the goals of the creators run counter to the end result they achieved. Example: if I'm telling a love story and nobody ever actually falls in love, I've failed at telling a love story, no? If I'm making an ostensibly serious film, but the performances of my characters are so bad and the writing so weird or off-putting or clunky that everyone just laughs at it, I've failed in making a serious movie, no? Tommy Wiseau may now claim that The Room was always meant to be intentionally bad, but I doubt that. Black Dynamite, on the other hand, is intentionally "bad" because it's satirizing a genre of film and some of the production flaws that wound up appearing in those kinds of films. I thought Gamer was actually a "good" movie but that's because my sense was that it was also a satire of sorts; if it was trying to actually be a thrilling action film with engaging and sympathetic characters that its audience would like...I can't see how you'd rate it anything other than a failure, although I haven't discussed that film much with folks since it came out.


Obligatory TFA/JJ bash bit..:rolleyes
I don't know why this Poe/Finn thing is a new whim, it's not the first time you cited this but the two of them spend like 15 mins together in TFA? They escape, have a bit of a banter, then get separated. Then they meet at the base, have a hug, good to see you're not dead, keep the jacket, off I go, not even a word anymore. I never thought that they were suddenly bestest buddie. It was TLJ that deepened their relationship and jumped into "ah they're really cool and the crowd loved them together". Oh wait, Rian actually wrote the script before even seeing the completed TFA allegedly...
IN MY OPINION OF COURSE!!!

Eh, I got the sense that TFA was really trying to speed their friendship along, partially because they knew that these two would be "friends" in future films, just like the OT heroes were. Look, I like TFA. I enjoy it as a film. But as with TLJ, it had its flaws. Some are what I'd consider subjective. For example, failing to take the time to explain the state of the galaxy and effectively differentiate between the Resistance and the Republic is, in my opinion, a subjective failure. I think audiences would've benefited from having the background info provided to them in some exposition...but it's not really necessary to tell the central story of TFA. Other stuff I think is an objective failure (e.g., the Poe/Finn relationship that I've mentioned). Same story with TLJ. I liked the film a lot, but it has its flaws. Some are subjective. I found the slow-mo chase to be...odd. I think it was risky to put the audience in Poe's shoes for the Poe/Holdo thing, and it strikes me that many in the audience missed what I think is the point of all of that. Some are objective, such as the Finn/Rose romance. That seems to come out of nowhere to me. I mean, I don't dislike it, but again, it feels unearned. There's been next to no romantic energy between the characters prior to the big kiss, just Rose fangirling it up around Finn when they first meet, and then...a big kiss as the gate gets blown open? It's shot gorgeously, and the relationship might be interesting, but...where'd it come from?
 
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Solo4114 Thinking about your example of a subjective flaw in TFA, I would say it is an objective flaw. It is the seventh instalment of an ongoing saga and some explanation of events from one episode to the next is needed to set up the story. The state of the galaxy far far away is the foundation on which a story stands. As you say, it is not crucial to the central story but it would benefit the audience. So the audience will buy in to it and go on that journey without needing to ask why. Using 'just because' as a premise is not good writing. But I'm no screenwriter so maybe that does make it subjective(?).

Where as, your example of an objective flaw, seems to me and sztriki, as subjective. Your interpretation of that relationship is different to others'. The character dynamics that were 'promoted' or just speculated on, initially looked to be similar to the OT but that's not really how it played out in TFA.
 
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I was going to say I can't believe this thread is still going, but when I actually thought about what this movie means... yeah, I get it. This movie basically demolished my future expectations of SW movies to come. I never thought I'd become disinterested in SW, but I've stopped following SW news and I don't miss it. This is the last SW movie I've seen. I still haven't seen Solo. Two shots of TLJ in the theater will be enough to tide me over until I'm dead.
 
I was going to say I can't believe this thread is still going, but when I actually thought about what this movie means... yeah, I get it. This movie basically demolished my future expectations of SW movies to come. I never thought I'd become disinterested in SW, but I've stopped following SW news and I don't miss it. This is the last SW movie I've seen. I still haven't seen Solo. Two shots of TLJ in the theater will be enough to tide me over until I'm dead.

Well that's just your opinion man, stop stating it as a fact, that's why the fanbase is split! :darnkids
 
Subjective, Objective, Digestive, Photosensitive,.....all I know is that The Last Jedi is the worst Star Wars film that I've ever seen,....but, now come to think of it,....The Last Jedi is probably the best Star Wars parody film I've ever seen

J

Do you really have to insult Spaceballs?
 
I tried rewatching Spaceballs again last year, it was unbearably bad. Horribly dated and some of Mel's worst jokes. Robot Chicken is much better at parodies of SW. That being said I'd still watch SB before sitting through TLJ again. ;)
 
What I haven’t heard are people who think TLJ is a great film without any caveats. Do we have anyone here who loves TLJ without any significant qualifiers?

I'll say it as many times as you'd like: I love all the Star Wars movies, and I think The Last Jedi is the best one by a healthy margin. I love it more every time I revisit it, its metaphors resonating more deeply as I dig into its layers of meaning. No caveats. No significant qualifiers. I am better for having seen it.
 
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