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
How do you guys feel about geeks and gamers opinions? I feel like SW fans are now the purest form of a threat to the franchise.

The fans are the heart of Star Wars and LFL is simply not giving them what they want, I've been a fan my entire life however the current course the franchise is taking does not in any way meet my expectations.

Identity politics should have no place in Star Wars and i'm disgusted that Kathleen Kennedy and LFL have chosen to focus so heavily on the things that divide us and not on what brings us together as fans.

I do think Geeks and Gamers spends to much time talking about Star Wars, however i do agree with most of his opinions and i have now abandoned the franchise i love so much.

And people at large seem to agree, Star Wars is in decline.
 
Hogwash. The absolute SWIQ standard was set with the theatrical cuts of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. All the filmmakers had to do going forward was to continue stories and create new ones, while adhering to that standard. But beginning with ROTJ, the filmmakers--from Lucas' LFL to Disney's LFL--had to get too cute, too clever by half, too convoluted, too political, too preachy, too fast in pace, too artsy, too terrestrial and modern in their films' look and feel, and too greedy in how quickly the films are being churned out.

The fans--none of them--are the problem. The problem lies squarely with the low-SWIQ rightsholders of the franchise, and the low-SWIQ filmmakers they hire to make their SWINO films. They are SWINO films, because they are Star Wars In Name Only.

The Wook

"Swino", sounds like a SW character.
 
My take on this is that it’s a damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation. I can only quote the guys at Red Letter Media why Star Wars after ROTJ is such a minefield (even if acknowledging that ROTJ was the weakest by far of the OT). As opposed to Marvel which has many decades of material to weed through and select the cream to use Star Wars is just 3 movies really. The cinematic universe thet they’re trying to churn out is simply not there, there’s not that much to work from. If you deviate too far from the original 3 then it’s not SW any more, if you repeat it too much it’s a ripoff/remake/same but different. I know there was the old EU but honestly every major character was exactly the same as they were by the end of ROTJ with almost zero progression or anything interesting dome to them, the new characters were not really interesting akd there was just a huge amount of junk like Skippy the Jedi droid and whatnot.
So yea I kinda given up on the idea of anything really interesting and genuinely exciting happenning with SW from an art/story point of view. TLJ had the chance and its biggest mistake IMO is that despite all the stuff that goes on for 2 hrs it does absolute zilch to change the basic setup of Empire vs Rebels. From business point of view it’s gonna go ahead on fanservice movies like Rogue One easy, people are crying for a Kenobi movie (no idea why), a Darth Maul movie (same), a Darth Vader movie...from what I heard there’s a semi-sequel to Solo in the works with Boba Fett...ugh...and all things considered neither the GoT guys’ nor Rian’s trilogy really fills me with hope, although without any details at all on those I’m not completely ruling either out.
 
Luke Skywalker thinks about killing his own nephew in his sleep, the child of his sister and his best friend! This is the guy who thought his father, Darth Vader, could be redeemed after he cut off his hand, blew up a planet, and killed Obi-Wan. This man went on a suicidal mission to the 2nd Death Star, because he believed one of the most evil men in the universe could come back from the darkness, and he was proven right! What does Luke apparently do with this new found sense of confidence in family? He pulls a light saber on a sleeping kid and runs away to let him ruin the universe after.

Han Solo doesn't stay with Leia and is a terrible, distant father who would rather haul cgi tentacle rape beasts around for... profit? Even though he's a legendary hero of the rebellion... Okay... Imagine being such a bad father that the child you raised actually restarted the evil empire you fought to destroy.

Leia Organa, instead of the kick ass, take no nonsense ball buster from the originals, is now a matronly, slow talking, constantly sad looking leader who might be Merry Poppins. She can't even trust Poe Dameron, who blew up Star Killer Base about 4 hours before this happened!

What a train wreck of a film.
 
Luke Skywalker thinks about killing his own nephew in his sleep, the child of his sister and his best friend! This is the guy who thought his father, Darth Vader, could be redeemed after he cut off his hand, blew up a planet, and killed Obi-Wan. This man went on a suicidal mission to the 2nd Death Star, because he believed one of the most evil men in the universe could come back from the darkness, and he was proven right! What does Luke apparently do with this new found sense of confidence in family? He pulls a light saber on a sleeping kid and runs away to let him ruin the universe after.

