Film Star Wars: Episode VIII

Oo0AahCantona said:
I'm devastated, just came back from the cinema with my brother and we both thought it was dreadful. Happy a lot of you seemed to really enjoy it but, nah, im shocked.
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I just got back from it and thought it was dreadful as well. Was left scratching my head at the end of it. This film didn't drive the story forward at all. It seemed pointless at the end. So many ridiculous scenes.

Kylo killing Snoke was a good scene. So was Kylo and rey killing Snoke's guards after that. But Snoke is a character the audience barely know. He was barely in the last movie and in this one he had just a few scenes before being killed. That reduces the impact of his death.

Finn and Rose surviving Holdo smashing her ship in lightspeed into the Star Destroyer was just bizarre. That's when I gave up trying to enjoy the film. And it ended on a bizarre note as well. What was the point of the film in the end? I thought in the middle of the movie that Rey and Kylo would switch sides and that would make for a great third film. Was disappointed though. Adam Driver was the best thing about this. Mark Hamill must be so disappointed with this and the way this trilogy has gone. Rian Johnson has messed it up, maybe because of Disney's interference.

Also what is going to happen to Leia now? Are they going to CGI Carrie Fisher for the next one?
 
The one thing that had me scratching my head to be honest was the whole:

Leia Superman scene in space. I know that she's force sensitive to some degree, though the films have never really explored that. So to have her suddenly revive herself in space and zoom in classic Superman pose fist out back to the space ship was so out of place and random that I was just like wtf?

Also if she has the power to do that then why didn't she do anything with the force to help in any of the films so far. The only thing I can think of is that it was Luke doing some shenanigans and doing it but her eyes opened and she was focusing which indicates it was all her.
 
Zarlak said:
The one thing that had me scratching my head to be honest was the whole:

Leia Superman scene in space. I know that she's force sensitive to some degree, though the films have never really explored that. So to have her suddenly revive herself in space and zoom in classic Superman pose fist out back to the space ship was so out of place and random that I was just like wtf?
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Aside from how ridiculous that was it just looked really bad too.
 
The more I think about it the less I like it, and I was not enthused to start with. Can understand why Mark Hamill was so agitated with Luke's character arc, hate what they did with that character Speaks volumes for Hamill that he was so impressive.

Know it has been discussed already in the thread but Rey is an incredible Mary Sue.

Mark is dropping to the 3-4 range. Have to take my nephew to see it this afternoon, might go even lower on second watch.
 
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Oh Star Wars what have you done. This trilogy is fecked. :lol:

It could have been so easy. All we wanted to see was Luke train the next generation of Jedi, the rebuilding of the new republic with Leia as leader, etc etc.

That could have been the backdrop while we met our new protagonist. The problem they have is that instead of progressing the story, they re-made A New Hope due to fan service and backed themselves into a corner. They made us unable to care about any of this because we've seen it all before. The new protagonist (Rey) is boring because we've already been on that journey as an audience. We meet a no-hope teenager and observe their growth as they learn about this new, mysterious thing called the force. We've already seen that movie, and the story of the elder 3 characters has been told.

So they either needed to continue that story (Luke's academy and Leia rebuilds the republic) or have new characters that weren't retreads of the previous lot. We got neither. They scrapped everything (the rebels defeating the empire, the Jedi coming out of the dark ages, etc) and placed us right back at day 1 with no explanation. Bad guys in charge, good guys try and stop them. New hero gets swept up in it. Given that we've seen that before, is it any wonder the second film is being met with meh reactions? Does anyone really care what happens to Rey, Finn etc? Or were you there to see Luke kick some ass, something we've waited for since it became clear they left him out of The Force Awakens. In the end it turns out they kill him off and you're left with a load of characters that aren't interesting and a story no one cares about. Great.
 
Should have adapted the Thrawn Trilogy, or set it years after so they were not screwing up the original characters to this level.
 
Wibble said:
Bloody hell you lot are hard to please.
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It's like few people had already decided how the story should have moved or how the characters should have developed, and are now overly critical because the movie went a different way. Just the feeling I got from reading some reviews online. Am not saying it was a great movie, but it was far from the worst Star Wars movie or as bad as the prequel trilogy.
 
Probably the best apart from the Empire Strikes Back I'd say. A few bits that were a bit pointless or didn't work that well but overall it was great fun. Bet they wish they hadn't killed Luke off now that they can't make Leia the main character of the next film.

