Star Wars: The Last Jedi [HERE THERE BE SPOILERS]

[Ian]

Just got back from it. It's rather good.

My favourite thing about it as my gut reaction is that where The Force Awakens was basically Original Trilogy Greatest Hits this, while it still has a lot of nods, is far more it's own film. It's also got some really fucking beautiful scenes / scenery in it. I liked the fight scenes too, they did some cool things to distinguish them from other fights in the series.

My gut-reaction-least-favourite thing is that while there are some genuinely and very funny moments in it I thought there were some scenes where they added laughs that unnecessarily eased the tension, like they weren't quite comfortable just going for the drama (or whatever you want to call it.) This is most notably in the Luke / Kyle 'fight' where Luke has 'survived' the barrage from the AT-ATs (or whatever they are called in this) and then with comic casualness just dusts his shoulder off. I laughed but I think I'd rather they hadn't put a laugh into a moment like that. It's a fairly minor gripe and while there may be more things that occur to me as I think about it I don't really have any big problems with it.

It's also comfortably Hamill's best performance in any of the ones he's been in. By a mile. Though I thought as with TFA the main cast were all pretty solid.

Lastly, I find it pretty funny that there was so much speculation about Snoke and, in this film at least, it's come to nothing. I dunno if there will be more to come in future films or not but after loads of fan theories and what-not as things stand he's just a very powerful mystery baddie who rocked up and then got lopped in half.

EDIT: Oh, and the whole 'Who were Rey's mum and dad!?' thing also seem to be a red herring at the moment. Many a fan theory is getting hastily re-written to say "Ah but in Episode IX....!"

[Bernanke]

To your second point, I completely agree. Snoke hitting Rey in the head with the lightsaber was another glaring example.

I like that Rey is nobody.

The scene where Holdo warps into the fleet was magnificent.

[Ian]

Yeah, that was really good. That whole story thread might have been the best proper sci-fi-y bit the series has had to be honest. And the moment of impact was fucking gorgeous.

EDIT: Actually there's probably another gripe in that it probably doesn't do enough with some of the characters and there are some bits that feel like they're there to add a set-piece or something. But it's still second best. Empire was always comfortably the best of the lot, and while this may change on further viewing I'd say this is still probably a relatively comfortable second despite the flaws.

[Pleb]

The Last Jedi is definitely better than The Force Awakens by miles. Maybe in true reflection on multiple viewings and screaming fanboys this should of been the true episode 7 that everyone was after.

I'm fearing this film and episode 9 may of suffered huge rewrites due to the unfortunate passing of Carrie Fisher.

EDIT: Oh, and the whole 'Who were Rey's mum and dad!?' thing also seem to be a red herring at the moment. Many a fan theory is getting hastily re-written to say "Ah but in Episode IX....!"

The ending of Battlefront II campaign mode pretty much confirmed that her parents were traitors from the first order but Kylo Ren (or Ben Solo, whatever) tried to serve it by claiming that they were smugglers which I pretty much knew that from gut feeling (maybe that's why Rey was a nobody) however I'm led to believe that...

Toggle Spoiler

Poe and Rey are siblings, shades of episode 6 with Leia and Han Solo?

[-james-]

Kylo Ren is really pretty useless, isn't he?

[five time]

What the hell was that scene with Leia flying across space?

The biggest tragedy was Admiral Ackbar though.

[Ian]

Kylo Ren is really pretty useless, isn't he?

Hux doesn't seem desperately competent either.

[Henry]

I'm sure I'll watch it again at some point but I'm underwhelmed. The first half was plodding and while the second was exciting, the writing wasn't great and the twists seem rather strange.
Can't fault them for not taking risks this time though.

[Dan]

I'm not a fan of them forcing in a load of jokes & cute animals with giant BUY THIS MERCH signs every time they appear (not that it'd be the first time they've done that), but otherwise it was pretty good. I'm not a massive Star Wars fan, but I had a good time with it.

They didn't really make any of the First Order elites look very good though - Phasma got mugged off in thirty seconds the first time she'd done anything in the series, and Snoke got mindfucked by a guy whose mind he was reading at the time, and subsequently also died before he could actually do anything more than deliver a few bits of ominous dialogue & be disappointed a lot. Kylo does also get made to look like a complete goon quite a bit for someone who's meant to be in the top five most powerful people in the galaxy, but I guess you can kinda play that off as being down to his identity crisis.