Han Solo doesn't stay with Leia and is a terrible, distant father who would rather haul cgi tentacle rape beasts around for... profit? Even though he's a legendary hero of the rebellion... Okay... Imagine being such a bad father that the child you raised actually restarted the evil empire you fought to destroy.

Leia Organa, instead of the kick ass, take no nonsense ball buster from the originals, is now a matronly, slow talking, constantly sad looking leader who might be Merry Poppins. She can't even trust Poe Dameron, who blew up Star Killer Base about 4 hours before this happened!

What a train wreck of a film.

markhamill.jpg
 
Looks like Jar Jar is no longer the most annoying, and I agree.
View attachment 820246
people suffering from timing. I think TLJ sucks, but Rose is just a band aid to cover bad writing. It was annoying that her presence impeded the plot.

But,

In terms of annoying, Rose at least has a likable actress. Jar Jar had that accent, the slapstick "comedy", AND the annoyance of basically only existing to impede the plot.
 
Whereas I and the people I know/have known for years uniformly like Rose. We level a lot of the same gripes at TLJ as at TFA, the Prequels... The older among us, RotJ... *shrug* The biggest beef voiced by any of them was Rose kissing Finn -- but that's because she's asexual and because she doesn't have those impulses and is kind of repelled by the idea, so when others demonstrate them it's kinda nails on a chalkboard for her.

Anyway... This was in response to my last post:

Hogwash. The absolute SWIQ standard was set with the theatrical cuts of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back. All the filmmakers had to do going forward was to continue stories and create new ones, while adhering to that standard. But beginning with ROTJ, the filmmakers--from Lucas' LFL to Disney's LFL--had to get too cute, too clever by half, too convoluted, too political, too preachy, too fast in pace, too artsy, too terrestrial and modern in their films' look and feel, and too greedy in how quickly the films are being churned out.

I'll say it's more that starting with RotJ we saw more of the unfiltered pen of George. He really needs intervening layers to turn his ideas into actual stories, as his notions of "good storytelling" are very simplistic, heavy-handed, and shallow.

On the flip side, I think one of the big issues with the current era is removing him too much from the creative process. But given he was pretty much done with it when he worked up his ST treatments and sold LFL, I don't think there was anything that could have kept him more involved, as a story consultant, as a first draft pitcher, whatever. He didn't want any part of that.

And, unfortunately, as one of the other intervening posters said, one of my biggest issues with the EU over its time was how few authors who dipped into the Star Wars universe really got it -- the same issue they're contending with now. There are a lot of people who appreciate Star Wars, but comparatively few who can create within the context. And some are very oddly specific. I don't really like Kevin Anderson's standalone Star Wars novels, for instance, but I love his collaborative work on the Jedi Apprentice series with Rebecca Moesta, and I love his work writing the Tales of the Jedi comics for Dark Horse. I don't know what was so different about the latter two that was lacking from the first...

The fans--none of them--are the problem. The problem lies squarely with the low-SWIQ rightsholders of the franchise, and the low-SWIQ filmmakers they hire to make their SWINO films. They are SWINO films, because they are Star Wars In Name Only.

That is an instigating factor, yes, but how people respond to it is what I was getting at. I was too young to clarify what left me wanting more from RotJ at the time, but I was quite able to express how I felt the Prequels let me down, ditto TFA, R1, Clone Wars, Rebels, TLJ, and Solo. But I try to understand where the filmmakers were coming from and work with them -- even though they don't know I, personally, exist. No one (well, hardly anyone) releases a deliberately bad movie. No one sets out to waste millions of dollars on something they know people will hate. The fact that some or all of them don't Get It makes me want to sit down with them and help them understand. Vitriol and boycotting isn't a useful response. I don't get people who adore the Prequels, but I'm not going to belittle and dismiss them for liking them. I didn't call for George's removal from LFL and his head on a pike when he dropped the ball as hard as I feel he did on AotC.

That one party is the one who originally created the universe and one isn't is immaterial when neither of them Get It.