It is a Space Opera FFS. Not high art.
 
Wibble said:
Probably the best apart from the Empire Strikes Back I'd say. A few bits that were a bit pointless or didn't work that well but overall it was great fun. Bet they wish they hadn't killed Luke off now that they can't make Leia the main character of the next film.

It is a Space Opera FFS. Not high art.
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To be fair, the whole message of that film was about letting go of the past and moving forward fresh so here's its chance to do what it was preaching.
 
Zarlak said:
To be fair, the whole message of that film was about letting go of the past and moving forward fresh so here's its chance to do what it was preaching.
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True but in the end popcorn films like this I'm just happy go along for the ride.

I even enjoyed episodes 1-3 despite the obvious flaws, some horrible acting at times and Lucas's terrible direction.
 
Wibble said:
Bloody hell you lot are hard to please.
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i dont think thats fair at all, im rarely critical, but this film was honestly terrible. i left the cinema just confused about how badly they handled pretty much every decision, minor and major, and upset that i didnt give a shit anymore about going to see the next one.

in a few weeks you'll start to see a lot more negativity creep out id imagine.
 
Zarlak said:
The one thing that had me scratching my head to be honest was the whole:

Leia Superman scene in space. I know that she's force sensitive to some degree, though the films have never really explored that. So to have her suddenly revive herself in space and zoom in classic Superman pose fist out back to the space ship was so out of place and random that I was just like wtf?

Also if she has the power to do that then why didn't she do anything with the force to help in any of the films so far. The only thing I can think of is that it was Luke doing some shenanigans and doing it but her eyes opened and she was focusing which indicates it was all her.
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Yeah that was very weird and a bit pointless. I can't make any sense of it. It can't have been your initial theory either as at that point that character had no connection to The Force.

Overall I really liked it. It's not without issues though.

Finn and Rose shouldn't even have been in the film. Their whole adventure was pointless, added nothing and achieved nothing. It took time away from explaining what the hell Snoke was about. It felt like they were given a storyline for the sake of diversity.

Snoke needed more clarity.

Leia shouldn't have survived the film. Luke going out was well done I thought. He went from suffering from some sort of PTSD/depression and trying to resolve himself to destroy the Jedi and die to reconnecting with The Force, accepting his failures and then finding peace in one last display of heroism.
 
Oo0AahCantona said:
i dont think thats fair at all, im rarely critical, but this film was honestly terrible. i left the cinema just confused about how badly they handled pretty much every decision, minor and major, and upset that i didnt give a shit anymore about going to see the next one.

in a few weeks you'll start to see a lot more negativity creep out id imagine.
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All three of us came out hugely entertained. The 3 other people I know who have seen it have also really enjoyed it. Can't wait for the next film.
 
Posting my opinions before I read any other reviews...

I enjoyed watching a star wars film, that's the best thing I can say about it, if they are coming more regular and more episodic then I guess a can put up with the odd dodgy one. This did remind me of the prequels at a few points, so that's pretty damning.

Far too much comic relief nonsense for my liking... and lots of other nonsense for that matter. I much preferred both TFA and rogue one. This film had a completely different feeling to it, down to the different director I guess. Bring back Abrams if you ask me.
 
Zarlak said:
The one thing that had me scratching my head to be honest was the whole:

Leia Superman scene in space. I know that she's force sensitive to some degree, though the films have never really explored that. So to have her suddenly revive herself in space and zoom in classic Superman pose fist out back to the space ship was so out of place and random that I was just like wtf?

Also if she has the power to do that then why didn't she do anything with the force to help in any of the films so far. The only thing I can think of is that it was Luke doing some shenanigans and doing it but her eyes opened and she was focusing which indicates it was all her.
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She is Luke's brother. Daughter of Anakin Skywalker. I always assumed she was a Jedi so I didn't think anything of it.
 
Oo0AahCantona said:
i dont think thats fair at all, im rarely critical, but this film was honestly terrible. i left the cinema just confused about how badly they handled pretty much every decision, minor and major, and upset that i didnt give a shit anymore about going to see the next one.

in a few weeks you'll start to see a lot more negativity creep out id imagine.
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You don't have to wait a few weeks, it's already been a fairly divisive film.

https://screenrant.com/star-wars-last-jedi-critics-audience-divide/

Personally I think a divisive Star Wars film is a good thing after the TFA which was likeable but very safe.
 
