Star Wars: The Last Jedi (SPOILERS)

[Kyle]

I guess I'm the only one who thought the scene with Yoda was the most fantastic scene in Star Wars since ROTJ? I loved every second of it. I have no grief with him controlling weather, after all Obi-Wan said that, "If you strike me down, I'll become more powerful than you can possibly imagine". Agree with many of the other gripes, though. I'll definitely say this is the first Disney-era Star Wars film I don't totally enjoy.

 

[4throck]

Yoda was great! I liked that scene too, really seems like something out of ROTJ

 

[Shifty]

Del Toro's character was a cardboard nobody.

He was clearly there to tie into Guardians of the Galaxy: a mini origin story for The Collector.

I find it curious that the First Order would have their Dreadnoughts project an external gravity field such that projectiles like--just for instance--bombs would be attracted to them. Even curiouser that the Resistance would have space vessels specifically designed to take advantage of this obvious tactical flaw.

And I now have the second-greatest piece of strategic advice for the military engineers in the Star Wars universe: perhaps outfit your capital ships with gun emplacements capable of handling small fighters? (The first-greatest is: concentrate your defenses on any part of your giant battlestation with the word "thermal" in it, whether it's a thermal oscillator or a thermal exhaust port or whatever.)

I enjoyed the movie, but I wish I didn't have to work so hard to keep my disbelief at bay. I don't really understand why it's so hard to write a story that proceeds through a series of connected events to arrive at a conclusion, with an internally consistent world and characters who act according to concrete motivations in sensical ways. It's like narrative is a lost art. Instead what we get is a bunch of action set pieces, fanservice, jokes, and narrative vignettes, all kind of lazily spliced together in a way that only looks halfway decent from a distance.

 

[Hielor]

It's fairly common knowledge that the original trilogy space battles were heavily based on footage of WWII fighter footage--I figured the bombing scene was just more of the same. Meh.

Speaking of terrible space physics, did anyone else notice that while Snoke's command ship was firing on the Resistance cruiser (and shuttles) that the blasts it was firing were arcing through space as if they were on a ballistic trajectory?

 

[Andy44]

...I don't really understand why it's so hard to write a story that proceeds through a series of connected events to arrive at a conclusion, with an internally consistent world and characters who act according to concrete motivations in sensical ways. It's like narrative is a lost art. Instead what we get is a bunch of action set pieces, fanservice, jokes, and narrative vignettes, all kind of lazily spliced together in a way that only looks halfway decent from a distance.

Couldn't agree with this more.

Making great movies is understandably difficult.

Making reasonably good movies shouldn't be hard at all for Hollywood veterans, especially considering the money poured into these particular ones.

---------- Post added at 07:00 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:57 PM ----------

Speaking of terrible space physics, did anyone else notice that while Snoke's command ship was firing on the Resistance cruiser (and shuttles) that the blasts it was firing were arcing through space as if they were on a ballistic trajectory?

I did not; if I ever have to see it again I'll look for it.

But then again, if there is a gravity field it would explain why ships always appear upright to each other, and why those bombers were there in the beginning. Design problem solved! That just leaves with trying to explain away a giant universal gravity field in the Star Wars universe. Easy, right?

 

[TerraMimic]

The bombers have their own gravity field. The bombs accelerated due to the gravity inside the ship. They just kept going after that.

Also, if anything from the old books still applies, gravity fields on large ships can extend a bit beyond the hull, so the bombs would start accelerating again once they got close enough.


... pretty sure I just spent WAY too much time thinking about that.

 

[Hielor]

The bombers have their own gravity field. The bombs accelerated due to the gravity inside the ship. They just kept going after that.

Also, if anything from the old books still applies, gravity fields on large ships can extend a bit beyond the hull, so the bombs would start accelerating again once they got close enough.


... pretty sure I just spent WAY too much time thinking about that.

First part can't be the only explanation since ships also fall "down" when destroyed.

 

[Andy44]

First part can't be the only explanation since ships also fall "down" when destroyed.

When I was little I remember watching those really old sci fi serials from the 1930s. The spacecraft were Nautilus-looking things hanging from strings with sparks flying out the engine nozzles and falling down to the bottom of the set. So obviously wrong, but you forgave it for the time it was made and the low budget and lack of experience by the makers.

No Star Wars movie maker has this excuse.

 

[Hielor]

When I was little I remember watching those really old sci fi serials from the 1930s. The spacecraft were Nautilus-looking things hanging from strings with sparks flying out the engine nozzles and falling down to the bottom of the set. So obviously wrong, but you forgave it for the time it was made and the low budget and lack of experience by the makers.

No Star Wars movie maker has this excuse.

Yep. One of the more egregious examples of this sort of thing I can remember in recent movies was Star Trek Into Darkness, where the two ships are slugging it out in orbit of the Moon, leaving a cloud of debris floating around them. Then, the Enterprise loses engine power, which causes it to plummet past the Moon and all the way to Earth (in a matter of minutes, no less)...while the presumably also-unpowered debris still floats around, unaffected by the same gravity which pulled down the Enterprise.
:facepalm:

All sci-fi movies should be required to have someone knowledgeable on staff who's allowed to smack the director or writer upside the head when something's too absurd to even be technobabbled away.

 

[4throck]

For Star Wars, I just pretend that the vessels are on the upper atmosphere.
So there's normal gravity, atmospheric drag, etc but the sky is reasonably dark!

But really it's a fantasy movie.... don't think about it too much!

