Yes, and I gave you several examples of crap that was in it.

If there was no vacuum in TLJ - then why did Leia have to use her powers to "fly" and survive?

In both versions, they're playing EXTREMELY fast and loose with science. If you honestly can't see that, I don't know what to say - but I'm pretty sure I'm not the fanboy here in that case :)

I get that you've grown up and you expect the movies to have grown up with you now that you actually care about science in your Star Wars - but that's like expecting Trump to say something clever.

These are mainstream spectacle films - and you're looking in the wrong place for science and logic.

Depends on what scenes you're referring to. But you seem to think selective science is more consistent, so why not? ;)

Anyway, we're arguing personal preferences and trying to intellectualize what we enjoy and what we don't enjoy when it comes to mainstream entertainment.

That's a dead end if ever there was one.

So…. I think I have to get back to The Division ;)

Spoken like a true SW fan. ;)

I'm mostly just messing with you guys. I'm glad you enjoyed TLJ as much as you did. I'm just a little surprised that so many people here thought it was better than TFA.

It's entirely subjective of course, but the opinion here seems to go against the majority.

Ah yes, The Division. I just purchased it, but I don't currenty have enough HD space to even install it. :-/

I think it's the most passionately divisive film I've seen in years. I didn't check out the fan responses before seeing it, because I didn't want to know anything about it.

I was very surprised to find so much blatant hatred towards it, frankly. I realise you don't actually hate it - but your comment about TPM being better was also quite a surprise.

I went from strongly disliking it to loving it throughout watching it, actually.

I hated the beginning with that lame "waiting for Hux" joke - and I absolutely despised the casino sequence. But once the Rey/Kylo stuff really got going - I started getting into it - and I was quite enthralled by the last hour or so.

But if it hadn't been Star Wars and it hadn't been playing on my nostalgia - I would have written it off as just another Disney piece of shit money maker. But since I actually cared about the characters, it got me.

Maybe it's a shitty money maker anyway, but I can't help myself when it comes to what I loved so much as a little kid :)

I think it had a lot of really neat SW stuff in it - and it wasn't predictable, very much unlike TFA.

I liked TFA quite a bit as well, though. This just had more creativity and much more character drama - which is just my kind of thing.

Let me know how you like it once you get around to it.

Oh, remember to enable "Neutral Lighting" :)

I don't know if I actually think it's worse than TPM. My immediate reaction was that it was worse, but I'll have to watch it again to see if my opinion shifts at all.

While I thought TPM was pretty terrible in general, it had scenes that stood out to me more than anything that happened in TLJ. The Qui Gon - Darth Maul sequence for example.

Jar Jar vs the Asian girl is a draw. ;)

The lightsaber battle in TPM is probably the best thing in the entire prequel trilogy - and the best battle of the saga. It's cool, but not so over-the-top that it becomes silly - like most of the action sequences of the prequels.

That said, I tend to find drama more compelling than "cool stuff" - so TLJ wins by a country mile here. Especially the way everything came together for the Luke sequence INCLUDING some cool stuff.

I found her rather obnoxiously PC myself, but I will never get past how bottom-feeder Jar Jar was. God, I hated that character with a passion.

Idk, I didn't find the drama in TLJ all that compelling to be honest. I thought the scenes with Hamil, Driver, and Ridley were good, but the majority of the remaining cast was mediocre to downright terrible to me.

Those are the scenes I'm referring to :)

They take up a good part of the film.

I also think some of the Leia sequences were very good. I liked her interaction with Holo-Luke and Holdo.

I don't really mind the cast. I don't blame the asian girl for getting the PC role. She could be a fantastic or terrible actress, I really wouldn't know :)

The role was nauseating, though.

I think Hux is either miscast - or way too exaggerated as a weakling power-hungry moron. He comes off as a parody of the typical "Empire" dude.

I think the style is the point.

First Snoke manipulated him, like Stacy Keach in American history X. Hux had a certain talent and is ambitious to a fault.

And not just Hux - Hux, Kylo Ren, Rey and Poe are all in over their heads. The only one to realize this and try to get out - in both the order and resistance - was Finn.

In the story arc regarding Poe, Leia, and Laura Dern, this was the point.

The arc with Rey's training, this was the point of Luke too. Like Paul Atreides before him, Luke is a messiah figure that checked out.

@Maylanders post was pretty spot on to me. I liked TLJ better because I was absolutely appalled with what they did with the story in TFA, which felt more like a reboot than a continuation. I could hardly believe how crappy it felt when I first watched it (it was actually more okish the second time because I knew what to expect). I had no expectations with TLJ, and that made it a more entertaining movie to me than TFA.

