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Star Wars Episode 8

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I thought there were flashes of excellence—visuals, performances, certainly music—but they were strung together by a LOT of very boring or in some cases utterly nonsensical plot and character motivation. It's bonkers to me that the filmmakers thought this movie needed to be almost three hours long.

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Just now, Chris said:

I thought there were flashes of excellence—visuals, performances, certainly music—but they were strung together by a LOT of very boring or in some cases utterly nonsensical plot and character motivation. It's bonkers to me that the filmmakers thought this movie needed to be almost three hours long.

 

Yeah there was way more in here than there needed to be. It felt like half a season of a Star Wars television show edited down into a 2.5 hour movie. 

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1 hour ago, Chris said:

I thought there were flashes of excellence—visuals, performances, certainly music—but they were strung together by a LOT of very boring or in some cases utterly nonsensical plot and character motivation. It's bonkers to me that the filmmakers thought this movie needed to be almost three hours long.

 

1 hour ago, Jake said:

Yeah there was way more in here than there needed to be. It felt like half a season of a Star Wars television show edited down into a 2.5 hour movie. 

 

One thing that I took from RedLetterMedia's old Phantom Menace review was that Star Wars as a series of films has always struggled with the temptation to multiply its plot threads, in order to produce a more epic climax. Going from A New Hope (the Death Star run) to The Empire Strikes Back (the Cloud City escape and the duel between Luke and Vader) to Return of the Jedi (the strike team on Endor, the attack on the Death Star, and Luke confronting Vader and the Emperor) to The Phantom Menace (the attack on the control ship, the attack on the palace, the battle between the Gungans and droids, and the duel in the power reactor) seems sometimes to have left a "high water mark" in subsequent Star Wars movies, where there's generally a little more going on than there needs to be. The later prequels got it a little more under control, but The Force Awakens was back to three separate plot threads in the third act (the sabotage mission, the duel between Ren and Rey, and the Starkiller run), and now this movie's shown a similar reach and grasp.

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It's also, on a purely literal level, undeniable that this movie is simply longer than any other Star Wars movie, and noticeably so. Obviously length doesn't necessarily directly correlate to complexity or number of extraneous elements, but it's not totally unrelated. (Also, the first three movies were the shortest of all Star Wars movies to date, and that feels relevant.)

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22 hours ago, Beasteh said:

I also watched it. My hot take was that it wasn't very good.


 

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The best part of the movie was probably the  a e s t h e t i c   - it's visually striking in many scenes, but the red room where Rey meets Snoke is incredible. Still feels like Star Wars, but it's a new look. The simple backdrop puts the focus on the actors. The guards, clad in red, pop in and out of the background, sometimes silhouetted, always a looming threat. So good.

 

(oh and Phasma was wasted again, why bother having her if you're only going to give her a minute on screen?)

 

 

 

Spoiler

I agree, and I think this is worth emphasising. The throne room was impressive. On the other hand, the casino was quite uninspired, at least in my opinion. A very direct example of gambling luxury. It really could have existed in any number of movies. Adding some weird creatures only emphasized how mundane it felt, at least to me.

 

And yes, given that we're introduced to a huge number of new named, speaking characters, it's doubly a shame that Phasma's role is so pointless.

 

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I liked it! First thoughts...

 

Weird self-deafeating pacing in the first hour when the tension of one thread was constantly punctured by the slow build of the other, and vice versa. Some of the island scenes felt wasted in this context, but edited differently I think I'd have loved all of that stuff. For about ten minutes it didn't really feel like a film anymore - picking up on Jake's take, more like a rushed TV series finale. For me, it did recover from that.

Spoiler

 

For the first time we have flashbacks in Star Wars, and not just that but Rashomon-esque ones. Also, Rey's visit to the dark depths of the island turns out to be being narrated by her later on. This stuff breaks with the by-now implicit formal constraints of SW (which Rogue One already started to rethink outside of the main saga) but serves the story well.

 

I appreciated the amount of Poe screen time - he vanished for much of VII but Oscar Isaac gets lots to do here. Like Harrison Ford, he is able to breathe life into an admittedly simple, archetypal character and, by extension, the whole silly thing. 

 

Canto Bight - the casino city - was the most glaringly disposable part of the story, and quite the zany caper, but maybe the film needed that kind of tangent to balance the darkness (it seemed like every twenty minutes someone either sacrificed themself to blow something up, or tried to...which is exhausting). Also it did develop Rose's character, and neatly set up the final minute.

