Good or New Movies Review

[Deleted]

The Force Awakens was a dumpster fire. I sincerely did not enjoy it. Start to finish. There were a few 'moments' in it, but I struggled to finish it.

The Last Jedi I managed to sit through without thinking 'huh, I wonder what else I could be doing with my time'

Then again, I didn't like Batman v. Superman or Suicide Squad either, so I'm clearly not a judge of what makes a movie good or not.

The Force Awakens felt like a fan's attempt to make a Star Wars movie based around their own OC where their character just is AMAZING and everyone loves them and they are the best.

The Last Jedi took those characters and turned them into flawed individuals who weren't superheroes. They were kids playing with powers they didn't fully understand and making mistakes. The whole theme of the movie was learning from failures. I thought it got the point across well.

[FiranSurvivor]

@admiral said in Good or New Movies Review:

The Force Awakens was a dumpster fire. I sincerely did not enjoy it. Start to finish. There were a few 'moments' in it, but I struggled to finish it.

The Last Jedi I managed to sit through without thinking 'huh, I wonder what else I could be doing with my time'

Then again, I didn't like Batman v. Superman or Suicide Squad either, so I'm clearly not a judge of what makes a movie good or not.

The Force Awakens felt like a fan's attempt to make a Star Wars movie based around their own OC where their character just is AMAZING and everyone loves them and they are the best.

The Last Jedi took those characters and turned them into flawed individuals who weren't superheroes. They were kids playing with powers they didn't fully understand and making mistakes. The whole theme of the movie was learning from failures. I thought it got the point across well.

***=Spoilers***

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If the entire Rose, Finn and DJ Casino adventure plot line didn't exist, I would say yes, you are right. But we wasted half the movie with that pointless and contrived plotline.

The only characters who possibly learned from their failures was Rey and Luke.

[WildBaboons]

@admiral said in Good or New Movies Review:

The Force Awakens felt like a fan's attempt to make a Star Wars movie based around their own OC where their character just is AMAZING and everyone loves them and they are the best.

That's very accurate. I'm so sad that Abrams is back helming the next one (at least I think he is?)

[ZombieGenesis]

I enjoyed The Force Awakens for what I felt it was supposed to be, a soft reboot of the franchise. A way for new people to enter without needing to have watched the older movies. I thought it paid tribute to the past while embracing the future.

My problem with The Last Jedi is I felt it discarded the past with a big middle finger.

***=For instance...***

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When Luke just tossed the lightsaber over his shoulder. I felt that was the mentality displayed through the entire film in regards to older characters and movies, "Eh, it's all garbage."

[Lithium]

When I see a critic site, like Rotten Tomatoes come up with a 56% you know what that means to me? I will either like it, or I won't.

Funny enough, that's every movie I've ever seen. I liked it, or I didn't.

Critics didn't help me come to that decision. Another person's review didn't help me come to that decision.

People need to make up their own minds.

It is absolutely ok to like or not like a movie, it is ok to express those opinions, it is not ok to expect anyone else to value your opinion over their ability to make up their own mind.

[Deleted]

https://movieweb.com/rotten-tomatoes-last-jedi-audience-score-fake-news/

It looks like the Rotten Tomatoes reviews for Last Jedi were trollbombed. Huh.

[FiranSurvivor]

@admiral said in Good or New Movies Review:

https://movieweb.com/rotten-tomatoes-last-jedi-audience-score-fake-news/

It looks like the Rotten Tomatoes reviews for Last Jedi were trollbombed. Huh.

It would be nice for once for something to not be politicized.

Because really what I needed with my shitty star wars movie was Trump.

[Auspice]

@admiral said in Good or New Movies Review:

https://movieweb.com/rotten-tomatoes-last-jedi-audience-score-fake-news/

It looks like the Rotten Tomatoes reviews for Last Jedi were trollbombed. Huh.

I didn't have time to actually read through them, but I was hella suspicious considering how every other review site out there, people I know, etc. were by and far positive about the movie. I mean yes, some people were lukewarm, some disliked it, etc... but the result did not lend towards the Rotten Tomatoes 'rating.'

That's some kind of bullshit. This is why I only give reviews and such a cursory opinion, tbh. Because of things like that.

[ZombieGenesis]

I ignore Rotten Tomatoes entirely to be honest. A worthless site, in my opinion. For me I find looking at the average IMDB rating gives me more or less what I need to know. If 100,000 people consider the movie an 8.X then I assume there must be something worth watching there (assuming the movie is something I have an interest in to begin with).

[Arkandel]

@zombiegenesis ***=NSFW content***

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What I'm pretty ambigious about, after watching The Last Jedi last night, is just how they can set a dramatic narrative for the third movie.

The old cast is basically gone; Han is dead, Luke is dead, Carrie Fisher is gone so they can only do so much with her... it's in the kids' hands now. And Kylo Ren just isn't the looming larger-than-life overwhelming threat that say, the Emperor was; he's not a mastermind, he's basically Darth Maul with a better character arc.

I don't know how much they can do with that. They really can't simply introduce a bigger Death Star again (well, they can, but the dramatic appeal lessens every time... what, this one can take out two solar systems instead of just one?), and I don't see threads they can pick at to make it work.

Ben Solo's redemption was attempted in this one and the door was shut on it near the end, or so it seemed... although I did feel it'd have been awesome to see him and Leia share a scene where he comes back looking for forgiveness after all that's happened.

