Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Rian Johnson, 2017)

[swo17]

Also, Todd Solondz should've directed

[McCrutchy]

I haven't seen it yet, but aren't any and all new additions to The Last Jedi the things that are garnering the most anger from hardcore Star Wars fans?

The most frequent complaints I've seen are ... Luke not being the same person he was in his twenties.

This could have been solved by casting Bruce Willis as the old version of the character, thus dramatizing the way that even though it's the same character, they're really more like two different people.

If Bruce Willis is going to play Old Luke, then the obvious solution here is to have Rian Johnson get the Star Wars negatives back out, and make a new Episode IV: A New 3rd Rock from The Suns of Tattooine, with Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Young Luke, John Lithgow as Obi-Wan Kenobi and Kristen Johnson as Princess Leia. Jane Curtin could be Yoda, and French Stewart could play all the Stormtroopers.

[MoonlitKnight]

The most frequent complaints I've seen are the inclusion of a certain socially conscious minority character and Luke not being the same person he was in his twenties.

Don't forget the porgs shaming Chewie for eating meat (their only real purpose in the movie). Between that and the big fuss made over the treatment of the racing animals, you'd think Johnson was a member of PETA or something.

[matrixschmatrix]

The most frequent complaints I've seen are the inclusion of a certain socially conscious minority character and Luke not being the same person he was in his twenties.

Don't forget the porgs shaming Chewie for eating meat (their only real purpose in the movie). Between that and the big fuss made over the treatment of the racing animals, you'd think Johnson was a member of PETA or something.

The porgs' literal purpose in the movie is that Skellig Michael has a protected puffin population and they kept wandering through shots, so the porgs were something to paint over the with. They're also obviously comic relief, which I would say is the clear purpose of that scene with Chewie- it's just something goofy in an otherwise very serious subplot.

[miless]

I would have loved that Chewie scene to end with him tossing the carcass aside, only for the living Porgs to devour it.

[McCrutchy]

The Last Jedi is down to four showings (all regular 2D DCP) at my local AMC multiplex. For some perspective on that, it's the same number of showings as Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, and startlingly, one less than Lady Bird, both films that have played there a few weeks longer than The Last Jedi.

And on top of that, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and The Greatest Showman are making a killing at the box office here in the States.

I would love to know the mood at Disney/Lucasfilm right now, as it seems that The Last Jedi may actually come in well under $1.5 billion (more like $1.35 billion), which I never would have predicted after opening weekend. Obviously, the film is an absolute success in normal terms, but in Star Wars terms? Maybe there's just a bit of nerves, now.

[movielocke]

Umm, lady bird is 90 minutes last Jedi is 155 minutes there should be at least one less showing because of how math works.

The length is very bad for repeat viewings because most theaters operate from 1000 to 2200 and won’t start screening past 2200 the sweet spot for maximizing ticket sales is 1800 to 2100, and lady bird (or force awakens at 120 minutes) can get two screenings into that window, whilst a longer film cannot. Longer films also sell much fewer tickets to shows starting at 2100+ because if your movie ends at midnight that’s fine, but ending at 0100 or later makes most people blanch. Note, avengers and ultron had similar fall off after thirty days and were a similar length (and benefitted from summer vacation), but Jurassic world and force awakens at 120 minutes both had much stronger legs.

Disney is probably not blinking because of the marvel and Disney animated feature experience. Not every marvel film performs as well as every other marvel film. Sometimes they’re shocked by a guardians or disappointed by an ant man, but they keep putting out product and stay the course. Retooling in over reaction after every film release results in far worse performance, just look at DC, for example.

And aside from phantom menace, the prequels also performed like generic IP action films, Star Wars at the box office does not automatically perform magic, just ANH, TPM, and TFA are world beaters, otherwise the IP is not really different from Marvel or Potter or Bond, reliable performer once or twice a year, sometimes over performing, but not crushing records.

[Ribs]

While worldwide gross is indeed discouraging (mostly due to China), The Last Jedi's still on pace for a final domestic cume of ~$625-630 million, which is really not that far off from where most reasonable guesses of where it'd end up would be ($650 million was the average number I'd heard). The movie's been out for six weeks - it's inevitable it'll dip down to one screen due to the absolute flood of new product that appears with the regular January garbage dump along with the awards contenders (re-)entering wide release.