 

 

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So, I had this weird thing where I was never bored during the film (my partner needed the toilet by the time they got to 2 hours in and then had to hold it for another 20 minutes) but almost as soon as someone asked me what I thought about it I could only think of the things I didn't like.
 

Spoiler


I thought Laura Dern brought a great feel to a terrible character. So, the first thing Poe does is ask Holdo what her plan is and she waves him off. This is done purely for the audience and unnecessary tension - bear in mind that the refuelling and the logistics of what they are doing means that she would have had to tell most of the people on the vessel (including filling in a comatose Leia when she woke up) except for Poe and his crew. It makes the mutiny feel utterly stupid.

 

The jokes whiffed a little but I think it was mainly because they came unexpectedly

I agree with everyone else that there were too many threads and it was too long

 

 

But yeah, it was fine, better than Rogue One
 

Spoiler


I cared more about that one bomber pilot in The Last Jedi than I did about the entire cast of Rogue One

 

 

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I loved it!

 

It has its flaws, it was too stuffed with plot beats. But what a breath-taking and beautiful movie with a fantastic emotional, thematic core.

 

 

Last thought: I was so happy with the reveal that Rey’s parents were “nobodys” The best thing this film does it discard the idea that the Skywalker lineage is the only thing that matters. The force belongs to all of us! ❤️

 

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I saw it. It's a Star Wars, and other than Rogue One, a Star Wars has the narrative heft of tissue and is mostly about characters running around and doing things

 

Spoiler

Honestly I think the Finn and Rose plot, as incidental as it seems, ends up being pretty important, in two ways: firstly, it kind of blows up the premise of the series, by showing that all those fun smugglers and ne'er-do-wells profit from the suffering and war. The Rebellion might be fighting for peace but they're dependent on people who absolutely do not want to it happen, and if you're going to have peace, for good, you need to deal with that. Snoke isn't the Big Bad we were led to believe. (Watch, though, as JJ Abrams completely fails to pick up on this.) Secondly, it fills in Poe: he's not just impulsive but actively harmful to the cause outside of being a pretty great pilot. The vast majority of the on-screen casualties on the Rebel side were collateral damage from plans he was responsible for. The movie primes us to see this by having him demoted after the cool battle scene where they lose all their bombers taking down one destroyer. The transport plan was a good plan that would have worked if he hadn't encouraged Finn and Rose onto that First Order ship.

 

But then, basically everyone in this movie gets smashed by the unintended consequences of their actions. What kind of annoys me is that it's spread around equally, which means that Rey, our main hero and the one who's supposed to be the wisest of our heroes (other than Leia), doesn't really get to demonstrate that she's learned anything. It's sort of there? She's the only one who really accepts and vocalises what she'd rather not accept, that she's an orphan without a place, and I guess by assisting the remnants of the Rebels she's making a place as a Jedi, buuuuuut that's pretty weak tea.

 

It is very pretty, though.

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Rey's heritage upending the 'destiny' trope coincides in a grand way with Blade Runner 2049 doing the same thing. I feel it worked better here, since Star Wars is soooo much about this stuff, that it feels fresh and original.


This felt like two movies smashed together. Everything about the Force, Rey's visit to the island and the wonderful scenes between Rey and Kylo was superb. I loved, perhaps moreso as an idea than in execution, that the main bulk of the movie was a Master and Commander-esque naval pursuit. Could've been developed better, but I gladly took it for what it was. But then there's an utterly sub-par caper on Casino Planet that dips into and below prequel waters. I was actively cringing when they rode on CGI animals.

Just think about what a missed opportunity it is to go to Monaco In Space and not do something cool with a high stakes poker game - Star Wars style. And why oh why does this trilogy insist on separating Finn and Poe, when they have more chemistry than any other pairing? Rose was an unnecessary, mediocre inclusion and her relationship with Finn not only unbelievable, but also... obviously... a giant waste of the gay romance that was set up between him and Poe. They had to put some serious blindfolds on to ignore the sexual tension going on there.

 

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1 hour ago, BigJKO said:

It has its flaws, it was too stuffed with plot beats. But what a breath-taking and beautiful movie with a fantastic emotional, thematic core.

 

 

I'm interested to know what you thought the theme of the film was. To me it felt like the theming was all over the place - the many plot threads didn't feel united.

