Considering how they have handled the other 2 main characters, maybe not...

I've no problem with the weak physics, it's the weak solutions to the various crises that bug me.That is to say, unimaginative writing.

Time and again people are rescued by the little rolly robot pulling off a "deus ex machina" miracle. That's just weak writing.

The fleeing good guys have only hours or days to live, the bad guys are so close their putting rounds right up their ass, as both groups zoom at top speed. The go-to scheme for resolution is for a small ship to break contact with the fleeing good guys, and go to some distant planet to enlist the aid of some "code breaker" dude, and bring him back to the fleeing ships already in flight at top speed.

As soon as the small ship broke contact with fleeing fleet, the bad guys could have easily sent a ship or two in chase. Bad guys are suddenly stupid?

The two groups of ships are zooming thru the galaxy at top speed, I'm going to break contact with them, go all the way to some other planet, get the dude to agree to come along, somehow catch back up and rejoin the friendlies zooming at top speed with baddies right on their tail, all in hours?

If you break contact with folks going super fast and go run an errand, how the heck do you catch back up the them?

The bad guys are suddenly able to track the good guys thru lightspeed and the solution is a codebreaker dude?

They call up the "Ma" (?) character re. finding a codebreaker. She's in a firefight, fighting to survive. But she laughs and jokes to add to the drama and hilarity. Is that reasonable behavior for someone in a firefight?

The movie was written for 8yr olds. All it's missing is teddy bears, Jamaican accents, and characters that walk like a Scooby Doo cartoon.

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Books @ Amazon
"If only he had used his genius for niceness, instead of Evil." M. Smart

To a certain extent, that's a weakness of all the Star Wars movies.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Or if this is such an effective tactic, why haven't we ever seen it before in any of the other movies where the bad guys were chasing the Rebels? Why didn't they use it on the Death Stars instead of trying to shoot a narrow target with a torpedo? Why haven't they just built unmanned light speed vehicles/torpedos to do the same effect without sacrificing people or ships?

Star Wars is built like a big block of swiss cheese. There are holes everywhere. It's not even a matter of looking for plot holes. It's a matter of deliberately trying to keep from falling into them.

Star Wars has never been a series really known for it's quality of writing.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

Well, it's fallen out of first place at the box office (domestically, at least) after 18 days, losing its spot to the Jumanji reboot, apparently:

"Jedi" took in $15.7 million. "Jumanji" scored over $16.1 million. "Jumanji" is in its 13th day of release.

For "Jedi," losing number 1 less than three weeks after release is a little surprising. But as I've told you right along, the new "Star Wars" movie hasn't been keeping pace with its predecessor, "The Force Awakens."

The older movie was at $750 million by its 18th day. "Jedi" is at $533,089,000."

It's also still getting ratio'd at Rotten Tomatoes, with a far lower fan rating than the high critics ratings it's enjoying. But news sources also say it's garnered more than $1 billion globally, so it's got that going for it.

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

I was only 6 when A New Hope was released, so I don't remember it being the case back then (or for the next two movies either).. was the Star Wars series always surrounded by such levels of "nerdiness", for lack of a better term - people questioning the science, plot holes and timeline issues etc? It seemed to come along with episodes 1-3 and 7-8.

I think everyone agrees on Jar Jar Binks though.

Once the early internet bulletin boards and then chat rooms started up, that stuff took off full force. I was nearly 17 when Episode IV came out and I don't remember all the kvetching going on through any of the first three originals.

And yes, Jar Jar Binks... 'nuff said. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

The online worrying about nerdy details obviously has built over the years, with a building fan base, the rise of the internet, the rise of "geek culture," etc.

But the 8 year-old level writing is pretty much how the whole series has gone. The first two were the least juvenile, but starting with the Ewoks, you had movies targeted at building merchandising rights for kids toys. The writing has always been mediocre.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

I know right? It has only taken in a $1B worldwide and still to open in China. What a bomb.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

This correction is good enough for me. I never forgave Lucas for those fucking teddy bears Ewoks.

Hey; never underestimate the ability of the movie studio to show it taking a loss. Studio accounting is legendary for its creativeness. ;-)

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"Politics is just show business for ugly people."

I wavered between liking and not liking the movie. There were things that were bothering me and stuff i liked.

Things I liked:

1 - Cinematography is beautiful.
2 - CGI is really well done.
3 - Audio is really well done.
4 - Luke's and Kylo Ren's acting I thought were really well done.
5 - Carrie Fisher is a badass. The mary poppin scene I thought is funny. Ridiculous but I laughed.

