People are too quick to judge The Last Jedi before Episode IX comes out

[SolVanderlyn]

READ THE WHOLE THREAD OR AT LEAST THE TL;DR BEFORE STATING YOUR OPINION, IF YOU DRIVE-BY TLJ IN ANY WAY, SHAPE OR FORM YOU WILL JUST LOOK LIKE A KNEE-JERK REACTION MORON WHO DOESN'T READ, ALSO SPOILERS

I'm a fan. Some people aren't. That's fine.

But...

This is a trilogy, and has been since the earliest planning stages. As far as we know, there's only two major things in TLJ that are going to stick for certain, and one is outside of the writer's control:

-Luke is dead.
-Leia is dead.

Here's everything else that's up in the air, now.

-Snoke's backstory. Yes, even though he's dead now.
-Rey's full history AND future role, whether Kylo's story was true or not.
-Luke's future involvement, including flashbacks.
-The Knights of Ren.
-Ben Solo's character development.
-The fruits of Rey's training.
-The extent of force powers, seeing new force abilities and learning more about how the force works.
-Seeing new and exciting Jedi/Sith confrontations with modern technology.
-The overarching message and theme of the three movies put together.
-The ultimate fate of the Jedi.

There's so much swirling around. There's a very high possibility of a timeskip. There's an infinite number of ways the story can progress. The hate or love for TLJ largely hinges on Luke's character, which understandably created a schism in the fanbase. But even then, there's room for that to grow, as we can get more scenes with Master Luke (in the past) or Force Ghost Luke.

Love or hate Johnson's take on the universe, he won't be returning for Episode IX, so it's highly unlikely we get another movie in the same vein, even if Abrams will be riding the coattails of Johnson's writing. He could easily go backwards or sideways or straight from here.

I think Episode IX will be one of the most interesting movies of all time based on prior expectations and the current split between people who enjoy TFA and hate TLJ, people who hate TFA and enjoy TLJ, and people who enjoy or hate both equally.

What's the point of this thread? Basically, I just wanted to remind everyone to chill and not jump to any conclusions until every course of the meal has been delivered. Was also wondering what people want and expect out of the next entry in the franchise.

Edit:

Of course people are going to have things they like and dislike about particular movies. Perhaps a better phrasing for this thread would have been "The sequel trilogy" rather than "The Last Jedi" itself, as that's really more the point I was trying to get across. I'm talking about the larger narrative, which many people seem content to dismiss based on how they view the two movies that are out already. Although, I do think the big picture affects how the individual pieces should be seen. But that's me.

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TL;DR - Everything hinges on Episode IX. What do you want/expect from it?

Mod edit: red text removed.

 

[shnurgleton]

I want it to be entirely about Kylo Ren and have no Finn or Poe

 

[ViewtifulJC]

whatever Episode IX is, its not gonna make 8 better or worse. The film is what it is. Just like TLJ saying, "eh...fuck that" to most of TFA's mysteries didnt make TFA better or worse. The first 30 minutes are still great, and then the rest of the movie just kinda happens.

 

[Fat4all]

everything hinges on you liking the movie after the one you didn't like

so don't not like it

 

[Servbot24]

The Finn & Poe part of TLJ will be completely irrelevant in IX, and it took up around half of the movie. It's just not good. The Rey and Kylo stuff was excellent though, so hopefully IX focuses as much as possible on that.

 

[SolVanderlyn]

whatever Episode IX is, its not gonna make 8 better or worse. The film is what it is. Just like TLJ saying, "eh...fuck that" to most of TFA's mysteries didnt make TFA better or worse. The first 30 minutes are still great, and then the rest of the movie just kinda happens.

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Since it's telling a continuous narrative that hinges on the trilogy being taken as a whole, I will have to respectfully disagree. It's possible to view VIII in a vacuum, but that vacuum will always be a vacuum that ignores the greater whole.

everything hinges on you liking the movie after the one you didn't like

so don't not like it

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This is extremely reductive and not at all what I said.