 

57 minutes ago, Roderick said:
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Just think about what a missed opportunity it is to go to Monaco In Space and not do something cool with a high stakes poker game - Star Wars style. And why oh why does this trilogy insist on separating Finn and Poe, when they have more chemistry than any other pairing? Rose was an unnecessary, mediocre inclusion and her relationship with Finn not only unbelievable, but also... obviously... a giant waste of the gay romance that was set up between him and Poe. They had to put some serious blindfolds on to ignore the sexual tension going on there.

 

 

Spoiler

Finn and Rose weren't a good fit for a high-stakes poker game - you'd have to pull in Poe to do that, he's the only one with enough roguish charm. On the plus side, that would allow Finn and Poe to continue their totally-straight-you-guys relationship. Really, it would be better to ditch the casino plot and just have Finn and co smuggle themselves aboard the dreadnought on a piece of debris or something (kinda like a reverse of what the Falcon does in ESB).

 

Rose was mostly irrelevant to the plot, save for that one line about saving what you love rather than destroying what you hate. Anybody could have said it though (Luke would have been a good fit for a line like that). It's also frustrating that these new characters don't add anything (Captain Phasma again...)

 

 

I keep thinking about ways the film could have been better, rather than dwelling on the bits that were good. Sure sign that the film didn't hit the mark for me.

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I think the central theme is failure. Every storyline is centered around failure and how the characters struggle to learn something from their failures.

Poe fails over and over in his gung-ho planning (the film takes stupid shortcuts to get him to make that second plan, as has been pointed out) but fails again and again, actively harming the Resistance. Until he finally learns how to lead, not to some big, heroic victory but to safety.

Rey fails to redeem Kylo or bring back the Jedi master to save the day, but learns that they don’t matter. The Skywalker lineage isn’t “The One!”
The Force, and hope with it, will come from “nobodys”, like her and a slave kid from Canto Bight.

Finn And Rose’s story is undercooked, IMO, but they fail their mission, bringing the wrong codebreaker along, who betrays them and shows them that ultimately it might not even matter if they win today, it’s all business and money makers have no interest in peace. Finn takes the wrong, suicidal lesson from this, but Rose learns that it’s not worth fighting for revenge, but rather fighting to save your loved ones.

Luke, burdened by the *big* failure of not believing in Kylo Ren when he needed it the most, shuts himself off from everything and stubbornly refuses to learn and let go.

It was a film about deeply flawed characters making terrible decisions and losing almost everything because of it and that’s why I loved this movie.

So basically, what Yoda said..

 

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Agree with BigJKO.

 

Spoiler

This extends to the villains, as well - the villains' weaknesses, what makes them villainous, is that they're not willing to admit the possibility of failure. Snoke straight up says that he will never be betrayed, right before he is betrayed. Kylo wants to erase the past, erase every regret, every mistake, in an effort to build a future that is exactly the way he wants it.

 

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6 hours ago, twmac said:

 

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I cared more about that one bomber pilot in The Last Jedi than I did about the entire cast of Rogue One

 

 

Yes this. 

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5 hours ago, BigJKO said:

 

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I think the central theme is failure. Every storyline is centered around failure and how the characters struggle to learn something from their failures. 

 

Poe fails over and over in his gung-ho planning (the film takes stupid shortcuts to get him to make that second plan, as has been pointed out) but fails again and again, actively harming the Resistance. Until he finally learns how to lead, not to some big, heroic victory but to safety.

 

Rey fails to redeem Kylo or bring back the Jedi master to save the day, but learns that they don’t matter. The Skywalker lineage isn’t “The One!” 

The Force, and hope with it, will come from “nobodys”, like her and a slave kid from Canto Bight.

 

Finn And Rose’s story is undercooked, IMO, but they fail their mission, bringing the wrong codebreaker along, who betrays them and shows them that ultimately it might not even matter if they win today, it’s all business and money makers have no interest in peace. Finn takes the wrong, suicidal lesson from this, but Rose learns that it’s not worth fighting for revenge, but rather fighting to save your loved ones.

 

Luke, burdened by the *big* failure of not believing in Kylo Ren when he needed it the most, shuts himself off from everything and stubbornly refuses to learn and let go.

 

It was a film about deeply flawed characters making terrible decisions and losing almost everything because of it and that’s why I loved this movie.

 

So basically, what Yoda said..

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

 

Thanks, this is a really interesting take on the movie.

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I think it has some really wonderful moments and lines. There's a strange tension where it feels baggy but it couldn't be made faster without removing the slower, meatier island bits. Finn's road trip is the obvious candidate for the cutting room but it sets up important things. Phazma could have waited until the next film and been given something meatier to do, I think. Maz's appearance and the whole lapel pin thing seemed superfluous. I suppose it's more enigmatic than just saying a Star Wars name - "Go find Elon Musk!"