The fans are the heart of Star Wars and LFL is simply not giving them what they want, I've been a fan my entire life however the current course the franchise is taking does not in any way meet my expectations.

I've been a fan since I was 2 (there was no Star Wars before that), and I'm used to not getting what I want or expect. It's nothing new. Problem is, the fan base is so diverse, there's no way to give everyone what they want or expect. I don't know if it's even possible to cover the majority. The Prequels were released into a different paradigm than the OT, and the new films are being released into yet another paradigm. Things aren't the same as they were twenty or forty years ago. The people who watch these movies are very, very different from those who lined up around the block in the summer of '77.

That said, I and the people I regularly go to movies with like TFA, like TLJ, like Rogue One, like Solo... We're not blown away by any of them, but we like them. Heck, one of the things we like is that they're skewing away from the post-RotJ EU, which is a plus in our books.

Identity politics should have no place in Star Wars and i'm disgusted that Kathleen Kennedy and LFL have chosen to focus so heavily on the things that divide us and not on what brings us together as fans.

Identity politics where...?

I do think Geeks and Gamers spends to much time talking about Star Wars, however i do agree with most of his opinions and i have now abandoned the franchise i love so much.

A shame. I'm excited to see where things go next. You will always be welcome back, of course, should you see something come along down the road that gives you a change of heart. I'm sad you find no joy in it currently. It's definitely not universal, though.

And people at large seem to agree, Star Wars is in decline.

I just said it's not universal. :p Much depends who one asks and where one looks for information. The general consensus I have seen is that we see this is a moment of transition. Hasbro is going to have to rethink how they do things -- not because of Star Wars declining, but because the landscape of how children play and what they play with is changing, the dilution of toylines is discouraging to collectors, and so on. Marvel's Star Wars comics are some of their better-selling titles, given how the head of the comic division is kinda laying waste to the Marvel Universe out of jealousy over how much attention the MCU is getting. And with the whole movies/TV/internet/home-video/streaming thing so up in the air and changing, the manner in which people receive Star Wars stories is likely to be very different in another twenty years than what we're used to now.

Star Wars as we knew it forty years ago? Where you could only see it when it was in theaters, had to re-create it with action figures and model kits, when there were only a handful of books and the Marvel comics to satisfy your appetite for more? Gone.

Star Wars as we knew it twenty years ago? The EU in full swing, Hasbro deluging store racks with more action figures than OT fans could have imagined, LucasArts overseeing a string of over a score of memorable games, half a dozen books a year being released, and Dark Horse flooding us with roughly as many Star Wars titles at a time? Gone.

Star Wars as it is now? Where the ancillary material is now as canon as the films, and thus the live-action, animated, prose, and graphic material is far more interwoven and interdependent then ever, where LucasArts is no more and Star Wars video games have all but vanished, where Hasbro has gone way overboard with no less than eight Star Wars toy and collectible lines/scales? Some of what's tried will work, some won't. In another decade or two, some of this will have been fine-tuned and streamlined, some will be gone, and something new will have come along to be tried. There are lessons to learn in every era, and the ordinary human beings who are in positions to have to learn them will do so imperfectly at best.

Luke Skywalker thinks about killing his own nephew in his sleep, the child of his sister and his best friend! This is the guy who thought his father, Darth Vader, could be redeemed after he cut off his hand, blew up a planet, and killed Obi-Wan. This man went on a suicidal mission to the 2nd Death Star, because he believed one of the most evil men in the universe could come back from the darkness, and he was proven right! What does Luke apparently do with this new found sense of confidence in family? He pulls a light saber on a sleeping kid and runs away to let him ruin the universe after.

Han Solo doesn't stay with Leia and is a terrible, distant father who would rather haul cgi tentacle rape beasts around for... profit? Even though he's a legendary hero of the rebellion... Okay... Imagine being such a bad father that the child you raised actually restarted the evil empire you fought to destroy.

Leia Organa, instead of the kick ass, take no nonsense ball buster from the originals, is now a matronly, slow talking, constantly sad looking leader who might be Merry Poppins. She can't even trust Poe Dameron, who blew up Star Killer Base about 4 hours before this happened!

What a train wreck of a film.