 

[Cronogear]

Problem is, I don't even remotely trust JJ to come up with satisfying answers to those questions.

 

[Hagi]

whatever Episode IX is, its not gonna make 8 better or worse. The film is what it is. Just like TLJ saying, "eh...fuck that" to most of TFA's mysteries didnt make TFA better or worse. The first 30 minutes are still great, and then the rest of the movie just kinda happens.

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This pretty much.

Whether I enjoy IX or not probably won't change much of what I think Rian did with TLJ. The things the OP lists as things up in the air aren't things I really care about the new film filling in either.

 

[GARlock Spiral]

Gonna have to disagree with you there. A trilogy is a three act story, by nature. In this case, Act 1, The Force Awakens, was something i found to be tolerable. In comparison, I'd put The Last Jedi below The Star Wars Holiday Special as far as movies go, so why would I want to see a trilogy where the best it has is mediocre, and the worst is terrible?

 

[EchoChamber]

Problem is, I don't even remotely trust JJ to come up with satisfying answers to those questions.

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Probably he will give more questions to those questions.

 

[Khanimus]

There are no questions I have for basically any of the characters that hinge on another movie. When Empire ends, Han's fate is up in the air, we just had the revelation about Vader, and Luke is just getting his footing after being beaten to a pulp.

After The Last Jedi... where is there left for anyone to go? Rey has accepted where she's from and is on her lone road to becoming a jedi. Finn is now "woke" and staunchly anti-First Order thanks to Rose, Poe is now in a leadership position after being a treasonous idiot for two and a half hours, and Kylo Ren has cemented his place as the villain of this story.

The only hanging thread is "how are the resistance fighters gonna beat the First Order?", and that's never been the compelling question in Star Wars.

 

[Fubar]

Since it's telling a continuous narrative that hinges on the trilogy being taken as a whole, I will have to respectfully disagree. It's possible to view VIII in a vacuum, but that vacuum will always be a vacuum that ignores the greater whole.

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But large parts of TLJ ignored elements from TFA, making the entire thing seem like a haphazard hodge-podge of a trilogy. You talk about a continuous narrative, but Snoke and Rey's origins were large hints/mysteries dropped in 7 that should have been large parts of 8. But instead they both get practically hand waved away as if they were insignificant.

Obviously 9 could come in and fix so many things, but when you start off with the janky way they did it, they have an extremely steep hill to climb.

 

[Fat4all]

why don't people like the original trilogy equally

after all, a new hope was just the prequel to empire, while return was the continuation of empire

 

[IAmAnAgnostic]

Uh... if a films defense is "somehow the next part of the series will make it from a terrible film to a good one" (what else could 'too quick to judge' imply?) perhaps the film itself has a ton of issues. And it does IMO, and even if every plot issue was explained in IX, it wouldn't make TLJ any more enjoyable as a movie.

 

[Randomly Generated]

It's weird how ESB doesn't require ROTJ in order to be a good movie.

 

[SofNascimento]

Episode VIII's shortcomings are its own, the next one won't help it. It might help Star Wars as a whole though.

 

[DrBo42]

It's weird how ESB doesn't require ROTJ in order to be a good movie.

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Bingo. TLJ just was not a good movie. Movies can be judged on their own even if they're within a series. Telling people they have to wait for the next one is absurd.

 

[PsionBolt]

If they were meant to be judged as a whole, they ought to have released 'em as a whole. They didn't; they released them separately. So they get judged separately. Makes sense to me.

And really, even if they had released them all at once, I'd still feel perfectly okay with judging different parts differently. Even within one movie (book/game/whatever), it's entirely reasonable to judge the execution of individual scenes, plot threads, or even single shots. Breaking things down into manageable parts is a key critical tool. Even holistic criticism relies in large part on examining how well all of the parts play off of one another or synthesize -- in other words, you still end up looking at parts either way.

 

[SolVanderlyn]

why don't people like the original trilogy equally

after all, a new hope was just the prequel to empire, while return was the continuation of empire

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I can easily rank these movies as VI > V > IV in my personal opinion, but I'm not going to say that the later movies didn't influence my opinion on the earlier ones and the story as a whole.