Silliness is a staple of the whole saga. Trying to apply science to Star Wars is a joke. It’s supposed to be inspired by Flash Gordon. It’s comic book science. Nobody expected Star Wars as a series to be this good or become a cultural phenomenon. Certainly not in the late 70’s. It’s always been about spectacle and drama!

Agreed, to me the science (or lack thereof) is not something that matters in Star Wars.

I don't see why we should assume that opinions of these current movies are distorted by nostalgia. I mean, there's several modern extensions of fondly remembered movies, and I think we can still judge them on their merits in a fair way. I loved the Alien movies, but thought the AvP and Prometheus movies were awful. I think Raiders of the Lost Ark is a good movie, and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was terrible. On the other hand, I found the latest Mad Max movie far more entertaining than the old ones.

I think it's quite possible to reach these opinions without recourse to nostalgia.

They wouldn’t be relevant at all without the original saga. TLJ would be about as loved as Wing Commander. They can’t stand on their own feet

That's probably true, but I still think we might find them wanting as movies in their own right, without being unfair to them because they don't perfectly recapture childhood joys.

I think this is one of my favorite parts of the Disney takeover, is that Stormtroopers (and especially the imperial guards), are actually somewhat badass now.

https://hips.hearstapps.com/pop.h-cd…-star-wars.gif

I am just glad my aging father is still with us and I am able to bring to to see these movies.

We both had a great time, the movie was enjoyable enough. They are always entertaining and I don't read to much into them, never have.

Thank you. :)

I'm glad there's at least one other person here who gets that.

I'm glad you guys enjoyed it and that your father was able to go. My father is at that age where he can't do a lot of things on his own anymore, and sitting in a movie theater for 2+ hours is too uncomfortable for him at this stage.

He's not really very old at 74, but being a smoker for 50+ years has left him in poor health.

First thank you for the nice post.
Second my Dad is the same as yours but 4 years older.

I have no clue how I get him in the car even,but we both enjoy watching movies together and golfing together.

What do yo do ever time I see him and my mother I think it might be the last time I see him. They were over 4 times over Christmas.

I hope you realise I don't think your opinion is unfair :)

To me, that wouldn't make sense. We like what we like - and whatever response to something, be it a movie or ice cream - is the response we have. That's neither unfair or "incorrect".

I'm simply saying the old movies were full of shit as well.

That said, obviously nostalgia is going to be a factor - and it's going to be more significant the stronger your emotional tie to whatever we're talking about is.

For me, I know the movies had a gigantic impact on me as a kid, so the tie is strong.

Anyone trying to claim their judgment is not affected by nostalgia ever - is either lying, incredibly naive or conceited - or not human.

That's why I'm saying I probably wouldn't have loved TLJ if it wasn't Star Wars - because it has a lot of things I generally hate about mainstream movies.

But I can't take the 9 years old kid out of my soul - and KNOW how I would respond as someone completely unaffected by my feelings for Star Wars, Luke, Leia, Jedis and so on. I can only guess about that.

But there's also a difference between a mainstream movie that's obviously not meant to be taken too seriously - and a movie that's trying to be very serious indeed.

For instance, Alien was never a typical mainstream movie. At least not to me - as a kid or as an adult. It was trying to be serious, and I think the script made that work rather well. Not a perfect movie, but a very good one indeed.

Any Alien movie that's going for the same thing should have a script that makes it work as well. That's where the new movies fail utterly, to me.

The script is important to me - and plausible human behavior matters a lot if I'm going to be taking something very seriously.

For Indiana Jones, I have to admit that the more I see of them as an adult, the more I realise they're silly as hell. I do think they have a certain charm in terms of the actors - and the creativity of the script. I thought Crystal Skulls lacked that to the same degree - but, again, I don't know how big a factor nostalgia is when it comes to Indiana Jones.

So, it's not as easy as that.

But, obviously - as we've established - you thought TLJ was much worse than the other Star Wars movies in these ways and that's not unfair. That was your experience.

To me, the jokes were over-the-top - but, as I said, the human drama and Jedi stuff was strong enough to make me able to ignore it.

That opinion isn't unfair or incorrect either.

To me, the notion of an honest opinion being unfair is silly. I don't understand how that would work. It could be uninformed, I suppose - but never unfair.

That would be like saying to someone that whatever he's feeling and thinking about something he experienced is "wrong" - and he better realise that he didn't actually experience what he thinks he did.

Too much like manipulation and mind control for my tastes :)

Nothing wrong with exchanging our experiences, though.

My dad hates all movies except Scaramouche and The Quiet Man :)

Hehe, not quite - but close. At least he picked two great ones.