Wibble said:
She is Luke's brother. Daughter of Anakin Skywalker. I always assumed she was a Jedi so I didn't think anything of it.
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Nah, to be a Jedi you have to be trained as one and part of the Jedi order. Like you might be a footballer but you're not a United player until you play for United etc. She has a weak connection to the force, but it's never explored, she never does anything with the force other than sense Luke in the original trilogy and she's lived her entire life as a normal person with no training or Jedi upbringing.

It would be easier to understand if at any point in any of the previous films she'd done anything at all to showcase any kind of force power let alone randomly just flying through space like Superman.

It was just so out of the blue and out of place. Imagine you were watching Rocky and Mr T knocked him out so Adrian climbed in the ring and went 8 rounds with him. You'd be scratching your head like wtf. I enjoyed the film and I hate excessive nitpicking and I have a very high suspension of disbelief but that scene was completely out of the blue and didn't belong.
 
Zarlak said:
Nah, to be a Jedi you have to be trained as one and part of the Jedi order. Like you might be a footballer but you're not a United player until you play for United etc. She has a weak connection to the force, but it's never explored, she never does anything with the force other than sense Luke in the original trilogy and she's lived her entire life as a normal person with no training or Jedi upbringing.
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I always assumed she would have been Jedi trained (in the long period when we only had three films to go on) but in any case it seemed likely she would have some skills in that area.

It would be easier to understand if at any point in any of the previous films she'd done anything at all to showcase any kind of force power let alone randomly just flying through space like Superman.

True

It was just so out of the blue and out of place. Imagine you were watching Rocky and Mr T knocked him out so Adrian climbed in the ring and went 8 rounds with him. You'd be scratching your head like wtf. I enjoyed the film and I hate nitpicking but that scene was completely out of the blue.
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Maybe but it didn't even cause a blip on my radar.

I did think that in retrospect they wished they had filmed that as her death. I guess it wasn't possible to rejig it so late in editing.
 
Wibble said:
I always assumed she would have been Jedi trained (in the long period when we only had three films to go on) but in any case it seemed likely she would have some skills in that area.

It would be easier to understand if at any point in any of the previous films she'd done anything at all to showcase any kind of force power let alone randomly just flying through space like Superman.

True



Maybe but it didn't even cause a blip on my radar.

I did think that in retrospect they wished they had filmed that as her death. I guess it wasn't possible to rejig it so late in editing.
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Yeah it would have been a great opportunity to let her go, but still. I don't think we've ever seen anyone in Star Wars do that yet so it's a feat that's actually pretty remarkable so for someone to just randomly do it who hasn't ever displayed any ability like that before is strange. Just weird. She never had any training before she was an adult, she didn't even know she was a Skywalker until she was already a senator. Jedi don't train people over a certain age, so sure maybe Luke taught her something - but to fly? He doesn't even do that himself, noone does. It's just a really strange thing for them to say 'we're going to have this person fly' in this scene. Even if Luke himself did it it would probably be considered weird. Ah well, a minor musing in the grand scheme of things.
 
She wasn't flying as she was in zero gravity. So only very low grade force ability needed.
 
Woot. The friend I want to watch this with says she should be well enough to watch it by Wednesday.

I already have strong opinions on the film. I can’t wait to be able to call people wankers for having differing views without them asking if I’ve actually watched it.
 
legolegs said:
Audience score is different from average rating though. The score just shows how many people liked it so it doesn't really matter if you think it's 1/10 bad or 4/10 bad.
The average rating is actually 8.2 for reviews and 6.8 for users.
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Ah ok I didn't know that but makes sense with RTs system in general. Still I saw already so many user scores which I can't take serious. People who gave the movie 1 star while saying it's pretty good but the Leia scene ruined the movie for example.
But that said the movie seems to be pretty controversial for fans witj opinions all over the place while the critics enjoyed it.

A bit of a bummer that JJ is doing Episode 9, that could be a big turnaround again in comparisom to 8 which kind of make me feel that the big plan for the trilogy is missing.
 
At the end of TFA we had 4 'bad guys' in Plasma, Snoke, Ren and Hux.

2 of these are now dead... and Ren doesn't seem to have much desire to rule the galaxy... in fact I'm not really sure what drives him. Hux seems like he only wants to follow orders and can't lead himself.
 