See, I agree with most of that, from a certain point of view. What my circle of friends all agree on is that there needed to be a much better transition from the Happily Ever After ending of RotJ to where we found Our Heroes in TFA, and thus then where they went in TLJ. As it is, it's way, way too jarring and discordant. Even reading all of the ancillary material doesn't fill in all the important gaps. But worst is the impression JJ gives in how he presented TFA. Per their timeline, everything only went to hell in about the last couple years, but it feels from the film to have been that way for a while.

As of five years before TFA? A quarter-century after RotJ?
• Han and Leia were still together-ish. He was often off doing things because politics bored and annoyed him, and she didn't blame him. They were in frequent contact. When her true parentage was revealed, he immediately come home to help.
• Ben was still training with Luke, and they were off in the Unknown Regions looking for something, as yet unrevealed.
• The Empire was either no more or so severely hamstrung as to be irrelevant. The First Order, which is not the Empire, had yet to go public.
• And Leia is just organizing the beginnings of the Resistance.

So somewhere about 3-4 years before TFA is where Ben finds out Vader was his granddad, Snoke's manipulation of him comes to fruition, Luke's academy is destroyed, Ben disappears, Han, Luke, and Leia discover he's become Kylo, Leia throws herself into the Resistance, Han kinda dissociates, and Luke goes Walkabout. And less than a year before TFA, the First Order starts nibbling around the edges of known space.

All of that, even in thumbnail form, is what we needed to see on screen. How they get from older, but still the people we knew, to in the middle of crisis. Not just starting us when they're at about their worst.
 
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Star Wars is in terrible decline. Just watched TLJ again last night for the Rifftrax and both my wife and I agree that it's just an objectively terrible movie. There is virtually nothing about it that is worth sitting through, especially for 2.5 hours. And we've both been Star Wars fans since '77, but clearly, Disney isn't making movies for us, they're making movies for Millennials. And that's why things like Solo are failing so bad.
 
The fans are the heart of Star Wars and LFL is simply not giving them what they want, I've been a fan my entire life however the current course the franchise is taking does not in any way meet my expectations.

Identity politics should have no place in Star Wars and i'm disgusted that Kathleen Kennedy and LFL have chosen to focus so heavily on the things that divide us and not on what brings us together as fans.

I do think Geeks and Gamers spends to much time talking about Star Wars, however i do agree with most of his opinions and i have now abandoned the franchise i love so much.

And people at large seem to agree, Star Wars is in decline.
Star Wars is in terrible decline. Just watched TLJ again last night for the Rifftrax and both my wife and I agree that it's just an objectively terrible movie. There is virtually nothing about it that is worth sitting through, especially for 2.5 hours. And we've both been Star Wars fans since '77, but clearly, Disney isn't making movies for us, they're making movies for Millennials. And that's why things like Solo are failing so bad.

This is the exact kind of thinking that is wrong with fandom. The fans nor the fandom is owed anything. Just because we pay for a ticket doesn't make us the heart of the franchise. We don't own it. It's not our property. From the moment Lucas put pen to paper to the moment he cashed the Mouse's check, George Lucas WAS Star Wars. He was its heart, its soul, its creator, and its judge. Now, as much as you may not like it, LucasFilm the company is the heart. Star Wars is not yours. It's LucasFilm's, and they may do whatever the Hell they want with it. THEY decide what is and isn't Star Wars. Not you. Not me. Them. Just because they decided to move on to the 21st century, while you stay in the 20th is not their fault. It's yours.
 
This is the exact kind of thinking that is wrong with fandom. The fans nor the fandom is owed anything. Just because we pay for a ticket doesn't make us the heart of the franchise. We don't own it. It's not our property. From the moment Lucas put pen to paper to the moment he cashed the Mouse's check, George Lucas WAS Star Wars. He was its heart, its soul, its creator, and its judge. Now, as much as you may not like it, LucasFilm the company is the heart. Star Wars is not yours. It's LucasFilm's, and they may do whatever the Hell they want with it. THEY decide what is and isn't Star Wars. Not you. Not me. Them. Just because they decided to move on to the 21st century, while you stay in the 20th is not their fault. It's yours.

