STAR WARS EPISODE VIII: THE LAST JEDI - Toy Sales Fall

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Paul MacLean
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Re: STAR WARS EPISODE VIII: THE LAST JEDI - Official Thread

#61 Post by Paul MacLean »

https://www.cbr.com/star-wars-fans-peti ... &view=list


Angry Star Wars Fans Petition Disney to Remove The Last Jedi from Canon

by Jon Arvedon in Movie News
Angry Star Wars Fans Petition Disney to Remove The Last Jedi from Canon

The eighth installment in the Star Wars saga, The Last Jedi, is proving to be one of the most polarizing additions to the beloved 40-year-old science fiction franchise. Despite receiving near-universal acclaim from critics, with some going so far as to proclaim it as the best Star Wars film ever, the audience score on the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes continues its downward trend and currently sits at 55 percent. (For comparison, the critic score is 93 percent). Now, in light of the poor fan reception, some disappointed moviegoers are actually pressuring The Walt Disney Co. to remove The Last Jedi from official Star Wars canon by way of an online petition.

“Episode VIII was a travesty,” the change.org petition reads. “It completely destroyed the legacy of Luke Skywalker and the Jedi. It destroyed the very reasons most of us, as fans, liked Star Wars. This can be fixed. Just as you wiped out 30 years of stories, we ask you to wipe out one more, the Last Jedi. Remove it from canon, push back Episode IX and re-make Episode VIII properly to redeem Luke Skywalker’s legacy, integrity, and character.”

After just four days, the petition is already well on its way to reaching its 10,000-signature goal, with nearly 8,500 similarly disgruntled fans pledging their support to wipe The Last Jedi from Star Wars lore. However, director Rian Johnson doesn’t seem to be letting the fan backlash get to him, acknowledging that “it hurts when you’re expecting something specific and you don’t get it from something that you love,” and adding that he “[doesn’t] take it personally if a fan reacts negatively and lashes out on [him] on Twitter.”

Regardless of what fans think of the movie, Lucasfilm clearly has more than enough faith in Johnson’s vision for the franchise. Over one month before the official world premiere of The Last Jedi, Lucasfilm announced that Johnson would creatively oversee a new trilogy of Star Wars films, with the press release noting that “As writer-director of The Last Jedi, Johnson conceived and realized a powerful film of which Lucasfilm and Disney are immensely proud.”

However, it will be interesting to see whether or not the growing ire from fans has any impact on Lucasfilm’s trust in the director moving forward.

Written and directed by Rian Johnson, Star Wars: The Last Jedi stars Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, Daisy Ridley as Rey, John Boyega as Finn, Adam Driver as Kylo Ren, Oscar Isaac as Poe Dameron, Andy Serkis as Supreme Leader Snoke, Domhnall Gleeson as General Hux, Gwendoline Christie as Captain Phasma, Anthony Daniels as C-3PO, Lupita Nyong’o as Maz Kanata, Benicio Del Toro as ‘DJ’, Kelly Marie Tran as Rose Tico, Laura Dern as Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo, and the late Carrie Fisher as General Leia Organa. The film is in theaters worldwide.



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AndyDursin
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Re: STAR WARS EPISODE VIII: THE LAST JEDI - Official Thread

#62 Post by AndyDursin »

My guess is they kill off the remaining original cast members. If that's true no wonder why people are pissed. Why even bother bringing them back to dispose of them? Hopefully they do better than shooting Kirk in the back on a rickety bridge in STAR TREK GENERATIONS.

Either way it's the lowest scoring STAR WARS film on the RT Audience Meter right next to ATTACK OF THE CLONES. So it's in good company there at least :shock: :lol:

Eric Paddon
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Re: STAR WARS EPISODE VIII: THE LAST JEDI - Official Thread

#63 Post by Eric Paddon »

The Star Wars fans now know how Galactica fans like me felt about Ron Moore!

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Re: STAR WARS EPISODE VIII: THE LAST JEDI - Official Thread

#64 Post by Monterey Jack »

All this butt-hurt fanboy whining actually makes me like the movie more. :lol: I'll take a wild range of reactions to a franchise sequel to a rote, "Eh, it's okay" any day.

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Paul MacLean
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Re: STAR WARS EPISODE VIII: THE LAST JEDI - Official Thread

#65 Post by Paul MacLean »

Eric Paddon wrote: Tue Dec 19, 2017 11:57 am The Star Wars fans now know how Galactica fans like me felt about Ron Moore!
At least Moore was redesigning the show from the ground-up and not trying to add out-of-character changes to the original series' timeline.

To me, these new Star Wars movies are more akin to Galactica 1980! :lol:

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Re: STAR WARS EPISODE VIII: THE LAST JEDI - Official Thread

#66 Post by AndyDursin »

I just got back a little while ago and will have a formal review on the site tomorrow.

Basically I understand what the fans are upset about -- but those elements actually bothered me less than the poor writing and directorial work that dominates this film. Seriously, what is Disney doing showing director after director the door on these projects, while allowing a hack like Rian Johnson free reign to craft a film like this? This movie isn't a total wipeout, but as Paul said, it manages to be more ambitious than THE FORCE AWAKENS while also less entertaining and heartfelt at the same time.

Some quick hits:

-Busy and boring. Too long and over-written -- this movie never felt like a Star Wars film to me. More like a Marvel product with Luc Besson elements or something. George Lucas' storytelling was clean and direct, and his films were usually cut fairly tight. This one is flabby and often dull, and at times feels like it's out of a different universe altogether.