But yeah, it'll be interesting to see where the Rey/Ren thing goes, and what they do with Leia considering they decided to fake us out in this one. It's a beautiful looking film too, particularly the Holdo suicide moment & the scene of them trying to take out the cannon/battering ram thing.

[Henry]

Kylo, Snoke, Luke & Rey have powers that seem to vary in strength according to the needs of the plot at any given moment.

Snoke's is virtually omnipotent one moment and then... not.

[Browning]

I thought it was absolutely brilliant. I liked Episode 7 but this was much better. As Ian says, it's probably top 2 along with Empire, although I need to see how it holds up outside of the cinema.

[Ian]

The ending of Battlefront II campaign mode pretty much confirmed that her parents were traitors from the first order but Kylo Ren (or Ben Solo, whatever) tried to serve it by claiming that they were smugglers which I pretty much knew that from gut feeling (maybe that's why Rey was a nobody) however I'm led to believe that...

Toggle Spoiler

Poe and Rey are siblings, shades of episode 6 with Leia and Han Solo?

It did occur to me that it might be a lie from Kylo. He (and the film as a whole) make a lot of burying the past / forgetting it altogether so it would make sense that he knows / saw something else and told her a lie to get her on board.

[hfswjyr]

I'm sure I'll watch it again at some point but I'm underwhelmed. The first half was plodding and while the second was exciting, the writing wasn't great and the twists seem rather strange.
Can't fault them for not taking risks this time though.

Same feelings here.
Also echo Ian's point of films these days feeling like the need to add a laugh to ease the tension. Probably to suit a younger audience I guess, but killing the mood for a half-hearted chuckle just doesn't seem like a good payoff to me.

[Ian]

I dunno that the start was plodding but it definitely sags in the middle and the casino city thing felt a bit like a caper for the sake of a caper. And as much as he's spent his life being raised as a Stormtrooper I thought Fin's initial glee at seeing the place was a bit daft. You remembered all your friends are about to die, big man?

[Alex]

I had very mixed feelings on this one. I'll be honest, about an hour and a half in I was sat there thinking "they've fucked this up completely", but then there's a great hour or so at the end that sort of pulls in back around, mainly involving cool action set-pieces.

Some of the dialogue in it was really bad though, by which I mainly mean the awful, shoehorned-in attempts at humour that they apparently felt the need to constantly inject into it. Poe Dameron prank calling a Star Destroyer as a diversion, Rey telling an unnecessarily-shirtless Kylo Ren to put some clothes on and Luke Skywalker brushing his fucking shoulder off are the main offenders that spring to mind at the moment, but there were definitely others. It really ruined the tone of the film.

The whole thing with Leia being blown off the bridge, actually into out-of-space, and then force-magicking her way back into the ship and surviving was probably the worst single thing about it though. When that happened I actually thought "right, she obviously died mid-way through filming and this was the only way they could salvage the story". I expected her to be in a coma for the rest of the movie, coming round right at the end for a brief, CGI-rendered emotional word with Luke before she died. I couldn't fucking believe it when she was up, walking round and part of the plot again.

[-james-]

Leia not being dead really was weird. What are they going to do with her from here?

[Pepe]

What's wrong with just replacing the actress? It's a movie about space ninjas, suspension of disbelief was achieved a few decades ago.

[Alex]

I imagine there will be some sort of time jump between this and the next one (there needs to be really, given that there appears to only be about eleven people left in the entire Rebel Alliance at this point), so they'll probably just have her die off-screen.

[-james-]

What's wrong with just replacing the actress? It's a movie about space ninjas, suspension of disbelief was achieved a few decades ago.

Light speed travel and aliens are separate from lazy writing.

Alex's theory does make sense, but they could've as easily have just killed her off already.

[Pleb]

There's rumours that Leia will be killed off through the opening crawl of episode IX which is probably what's going to happen.

[phonics]

Episode 11. Christ.

[Pleb]

Wrong way round

[phonics]

In 3 years you'll be spot on.

Is there less incessant star warsification of brands this year or has it been so constant the last two that seeing a bag of oranges being branded 'Star Wars bb8 oranges' is just less galling?

[Raoul Duke]

Watched this earlier. Generally really good (I mean, it's fucking Star Wars) but it did sag a bit in the middle and I don't really care about Kylo Ben Ten Ren.

As ever with these films, the droids are the best bit: comedy, punchlines and saving the day.

[Pleb]

In 3 years you'll be spot on.

Is there less incessant star warsification of brands this year or has it been so constant the last two that seeing a bag of oranges being branded 'Star Wars bb8 oranges' is just less galling?