 

I thought Laura Dern was great but her character was really just a narrative tool for Poe's development. Ultimately I think Leia could have performed that function and taken her place.

 

Everything with Snoke was wonderful. Some cracking CG, there. And I very much enjoyed the reclaiming of the word 'spunk'.

 

I loved when Rey 'reached out' on the rock ("ooo the force is strong with you!") I thought Mark Hamill gave a really really top performance - he had A LOT to do and he melded all the weariness with humour and flashes of the Dagobah Luke we knew.

 

I loved how Kylo's character was deepened. Obi-Wan's 'certain point of view' line really echoes with him and there's real and relatable complexity there.

 

19 hours ago, BigJKO said:

 

  Hide contents

I think the central theme is failure. Every storyline is centered around failure and how the characters struggle to learn something from their failures. 

 

Poe fails over and over in his gung-ho planning (the film takes stupid shortcuts to get him to make that second plan, as has been pointed out) but fails again and again, actively harming the Resistance. Until he finally learns how to lead, not to some big, heroic victory but to safety.

 

Rey fails to redeem Kylo or bring back the Jedi master to save the day, but learns that they don’t matter. The Skywalker lineage isn’t “The One!” 

The Force, and hope with it, will come from “nobodys”, like her and a slave kid from Canto Bight.

 

Finn And Rose’s story is undercooked, IMO, but they fail their mission, bringing the wrong codebreaker along, who betrays them and shows them that ultimately it might not even matter if they win today, it’s all business and money makers have no interest in peace. Finn takes the wrong, suicidal lesson from this, but Rose learns that it’s not worth fighting for revenge, but rather fighting to save your loved ones.

 

Luke, burdened by the *big* failure of not believing in Kylo Ren when he needed it the most, shuts himself off from everything and stubbornly refuses to learn and let go.

 

It was a film about deeply flawed characters making terrible decisions and losing almost everything because of it and that’s why I loved this movie.

 

So basically, what Yoda said..

 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Yes, this is it exactly. EVERYONE fucks up. Obi-Wan does, Yoda does, Anakin does, Han, Leia, Ben, George(!) The movie hinges on the line from that one character. 

 

If Force Awakens felt like a New Hope retread, this seemed like they'd crammed both Empire and Return of the Jedi in. And I know it was too long. But I liked it.

 

Edit. Ooo, and one more thing! The music was a delight, as always, but I don't recall hearing a new theme while watching. It seemed like there was SO MUCH to reprise that there wasn't much space for anything new. I'm going to get the soundtrack today, but it did feel somewhat like a 'greatest hits'.

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There's like... so much stuff in this movie. I saw it last night and I think it's going to be a while, and take a few rewatches, before I can say anything detailed and coherent about it. All I know right now is that I loved it. It's crazy that this year we got The Last Jedi and Blade Runner 2049, two movies that take beloved decades old movies and do some really radical stuff with them and knock it out of the park. I think BR2049 and TLJ are both excellent films that depart quite a bit from the originals in a lot of ways, TLJ much more so. I would kind of have liked films that recaptured the magic of the originals rather than doing new stuff, since I loved the originals so much, but I'm equally happy with movies that do their own thing and do it well. I'm not sure BR2049 and TLJ needed to be Blade Runner or Star Wars films, but they're excellent films.

 

And I'll say the same thing about TLJ that can be said about The Force Awakens, and Rogue One for that matter: boy howdy do they hire some really good actors for these things. Like holy shit, everyone's so good. The amazing performances from Boyega, Ridley, and Driver were the only good things about The Force Awakens, and we've got them here in spades plus Isaac and Gleeson finally getting something to do, Hamill being tremendous, Laura Dern and Benicio del Toro!!!!, etc. 

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This is going to derail it but does anyone have that interview with the guy that helped make the Star Wars trilogy but then was cast out and resulted in Return of the Jedi not being what it should have been?

 

I remember Chris Remo mentioning it on a podcast years ago and the subsequent article and interview was fascinating.

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I saw someone posit something, on twitter I think, about a certain Leia scene. It sort of reframes it for me in a way I like.

