Funny, because I read the bungling attempts of the rebellion as a parable on the democratic party–maybe from the perspective of the party elite. Leia and the vice-admiral are Clinton and Pelossi; Luke and Poe are stand-ins for Bernie, recruiting the next generation and causing destruction among the rebellion at the same time. In the end, we learn that they were right all along, that losing was their plan, and a new rebellion will rise from the ashes. See, we meant to lose to Trump/Ren, to get you guys all excited again.
Mr. Bells, to his friend: That movie had some weird tit obsession. What was with the alien made of boobs?
And I could have gone forever without Luke milking some alien tiddy.
Interestingly, I thought Canto Bight was too long, and only existed to give Del Toro a part.
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Yes - this article pretty much nails it.
The Casino/Hacker mission was completely unnecessary and bogged down the narrative, perhaps ruining the movie for me in a way. There was a fair bit of hammy dialogue, so-so acting, and missed opportunities. I think I still liked the movie though - not quite sure yet - needs a second viewing.
Speaking of missed opportunities - they easily could have cut the chaff, and supplemented the Yoda scene with other force ghosts. Hell - Liam Neeson, Ewan Macgregor, Hayden Christenson etc are all still around. It seemed weird that only Yoda would pop up. Perhaps they all could have helped Luke astral project himself into the scene with Kylo, given this was a new ‘power’ for the Jedi.
Lastly - the whole subplot with Laura Dern felt forced and misconceived. To me it was another case of building artificial plot, similar to video games, versus keeping it simple and telling a good story.
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I felt the casino mission was important because again it subverted expectations. We’re used to the scrappy Rebels outsmarting the dumb fascist Empire, and pulling the rug out from under the bad guys at the last moment. But they didn’t, they were outsmarted by Hux and Phasma. Even the slicer wasn’t the Han Solo type we expected, he’s a pure scoundrel & mercenary, which was honestly refreshing. But as we saw at the end, the mission helped spread word to a new generation.
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That’s one thing Mrs Ficus mentioned: what the hell was the point of Laura Dern being in the movie? And I agree in many ways. Introducing her as the bad ass successor to Leia and then having her be the one to go out in a blaze of glory? I was very surprised it wasn’t Leia staying behind and piloting the ship. Or Nien Nunb. Or Ackbar (how awesome would it have been for him and Hux to simultaneously shout “it’s a trap!”). Or any other long established character to build more narrative weight.
I’m actually glad they didn’t go this way. It was Yoda that trained Luke so it made sense that he was there in Luke’s time of ultimate crisis to impart one final and important lesson. At the end he didn’t need any help to project himself as his final act as a Jedi. I think adding any other gimmicks behind these scenes would have just cheapened them.
Another huge failure for the Rebellion, and Poe as a leader (which is consistent with Yoda’s message about growing from failure that overarches the plot).
Was this whole section kind of long and overindulgent? Yeah, I think it could have been better but it wasn’t ruinously bad for me.
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And that, I think, was the whole point - to literally set up that end scene.
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MRW:
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I think it’s because they wanted us, the audience, to share Poe’s doubts. If it’s Admiral Ackbar, all the SW fans are going to trust he knows what he’s doing, and that there’s a plan that makes sense.
Now, it’s Holdo who we don’t know. But we do know she’s one of Leia’s Resistance commanders, which pretty much means she can’t be a coward or an idiot; Leia would never have picked such people for her personal anti-First Order crusade. And Poe himself knows that she’s apparently a war hero, even though he’s never met her before. And furthermore, we’ve already seen that Poe is a hotheaded fighter jock, who hasn’t learned to think strategically, for the long term.
As such, there are all sorts of good reasons for us, the audience, to trust Holdo’s competence… yet we end up worrying if she doesn’t know what she’s doing, because Poe and the other viewpoint characters don’t trust her. It works, and works well IMO.
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I felt the same way, even after the end scene with the kid nonchalantly force-brooming.
However, I enjoyed it on a meta level, because I perceived it as the director making fun of the fact that you need something of a quest and a race scene in any Star Wars to become a spin off computer game. At no point, this excursion was to be taken seriously, and I think the director made this clear from the beginning when Finn met Kaylee Rose.
I think the whole movie is a subversion of the Hero’s Journey. No one Refuses the Call, they all fucking JUMP at the chance, with variously disastrous results. Everyone wants to be the hero, except the guy who’s already done it. Luke just wants to point out that being a legend sucks. The reward for a job well done is another, more difficult job.
And that the end result of all this hero-ing is a bunch of weirdos getting rich off both sides.
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My impression is they’re going to pretend episodes 1-3 never happened. Fine by me.
No!, just… No.
That’s my take too. They could have done it better, but the current generation of rebels ha been basically wiped out and abandoned. We needed to see that they are not forgotten and that there is a new generation ready to continue the fight.