He's 76 and, very fortunately - in very good health for his age. But I could never really get him to watch anything for more than 10 minutes.

Even now, he has the hardest time sitting still unless it's some crappy soccer match or the news :)

My mother is the movie fan in the relationship.

The usual tactic. And, of course, no-one is actually saying that.

Wow, been awhile since we had one of these threads.

1. Dart post opinion
2. X disagrees
3. Dart post opinion again with huge wall of text.
4. Goto 2, until X gives up.

:D I missed those.

It's not a competition, GG :)

Well, not for me.

A competition about movie preferences is one where all participants have lost upon entering.

There's nothing about nostalgia for me. I hated episode 1, liked episode 2, liked episode 3 even more, liked episode 7, but I was just disgusted by episode 8.

You forgot to mention your opinion about the only movies where nostalgia is a factor ;)

I wasn't referring to anyone in particular when I made that comment.

Even so, I wanted to make sure you realised I didn't consider your opinion unfair.

I have to say I feel TLJ doesn't bode well for the future of Star Wars. It's very clearly part of the Hollywood/Disney/sequel trend, which means it's just going to be more of the same going forward.

There were a lot of negative things about the prequels, and in many ways they are inferior to TFA and TLJ, but at least Lucas would stick with his vision instead of writing the movie according to a recipe. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't.

I just saw the movie last night. FYI, this post is full of spoilers. Saw with my wife and two kids. They all liked it, but they seemed to enjoy my rants about it, so when I saw this thread, I thought I would share my thoughts. I have not read any other posts in this thread yet, so I apologize for any repetitiveness. Here goes (this is going to be long):

1. I went in to the movie still bitter about something that was very unsatisfying to me about the first movie. How the heck did the First Order ever come to be? How could the triumphant rebellion ever allow its vanquished foe to grow in power to such an extent, including building another planet killing weapon? They apparently needed the janitor to understand the magnitude of the threat and how to defeat it. That alone made me really struggle with these new movies. If the Republic allowed the First Order to grow to this extent, frankly they deserve to be defeated.

2. The Last Jedi was really disappointing in so many ways. I at least felt that Rogue One paid off with the fun battle scenes and sacrifice in the last 45 minutes or so of that movie. As I sat bored through this one, I was at least expecting a mindless battle pay-off, but we didn't even get that.

3. Leia surviving the vacuum of space and flying back into the holed ship was one of the dumbest and unnecessary scenes I have seen in any movie.

4. After The Force Awakens, the main two things I heard people talking about afterwards were (a) who do you think Rey's parents are and (b) what's the back story behind that Snoke guy? Well, the movie managed to destroy what small interest I had by making both those questions irrelevant. I guess Rey's parents were the Force like I seem to recall was the case with Anakin. Lame. And the cool looking Snoke, an awesome (if classic) villain? Snuffed out in dumb fashion. It's like they heard all the criticisms of The Force Awakens being too much like A New Hope, so this time they said, fine, we will have the throne room scene from Return of the Jedi, but this time it's a movie too early, and it will end with a shocking difference! So now we are left with hapless emo-goth guy in charge of the First Order. How can you have a movie series like this without an awesome villain left alive?

5. Apparently BB-8 has managed to slough off any vestige of Asimov's Laws of Robotics, as he uses an AT-ST to execute a killing spree. how cute! I think I heard the Unreal Tournament guy's voice in the background - "Multi Kill!"

6. So is Finn really a robot or something? It's almost like the movie is mocking us when this supposed janitor has encyclopedic knowledge of every First Order Base, ship, piece of tech, etc.

7. What a waste of Mark Hamill. The ending of the Force Awakens both disappointed and intrigued me - disappointed me because he had only a cameo in that movie, but I was excited for the prospect of what they would have him do in this movie. Sadly, the answer was not a whole hell of a lot. His death, coinciding with an apparent "new Dawn" for the rebellion/Republic, was, in my opinion, just dumb rather than poignant. Luke and Snoke were the only characters I was really enjoying, and now they're both gone?

8. Interesting how these giant capital ships work - apparently you always need at least one person to stay on board. Not 100, not 2, not zero - 1 person. And if you do have that one person, you can do whatever is necessary, like super complicated jump to lightspeed into another ship calculations.

9. The cloak on the fleeing rebel ships seemed less than effective to me, seeing as the admiral lady could sit on her capital ship and look out the window and watch them go. I guess the First Order ships didn't have windows or binoculars.

10. The movie seem to be mocking the viewer with the dialogue at many different points. One example - Red-haired First Order admiral guy says to his subordinates - "with all this technology, we really can't catch those rebel ships?" That's certainly what I was thinking. But even worse, why the heck would you call back your tie fighters? Apparently even just two or three tie fighters can totally tear up the biggest Republic ships. I'm pretty sure that they have more than five tie fighters on a Star Destroyer. I guess the First Order just cares about the well-being of its pilots more than the Republic does.