So what's left? What do we care about enough? Ray is basically a Jedi now now, what's left that we want? What are the stakes?

[ZombieGenesis]

@Arkandel
***=The Last Jedi***

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That's pretty much exactly how I feel. The Force Awakens was certainly flawed but I left the theater with a host of questions that kept my mind busy for 2 full years. Questions that kept the internet buzzing and interest in the saga high. I really have no questions after watching The Last Jedi. I mean aside from "What the heck kind of movie are they going to make now?" I just didn't feel like The Last Jedi set up anything interesting for the next movie.

Don't get me wrong, I like Kylo Ren and Rey. I don't even mind Poe and Finn. I just feel this movie did most of them a giant disservice. I think The Last Jedi could have just been so much better, so much more interesting, so much more intriguing. Instead I felt it was just flat. I was looking forward to learning more about the characters introduced in The Force Awakens but we really didn't get that. We learned nothing about the Knights of Ren, learned nothing about Snoke, got this weird story about Luke looking to murder people in their sleep, what I hope is a BS story about Rey's parents being nobodies, and Benicio Del Toro...for reasons. Instead of building up the bromance between Finn and Poe we get Rose and the worthless casino world storyline. And, again, Benicio Del Toro who served to further no plots or storylines himself. Instead of learning more about Captain Phasma or having them setup a climatic third encounter between her and Finn, she shows just long enough to die.

Anyway, those were some of the things that just rubbed me wrong with the movie. Now there were several parts that were really good and a bit here and there that were flat out awesome but I felt they were just outnumbered by the flat or bad parts. My wife, on the other hand, really enjoyed it.

[Arkandel]

***=NSFW content***

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One of the things that bugged me a little was an interview the film's director (whose work I do like) saying he'd have loved to do more with Phasma but there was just no time.

Like, dude, you just had us spend half an hour of the movie with Del Toro's character who added nothing to the movie. He tried to add some moral ambiguity by showing us arms deals sold guns to both sides but that's not gonna work in a Star Wars universe man... not when there are hideous villains fallen to the Dark Side wiping our star systems with Death Stars. It just makes no sense, no, there are bad guys and good guys here, okay?

So Phasma was the most one-dimensional Star Wars fan favorite antagonist ever.

[Thenomain]

I loved The Last Jedi's complex emotional themes, and the little puffin whatever animals that I've heard people complaining about. It was a bit too long, a bit forceful on the theme of hope, but I didn't regret setting through one minute of it. I even got caught up in one or two of the movie's gotchas and actually spoke out loud when I saw the reveal. I forgot that I was at a movie and that's what I go to a movie for.

Sure, I can spend time complaining about quite a lot of it, but I put The Last Jedi well within the quality of the original three movies. Solid 'A' grade from yours truly. Would watch again...albeit at home where I can pause and stretch and get some snacks.

[ZombieGenesis]

@thenomain While I strongly disagree on the overall quality of the film I did think they did a good job of making the Porgs interesting without shoving them down your throat. My wife loves them and even I thought they were kinda cute.

[Thenomain]

@zombiegenesis

Well I'm also the kind of person who when they go watch a movie based on a book I love, I'm not looking for that book in a movie. I could have liked the Star Trek reboot, but it was nothing I hadn't seen before. Maybe if I'd seen it with fresh eyes I could've enjoyed it. Too much was going on with too little linking it together. This was my problem with The Force Awakens. This is what I fear about Infinity Wars. Character creep is a very real problem, and I feel that The Last Jedi solved that while also not reducing things to A New Hope's level of incipit Joseph Campbell Hero's Journey blah blah blah.

I say that even though I am still very starry-eyed about A New Hope. It's a beautiful mark of our cinema history, and I think it's still very watchable. "Too simple" works very well for it.

I'm pretty sure that The Last Jedi was not going for that. I think it 90% succeeded in its goal, even if some of the beats wore very thin to me as well. But I still enjoyed watching it, and in the end of the day that's why we watch movies. And we're disagreeing about what's wrong with it, so it can't have done that bad.

[Lithium]

That's exactly it, you have to go into a movie looking at it by itself, not trying to compare it to the books. A book is an entirely different media, much of it filled with your imagination, there are huge gaps and differences in style and flavor. I can enjoy a book for what it is, and a movie for what it is. They are two different things entirely.

[Aria]

@lithium said in Good or New Movies Review:

Science took one to the kidney there.

I spent a fairly large chunk of The Force Awakens mentally screaming "THAT IS NOT HOW SUNS WORK."

[Miss Demeanor]

@lithium said in Good or New Movies Review:

That's exactly it, you have to go into a movie looking at it by itself, not trying to compare it to the books. A book is an entirely different media, much of it filled with your imagination, there are huge gaps and differences in style and flavor. I can enjoy a book for what it is, and a movie for what it is. They are two different things entirely.

In some cases, (The Lost World), only the barest of lip service is paid by the movie to the book. Don't get me wrong, TLW was awful on its own merit... it was additionally awful for only very vaguely resembling the book.

[Lithium]

@aria LOL Not only that but, how were they flying the planet around to different suns again?

[Jennkryst]

@aria @lithium My only complaint with Starkiller Base is that it wasn't a 'shoot star, SUPER NOVA' gun.