THE LAST JEDI thoughts/reactions/reviews/mind-explosions (spoilers!!)

[Virginiá]

http://scriptshadow.net/movie-review-the-last-jedi-and-maybe-the-last-star-wars-movie/

Re: Plot holes and other major problems with Last Jedi: The linked post really explains it far better than I could and in more detail.  It's a long read, but a really good one (even if like me, you're more interested in the general writing aspect/what can be learned from this disaster of a script and don't really care much about Star Wars itself).  I'd suggest reading it if you really want to know why so many folks think Last Jedi is an absolutely horrible Star Wars movie (and really a bad movie in general).

Thanks for posting that link! It really helped me flesh out some of the issues I had with the film but couldn't quite sum into words. Overall I liked it if not only because I'm a huge Star Wars nerd, but I feel like they messed this up somehow. One thing that I had noticed 24 hours after it came out that really had me curious and worried was the RT audience score, which the author of that article touched on:

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Now the fan score is at 53%.

I really think Disney screwed up big by having Rian Johnson direct the movie. The article makes a compelling point that it's almost like Johnson absolutely hated TFA and JJ's contributions, and spent the entire movie trying to disassemble what JJ had done. It's similar to Trump - he just has to undo everything his predecessor did, even it proves damaging to the future. I don't understand why Disney allowed this guy to make such huge changes to the story - they should have seen how problematic this could become.

All this just to have JJ come back for the next movie. What was the point of bringing on Johnson? Why did they do this? I mean, regardless if one likes the movie, you have to admit that it clearly didn't sit right with the audience, given the huge gap in critic vs audience reviews.

[Virginiá]

Btw, for a Star Wars film (i.e. a franchise pretty much guaranteed to top $600 million on brand name alone no matter what) Last Jedi is not doing well at all (especially domestically) and we should remember it needs to top $800 million just to have any chance of breaking even when you factor in things like marketing and costs outside of the formal budget.

I've seen this mentioned before. Is this really true though? This seems more like a "Hollywood Accounting" figure as opposed to something realistic. The film's official budget was $200 million, and even if you factor in another $200 million (+/-) for marketing/etc (which is a lot), that's still only 400. I read this for The Force Awakens (link)

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Which definitely sounds more realistic. I don't understand how TLJ could cost almost a billion dollars. It doesn't make sense to me unless they were holding money bonfires every night during production.

Also ftr it does appear to have surpassed 800 million so far.

[Virginiá]

-The lightspeed ram (could have basically trivialized any space fight, including against the death star)

I've been wondering about this for a while. It's plausible that a death star-like space station could have shields to protect itself from it, but less plausible with smaller battleships.

I take it that this is one of those things that is possible, but that we won't see as often as we would if the Star Wars universe was based more on what would happen in reality. There are a lot of things in Star Wars like this. For instance, why aren't AI-controlled starfighters used more often? Even in the prequels, it didn't really add up. A galaxy that technologically advanced could easily make fighters that piloted themselves and didn't rely on some command and control ship like the droid army.

Or what about any number of the laser rifles - why do some of them act like regular Earth rifles? Like in Rogue One, where he had this weapon that seemed like a mini-gun/shotgun hybrid.

Why are thermonuclear or even anti-matter bombs not used wayyy more (or at all)? At the end of TLJ, why bother trying to break open the blast door when they could just dropped a few anti-matter bombs with the explosive power of a 500 megaton nuclear warhead? It would have blown a crater in the planet's mantle and wiped out the resistance/rebellion/whatever.

Why in TLJ did they have "bomber" ships dropping gravity bombs when there was no gravity?


It just goes on and on like this lol. I love Star Wars, but it requires a huge suspension of belief to watch it. They try and make so much of the Star Wars universe/technology "human/earth-like" even when it absolutely should not be.

-Being able to fly through space with the force (Why did Anakin and Kenobi bother with starfighters at the start of Ep. III if they could just fly in and rescue Palpatine?)

She could move but she was still being affected by the coldness of space. So they'd need special suits to just be in space. Plus, it's not practical in the middle of a military engagement. In a ship, they could afford to get hit a number of times without hurting them directly. Without a ship, one hit and they'd likely die.

-Being able to project yourself long distance with the force

To be fair, it seemed like the power required to do that ended up killing him. Or, perhaps he would have survived but made himself into a force ghost for whatever reason? I'm not sure.

[Virginiá]

"Gravity bombs"??

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unguided_bomb

1. Thermal Detonators are magnetic, see TFA

Ok, fair enough.

However I can still go on about different aspects of that scene. Why did they need bomber ships to fly over it? You're telling me with all that technology, they can't attach mini thrusters to these bomblets to propel them towards a ship that they normally would not be able to get close to? Seriously - even here on Earth we have missiles, knowing full well that many high value targets cannot be approached like that. But it's even easier to implement this in space, given the lack of an atmosphere. They have used them before in SW, just not in certain instances where it makes the most sense.

The idea of bomber ships in the Star Wars galaxy is a humanized concept. I'm sure there would be instances where it is appropriate, but absolutely not that scene. Resistance ships should have had a veritable smorgasbord of small, guided missiles that could be launched from nearby.

I'm definitely not the only one to write about Star Wars' excessive use of 'humanized' tech, either.

1. Thermal Detonators are magnetic, see TFA

I'm not entirely sure what this was referencing.