Opening sequence was awesome. They did a great job with the action scenes. The plot was sortof all over the place. Cinemasins could make an hour long video from this movie. This franchise is falling into the trap most of the superhero movies are falling into, unable to decide whether it's a fun filled action film or a deep suspenseful thriller/drama that really makes you think. Overall I'd give it 8/10, it was enjoyable.
 
antsmithmk said:
At the end of TFA we had 4 'bad guys' in Plasma, Snoke, Ren and Hux.

2 of these are now dead... and Ren doesn't seem to have much desire to rule the galaxy... in fact I'm not really sure what drives him. Hux seems like he only wants to follow orders and can't lead himself.
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Spoiler tags please, some people have not seen it yet.
 
This is a great movie if you are not expecting its a star war movie, but maybe disappointing if you are expecting it is.
 
Did anyone else catch the post credit scene?

Thought the film was pretty decent myself.
 
Pyroblazer said:
Ah ok I didn't know that but makes sense with RTs system in general. Still I saw already so many user scores which I can't take serious. People who gave the movie 1 star while saying it's pretty good but the Leia scene ruined the movie for example.
But that said the movie seems to be pretty controversial for fans witj opinions all over the place while the critics enjoyed it.

A bit of a bummer that JJ is doing Episode 9, that could be a big turnaround again in comparisom to 8 which kind of make me feel that the big plan for the trilogy is missing.
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That's a massive bummer, he's unbelievably overrated. There isn't one thing that he's written or directed in the pas that makes him worthy of being so involved with Star Wars.
 
I’ve seen it twice now - it’s not perfect but it seems that a lot of people just want a rehash of the original trilogy, despite moaning that TFA was like a remake of ANH.

As soon as they announced it would be a continuation with old beloved characters, it was inevitable that there would be a lot of people who would be highly critical of what they were doing.
 
izzydiggler said:
I’ve seen it twice now - it’s not perfect but it seems that a lot of people just want a rehash of the original trilogy, despite moaning that TFA was like a remake of ANH.

As soon as they announced it would be a continuation with old beloved characters, it was inevitable that there would be a lot of people who would be highly critical of what they were doing.
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This is fair. These are some of the most culturally important fictional characters of the last 50 years, brings a level of expectation and care that is hard to live up to. After watching it for the second time I feel much the same. However I was able to appreciate Adam Driver to a greater extent, his performance is nuanced and excellent, come a long way from the emo kid in TFA.

It feels like one of these endless Marvel movies, from the forced attempts at humour to the forgettable/disposable nature of it.
 
Wibble said:
I did think that in retrospect they wished they had filmed that as her death. I guess it wasn't possible to rejig it so late in editing.
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She died almost a year ago. They must have had serious conversations about re-editing and reshooting some scenes to turn that into her actual death. I don't think the route they took was the right decision (particularly with how awful that superman moment was) given they will instead have to awkwardly write her out between films. But I can also understand that those involved didn't want to leave most of her final performance on the cutting room floor.
 
No proper death scene for Akbar :(

Fischer's death must have really derailed things. JJ's got a real challange on his hands for the next one. Maybe we'll see force ghost Luke to make up for the lack of Leia since episode 9 was all set up for her to take center stage from the old characters.
 
Untied said:
I think my issues all come back to the treatment of Snoke in this film. For Ben's story to make sense the actions/motivations of Snoke are crucial to understanding Ben's corruption, and why the relationship with his parents fell apart
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I agree that Snoke was very underdeveloped, and just when you thought he was showing his true strength as an antagonist he gets chopped in half. Though I have to say I prefer going that way in terms of the trilogy overall, Rey vs Ren having the focus has solid potential without some other ubersith in the way, particularly if a couple of years is left between the events.

I also think Abrams (and Kasdan if he's back) can flesh out some exposition in 9. Not sure whether they knew where that character was going in TFA or just set him up as a mystery for others to delve into, but presumably they'll have some ideas that they might want to put in.
 
Good but not great film. I think the problem is we love the original characters, and wanted different arcs for them. We had specific ideas about them that have been ruined, and a lot of people (me included really) are struggling with that.

Seen as an individual film, it was a good one, that kept people guessing. Probably would have it 3-5 on my personal list, which goes something like:

1. Empire
2. A New Hope
3. Last Jedi
4. ROTJ
5. Force Awakens
6. ROTS
7. TPM
8. Crappy Clone Love Story
 
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