Things I didn't like:

1 - The Force Awaken had people searching for a map to find where Luke went. We later find out Luke told Rey he went to most unfindable place in the galaxy to die. wtf. Why even bother with the map?
2 - Anakin took 3 movies to get proficient at the force. He loses a hand in the process against Count Dooku. Luke took 2 movies to be able to move rocks and loses a hand to Vader in the process. The series establishes that the force is hard to learn. Rey takes 2 lessons to beat Luke in a stick fight. Luke, the grandmaster jedi, lost to a person who took 2 lessons. Rey is able to move not one, but a landslide of rocks from the entrance. That's only 2 lessons...and without losing an arm. wtf.
3 - Vice Admiral Hodo. She could have told Poe their plan, but they went on an unnecessary casino scene. She ended up committed suicide with their capital ship at the end. wtf.
4 - Lack of story development for Rey. She's almost an empty vessel in this movie. In TFA, I thought we were going to get a big reveal why she's so good at lightsaber combat and her force abilities- but no. I thought at least Princess Leia was done right in Episode 4 and episode 5 for her development. You could grow attached to her.
5 - Captain Phasma could have been more awesome. A great actress, one of my favorites, and it felt like Rian wasted a great opportunity on her. She's so good!!!!
6 - Finn - I think his character arc is done.
7 - Rose - Her introduction was cool but the save on Finn when he was going to sacrifice himself, wtf. The resistance had the most impenetrable wall in the galaxy and he was going to take out the death canon but he got saved because of "love". Hmmm.
8 - Snoke. I still don't know his back story but he's supposedly important. TFA had a big buildup on Snoke and he dies like that in TLJ?
9 - Anyone notice that the First Orders, minus Captain Phasma, are white males with emotional issues and the Rebels are the diverse group with female leaders? The idea seems to be shoehorned in there.

Just saw it. Couldn't agree more. Your idea is to fly at light speed through the big ship and you decide to do it after almost everyone is killed off? Heck you could have done that with an autopilot program. And what the heck with Luke? Projecting himself across the universe then dying 30 sec after he does it?

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

Took the family to see a matinee yesterday. The family had a pool on "how long it would take for Dad (me) to nod off", based upon how boring it was for me. While they say it took all of 15 minutes, in my defense I really missed the part when Rey gets off Luke's island. I did wake up somewhere around the casino scene, nodded off again and awoke for the Resistance escape.

I think you make a lot of excellent points. I wanted to touch on two.

- Re: 6 things you can do. I think this is spot on. Star Wars is an epic story about the rebels battling with the empire. That's what we've come to know it as and that's what we want and, like you said, what more can you do? They opened their show with their big hits and saved nothing for the encore.

- Having said that, it was still a weak movie even once you take that into consideration. Rose was a terrible, and pointless character. Yoda was almost as annoying as Jar Jar Binks. WTF was up with the Mary Poppins move from Leia? And truth be told, they never should have brought Fisher back. Her character has become unlikable. The falling apart salt mining ships that they used to attack the AT-ATs were needlessly goofy. And the entire casino planet side story was dumb and pointless.

I did actually still enjoy the movie, but barely.






"Don't get me wrong, $455 million to date is a good haul, but relative to The Force Awakens -- the first of the Star Wars movies in the Disney-fired reboot universe -- it's doing about $200 million less than TFA did at this point.

Also, in the first week of its release, The Last Jedi saw a 77% drop in ticket sales, the worst ever performance for any Star Wars movie, including those three Lucas prequels. There's also been a lot of fan backlash published on YouTube. It appears TLJ is Disney's own "Justice League," which I thought was one big mess of a flick. So maybe Disney now has its own version of a DC Extended Universe problem.

Some thoughts:

1. There has to be an element of Star Wars fatigue in all this. I think folks realized that The Force Awakens was really a weak rehash/reboot, and they're also on to the fact that there are only about six things that can happen in the Star Wars universe, which is supposedly a huge canvas, at least in the many books, but which in the films has been surprisingly limited. Rogue One experienced this same effect shortly after its release, and The Last Jedi seems to be undergoing this phenomenon at an even faster pace.

2. These Star Wars movies, and the associated Universe flicks (Rogue One, now a Young Han Solo treatment in May 2018) count, are just coming out too quickly. That makes the release of one of them not so special anymore. They're just not "events" these days. They're more like obligations, or obeisances, that Star Wars fans have and make.

3. Another problem may be that the Disney-led treatments are getting a bit too heavy-handed in the SJW/End the Patriarchy (in terms of leading characters) department. Various geek review sites are making note of this, too. (ed. Plus, those bastards killed off Admiral "It's a trap!" Akbar very early in this one. How rude! ;-)

4. Lots of fans are also expressing displeasure at Luke Skywalker's (Mark Hamill) treatment in the film. I admit I wasn't too thrilled with his story arc, either. Hamill himself doesn't seem as if he was too thrilled by his character's storyline, either. Skywalker/Hamill links the old with the new, so to speak, and there's a way to do a hand off the baton when it comes to a character's arc in decades-later reboots. Plenty of fans don't think that was handled very elegantly in TLJ.

In the end, it may not matter. The Last Jedi's probably going to do at least $600 million, minimum (I have no idea what it cost to make and distribute and promote, which was probably a significant amount), a good payday by any measure. Plus, there are streaming videos, Blu-Ray, merchandising and other revenue streams that'll prop it up.

Still, while I thought it was an entertaining diversion for a few hours, I didn't think it was earthshaking or groundbreaking in terms of advancing the Star Wars story and Universe. It just was there and it was the holidays and someone had to go watch it, right? "

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-----------------------------Baron Von Speedypants
-----------------------------RunTraining articles here:
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