 

 

During her near-death experience I, and a lot of people, assumed she Force

flew back to the spaceship. But the person posited that maybe she Force pulled the ship towards her, which I really like and makes me more positive on that scene. I was already more positive than some people were about that scene. I know this is just a minor nitpick, but something about her pulling an entire cruiser towards her makes the scene an ever cooler, bigger show of her nascent Force powers at the moment of near-death.

 

Anyway, I'd also like to add that Mark Hamill was fantastic in this film and it was amazing to see him get a great live action role after all these years and seeing him knock it out of the park. :tup:

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Re: acting in TLJ, the nice surprise for me was Ade Edmondson (famous from British comedy TV like Bottom and The Young Ones, but more recently the BBC's War and Peace adaptation) turning up as a First Order Captain. I've since seen it referred to as a cameo but it's a meatier role than that, like Admiral Ozzel in TESB - he's in the very first scene with Hux and several others, bearing bad news. As it happens I saw him on stage as Malvolio in Twelfth Night last month and he was terrific, and I sort of wondered why he hadn't done more film work - now, hey presto! An inspired choice, continuing that great tradition of British character actors as Imperial officers.

 

I liked the score and it seemed to expand on the new themes from VII nicely but I'd have to see it again. dartmonkey's right about 'greatest hits' - it's tough now because if we get a thrilling Falcon chase scene, Williams seems to feel he has to quote the asteroid pursuit music from TESB, and he's probably right (I loved that!). That leaves a little less room for new ideas - maybe Canto Bight let him stretch a bit, but I can't recall that music right now.

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The Canto Bight music was pretty stretchy, I think.

 

edit: I just listened to it on the soundtrack and uh yes this is stretchy as fuck. It gets into Catch Me If You Can territory, and that's just one of like, five separate equally crazy things it's up to. And it's less than 3 minutes long.

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I was facepalming in cinema during watching it. Not good. There is definitely some competent cinematography here for sure, except for the warp cuts (I don't think I've ever seen cuts done like that, what gives?). Visually, everything is very well done indeed.

 

It's just that the story is complete bollocks. It's like a delivery system for heroic moments for almost all of the characters and these moments are almost all ridiculous and twisty. There strength in the way which the medium can provide suspense, as established mainly by Hitchcock and others before him, goes unused. There is not really even rising tension and climax in this. Anything cool happens - a moment later it's twisted around. He sacrificed himself! How heroic! Wait, no he didn't! Wait, actually he did! MIND BLOWN! (not)

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I still have a lot of thinking to do about the movie, and I for sure have to rewatch it before committing to much of anything, but I feel like Star Wars has always had twisty stuff like that. They can't open the door! Oh, but they can, R2-D2 is coming! Oh no, a stormtrooper shot him! He's dead? No, he's not. Anyways Han can rewire the door! He's got it! Wait no he doesn't, that made it close. Oh no Leia's been shot! And now they've been captured by a stormtrooper! But no, Leia has a blaster! They got him! Oh no, it's an AT-ST! They're captured again! Wait, no, it's Chewbacca. He's going to come down to help Leia! Wait no, Han's got an idea! He's going to climb up into the AT-ST and impersonate an Imperial Officer and tell the people inside the bunker that the Rebels have been defeated and they're on the run and now the people inside the bunker are going to run out to help with the chase! But then it turns out the Rebels and the Ewoks ambush them!

 

That's not to say this movie isn't super twisty. It definitely feels like you've got about seven times the number of things that happen compared to something like The Force Awakens or A New Hope, both of which pared their twists down to however many it takes to run through the hero's journey plus a few extra (oh look, Han's back and he's saved Luke from Darth Vader!). I just mean that twists don't turn a story into bollocks. They just turn it into a twisty thing! And come to think of it, Rian Johnson's other three movies are equally twisty. He doesn't like straight lines in his plots, I guess!

 

My own preference with respect to twistiness is that I don't really care. A plot where nothing happens, a plot where a trillion things happen, whatever. As long as the emotional throughline makes sense, the plot can do whatever it wants. If the movie wasn't very suspenseful then I'm inclined to simply view it as a movie without suspense, rather than as something that ought to be castigated. I did feel a fair amount of suspense at various points in the film - basically anything involving Luke, the very first scene with the bombers, basically anything involving Ren and Rey - but if I were in your position and I felt like the movie didn't have suspense, I don't think I'd dislike it for that reason.

 

certainly didn't feel like the movie was just cheaply trying to blow my mind or something. It didn't feel like a gimmicky kind of "it's the Sixth Sense and Luke was dead all along" sort of thing. At least for me, I never got that impression.

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