...and a lot of people can decide NOT to see their Star Wars. Which seems to be what happened. Maybe it's just me, but when I buy a ticket, I do feel I'm owed a good movie.....which TLJ was not. I buy a new a new car and it falls apart, the next time I buy a car, I'll think more than twice about buying that brand again. And not because it "21st century" whatever that means. I don't buy it because it's crap.
 
...and a lot of people can decide NOT to see their Star Wars. Which seems to be what happened. Maybe it's just me, but when I buy a ticket, I do feel I'm owed a good movie.....which TLJ was not. I buy a new a new car and it falls apart, the next time I buy a car, I'll think more than twice about buying that brand again. And not because it "21st century" whatever that means. I don't buy it because it's crap.

And that's your right to not see it. If you didn't like something, I see no reason why you should have to or want to partake in any more of it. However, you aren't owed a good movie. You can expect one, but you can't be owed money back just because you didn't like the movie.

Personally I'm not seeing Solo right away because I hear it's not good. I'm not expecting to see a good movie nor do I want to see a bad movie. I really don't even have an interest to see it. I never did. I think it was miscast and unnecessary. I might see it later, but only if I have the spare change and boredom to do so.
 
This is the exact kind of thinking that is wrong with fandom. The fans nor the fandom is owed anything. Just because we pay for a ticket doesn't make us the heart of the franchise. We don't own it. It's not our property. From the moment Lucas put pen to paper to the moment he cashed the Mouse's check, George Lucas WAS Star Wars. He was its heart, its soul, its creator, and its judge. Now, as much as you may not like it, LucasFilm the company is the heart. Star Wars is not yours. It's LucasFilm's, and they may do whatever the Hell they want with it. THEY decide what is and isn't Star Wars. Not you. Not me. Them. Just because they decided to move on to the 21st century, while you stay in the 20th is not their fault. It's yours.
This is such a weird comment. Using the word "owed" seems silly to me, or when someone says "fan service". Do you not know where "fan" comes from? It comes from "fanatic". As in they are nuts for whatever "it" maybe, a sports team, a religion, book series, or movies. If a company is in charge of making movies held to a certain standard that people expect out of the movies they love, and they dont deliver, thats BS. If a Star Wars FAN made the movie, he would respect what came before it, and not try to shake up what people are devoted to. George Lucas wasnt Star Wars. Not by a mile, yeah, he was part of it, but man. I swear the guy has some sort of autism, because he doesnt know how people work. There was a huge machine that helped him get Star Wars made, and successful. Yeah, they can do whatever they hell they want with it, but the only reason they acquired it was to MAKE MONEY. Thats it. Thats the only damn reason. If you think its any other reason, you need to get a catscan. TLJ convinces the old fans that they dont need us, we are dead to them, we are making new fans, then they try to make a movie that caters to the old fans. Its dumb. Lucasfilm needs to get their head out of their ass and tell good stories. Thats the fundamental reason why this movie SUCKED. It effed up the damn story, and took characters people have known and loved for decades and ruined them. Its a travesty.
 
In any business, if you would like to keep your customers you will continue to produce a product that they wish to purchase. Disney is not an “artist” or some kind of creator that feels the need to be true to its muse. The only stake they have in this is the purchase price of the asset. They bought Star Wars to do just what businesses exist for and that’s to make money. If they don’t care about making the money from the people who’ve been fans for 40+ years, that’s just fine. But having the attitude of “if you don’t like it you’re a sexist bigot and we don’t need your money anyway because there will be plenty others who will buy it” is not how you successfully sell a product long-term. The rewards they reap from a built-in fan base will (and arguably has begun to) dry up with that attitude. Those of you that say the fans are acting entitled are overlooking the fact that Disney themselves are acting like they are entitled to my fandom dollars, no matter what kind of drivel they schlock the Star Wars name on.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I'm not saying Disney is entitled to your money. They're not getting mine for Solo, so I think that makes it pretty clear about my stance on that. However, they want to make a profit, Not just from fans, but from all audiences. Because Millennials currently outnumber Baby Boomers, guess whose money is more coveted.
Hint: It's not the people with their minds stuck in the last century.

In other words: If you wish to have a complete and profitable franchise, you must embrace a larger audience. Not just the narrow, dogmatic view of the fans.
 
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