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[Starver]

I'm waiting to see how they explain the Falcon's revised appearance away.

I may well base my enjoyment of the movie on how well they do that.  (Not intentionally, but inevitably. And it could undyly uptick as well as unfairly downmark the full product, as well.)

[Harry Baldman]

It was the best of films, it was the worst of films.

[NJW2000]

It was the best of films, it was the worst of films.

Far more mediocre than this.

[scriver]

It was the most mediocre, it was the least mediocre.

[Dunamisdeos]

It was the most mediocre, it was the least mediocre.

Somewhere in the middle

[scriver]

It was the furthest from the edges of mediocrity, it was the closest to the edges of mediocrity

[ChairmanPoo]

In short, the movie was so far like the rest of the saga (barring ANH and TESB), that some of the noisiest movie critics insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

[Sirus]

Finally saw The Last Jedi. It was alright. I wasn't expecting a cinematic masterpiece and I was not disappointed. Certainly better than some of the prequels.

I geeked out a little upon seeing Yoda though. He moved and looked a hell of a lot like the original puppet. I hope it was.

[Kagus]

I'm another one who didn't particularly care for TLJ, for a number of reasons. I mean, I'm used to some amount of stupidity in a Star Wars film, the setting kinda requires it... But this was something of an overachiever in that regard.

Still, if you can turn your brain off enough there are a fair few flashing lights and zip-zap noises to keep things entertaining... But yeah, I preferred the previous one. And I don't even like Jar-Jar Abrams.


Rogue One is still the best Star Wars film though, definitely. Well, that and Turkish Star Wars.

(Yes, that's a real movie. Yes, that's the Indiana Jones theme. Yes, he's kicking rocks so hard that they explode)

[Hanslanda]

I would agree that Rogue One is top SW film. Although, I find Episode IV and VI to be pretty epic.

[Dunamisdeos]

Return of the Jedi, for all it's fuzzy problems, is probably my favorite.

Also, Rogue One is just overall great to me. Easily the best of the new universe stuff.

[Sirus]

Rogue One ties with Return of the Jedi for the Best Space Battle in Cinematic History, at least in my mind. And yeah, of all the new stuff it easily stands up to the OT in terms of quality. I just wish the rest of the New Canon could match up.

I guess my biggest gripes aren't with the story or the pacing (though both certainly could use improvement) as much as they are with lore. Whaddya mean, "it's impossible to track a ship through hyperspace"? They had tracking beacons back in ANH! Leia has a tracking beacon with her so that Rey can track her! At any number of points in the EU do they talk about tracking hyperspace vectors or what-not!

Why on earth do the guns on Snoke's flagship fire in an arc? Even with Star Wars' rather flexible space physics, energy weapons travel in straight lines and do not arc even in a gravity well (which they were not in, they were in deep space). I have a similar issue with the payload from the bombers (now those were some hot garbage) but I can at least imagine the bomber's artificial gravity doing a thing in that instance, maybe accelerating them out the open hatch.

[Kagus]

Well, SW fluff has never had much of a reputation for making sense. I know this, because I have binge-trawled Wookiepedia in search of answers to various questions.

One such question was: "Does the Dark Side have any redeeming features?", and the answer was "No. No it fucking does not". The Dark Side even physically manifested as a person at one point (somewhat debatable. As with everything else, It Is A Mystery), and that person was Asshole McMurderboner II, who plotted to murder his own family because they were holding him back from murdering every living thing in the universe.

There's a holocron of "the One Noble Sith", the one dude who apparently lived in a Dark Side nexus (speaking of, why the fuck did Luke decide to 'hide' on an island with a Dark nexus on it? Sith are drawn to those things like flies) without going on a death-and-torture rampage against everything within reach. He only ever played any part in any story because he mastered an otherwise unknown dark art which was later uncovered by a couple more murderbone-prone sith.

What is this art that the Noble Sith perfected and that he performed regularly? The summoning of Dark Wraiths. What are Dark Wraiths? Oh, they're just quasi-physical manifestations of pure fucking hatred, and they're conjured via the lifeforce of someone else so if you slap one enough that it goes away, some random innocent person on the other side of the galaxy will just up and fucking die. Sounds Morally Defensible™ to me!


Yeah. That's legitimately the most stand-up guy they can show off. There's another "WooOOoo Mysterious Gray-Zone Balanced Sensei" character that shows up and says "Maybe there's a way of using the Dark Side while also not being an asshole", but the most she has to show for her ethics is to point to the aforementioned Noble Sith as a positive role model and then induct her first student by torturing him for a few days.


Also, Dooku was criminally underrepresented in the films, despite his dork-ass name. Dude invented a lightsaber form for fuck's sake.

[Sensei]

We're still doing nitpicks?

Honestly I see nothing wrong with the bombers. If they have gravity inside, it doesn't seem the least bit strange that they would be accelerated by gravity. Since the series already draws on WWII style fighter combat as a visual shorthand for the audience to understand what's going on, extending that to a crewed bomber makes plenty of sense. The only bad thing about it is that it does draw some attention to the gravity on these craft enough to make you think "How DOES that work?" which is unwise. But really it makes plenty enough sense and is, most of all, consistent with how space combat has already been depicted, if not 'realistic'.

The arcing plasma whatever-they-are cannons though, those just throw me for a loop.

It does bother me in general that it all doesn't feel very lore-friendly. If you're supposed to be invested in the Star Wars continuity (and presumably you are, since they're marketing this as a Star Wars movie to people who want to see it because they liked the other movies) then little stuff like inconsistent technology (see: tracking) is annoying, especially since they could easily have come up with some other excuse ('they have a doohickey that stops us from tracking them!') but moreover the entire premise is frustrating. Jumping from the Empire being crushed and peoples of the galaxy united to some other, new organization that's basically the empire and controls the whole galaxy to the point where the rebellions are right back to being scrappy underdogs again is just jarring and begs for an explanation. I mean we know WHY they did it: They figured it was a safe bet to just tell the same story over again. It just doesn't make you feel rewarded for paying attention at all, and it doesn't really feel like a good payoff if you're invested in the old characters either.

[Reelya]

One thing that hasn't really been brought up is Benicio del Toro's bit in the new movie, which was effectively about who the real baddies were, the New Order or the Resistance. Sure, it's defended on the grounds that it's bringing in a real-world issue about how both sides have the same arms dealers, and about war profiteering.

Except ... it just feels completely incongruous for the actual setting in question. The Empire/First Order are just straight up literal Space Nazis with the Rebels/Resistance being literal WWII resistance fighters. That's like asking "who are the real villains of WWII - the Nazis or the French Resistance?" - to which the only people applauding the asking of the question should be actual Neo-Nazis.

Sure, the thing about arms-trading is a good real-world point to make, except it's complete nonsense in the Star Wars setting. The idea that the Empire had their Tie Fighters made by the same companies that produced X-Wing fighters is completely idiotic. The WWII equivalent would be discovering that the same company made Shermans as made Panzers and T34s. Sometimes there's a situation where one country is supplying both sides with weapons, but it's generally on the fringes of some larger-scale conflict such as the Cold War. e.g. there's no company in existence making both M16s and AK47s and supplying them to different sides of the same conflict. e.g. the set-up is incongruous to the Star Wars setting but it also fails to make a coherent point about real-world arms dealing. Lockheed aren't in the business of making MiGs and selling them to post-communist nations, it just doesn't make sense. We just don't see the same company making cold-war-era US gear to sell to US client states and the same company making soviet-style gear to sell to Russian client states. Maybe there's a point in there that "selling arms is bad" but its buried by how unrealistic the whole thing is.