Of course people are going to have things they like and dislike about particular movies. Perhaps a better phrasing for this thread would have been "The sequel trilogy" rather than "The Last Jedi" itself, as that's really more the point I was trying to get across. I'm talking about the larger narrative, which many people seem content to dismiss based on how they view the two movies that are out already. Although, I do think the big picture affects how the individual pieces should be seen. But that's me.

 

[Principate]

The last Jedi could have honestly ended the sequel saga of films the way it's set up with the next film being a launchpad for a new saga. I'm not really sure why needs the audience to see future films to be fully judged. It's not like the directors and writers are even the same.

 

[Fat4all]

for all we know people might respect tlj more after the next film

but there's always the chance this new trilogy is the inverse of the first trilogy, where the first and the third are more liked

 

[Zampano]

The actual story decisions are the least of that film's problems. It's just not a great film. The next one could be the best film ever, cap the arc off perfectly and still not change that.

 

[RationalGinger]

The Finn & Poe part of TLJ will be completely irrelevant in IX, and it took up around half of the movie. It's just not good. The Rey and Kylo stuff was excellent though, so hopefully IX focuses as much as possible on that.

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The biggest failing of TLJ is making the Resistance and First Order utterly incompetent. This is, hilariously, something the prequels did as well, making everyone but the main characters useless.

In the OG trilogy, the Rebellion and Empire, while still secondary, were never portrayed as outright stupid. Arrogant, sure, power hungry definitely (in the case of certain imperial admirals), but not dumb.

TFO and Resistance are tangential to the main plot of TLJ; with the Resistance existing only to argue with each other, and TFO comes across as evil goons at best and stupid evil at worst.

Finn's character growth is set aside and he's relegated to comic relief again with a side plot that doesn't change the ultimate fate of the Resistance having to be saved at the end by Rey and Deus Ex Luke. Even if TFO hadn't seen through their stealth, the minute the Resistance sent out a call for aid, the fleet would have found them.

The Luke, Rey, and Kylo parts feel meaningful and have purpose. The other 2/3rds of the movie are irrelevant.

 

[TerminusFox]

So much shit happens in TLJ, yet it still made me feel like nothing happened.

Never has a movie managed to accomplish this paradox

 

[tino]

How is episode 9 (written by Arron Sorkin and directed by a reborn Stanley Kubrick) going to make the Rose stuff in 8 better? Ridiculous argument.

 

[Peristerium]

Sometimes I wish they hadn't dragged the original characters back into the fray only to cast them aside and give them half-ass plots. I'd rather remember them the way they were the last time I saw them in RoTJ. I don't want to know that Han had a shitty son and got killed by him. I'd rather they just focus tens of years after RoTJ on all of these new characters without the baggage of the past.

But here we are. I don't....hate TLJ but at the same time I wasn't hot on it either. The same thing with TFA. I thought some parts of TLJ were excruciatingly boring. I was mentally checking out at the Luke and Yoda convo. It was just too cryptic for my taste. And at the end I felt like we went nowhere. I did like the 5 secs of first meeting between Rey and Poe. It's the only time in the new trilogy where I see chemistry similar to that of Han and Leia.

 

[Nassudan]

Finn's character growth is set aside and he's relegated to comic relief again with a side plot that doesn't change the ultimate fate of the Resistance having to be saved at the end by Rey and Deus Ex Luke. Even if TFO hadn't seen through their stealth, the minute the Resistance sent out a call for aid, the fleet would have found them.

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He's been relegated to both comic relief and love interest of a completely uninteresting and irrelevant side character (Rose). It's pretty bad, John Boyega deserves better.

 

[JDSN]

A mediocre movie Is a mediocre movie, if the next Is great and solves the unimportant questions that folk have, it wont change the fact i mostly wasted my time watching TLJ.

 

[Seganomics]

It's weird how ESB doesn't require ROTJ in order to be a good movie.

