STAR WARS, INDY , HOWARD THE DUCK DEUCE; AND MORE

[Abraham Smashington]

Haha. Oh George.

[Anderson]

Reviews that I trust loved it. And they were ambivalent on Last Jedi.

Troy?

Sorry, I've been coughing and hacking this week like I've been LARPing Red Dead 2.


TROS is a modern clone of ROTJ. A first 45 minutes to hour that has fuck-all to do with the movie, but wraps up shit from the previous one. The trilogy's real master trying to rework things he didn't like from a previous director?


Obvious as fuck edits and reshoots shaping a story midunspooling? All that is there.


I'll say this. It won't be in my Top 25 of 2019, but it's not a bad movie. It just feels very, very weak in comparison to Mandalorian.



What the film does is make the case that TLJ fucked up the progress of TFA and undermined the trilogy. Every TLJ holdover feels shoe-horned for the sake of continuity.



In terms of all the movies, it ranks towards the middle for me. Just a fair film that didn't quite stick the landing. But, that's because this trilogy was really 2 1/2 films of story and 1/2 a film of Rian Johnson jerking off for his Film Cunt Fans to applaud.

[Abraham Smashington]

Rise wasn't bad BUT the whole time I was watching it I was sitting there wishing that these movies were all written at the same time. TLJ wasn't necessarily retconned but alot of it did not matter. Also, haha fuck you Rose.

The Leia stuff was nicely handled IMO. The last space battle was fucking nuts.

  Spoiler: spoilers 

Rey being a Palpatine was dumb. Using the force OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER to bring people back/heal wounds was dumb.
Ben's redemption was dumb. Evil Dr. Satan looking Palp was neat. The use of other force powers like throwing lightsabers, and pulling down the transport was cool. Zorri Bliss was neat BUT DJ should have been the droid hacker or whatever even though I enjoyed the little alien thingy. Lando was having a blast. BUT that last fight was lame. All of the force ghosts should have appeared to help her. Instead all it took to take down Palpy was 2 lighsabers? dumb. ALSO: WHERE THE FUCK DID REY GET THAT THIRD LIGHTSABER FROM? Did I miss something? she buries Leia and Luke's lighsabers and then this new one is there all of a sudden?

I'm still high from seeing it but I think I concur with Troy's take. Some good, some bad, and I'm fine if we never see any of these characters again.

[Martin]

Seeing this on the 26th. Can’t wait.

[Matt]

OK, here we go.

TL,DR version: lower your expectations by a lot. The film is a mess, especially in the first hour, but it's filled with a lot of great moments and provides an adequate enough ending to the whole shebang.

Long version: the film goes out of its way to redo the events of TLJ. The first hour of TROS is like a soft reboot of TLJ, cramming 2 hours worth of plot into a highlight reel of a movie with very little narrative flow. It's all quick dialog bursts and action sequences with zero character development, scene transitions, or real narrative. After that first hour, the film slows down by a lot and lets scenes breathe. An actual narrative starts to form and characters are allowed to have motivations other than 'quick, we need to go here!'

While the final hour and a half works, it's also filled with a lot of weird storytelling decisions that don't really make a lot of sense. Your mileage will absolutely vary in terms of what happens regarding the plot, but I felt that there was considerable room for improvement. The good news is that Kylo Ren and Rey are both given fairly satisfying arcs to carry them through to the end of the film. Also, Poe and Finn are well served in terms of screen time. In the first hour, they're pretty much there to yell and trade comedic barbs, but in the second half they get to actually participate in the story. The same can't be said for Rose...she was set up as a major character in TLJ, but she's all but written out of this movie. To say anything more would be to introduce spoilers, so I'll just leave it at that.

The finale is a mess. As usual, there's a big space battle. Unfortunately, it's edited rather poorly. There's no real sense of geography, so it's hard to understand where everyone is or what's going on. Contrast that to the ending of ROTJ where you always knew exactly what was going on in the space battle above Endor. There are other quibbles that I could bring up that would go into spoiler territory, so I'll just say that I was really underwhelmed. The film tries for a big AVENGERS: ENDGAME 'on your left' moment and absolutely flubs it...one of many flubs.

The acting is solid and the John Williams score is absolutely the best of the new trilogy. The film is filled with individual moments that really work beautifully (most of them callbacks to the original trilogy) but the overall narrative is really, really off.

I wouldn't call it a 'good' movie but it's probably 'good enough'. It's 'adequate'. I suspect that there's a director's cut out there that restores maybe 30 minutes of footage to that first hour and makes it all flow better.

[wydren]

Yeah, I didn't care for it. I agree, wish it was all written at once. Whatever you thought of TLJ, it really seems JJ didn't like it and spends the first half of this one retconning. The whole damn thing feels so rushed, by the end I didn't care about any of the characters or what they were doing.



Honestly, it's the first Star Wars movie I've seen were I was bored halfway through and just waiting for it to end.

[Abraham Smashington]

I just love how JJ gave no shits about Rose and her stupid character.

[Matt]

I just love how JJ gave no shits about Rose and her stupid character.

That was wild. She was pretty much shoved aside in favor of new character Jannah. Seeing Lando put the mack on her at the end of the film was pretty funny, though.

[Abraham Smashington]

That was so odd.

[Matt]

Pretty sure he was gonna show her his little maneuver from the battle of Tenab.

I need to see this again, I think. It might play better a second time.

[Abraham Smashington]

I took it like she may be his daughter and not sexual actually. Hahah

[Matt]

I took it like she may be his daughter and not sexual actually. Hahah

Dude. It's Lando.

He was wanting a piece of that.

[Abraham Smashington]

I'm like 99% sure there was a scene cut out where he mentions his daughter was stolen by the first order or something.

IN NO WAY IS 80 YEAR OLD LANDO TRYING TO FUCK A 20 YEAR OLD.

[B_Metal]

I'm like 99% sure there was a scene cut out where he mentions his daughter was stolen by the first order or something.

IN NO WAY IS 80 YEAR OLD LANDO TRYING TO FUCK A 20 YEAR OLD.

I'd bet you all my stock in Colt 45 that he would.

[wydren]

Hah, I took it as Lando being smooth and mack as well. It works everytime.