re: Watched The Last Jedi. I don't get the vitriol.

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OP is a flaming liberal so his affection for TLJ is not surprising.

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He may lean left but that has nothing to do with this thread.


Neither 1242 or myself are liberals and we agree with the OP. Chunks is making great points and it’s all of you that sound like tantrum throwing twitter rantards.

I could recite the movie by heart, if pressed.

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You aren't.

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How do you know?

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How do you know?

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Your know how I know.

Political stuff aside - since mentioning it instantly polarizes people - TLJ was still terrible, for reasons I have elaborated before, but shall do again since it is therapeutic for me:

-The First Order was played completely for laughs, thus removing any sense of threat when we see them on screen. Hux is a buffoon. Kylo Ren has already been beaten by Rey. Why is anyone afraid of them? Imagine if, in the climactic scene of Empire Strikes Back, Luke, having not completed his Jedi training with Yoda, nonetheless beat the crap out of Darth Vader. How excited would anyone have been for RotJ then? What would have been the point? The entire purpose of the second act of a story is to make it seem like the antagonist is too much for the protagonist to overcome and set up the final showdown. “Subverting expectations” by not doing that does leave your audience thinking, “Wow, I didn’t see that coming,” but not in a good way.

-The original trilogy had the benefit of no pre-existing backstory, so it was possible for them to be very vague with the setup. There is an Empire. They are bad and control the galaxy. At some point in the past there was a Republic that was good and which was defended by the Jedi, who were super good. Now there are Rebels fighting to restore the Republic, and the Jedi are (almost completely) gone. That’s all we needed. No specifics. Broad strokes got us where we needed to be to enjoy the story. The sequel trilogy, however, most assuredly does not have that luxury. We already know and love these characters. We know what they were fighting for and that they ultimately achieved their goals. These are not things that can be ignored, except that the sequel trilogy almost completely attempts to do that, and in the rare instances that it doesn’t, it shits all over what the original trilogy set up. Han Solo’s character arc from ANH to RotJ is that he learns to trust others and believe in something more than just himself. Except that apparently he didn’t, because he went right back to being a smuggler again when the final battle was done. Luke’s battle to restore the Jedi to the galaxy is the entire fricking point of the original trilogy. They didn’t call the third act “End of the Empire” or “Emperor’s Fall” or anything like that, they fricking named it Return of the Motherfricking Jedi. So it pisses off fans not a little when the sequel trilogy reveals that that victory was actually a failure, and Luke himself is not the awesome Jedi we saw him as at the end of RotMJ, but is instead a bitter old man who has decided that Jedi are stupid and the whole thing was a bad idea. And then Force Ghost Yoda shows up andinexplicably fricking agrees with him. If Yoda believed that the Jedi needed to die out, why go to all the trouble to train Luke as one in the original trilogy? Why not just show him the right way to hold a lightsaber and leave it at that?

-Now, TFA could afford to play a little coy with the events preceding it because it was the first act of a new story, and therefore its purpose was to set up some intriguing storylines that would be addressed in the second and third movies. We don’t know who Rey’s parents are because she herself doesn’t know. We don’t know who Snoke is or what he wants because (apparently) the Resistance doesn’t know either. We don’t know why the victory of the Rebellion turned out to be so incomplete and apparently inconsequential or why the restored Republic relies on a small band of freedom fighters rather than an actual fricking military because... well, look, just go with it, ok? But then TLJ comes along and completely shits all over those questions too. Want to know who Rey’s parents were? Well too bad, because you were apparently an idiot for even being curious in the first place. Want to know who Snoke is and what his goals are (i.e., THE ENTIRE frickING REASON ANY OF THIS IS HAPPENING IN THE FIRST PLACE)? The joke’s on you, motherfricker! TLJ makes such an obvious attempt to avoid normal, eons-old storytelling tropes that it basically laps itself and only succeeds in taking you out of what little story remains.

-And that isn’t even counting all the stupid little things in the movie, like the fact that in a galaxy with presumed trillions upon trillions of inhabitants, the fate of them all is being decided by two groups with about five ships and a few hundred people each. Seriously, if the First Order’s rule is so lax that only a few hundred people out of trillions can be bothered to stand up to it, can it really be that bad? And then there is the stupid “speed limit in space” ridiculousness, the fact that the Resistance “wins” at the end by running away so effectively that the First Order basically gives up, Finn’s big heroic moment being him hitting a woman in the back, the entire Finn-Rose-Poe subplot that ends up having no point and going nowhere... I could go on.

TLJ is a bad movie by any standard. One need not inject politics into things to make that point.

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Thanks, OP. I thought the movie sucked, but I love it now.

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You don't have to like the movie, but to list one of your main reasons to not like it is because it's "trying to shove SJW/feminist agenda down my throat" is ridiculous.

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So it pisses off fans not a little when the sequel trilogy reveals that that victory was actually a failure, and Luke himself is not the awesome Jedi we saw him as at the end of RotMJ, but is instead a bitter old man who has decided that Jedi are stupid and the whole thing was a bad idea.

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Both of these problems began with TFA, not TLJ.

What else should have been done with Luke after TFA?

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-The First Order was played completely for laughs, thus removing any sense of threat when we see them on screen. Hux is a buffoon. Kylo Ren has already been beaten by Rey. Why is anyone afraid of them?

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Why was anyone afraid of the Empire after ANH? A farmboy who had never flown a spaceship blew up their Death Star.

Talk about being comically inept.

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Luke’s battle to restore the Jedi to the galaxy is the entire fricking point of the original trilogy. They didn’t call the third act “End of the Empire” or “Emperor’s Fall” or anything like that, they fricking named it Return of the Motherfricking Jedi

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Or....

The Jedi in question isn't the multitudes of Jedi as seen in the prequels, but Anakin.

Maybe the title refers to Anakin returning, and becoming the Jedi he once was.

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So it pisses off fans not a little when the sequel trilogy reveals that that victory was actually a failure, and Luke himself is not the awesome Jedi we saw him as at the end of RotMJ, but is instead a bitter old man who has decided that Jedi are stupid and the whole thing was a bad idea. And then Force Ghost Yoda shows up andinexplicably fricking agrees with him. If Yoda believed that the Jedi needed to die out, why go to all the trouble to train Luke as one in the original trilogy? Why not just show him the right way to hold a lightsaber and leave it at that? 

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Yoda basically did that in the OT. He trained Luke to be a weapon, not a master.

Luke sought out the Jedi texts and taught himself to be a "master" and discovered that the Jedi religion was flawed and more harmful than not.

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And that isn’t even counting all the stupid little things in the movie, like the fact that in a galaxy with presumed trillions upon trillions of inhabitants, the fate of them all is being decided by two groups with about five ships and a few hundred people each

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It was pretty remarkable at the end, when there are only about 6 people left in the reinsurance. At this point, it’s not even a resistance just a few insignificant disgruntled people.

The people who liked TLJ are likely the same people who like pure action movies.

Both have no substance or soul, just flashy Wooow special effects.