The Porgs are apparently selling well.

[phonics]

I'm fine with them selling toys to children/adults that should know better. I'm talking about my Duracell batteries telling me the force is inside them and this shit

[Ian]

Some of the dialogue in it was really bad though, by which I mainly mean the awful, shoehorned-in attempts at humour that they apparently felt the need to constantly inject into it. Poe Dameron prank calling a Star Destroyer as a diversion,

The prank call of the star destroyer felt really out of place.

It felt like a very different attempt at humour and there was another line that felt like that. Probably "chrome dome."

[Raoul Duke]

The prank call of the star destroyer felt really out of place.

That felt like Guardians of the Galaxy

[Mike]

Just seen this, I enjoyed it but think I preferred The Force Awakens, mostly because they really over did it with forcing attempts at humour.

My favourite parts came from the audience, when the ship crashed into the other and they removed all sound. The cinema was silent apart from one lone man laughing for some reason.
The second was a sad voice behind me saying ‘oh no’ at a certain death at the end. He sounded genuinely heart broke. Made me laugh hearing it which made me seem like a berk

[Pleb]

The jump into lightspeed into Snoke's ship was fucking stunning I must admit.

[Spoonsky]

I didn't like this movie very much. It was an hour too long, the dialogue was pretty shit, especially in the fight scenes as has been mentioned, and the whole casino scene ending with the idiotic "save the animals" moralizing was just dumb. I don't think Mark Hamill's a good actor, but at least that's consistent with the original trilogy. One of my biggest problems with the new films is that all of the villains are just pretty laughable, nobody's even close to being half as threatening or memorable as Darth Vader. It makes it harder to take the whole thing seriously. (The same with fucking Yoda - it was great to see him but I couldn't help laughing at every one of his lines when it was meant to be more of a serious scene.)

There were about 40 minutes when shit got real, from when Rey confronts Snoke and that whole scene, which I really enjoyed, because the film actually had some gravity and felt important there. I felt like it should have ended when they were wrestling over that lightsaber.

On the whole I liked Episode 7 a lot more. I'd like to rewatch the original trilogy again though.

[ItalAussie]

The jump into lightspeed into Snoke's ship was fucking stunning I must admit.

Stunning, but poses a lot more questions than answers when you think about it for more than a few minutes.

Why is that not the standard combat method? Get a massive hunk of metal, strap a warp drive to it, aim it at the middle of the Death Star, and hyperspace. Why were the bad guys not 100% prepared for the possibility, rather than acting with shock when people with literally nothing left to lose turned to aim their giant hunk of metal at the enemy boss' spaceship?

All wars should basically be kamikaze-ing hyperspace ping pong battles.

[ItalAussie]

Best: All the Luke-Rey-Kylo bits.

Worst: The casino sidetrack (aside from Benecio del Toro basically reprising his role from The Usual Suspects).

Also, the good guys could benefit from some kind of instructions regarding efficient workplace communication. And it's a little galling to realise that everyone who died basically died because the good guys screwed up massively by going on an impetuous adventure that doomed everyone.

[Ian]

The people with plot armour do seem a bit callous towards those who do not.

[ItalAussie]

Also, Rey's parents being nobody is fantastic.

It's a far better outcome than anything else they could have come up with, and works very well with her arc.

[Ian]

I still think there's a decent chance that ends up being a lie.

Ren's whole thing is about cutting yourself off from the past, and by telling her that, if he knows it's not true, he's trying to "help" her do that.

[Henry]

I can deal with Rey being "nobody". Less so the characterisation of Luke, how no explanation is given for Snoke, and the incredibly stupid "chase" storyline.

[phonics]

Saw this yesterday. That Casino part was utter tripe and should have been cut along with the whole bit on the moon base.

What's the point of that Finn character now it's going to be the Chinese girl on the end of a BBC and not Rey?

[Alex]

Stunning, but poses a lot more questions than answers when you think about it for more than a few minutes.

Why is that not the standard combat method? Get a massive hunk of metal, strap a warp drive to it, aim it at the middle of the Death Star, and hyperspace. Why were the bad guys not 100% prepared for the possibility, rather than acting with shock when people with literally nothing left to lose turned to aim their giant hunk of metal at the enemy boss' spaceship?

All wars should basically be kamikaze-ing hyperspace ping pong battles.

Very true.

Also, why did she stand there and watch about 90% of the escape shuttles get blown to pieces before she decided to take this course of action?