 

[dbeachy1]

This is getting interesting. Quoting from Facebook User Claims to Have Manipulated the Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score for Star Wars: The Last Jedi (emphasis added):

How much free time do you have? Well, there’s a person out there on Facebook that has plenty of it, since he claims to have spent the weekend ruining the audience score for Star Wars: The Last Jedi on Rotten Tomatoes.

<snip>

Update Dec 17, 5:15 PST – On diving into a comparison between rate of reviews on other current releases and recent blockbusters, we noted a few abnormalities. For instance in The Shape of Water, there are a number of audience reviews where the review copy is for Last Jedi, not Shape of Water. This only lasted for a relatively brief time, but over a span of several users. It reads as if someone might have misconfigured a bot.

Shape of Water Review Scores:

In addition, comparing the user review rate between Last Jedi and Thor, we noticed that Last Jedi already has far more than Thor does. While Thor had been slowing to only about a dozen reviews per day in recent weeks, as of Jedi’s opening, the number of Thor reviews have skyrocketed. Many of which are by the newly-created accounts which did a low score for Jedi, then immediately turning around and doing a Thor review.

Comparing that user behavior with other film release, something feels atypical to say the least. If it’s a coordinated campaign or a bot farm, however, remains to be seen. The possibility remains that there is simply an army of individuals all racing to do their very first reviews ever for Jedi, but the more we dig into this the more it feels manipulated.

We have reached out to Rotten Tomatoes for comment.
(Last Updated December 17, 2017 7:24 pm )

Looking at the screenshot, it shows three (bad) reviews for The Last Jedi from three different users just in that single page for The Shape of Water. It doesn't prove it's a misconfigured bot, but it's a hell of a coincidence.

More information here: Did Audiences Enjoy ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’? Deciphering Online User Reviews From Exit Polls Quoting:

We received a number of emails this weekend and comments in the box office section about the audience reaction to Disney/Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi. The sequel earned its third straight A from CinemaScore after The Force Awakens two years ago and last December’s Rogue One. And on ComScore/Screen Engine, Last Jedi earned an 89% overall positive score and a five-star rating from moviegoers. That’s in the wheelhouse of what Force Awakens earned (90% overall positive/ 4 1/2 stars) and Rogue One (91% positive, 4 1/2 stars). These are scientific, statistically accumulated audience exit polls that studios can take to the bank, and which they rely upon to deconstruct various elements of a film’s opening.

However, readers have asked: How can it be that Last Jedi‘s audience results are this high?

They point to the Metacritic user score of 5 for the film, IMDB’s 7.9 out of 10 rating, and the Rotten Tomatoes’ Audience Score of 56% from 96K reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, Last Jedi‘s user score is also an anomaly. Typically, user scores aren’t that far from their critical ratings. Simply put these are all unscientific means of measuring audience reactions. Anyone can log into these sites several times (anecdotally we played around with this last night) and weigh down the audience grades against a movie. The consensus from non-Disney sources this morning is that “trolling” occurred here in regards to the online reaction to Last Jedi. In addition, there’s no way to filter on these sites whether or not the users have actually seen Last Jedi or not. CinemaScore and PostTrak literally poll moviegoers in real time, as they’re exiting the theater.

It's going to be interesting to see what turns up, assuming Rotten Tomatoes does a real investigation into the numbers.

EDIT:
More interesting perspectives here: ‘The Last Jedi’ and You: What Fans Think of the Newest Chapter

 

[Andy44]

LOL that's pretty funny. Hell hath no fury like a geek scorned.

 

[Frilock]

As far as the critic reviews go, its a good thing to remember Disney has in the past applied pressure to journalist who give their films bad reviews. So that whole 'review manipulation' might in fact go both ways.

Also for the first Star Wars (1977) even though the reviews NOW are pretty positive, back then they weren't. So it might simply be a case of critics disagreeing with the general audience yet again.


For the record, I don't plan on seeing it until it comes to home video, so I don't have an opinion my self. I did like Rogue Squadron and my view of TFA has improved slightly, however.

 

[4throck]

What's the surprise ? Of course those sites are manipulated.
Movies have 9/10 score months before they are out.

Business as usual. Good reviews mean that we will get more Star Wars movies.
So there's a good chance the next one is better! :rofl:

 

[Hielor]

...I did like Rogue Squadron...

Sadly, Rogue One wasn't about Rogue Squadron. That would've been a fantastic movie, though! Top Gun in space, maybe...

 

[Frilock]

Sadly, Rogue One wasn't about Rogue Squadron. That would've been a fantastic movie, though! Top Gun in space, maybe...

Whoops :facepalm:.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Hell yeah! Biggs and Wedge need their own movie!

 

[Andy44]

Hell yeah! Biggs and Wedge need their own movie!

That's Red Squadron. not Rogue Squadron.

---------- Post added at 04:18 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:16 PM ----------

Good reviews mean that we will get more Star Wars movies.

Good reviews of bad Star Wars movies means we will get more bad Star Wars movies.

At least unless critics lose their credibility with the public, which they haven't.

 

[PhantomCruiser]

I thought Wedge was skipper of Rogue Squadron?

edit -
Been reading the wiki, wow am I out of date. Hard to keep up with all the criss-crossed story lines. Seems I remember playing a game or two where Wedge was in overall command of Rogue once Luke set up his Jedi academy.

 

[Andy44]

I thought Wedge was skipper of Rogue Squadron?

edit -
Been reading the wiki, wow am I out of date. Hard to keep up with all the criss-crossed story lines. Seems I remember playing a game or two where Wedge was in overall command of Rogue once Luke set up his Jedi academy.

Biggs was killed in Ep IV, while serving as part of Red Squadron. I'm pretty sure "Rogue Squadron" was stood up later.