Quite shocked there isn’t a thread about this yet.
Let’s discuss.
I’ve already declared this to be a non-spoiler free zone in the title so don’t worry about blurring anything.
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Anyway my $0.02. Mrs Ficus wasn’t a huge fan. I quite liked it although I’m not quite sure why yet. This is going to take some unpacking but the more I’ve read the more I’m starting to get why.
In so many ways the series’ tropes and plots were subverted and burned to the ground. Literally and figuratively.
All the speculation about who Rey is? Jokes on you, she’s just a nobody.
Snoke as the overarching Big Bad? Hah, let’s kill him off in the middle of the second movie.
The return of the Jedi order? Nah, fuck that. The Jedi kinda suck. We don’t really need them anyway.
There was a lot to like. The kamikaze scene was breathtaking. The interplay between Ren and Rey was great. Luke as the crochety “too old for this shit” anti-hero.
There was a lot I didn’t like, too. The Leia space walk was totally a “what the fuck is this shit” moment. The comic relief was really bad at times (really, a yo mama joke?).
As I said before, I’m still unpacking everything I’ve seen but so far I’m thinking this installment was pretty great.
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I literally just got back from seeing this with Tachin Jr, So I’m still processing this as well,
This is what I liked most about this movie, it didn’t take itself seriously, it was free to be its own take on the Star Wars universe. I appreciated this.
If Rey had turned out to be another Skywalker I would seriously give up on the franchise, I’m glad they didn’t go there.
I really liked how Luke basically told Rey the Jedi were useless and how the force has nothing to do with them. That felt like it was saying what everybody already knows, midichlorians are stupid.
I’m not sure about this one. Yes, it was ridiculous, but then so is everything else. The thing I liked though is that it’s the first time I can remember in the movie that my expectations were subverted. If anybody was going to die in this movie, I was sure it was going to be Leia. When Kylo Ren hesitated in personally killing his mother yet the empire went ahead and killed her anyway, I was sure that was just another example of “Women in refrigerators” to further propel Kylo Ren to the dark side since he seemed to be wavering, but they didn’t do that, and we got to see Leia actually use her Jedi powers.
I need to watch this again, but the thing that was bothering me in the movie is that, it’s not until the last battle in the abandoned rebel base that we start to get what the movie is about, and by this time, it’s hard for the movie to deliver on it’s themes. If anything, this is the movie I would have like to have seen instead of The force awakens, it really does set up an arc for our characters to follow and finally sets up the rebellion as a proper underdog and as a force for hope in this universe.
The only real gripe I had was that the music was, again, lacking. There were times where the themes were strong and really underscored what was happening on the screen, but the rest of the time, it was just… there.
Edit: A word.
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Someone far more articulate and observant than me pointed out the whole movie is about failure and learning and growing from it - just as Yoda said.
Pretty much all of our heroes failed at what they set out to do - Luke and Rey couldn’t save Ben (despite his brief face turn, I think he’s even more far gone than ever), Finn and Rose couldn’t help the Rebellion fleet escape and basically bumbled everything they did, Poe was responsible for the decimation of the Rebellion’s fleet, nobody heeded the Rebellion’s distress calls, the Jedi order failed, and so on.
On the other hand, the future is wide open now. There possibilities are limitless.
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Kind of interesting that Luke has Loki powers now. (“Piss off, ghost!” –Korg)
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We knew that we could count on you.
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Another upside to this film. The Right hates it.
Just look at the vitriol in the comments section. So much anger and cries about liberal conspiracies and SJWs invocations.
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The galaxy shall know the iron fist of those two emo teenagers who are apparently in charge now!
All I know is that I wouldn’t want to be the guy who had to write this year’s annual report for the Rebel Alliance. Of the Trillions of sapient beings in the galaxy the entire resistance movement is now reduced to maybe a dozen people and a single spaceship that had already been deemed “a hunk of junk” 40 years earlier? Ouch.
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The Leia moment was the first - and only - time we get to see her actively use the Force. It was like … 40 years worth of payoff. Yeah, she can use it. And HOW.
My quibbles would be:
- some fight scenes went too long. Really, we’re gonna knock Phasma into a hole again?
- wtf did we need 4-tit green milk for
And the big one: When Luke’s robes collapsed, they missed their chance. Leia should have gone then, too. Connected twins, leaving together. Both sets of robes gently collapsing as they fade away. The end of the Skywalkers. Because now they either have to kill her offscreen, which seems unfair, or say she’s gone away somewhere when we all know that’s bullshit.
Hyperspace kamikaze scene: best thing EVER EVER jesus that was beautiful
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You could hear a pin drop in the movie theater.
And then some jackass had to yell, “DAAAAMN” and ruin the moment.
I really wonder what they are going to do here now. There were plenty of opportunities in this film to kill off (or otherwise send off) Leia in a dignified way that made sense to the film universe. I mean, hell, if a dumb (but oh so fun) film like Furious 7 could give one of its central characters an amazing send off well after he had died in real life, there’s no reason Star Wars with it’s unlimited budget and creativity couldn’t have done something in TLJ.