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ESB made the next installment an exciting prospect. TLJ doesn't.

 

[Fat4all]

don't praise god of war too highly

the sequel could suck big time

 

[Everybody Lies]

The second movie in a trilogy is supposed to leave compelling questions that need answers in the final film. TLJ fails at that spectacularly.

But the real problems with this mess started with TFA.

 

[saenima]

I can judge it just fine as its own movie. The next one could be the best movie ever made and TLJ would remain as boring as it is now. I don't really care if a movie falls within some canon or if it makes sense in some external series context. I take every movie as it exists and that's it. TLJ is a mess that fails to be engaging. In my opinion.

 

[SolVanderlyn]

Alright, my phrasing was poor and nobody is reading the OP and my original intention of discussing the sequel trilogy as a whole is being lost for people to shit on TLJ endlessly again, which is partially my fault. Could a mod either edit the title to say Sequel Trilogy or lock the thread?

 

[tino]

Actually e8 might drag e9 down because it will spend so much time JJsplain e8, now that I think about it.

 

[The Silver]

I liked TLJ as a movie in and of itself but the worst thing I can say about it is that it did not do a good job of getting me interested in what happens next. I honestly really don't care for the most part. The only compelling character arc left is Kylo Ren, I'm pretty content with where Rey is at and Finn became a bore compared to TFA.

I've always felt the rebels vs empire conflict is the worst thing about the sequel era so I don't care at all how that resolves. I did enjoy Snokus doing his best scenery chewing Palpatine impression but he's gone now.

 

[saenima]

why don't people like the original trilogy equally

after all, a new hope was just the prequel to empire, while return was the continuation of empire

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Why don't people enjoy the prequel trilogy? It's just part of the bigger story and is redeemed by A New Hope.

Spoiler

yuck i need a bath

 

[Zombine]

I like TLJ. I enjoy what it tried to say. I have very low hopes for this as a trilogy though because I don't feel like I know enough about any of these characters, and there's one 2 hr 45 minutes film left to eastablish itself and take us on an actual adventure. While there are new characters I love, I feel like the first two films have taken us nowhere in particular. 7 & 8 take place moments after one another, and a majority of 8 takes place on a ship in space. You get a casino and a little bit of a salt planet and that's it. I don't feel as if there was enough of a time jump between the first two films for this to feel like an actual trilogy.

 

[$10 Bagel]

People are too quick to judge anything.

 

[Fat4all]

People are too quick to judge anything.

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I JUDGE THIS POST AS GOOD

 

[Budi]

Well no, they aren't going to reshoot The Last Jedi after IX comes out. It is what it is.

And if you think people are too quick to judge the trilogy before the last one comes out, eh we already have 2/3 and neither one was really impressive. Even if I end up loving the last part, it doesn't change how I feel about the first two. But sure, then the trilogy would get bit better if it had atleast one great movie in it. People shouldn't judge the trilogy before everything is out, but they sure can judge the first two installments.

People are too quick to judge Solo though, we only have trailers so far.

 

[OutofMana]

I don't think my opinion on TLJ would change if episode IX ends up being good. If anything it would probably make that movie worse for me. Idk, if anything, Infinity War did a better job at subverting expectations and made them actually satisfying/payoff. I'm looking forward to part 2 of that more than I am for episode IX. Which is something I don't think I would ever say as a big Star Wars fan.

 

[Deleted member 21709]

We have to judge it as a movie first, as another chapter in the Star Wars story second.

 

[Slaythe]

I mean...

They admitted they didn't know where they were going so the "trilogy" is irrelevant.

And the problem of TLJ, beyond lots of structural issues that is, is that the movie's ending goes against everything the movie itself spent 2 hours doing.

So at the end it's back to square 1 expect your childhood heroes and every plot line you cared about is gone. It feels extremely rubbish.

Also I cant really tolerate how they handle the force.

People had issue with Rey becoming more powerful than like almost every jedi ever two days after learning about the force is rationalized by some by the fact that the force boosted her to match Kylo.