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Re: hero’s journey
Well, in this iteration, Luke isn’t The Hero anymore, and more like The Mentor.
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Good call. It subverts the whole “hey, sometimes you have to be a hotheaded dude with spunk and give the middle finger to authority to get anything done!” myth; Poe thinks he’s doing the right thing by starting a mutiny, but he realizes afterwards that if he’d just stopped to listen for five minutes, the people who’ve been doing this a lot longer than he has might actually have a bigger plan.
And it cuts through the legends of being a Jedi Master. I loved Luke’s line about “jumping in with a laser sword to save the day”. He didn’t even say lightsaber. He’s got the weight of being a legend on him, but he’s just Luke.
Thinking back, the end of Empire was supposedly “their low point”, but they had a massive battalion and fleet and half of the galaxy behind them. Now it’s two dozen people aboard the Falcon, Luke’s gone, and they’ve been abandoned by all of their allies. I feel like they need another three movies to rebuild this movement.
On the other hand, the New Order was basically built and run by Snoke, and now it’s being led by a rage-filled jerk distrusted by his underlings who’s on a single-minded mission to find Rey, so I’m not sure it’ll have the same strength going forward.
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I saw TLJ on Saturday morning with a large group of friends, many of whom are die-hard Star Wars fans; we often get together to play Star Wars tabletop RPGs and used to play Old Republic and Galaxies back in the day. We’re all big fans, and when the movie was over, we all applauded and everyone was talking about how awesome it was, their favorite parts, what might happen next, and debating whether this was the second or third or fourth-best movie in the saga.
Two days later, after apparently consulting Facebook and Twitter, nearly every single one has changed their minds and has decided it’s their least favorite of the whole saga and given up on the new trilogy. When I’ve talked to them, I think it all comes down to being a fan due to nostalgia. They want the same nostalgia hit from 1982; they want to see Ithorians and Tattooine and B-Wings and Mandalorians and Hutts and maybe a cameo from Lando, but instead they got crystal foxes, porgs, and the deaths of favorite characters. And they interpret that as betrayal and the dismissal of what they loved as fans, and the Internet has apparently decided that the New Order is a commentary on Trump or something. It’s weird loving this new movie but being told by other Star Wars fans that I should hate it, and I feel like the “collective wisdom” of social media trends towards hatred moreso than celebration.
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I was a little disappointed when we met Snoke. I was hoping for the totally bonkers fan theory of Snoke actually being Jar Jar Binks to be true.
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This perspective makes sense. The missus and I were trying to figure out why we saw a number of people leave before the end of the film, and had guessed that a couple people had snuck in, and wanted to get out before getting caught.
I thought it was a fine middle movie for the new trilogy. The middle movie is supposed to end on a low note, which it did. We got some gorgeous visuals (favorite being the blood red salt flats), and a lot of what makes Star Wars, Star Wars (with a bit of subversion thrown in).
Perhaps the biggest issue is that the last couple films (Rogue One and TFA) gave too much fan service and thus skewed expectations towards a paint by numbers romp through the galaxy.
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A couple of more thoughts on TLJ:
I’m glad Snoke turned out to be unimportant, I just am.
Porgs: Those small birdlike creatures that started nesting on the Falcon. Unnecessary I think.
It still seems so silly to me that Fin and Rose leave their convoy in the middle of a fight to go look for a codebreaker.
Kylo Ren is a better villain this time around than on The Force Awakens.
No time for Finn and Poe to sort out any unfinished business? They’re going in a different direction with this?
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Until the end of this movie it had never registered for me that Rey hadn’t even had a chance to meet Poe during The Force Awakens. Sometimes it’s only obvious in retrospect how little time the characters actually spent together. If you look at the timeline of the original Trilogy Luke spent a grand total of a few days training with Yoda (just as Rey did with Luke.)
As for Finn and Poe? They only had a few short conversations from the time they met to the time Finn ended up in the high tech zip-lock bag.
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My Facebook is currently chock full of this sort of thing from Star Wars fanatics I’ve known for 20+ years, and I’m just kind of speechless:
The new Star Wars movie shouldn’t have been entitled “The Last Jedi”. It should have been called “Every Great Strategy A Man Thinks Up Gets Totally Fucked Up by Some Woman.” There. I said it. That’s what it was. 2.5 hours of some woman either not communicating or talking or thinking and it totally fucks something up. When Rose does her “thing” to stop Finn - “for love” - I felt physically ill. Worse than the Ewoks.
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Did the person who wrote that miss the part about how Poe was wrong from the start and got a bunch of people killed for no reason while Leia and the Vice Admiral actually had a solid survival plan that would have worked flawlessly if Finn hadn’t been sent on some foolhardy mission that ultimately allowed Benicio Del Toro to sell them all out to the Empire?
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