[movielocke]

If the guess was 650 a month ago and the final number is 625, that’s underperforming by FOUR PERCENT! Quick! Someone get the torches and tar and feathers!

[matrixschmatrix]

For all three Star Wars trilogies, the second movie made about two thirds of what the first one did, at least domestically- given that TLJ is right in line with that, the top grossing movie of its year domestically AND internationally, and likely to crack the top five grossing movies of all time, it's hard to imagine the studio head who wouldn't feel pretty good about this. If they're worried about anything, I would guess it would be Pirates of the Carribean or Cars 3, the only Buena Vista products to come in under $200 million

[domino harvey]

After being scared away by the lameness of Rogue One and the effusive negativity of many board members here towards Star Wars: the Last Jedi, I finally caught up with it and I def regret skipping this one in theatres. Will not be making the same mistake for the final installment. A huge shout out to user who is bobby dylan for his ability to engage some of the most needlessly cruel and mean-spirited “criticisms” I’ve ever seen on this forum coming from a handful of members. I don’t think this film is the great masterpiece some of its more fervent defenders claim (mostly elsehwhere), and I don’t think it’s quite as good as the Force Awakens, but it is well-made, entertaining, and flirts with some larger and more interesting ideas than the previous installment. I also liked that the entire film unfolds over a limited timeframe of something like one or two days (little hard to gauge). Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren is a compelling villain, much more so now that he’s complicated the predominant readings of the first film. The wonderful shared space he and Daisy Ridley’s Rey exchange for the first half of the film is a clever and unexpected device that works well, especially when its true purpose is revealed.

I’m surprised there’s so much flack from the right about the perceived “SJW”-ness of the film, given that the “twist” here is that it turns out anyone can be a Jedi and it is no longer preordained like royalty lineage. Isn’t this the great right wing ideal, that anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and be someone by virtue of their actions?

Along these lines, I did some brief Google searching on responses to the film and was appalled by the hateful comments the Kelly Marie Tran character garnered. It is hard to see these comments as anything else but either sexism or racism or both. I think most of you reading this know I’m usually hesitant to jump to these conclusions, but it’s difficult to see what else about her or her character could possibly set off a certain contingent of male audience members, other than that they didn’t want to fuck her for reason x y z.

[Drucker]

I’m surprised there’s so much flack from the right about the perceived “SJW”-ness of the film, given that the “twist” here is that it turns out anyone can be a Jedi and it is no longer preordained like royalty lineage. Isn’t this the great right wing ideal, that anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and be someone by virtue of their actions?

I have not seen this film, but if you read the writings of Corey Robin, namely: The Reactionary Mind, part of his thesis is that while the right claims to believe what you've described, in earnest they actually have a preference for "natural" hierarchy, and believe the powerful should rule over the less powerful.

So it may not be as surprising as you described.

[Big Ben]

A reminder that there was that case of the Men's Right's Activist who got so Mad Online™ he edited the film down to forty six minutes, editing out all the women he could.

The film grossed over a billion dollars. While totally expected it really destroys the idea that the film was a some sort of disaster. I think the most vocal backlash (NOT people with legitimate criticism) is just a combination of several things that really ended up being appearing far worse than it actually was. I've no doubt the last film in this new trilogy will make big bucks too. And LucasFilm obviously has no problems with Rian Johnson either as they handed him the keys to a trilogy of his own.

[domino harvey]

That is hilariously awful:

“Leia never scolds, questions nor demotes Poe. He is a respected and very skilled high-ranking member of the resistance.“

Not to mention how apparently they completely remove another female character for being to mean to a male character but in this edit the guy actually dies!

Drucker, that sounds like a compelling thesis, I'll have to look into the book

[McCrutchy]

I'm just honestly surprised that so many people see The Last Jedi as this daring, dark blockbuster. I didn't get that sense at all, and I found it to have an extremely noticeable corporate agenda, namely to extinguish the Skywalker-era narrative, and to advance several other new characters into potential other films. To some extent, obviously, this is unavoidable in the latest entry of a franchise, but the absoluteness of it all, the way that certain characters seemed invincible, while others seemed to have a target on their head/ticking clock from the moment they stepped onscreen, was what really grated on me. Combine that with the fact that much of the humor--which is always subjective--didn't work for me, and you have a film that drops from good, to decidedly mediocre, and while I was not a big fan of The Force Awakens at all, I did think The Last Jedi basically took the trilogy in the wrong direction, right from the first scene. I don't think anyone can deny it's a technically impressive film, but being impressed by the story, which feels like it was rubber-stamped by Disney as part of a "Star Wars: The Next 25 Years" investor meeting, is something else entirely.