Well, the force didn't boost Luke to match Vader with no effort.

But I'm okay with that.

The problem is that Rian felt the need to ruin that too. "Snoke made that connection between them"....
Yikes holy shit.

And worse than that : the broom kid also has no training and displays abilities beyond what Anakin himself could do. The hell ?


I see some people saying " but now it just means everyone can be a jedi not just the skywalkers" which is such a dumb thing to say.

Every single jedi we saw besides them were "nobodies". They didn't have lineage. Hell Obi Wan beat Anakin the most powerful jedi to be. So TLJ is not doing anything new.

All TLJ did was take away effort and time to learn, from your mistakes and from actual teachings. This is garbage.

Feels like wanting all the pay offs with no set up.

Also I have no idea what jedi Sith with modern technology you're talking about.

First of all there's no Sith. And the world feels horribly dated somehow. Especially compared to Clone Wars and stuff.

 

[Graciaus]

That doesn't even make sense. It might help the series overall if the next one is a knockout. But that doesn't change the fact that a lot of people have issues with the current one.

 

[Forkball]

I enjoyed TLJ and think the ending left the characters in a very interesting situation. Episode IX can go a lot of directions and I'm excited to see how they end it.

However, I do think it's fairly clear they are just making it up as they go along. Contrast this to the MCU where things are clearly laid out, yet also open enough to go in different directions. They didn't have the details down, but they knew they wanted to have Thanos be the ultimate threat. Compare this to Snoke. I don't think they had anything planned for that guy at all. You could say, "But Ren was supposed to be the big bad and not Snoke!" which may be true, but when Episode VII wrapped up I don't think they had any answers to that movie's many questions.

 

[SolVanderlyn]

Also I have no idea what jedi Sith with modern technology you're talking about.

First of all there's no Sith. And the world feels horribly dated somehow. Especially compared to Clone Wars and stuff.

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I meant real world filmmaking technology. And Ren isn't a Sith, technically, but you know what I meant.

 

[Liquidsnake]

TLJ was not good on its own or in the grand scheme of things. Horrible choices, terrible side plots. Hot shot directing at its finest.
I will judge it on its own. TLJ did more harm to a franchise than anyone can realize. I really hope Disney forces Lucasfilm, to get their act together, mainly Kennedy.

TFA was perfection.

 

[Beartruck]

People had issue with Rey becoming more powerful than like almost every jedi ever two days after learning about the force is rationalized by some by the fact that the force boosted her to match Kylo.
And worse than that : the broom kid also has no training and displays abilities beyond what Anakin himself could do. The hell ?

I see some people saying " but now it just means everyone can be a jedi not just the skywalkers" which is such a dumb thing to say.

Every single jedi we saw besides them were "nobodies". They didn't have lineage. Hell Obi Wan beat Anakin the most powerful jedi to be. So TLJ is not doing anything new.

All TLJ did was take away effort and time to learn, from your mistakes and from actual teachings. This is garbage.

Feels like wanting all the pay offs with no set up.

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All of this criticism about characters learning too fast and we ignore shit like Luke being able to force jump 20 feet in the air after like a day and a half of training.

Also, the little kid had abilities way beyond young anakin? Lol. Last I checked broom kid didn't fly a ship into space he never piloted before and singlehandedly win a huge space battle.

Characters always pull abilities out of their ass in stars wars. Stop pretending this is different.

 

[Slaythe]

I meant real world filmmaking technology. And Ren isn't a Sith, technically, but you know what I meant.

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I am not impressed at all by what I saw in TLJ bar that suicide light crash and maybe the guards battle.

The practical effects and monsters are awful because they try to cater to prequels haters but they haven't progressed the techniques ( while other movies absolutely did ) and the cgi is very obvious and of doubtful quality at times.

I mean, this isn't an indie movie it's one of the biggest movie ever, compared to the marvel movies it sure isn't getting the same quality on that front.

 

[y2dvd]

TLJ made the prequels a better trilogy.