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The choice to cut the sound then was fucking genius. WAY more dramatic than explosions. I keep randomly yelling at my husband how great it was, in the middle of other conversations.
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No way. You’ve already seen uncanny young Leia. You will see not so uncanny aged Leia, soon. There is simply no fucking way they haven’t made motion analysis and 3D scanning of Ms. Fisher during this production. I would not even be surprised if it turned out that some of the scenes - in particular the space float - actually were already modeled.
Also, it is conceivably possible Abrams has had a master plan and already filmed material with Ms. Fisher.
And FTR, this film has made my eyes water many times when she was on screen. They made a really good decisions revolving some plot lines around Leia like a weird storm, and she’s the calm but forceful centre. (Pun intended.)
I’ll have to say some more about the film later, I think. But Leia had some pretty good scenes worth highlighting.
Her entry through that door is stunning. (Pun intended.) That’s a direct reference to Vader’s first appearance. Also, I bet Lucas got the entrance from somewhere, so this is a kind of recursive remix. Her connection to Luke, which woke her up, might be a stylistic reference to several films - including Alien.
She has several good “weary” scenes, and I will need to watch each one again to decipher both their significance for the character as well as the references. In general, the General is by far the most mature in the bunch of so-called heroes and villains.
Her dismissal of Poe, as well as her motherly confession that she likes him are also nice. I’ve seen this before, don’t know where and when, and I don’t mean the cross reference to Han’s full-of-himself scene. It’s also interesting for her character, given her apparent non-relationship to her own son, who is reckless in his own way.
Her locked-in scene played safe in references to Hoth, and I’ll be damned if I can’t over-analyse the shit out of it as soon I re-watch this. Her touching (pun intended) scene with Luke has the dice. Inception, anyone?
I really would like a bunch of film students to go through this film in a debit seminar, and have a full-length visual comment by Kirby Ferguson. And I’d pay good money for a translucently glowing Joseph Campbell to comment on Kirby’s observations. sigh
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They said they’re not doing that.
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As I haven’t seen it yet - is there anything about opening PDF files in it?
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I don’t believe them.
I can hardly wait for the next one; apparently it has a plot that I can really relate to.
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Kylo Ren and General Hux are, in many ways, the today’s alt-Right and neo-Nazis personified: Young, angry, privileged men who embrace the toxic legacy of a failed regime of evil. More importantly, they’re not awesome or cool. Darth Vader is one of the most iconic film villains of all time, and although the movies make it clear it’s not awesome to be Vader, he still is one hell of a black knight.
Whereas Kylo Ren is an angry young man barely in control of himself, who desperately tries to embrace Vader’s legacy while it’s painfully obvious to himself and to everyone else that he’s not up to it. (Interestingly, it’s him throwing away that mask, that really starts the process of him becoming his own man… an evil, villainous one, but still!)
And Hux, of course, is a pompous, arrogant, rage-filled slimeball. His spittle-flecked speech in TFA, and now his initial speech to Poe Dameron in TLJ, are perfectly in character. Just compare him with the dreadnought captain, who’s obviously a remnant of the Imperial officer corps. I’ve seen people call him “an ascended Empire fanboy”, and that’s an excellent description of him.
But yeah, overall: it was a good movie, though not without its flaws. After TFA, which played it quite safe, to reassure everyone that Disney knew what they were doing with Star Wars, TLJ goes out of its way to not be just another Star Wars movie, defying audience expectations and deconstructing Star Wars tropes… while still, in the end, managing to keep the spark of hope alive after quite a bleak movie.
Also, hot damn did it look good. 
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I really appreciated all of that. I thought they brilliantly subverted everyone’s expectations of this just being an Empire Strikes Back retread and upended every fan theory in smart ways. It made me say “holy crap, NOW what??” in the same way that the table-flipping moments in ESB did, but in unexpected ways.
I loved the Leia space walk and didn’t find it cheesy or silly at all, it legit gave me chills to see the Princess using the Force in a powerful way, something we rarely if ever see her do.
The hyperspace battering-ram moment was one of the most astounding visuals of the Star Wars saga and beautifully presented.
And that end scene with the kids? Brilliant. Did you notice the kid pulling the broom to him with the Force?
I want to see it again (right away!) to better process it – it’s a lot of movie – but my quibbles would be:
• many-boobed opera-singing alien in the casino was just silly
• Canto Bight went by too fast, I wanted just another thirty seconds of exploring the place to take in all of the weird aliens
• BB-8 is maybe a little too bad-ass.
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It’s tough. Both JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson have said that Ep. IX was supposed to center on Leia in the same way that VII centered on Han and VIII centered on Luke. As you say, they absolutely could have simply given her a dignified and emotional send-off in this one. The fact that they didn’t says to me that they might consider the character important enough to recast it (which will be extremely controversial) or at least have a CG Leia appear long enough to do some kind of torch-passing. They had a few moments with her at the end telling people to follow Poe, which felt like a bit of a nod towards that.
But I couldn’t help thinking afterwards, “how are they going to do the next movie without her???”
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