And while I don't understand labeling it as too much of an "SJW film", I didn't really need to have Jedi-ness spelled out for me like that. Growing up with Star Wars, I never felt like the Jedi were some exclusive club that only certain people could belong to--maybe not everyone could be a Jedi, but surely most people, with effort, could be--but I did always feel that the potential needed to be awakened, and shouldn't be inherent in anyone (except perhaps under very particular circumstances). So that bit with the kid at the end, it just felt like the writers were trying to show off to the audience.

[Big Ben]

Of course Disney plans on making more films. It would be silly to act as if Star Wars hasn't been milked like the Wonder Cow that it is from day one. Need I remind everyone of this atrocity? Star Wars has always been all over the place. Toys. Games. Books. . Disney is just ensuring that we'll have more of it until the end of existence. It's just and extension of what we've had before. There is just likely to be more of it now.

Totally real image of the Holiday Special and proof that Star Wars has always had dumb shit.

[Brian C]

Of course Disney plans on making more films. It would be silly to act as if Star Wars hasn't been milked like the Wonder Cow that it is from day one. Need I remind everyone of this atrocity? Star Wars has always been all over the place. Toys. Games. Books. . Disney is just ensuring that we'll have more of it until the end of existence. It's just and extension of what we've had before. There is just likely to be more of it now.

I'm afraid I have to agree with this. I mean, on one hand I can completely understand McCrutchy's complaints about the corporate-product feel of this. But still, complaining that this movie is uniquely corporate-driven feels a little bit like a kid finding out that there's no Santa Claus. If anything, my disappointment is that Johnson wasn't able to distinguish the film enough from the corporate mediocrity that I've associated with the franchise for a long time now.

[MoonlitKnight]

At least Lucas understood the concept of 'absence makes the heart grow fonder,' since he didn't feel the need to keep churning out SW movies once the OT was completed, ultimately waiting around 15 years until jumping back into it. Di$ney is running the risk of oversaturation... and the increasing number of longtime fans getting pissed off about the direction they're taking the franchise isn't helping their cause. It's becoming more obvious by the day they never really intended to uphold Lucas' vision of this universe he created but rather exploit it for nostalgia purposes while gradually phasing it out in favor of their own (which, again, seems to amount to basically turning it into 'Marvel in Space' -- or perhaps 'Harry Potter in Space'), because, well, [in the voice and manner of a prickish gloating child:] It's ours now! It's ours now!! We can do what we want with it! Na-na-na-na-boo-boo!!!.

[DarkImbecile]

I will never understand Star Wars people.

[domino harvey]

I will ban without mercy the next user to unironically spell Disney with a dollar sign

[MoonlitKnight]

I will never understand Star Wars people.

I'll never understand 'superhero' people. I suppose we all have our blockbuster franchise blind spots, so to speak.

[Shrew]

TLJ is certainly more corporate product than auteur masterpiece, but I really don't understand the complaints about how it's "too Marvel". What does that even mean? That it's moving away from trilogies to more episodic stories? Would people have preferred the old Expanded Universe strategy of endless stakeless repeats, eventually resorting to some bizarre alien invasion to spice things up? And then there's this authorial nonsense rarefying Lucas's "grand vision" (which of course never altered from the grand Starkiller saga he set down in 1974). One of the weirdest aspects of Last Jedi's reception is how the prequels have somehow become sacrosanct (perhaps because TLJ takes dead aim at the some unsettling aspects of the Jedi seen in those films). There are points in all this I agree with (this new trilogy may have benefited from the standard 3-year gap, and Rogue One's problems stem largely from a rushed script that seemed to go through several drafts in the middle of filming), but the fan reaction is so hung up on weird contradictory details (often unfortunately gendered) when really the issue is that the film actively challenged so many expectations and assumptions.

SpoilerShow

As for the corporate machine angle, I can easily imagine Johnson pitching "I want to kill Luke Skywalker" and Disney eating it up, but Luke tossing aside his lightsaber is anything but corporate whitewash.