[Browning]

I don’t understand people criticising the Snoke thing. Palpetine has zero background and didn’t even have a fucking name in the originals and when they finally gave him one it made everything worse. I’m happy with Snoke as is if that’s the alternative.

[Henry]

I wouldn't have anything against a new character whose background is left deliberately mysterious. But for Snoke, to me that doesn't work for two reasons.

One, his appearance is connected to the whole plot pivoting in the opposite direction from everything we thought had already been achieved in ROTJ. That does need some explanation, in my eyes, not because the universe needs to be explained completely, but because the story needs it. If the caterpillar turns into a beautiful butterfly and then its main problem in the next volume is how ugly it is and that it can't fly, I'm going to want to hear more on that.

And two, everything about Snoke in TFA seemed to make a narrative promise that there was some great secret to be revealed here in the future. The Emperor was quite well described as 'Emperor' -- fulfilling the trope of the powerful evil guy in charge of the evil government. It might have been bland, but it certainly was intelligible. Snoke was an Abramsian mystery box. It bugs an audience to show them to be empty. If the Hungry Caterpillar ended every page with, "and then it looked up to that one big green leaf, which was somehow different to all the others", I would expect that leaf to crop up again at some point, not just to tumble away with all the others in the fall.

[John]

Quality metaphor work from Henry.

Abrams set up the intrigue around Rey's parentage in the last one and he's back in charge for the next one so unless there's a deleted flashback scene confirming what Kylo Ren had to say that can be slotted back in for the DVD release I'd lay money on it being a lie and her having some secret Skywalker blood.

[Raoul Duke]

Rey is almost definitely Ren's sister, surely?

[Browning]

Most of that feels like an issue with The Force Awakens rather than The Last Jedi. It was Force Awakens that basically hit the reset button and put the Empire (under a different name) back on top with no explanation whatsoever. Last Jedi couldn't really resolve that short of having Snoke talk to Kylo for an hour about how he rose to power, or without a bunch of probably awful flashbacks. If they ever make an episode 6.5 (similar to Rogue One) to fill the gap between trilogies, that would be the best way to resolve those issues, cramming them into the Last Jedi just wouldn't have worked for me. I'm not sure, character wise, there was anything about Snoke that made him more intriguing than the Emporer was in the originals, other than the fact his holograms were fucking massive for no real reason.

[five time]

I'm not sure, character wise, there was anything about Snoke that made him more intriguing than the Emporer was in the originals, other than the fact his holograms were fucking massive for no real reason.

I think the issue here is that they described him as being an ancient being who was the most powerful force user in the Universe.

If so, what was he doing during the previous trilogy and how did he go undetected? He has a massive hard on for Vader for someone that was seemingly in hiding during that time as well.

[Yaysus]

how has nobody pointed out how fucking out of character it was for luke to attempt to fucking kill his sleeping nephew?!
or how rey is already stronger than luke and kylo with pretty much 0 training?

[ItalAussie]

I still think there's a decent chance that ends up being a lie.

Ren's whole thing is about cutting yourself off from the past, and by telling her that, if he knows it's not true, he's trying to "help" her do that.

I have faith that they'll follow through on the idea. It's just much, much better than "oh, by the way, you're part of the great big Skywalker soap opera".

Not everything has to be part of one great conspiracy, surely. We need this to really prove that the force is bigger than one messed-up family.

[ItalAussie]

how has nobody pointed out how fucking out of character it was for luke to attempt to fucking kill his sleeping nephew?!

I don't reckon that's true. Luke probably has some pretty nasty memories about the whole "conflict with the dark side/experience of war" thing. Imagine knowing that it could all start again, and you could make that go away with one action.

I'm not saying that he should, but you could see how someone jaded from war, and with the possibility of stopping a new war before it starts, would feel they have to take it. It clearly showed that he didn't want to, but felt like he had no real choice given what was at stake.

And Jedi powers have always fluctuated based on what the plot demands. I wouldn't read too much into that.

[phonics]

Snopes explained that. Rey wouldn't have any powers if it wasn't for Ren getting too strong.

[Ian]

I have faith that they'll follow through on the idea. It's just much, much better than "oh, by the way, you're part of the great big Skywalker soap opera".

Not everything has to be part of one great conspiracy, surely. We need this to really prove that the force is bigger than one messed-up family.

Oh I want it to be the case that she's "nobody." It'd be an obvious jumping off point for if/when they finally move on a bit from the Skywalker thing. Unless that's going to be the theme of the Episodes forever and ever and ever.