I saw the Last Jedi last night and I thought it was a great movie, probably the best one yet out of the new films. It was a fun movie that took Star Wars into new directions IMO. 

Now I do understand that it seems this movie was particularly divisive amongst fans. So, that being said, what is your opinion, fellow GDNetters? 

I thought it was a cash-grabbing pile of garbage. The plot didn't make any sense in context with The Force Awakens, and not only the whole thing, but multiple scenes seemed to be predicated on copying the OT. I swear there was even a point where they did shot-for-shot recreations of Yoda scenes from The Empire Strikes Back.

At the start, I was thoroughly confused at the premise. Since when was the First Order winning? Since when was the new Republic dissolved? Did the entirety of the Republic live on those few planets that the Star Killer destroyed? It doesn't make any sense. Now all of a sudden the First Order has inexplicably, after having a major planet-sized base destroyed, you're telling me they're ruling the galaxy? The only reason I can think of for this circumstance is that the writers wanted to copy The Empire Strikes Back, which kind of had the same sort of thing, but the difference is that the Empire was a well-established official governing body, ruling over the galaxy for decades. In The Force Awakens, that would be the new Republic; the First Order was just a terrorist group. And in the last movie, this terrorist group lost. Sure, they blew up a planetary system, but they lost a massive stronghold. What follows should be mass civil unrest or possibly a civil war because of the carnage, not a sudden regime change.

Most of the movie was centered around that chase scene where the rebels are running out of fuel. All the leaders die; fair enough. What doesn't make sense, though, is what the new leader does. It's made clear later on that she has a solid plan. Why doesn't she tell anyone? Why does it have to be a secret? If she had just opened her mouth and told that guy what the plan was, he and the other guy wouldn't have gone off and ruined the whole thing.

The movie's recurring theme is challenging what good and evil are... and yet, it just randomly drops this at some point in the movie, returning to the simple good and evil story of the original trilogy. What was the point of that?

And most importantly, the only good characters are Luke and Leia. Everyone else is poorly developed and not very relatable.

I'll give it one thing: it's better than The Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones. It's not any better than Revenge of the Sith, though.

I haven't gotten out to see the latest film yet, but I've never really understood where all the hate for the "copy-paste" in The Force Awakens comes from, but the same people don't hate on the "Copy-paste" of the original films, given how closely they follow the classic Hero's Journey cycle... There really isn't anything all that novel or ground breaking for a literary standpoint of the original films. That they're trodding back around the circle of the Hero's Journey and much of the film seems familiar is kind of a given, seeing as the entire story feels horribly familiar to anyone who is even remotely paying attention to literature over the last few hundred years.

I thought the Last Jedi was a good movie at 2h 40m but it would have been a great movie at 2h.

Basically, there was a whole bunch of stuff that just didn't need to be there, and added nothing to the film. It really dragged out the middle act.

But the third act was fantastic. I loved that it didn't go the way people were expecting. 

6 hours ago, JulieMaru-chan said:

What doesn't make sense, though, is what the new leader does. It's made clear later on that she has a solid plan. Why doesn't she tell anyone? Why does it have to be a secret? If she had just opened her mouth and told that guy what the plan was, he and the other guy wouldn't have gone off and ruined the whole thing.

I've heard this criticism again and again... and it really doesn't have any merit. 

a) who said she didn't tell anyone? She just didn't tell the guy with a history of disobeying orders.

b) "why does it have to be a secret?" Call me crazy, but if I was planning a sneaky manoeuvre that relied on the empire not finding out, I'd keep it a secret too. Not announcing your secret plan to your entire military is just common sense.

That said, that whole sequence could have been much shorter and the movie would have benefitted. 

One thing that was really bad was 

She just didn't tell the guy with a history of disobeying orders.

A history of disobeying orders wasn't shown. He was just shown doing something stupid one time. Yes, it was monumentally stupid. Maybe he should have been locked up (which she didn't do). But he wasn't a spy or anything like that, and he was desperately pleading for her to tell him that she had a plan. She was pretty much asking for a mutiny with that.

No matter how your slice it, there was no good reason in-story for her to act that way. It was nothing more than a weak excuse to make a mutiny happen because that's what the writers wanted. They easily could have done it better.

I've never really understood where all the hate for the "copy-paste" in The Force Awakens comes from

I don't mind recycling old ideas at all, but it needs to be done well or it's just a waste of time. The Force Awakens did a decent, but not altogether that great job (A New Hope is mostly better and has pretty much the same story). I didn't get this from The Last Jedi. All these throwbacks to The Empire Strikes Back and the rest of the OT struck me as forced (no pun intended).

22 minutes ago, JulieMaru-chan said:

A history of disobeying orders wasn't shown. He was just shown doing something stupid one time.

Leia pretty much says "you're always doing this" (or words to that effect). 

24 minutes ago, JulieMaru-chan said:

he was desperately pleading for her to tell him that she had a plan. She was pretty much asking for a mutiny with that.

And again, military leaders don't go around broadcasting their secret plans to every officer. The whole plan clearly hinged on secrecy. 

26 minutes ago, JulieMaru-chan said:

It was nothing more than a weak excuse to make a mutiny happen because that's what the writers wanted. They easily could have done it better.

I agree with this. In fact, you could cut most of that whole plot along with Finn and Rose and you'd have a much better movie.

Rocket Jump recently did an excellent video about how Star Wars (A New Hope) was

10 hours ago, Avalander said:

I liked it a lot more that The Force Awakens, although that can be explained by my expectations being much lower.