[McCrutchy]

Of course Disney plans on making more films. It would be silly to act as if Star Wars hasn't been milked like the Wonder Cow that it is from day one. Need I remind everyone of this atrocity? Star Wars has always been all over the place. Toys. Games. Books. . Disney is just ensuring that we'll have more of it until the end of existence. It's just and extension of what we've had before. There is just likely to be more of it now.

I'm afraid I have to agree with this. I mean, on one hand I can completely understand McCrutchy's complaints about the corporate-product feel of this. But still, complaining that this movie is uniquely corporate-driven feels a little bit like a kid finding out that there's no Santa Claus. If anything, my disappointment is that Johnson wasn't able to distinguish the film enough from the corporate mediocrity that I've associated with the franchise for a long time now.

I never said "uniquely". There is plenty of corporate-driven material related to Star Wars, the most blatant of which in terms of the original trilogy is probably the Holiday Special, which is horrendously dated and of its moment (I never engaged with Star Wars outside of film/television, so possibly there is written material or other merchandise which is even more ridiculous). But The Last Jedi, as slick as it is, feels like it could end up being just as dated in a couple decades time. Obviously, the film could end up looking better if Episode IX is some kind of miracle film that ties everything together and provides a satisfying conclusion to all six films, while leaving people excited to eventually get more films in the future, but that's an incredibly tall order, and based on The Force Awakens, I don't think Abrams is going to pull it off, certainly not in one movie.

However, I must say I don't understand the comparison to Marvel films, either. Obviously, Marvel films are to some extent ripping off fantasy franchises in general with their exhausting "extended universe" nonsense, but anything Star Wars is probably still distinctive enough to be its own thing, even if the new films suffer from a bit too much present day tone and perspective. Of all the problems the Disney Star Wars films face, and I would argue that there are a few serious ones, tripping over Disney's Marvel films isn't one of them, although the way all these films are going, we sadly can't rule that out for future films. In fact, it's probably a matter of time before somebody thinks it's a good idea, if they haven't already.

[Luke M]

After being scared away by the lameness of Rogue One and the effusive negativity of many board members here towards Star Wars: the Last Jedi, I finally caught up with it and I def regret skipping this one in theatres. Will not be making the same mistake for the final installment. A huge shout out to user who is bobby dylan for his ability to engage some of the most needlessly cruel and mean-spirited “criticisms” I’ve ever seen on this forum coming from a handful of members. I don’t think this film is the great masterpiece some of its more fervent defenders claim (mostly elsehwhere), and I don’t think it’s quite as good as the Force Awakens, but it is well-made, entertaining, and flirts with some larger and more interesting ideas than the previous installment. I also liked that the entire film unfolds over a limited timeframe of something like one or two days (little hard to gauge). Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren is a compelling villain, much more so now that he’s complicated the predominant readings of the first film. The wonderful shared space he and Daisy Ridley’s Rey exchange for the first half of the film is a clever and unexpected device that works well, especially when its true purpose is revealed.

I’m surprised there’s so much flack from the right about the perceived “SJW”-ness of the film, given that the “twist” here is that it turns out anyone can be a Jedi and it is no longer preordained like royalty lineage. Isn’t this the great right wing ideal, that anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and be someone by virtue of their actions?

Along these lines, I did some brief Google searching on responses to the film and was appalled by the hateful comments the Kelly Marie Tran character garnered. It is hard to see these comments as anything else but either sexism or racism or both. I think most of you reading this know I’m usually hesitant to jump to these conclusions, but it’s difficult to see what else about her or her character could possibly set off a certain contingent of male audience members, other than that they didn’t want to fuck her for reason x y z.

The criticism I’ve seen on the internet has been dominated by people who really hate it and constantly want to let you know why, while the people who liked it only sorta enjoyed it. No one’s going to make it the hill they die on against mobs of angry fan boys. You can see the hate almost everywhere even Wal-Mart reviews for the blu-ray (which by all technical merits is a top notch disc.) These people are going out of their way to tell anyone that’ll listen they think it’s bad.

As someone who grew up watching the movies more times than I can count, I’ve always identified somewhat with other fans but that ended with the reaction of TLJ.

[swo17]

Fanboys--sometimes I wish I could just put my fist through the whole lot of them.