11. The movie was wayyyy too long. The entire casino sequence could've easily been cut. Pretty much everything on the island with Luke could've been cut, and I like Luke.

12. Potentially fun scenes were just squandered. Rey going into the Dark Pit on the island. She asked about her parents… two shadowy figures approach… the tension builds… and it's just Rey. Wow.

Maybe I'm just a much bigger critic than I used to be. I found the most recent Star Trek movie similarly full of plot holes and lameness. Yet the first Mortal Kombat movie is one of my favorite movies of all time- so what do I know?

Nah, I just think Star Wars provokes more passionate discussion than most mainstream movies - and though certain people would like to deny it, I don't think there's any escape from nostalgia and love of the old trilogy being factors when forming an opinion.

What I find most interesting about it is that it seems to work both ways.

I mean, some of us apparently like/love TLJ (recognising warts and all) - BECAUSE we love Star Wars.

Others seem to dislike/hate TLJ BECAUSE they love Star Wars - just a different kind of Star Wars, I guess.

At least, I can't immediately see what other explanation there is for this amount of passion going both ways.

I'm not just talking about this thread - and the Watch is much calmer than most places.

Try checking out IMDb, for instance - and you will find an endless amount of bile and 1/10s thrown at this film - despite the high aggregate user rating.

Combined with the Metacritic 85/100 critic score - it really does strike me as one of the most divisive blockbusters in a long time.

I am not really a fan of Star Wars, but I do like a good story. Star Wars 4-6 had a good story, Star Wars 1-3 also had a good story albeit with some dumb distractions. Star Wars TFA was okay, but the story took a back seat. In Star Wars TLJ the story was irrelevant, it became a Transformers movie imo. It was a preventable change, 5 minutes of explanation would have changed my complete outlook of the movie.

That's fair enough.

I really liked the story of the fallen hero redeeming himself, personally. Perhaps not the most original story of all time, but when is that ever the case.

Also, I really, really liked the way he did it - without violence and by sacrificing himself. He essentially sacrificed himself to save the alliance by setting an example.

They managed to make that happen in a cool, unexpected - and very emotional way. That's not what I expected from a Disney mainstream movie - so I was surprised.

I found it both touching and very appropriate for the character.

In that same way, I really appreciated how Kylo chose to become the supreme leader. I think Adam Driver is the best thing in the new trilogy, though Hamill gave him a run for his money.

Really enjoyed a more mature and seasoned take on Luke. He was never a favorite character of mine. Well, certainly not in ANH with his "I was going to tashi station to get some power converters" whining :)

I always thought he was just a little too naive for my tastes.

But he grew in ESB and RotJ - and became less happy-go-lucky.

His character in TLJ seems like it could well happen after failing to that extent. I don't understand the criticism here.

As I understand it, Hamill himself changed his mind about that - and is now a supporter of the direction, though I could be misinformed.

I admit it was an unusual choice to have Luke consider murdering his student - but the movie went out of its way to explain how much darkness was inside Kylo, and he didn't really intend to go through with it.

I think it worked particularly well because I didn't see the big things coming or the way they were coming - and I loved the little details and respect for the original trilogy, including the golden dice and how Leia was not just there for show.

I don't know why the silly jokes and antics didn't ruin the film for me. I agree with most of what you guys are saying about leaps of logic and stupid humor.

I guess there was enough good stuff in it to suit my preferences to make me give all that shit a pass.

Maybe I've grown too lenient? ;)

BTW, did I mention I really appreciate how we can exchange about this movie without it devolving into base name-calling and what not?

Just another reason I really like the Watch :)

One would think it's not that rare, but it is.

Happy, positive mood:



Just not in the mood, mood:

I agree with most of what you said. As I said previously in this thread though: I still think it's a great movie. A fantastic one even. Very entertaining. Great production values, visuals and sounds are all top notch.

I just don't like it in the Star Wars context, as too many things just feel off for me. I can accept that sort of thing from a Marvel movie, but not Star Wars.

Edit: And I really, really feel they should have just started off with a clean slate by placing the new trilogy much further into the future. I think there would have been much less controversy had they simply said "after 100 years of peace, stagnation in the New Republic has made the rise of this new threat possible". Any involvement of the old cast could simply have been as holograms/holocrons and so on. Mentioned as myths and legends that built the New Republic etc.

Their whole Disney-fication of it would have been a much smoother process then, as fans wouldn't get as caught up in certain details.