I liked that there was more character development and less action scenes, and the plot felt less copy-paste from the original trilogy. I didn't like that there are some scenes that are trying too hard to be funny and I feel that they don't go well with the tone that the rest of the movie wants to set.

Yea, I felt like there was less direct similarities to the original trilogy. Although I overall liked The Force Awakens, the major detractor for me was how there was a Death Star 3.0 at the end of it. I actually liked the humor honestly, but that's just my opinion.

Just as a note, everyone's entitled to his/her own opinion on the movie, I don't want to seem like I'm fighting with someone over this.

9 hours ago, JulieMaru-chan said:

At the start, I was thoroughly confused at the premise. Since when was the First Order winning? Since when was the new Republic dissolved? Did the entirety of the Republic live on those few planets that the Star Killer destroyed? It doesn't make any sense. Now all of a sudden the First Order has inexplicably, after having a major planet-sized base destroyed, you're telling me they're ruling the galaxy?

Well, let me take a crack at some of your points. As I understand it, it seemed like the New Republic was in complete disarray and frightened after the First Order guys destroyed an entire system. It also seems that the bulk of the New Republic military was destroyed in the strike on the Hosnian system. It's in the Force Awakens actually:

So it's not inconceivable that the Resistance, which was always a rag tag group of soldiers, and the New Republic, would be losing brutally to the First Order after a Pearl Harbor-esque attack.

As I understood it, they weren't ruling the galaxy but were rather winning, a ton. 

9 hours ago, JulieMaru-chan said:

The only reason I can think of for this circumstance is that the writers wanted to copy The Empire Strikes Back

No argument here. They definitely wanted a similar premise. Which isn't a problem in it of itself.

9 hours ago, JulieMaru-chan said:

In The Force Awakens, that would be the new Republic; the First Order was just a terrorist group. And in the last movie, this terrorist group lost. Sure, they blew up a planetary system, but they lost a massive stronghold. What follows should be mass civil unrest or possibly a civil war because of the carnage, not a sudden regime change

As I understand it, there hasn't been a regime change. Maybe I missed something, but it seems more like that much of the remnants of the New Republic are frightened as hell.

9 hours ago, JulieMaru-chan said:

What doesn't make sense, though, is what the new leader does. It's made clear later on that she has a solid plan. Why doesn't she tell anyone? Why does it have to be a secret? If she had just opened her mouth and told that guy what the plan was, he and the other guy wouldn't have gone off and ruined the whole thing.

I'm with @ChaosEngine here, it's not that odd that she wouldn't necessarily broadcast her plans to everyone, especially a guy who doesn't seem to like following orders. In most military structures, the expectation is to follow orders, not necessarily to be informed of the reason behind those orders.

Moreover, the crew does indeed mutiny, or at least, some of it does. Some folks do relive her of her command for precisely this reason. Furthermore, maybe she's just straight up incompetent? A big theme in the movie is failure. All she needed to do was say there is a plan in place to escape them. Trust me. But she doesn't, and it absolutely costs her and the Resistance, since not enough of the crew trust her.

9 hours ago, JulieMaru-chan said:

The movie's recurring theme is challenging what good and evil are... and yet, it just randomly drops this at some point in the movie, returning to the simple good and evil story of the original trilogy. What was the point of that?

Not sure I can agree here, especially because there's a lot that hasn't really been established yet. There's more to come in the next movie that I think is being hinted at here. 

9 hours ago, JulieMaru-chan said:

I'll give it one thing: it's better than The Phantom Menace or Attack of the Clones. It's not any better than Revenge of the Sith, though.

I did like Revenge of the Sith, but I'd say that this movie is still ahead of Revenge of the Sith, mainly because it lacks the cringey romance of Anakin and Padme. 

Just my opinions though.

6 hours ago, Luckless said:

I haven't gotten out to see the latest film yet, but I've never really understood where all the hate for the "copy-paste" in The Force Awakens comes from, but the same people don't hate on the "Copy-paste" of the original films, given how closely they follow the classic Hero's Journey cycle... There really isn't anything all that novel or ground breaking for a literary standpoint of the original films. That they're trodding back around the circle of the Hero's Journey and much of the film seems familiar is kind of a given, seeing as the entire story feels horribly familiar to anyone who is even remotely paying attention to literature over the last few hundred years.

I think the main issue for many people in the force awakens at least was that they went with creating another new kind of Death Star that needed destroying rather than something at least visually different. This, IMO, seemed a bit lazy. I still liked TFA, but this one thing, if only they could fix it, would've been nice. 

2 hours ago, ChaosEngine said:

I agree with this. In fact, you could cut most of that whole plot along with Finn and Rose and you'd have a much better movie.

Rocket Jump recently did an excellent video about how Star Wars (A New Hope) was

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I do agree that the pacing of the movie slowed down in the middle act, but I still enjoyed it. It might've seemed tacked on, but again, there is another movie, where I'm hoping it develops more. I wish Finn developed more as a character though. He didn't seem to have as much development as Rey. Was a little disappointed by that.

The Leia force survival was a little odd. Not necessarily "it shouldn't be here! She should've died!", just oddly executed. They could've gone for a different visual vibe. 

I plan on watching the movie a second time, so let's see if my opinion stays the same on this. 

35 minutes ago, deltaKshatriya said:

Not necessarily "it shouldn't be here! She should've died!", just oddly executed.

Yeah, 100% agree on this. Great idea, bad execution.