-Daisy Ridley looked more physically "fit" -- so thumbs up to that. The movie should've had more of her, less of nearly everyone else.

-Mark Hamill gave easily the best performance of any of the original trilogy stars. Too bad he's done now except for a ghost cameo.

-Snoke total wipeout.

-Kylo Ren still a total bore. Hard to make the villain of the trilogy so dull and think people will still care. He's got Daddy/Mommy issues, he's bad, he might be good, he might turn, he might not -- blah blah blah. Who cares about him? Why should we find him compelling? This is the major failing of this trilogy in every respect and it's leaving a black hole that Episode IX is going to have to overcome.

-Utterly embarrassing moments sprinkled throughout were a major problem. Did nobody think about pruning the film of these sequences?

-Every scene with John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran could've gone. I didn't like them, I wasn't interested in their story (orphans! exploited animals!), and I felt like they took away from the main thread of the movie. Benicio Del Toro a major letdown also.

-The humor wasn't a major issue for me but that opening bit with Poe and the First Order commander was embarrassing.

-The "Space Leia" scene was absolutely horrific. What was Johnson thinking? Several people audibly laughed outloud (sorry I was one of them) at a moment that looked like it belonged in the 1939 "Wizard of Oz," not Star Wars.

-The ending scene was woefully misjudged, totally unnecessary, as well. Coming soon from Disney: LITTLE ORPHAN JEDI, Part 1 of XX (Is this Johnson's next trilogy? God I hope not). A bit that should've relegated to the deleted scenes section of the Blu-Ray.

-JJ Abrams has his work cut out for him with Episode IX. What's left to care about? Kylo is so lame, he couldn't even defeat Luke's visage! Will Rey confront him for one last battle? Man I am on the EDGE of MY SEAT already for that one. But it speaks to how poorly constructed this movie was conceptually, that in many ways, this movie already felt like "the end" to me -- change the ending so Kylo is defeated and there's literally nothing left to resolve. But we've still got one more to go to placate the Disney stockholders.

-I love John Williams. That said, this is one of the few scores I've ever heard by him that did not elevate the film it was written for. Most of it I'm going to pin on modern filmmaking and how music functions now -- it's all frantic and loud, stopping only here and there for sporadic reprisals of old themes...sad to say, it did almost nothing for the movie, and sounded more like some non-stop mess Giacchino would've spewed out than a typical Williams effort. I didn't like it, sorry!

A 6/10. Maybe a bit better than ATTACK OF THE CLONES but that's it on the Star Wars scale. Happy Life Day everyone!

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Re: STAR WARS EPISODE VIII: THE LAST JEDI - Official Thread SPOILERS!

#67 Post by BobaMike »

Andy, your review is SPOT ON. Exactly my thoughts. I don't understand the raves this is getting. Why are people so happy to have (as many articles have stated) the previous movies sh*t on so much?

Why couldn't the First Order just jump in front of the Resistance? They have NO faster ships? Please

I am annoyed about Snoke. Where did he come from? I know the Emperor was unexplained in the original trilogy, but that is because we knew nothing about the galaxy. Now we do, and Snoke doesn't fit into what we know.

Luke, who saved Darth Vader, who went to save his friends on Cloud City, just up and hides when he knows things are going bad? I don't buy it. Doesn't fit the character. Mark Hamill was right when we was quoted as saying he disagreed with the direction Luke was going in.

Leia/Mary Poppins was dumb. Should have killed her there. Or later when Holdo died.

William's score was servicable, but waaaaay too many Force theme quotes.

*Maz Kanata was wearing the Rocketeer's jetpack, which was cool.

My thought during the film, which had me excited at first, was that Luke had been dead the whole time. We saw his crashed X-Wing, and I thought he was going to be a force ghost the entire movie. That might have been a better way to explain why he didn't help his friends over the past 20 years.

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Re: STAR WARS EPISODE VIII: THE LAST JEDI - Official Thread SPOILERS!

#68 Post by AndyDursin »

BM -- now THAT would've been a plot element that would've been totally unique and interesting! What a great idea -- sadly, the likes of Rian Johnson wouldn't have thought of something like that.

Didn't you love some of his dialogue? "I want to punch this terrible, beautiful city" or whatever Rose's line outside the CGI Intergalactic Casino?!? And people crapped all over George Lucas for his dialogue? :roll:

My largest issue with both of these Disney films is that the flimsy premise is so contrived and yet we're supposed to just accept it at face value. The Empire was wiped out but it's baaaaaaaaaaack. How? Why? They've never addressed that beyond one line of dialogue. At the end of this film, we're left to believe only a dozen people are against them -- seriously? Even in a sci-fi fantasy like this, you've got to do more than that, especially when the galaxy -- which seemed a LOT bigger in the Lucas films -- has already been established in six prior movies.

This story does irritate me. The whole set-up Disney has established is cynical. "Hey, let's bring back the people you love so we can kill them off...but don't worry, we'll placate those fans with terrible standalone movies like HAN SOLO coming in 2018! Kill them off now, make movies about them later!" Critics took the bait. See, it's "edgy" to kill off cast members -- but how dumb was it to bring back Ford and Hamill, and have them share no screentime together at all?

As for critics, I've started trusting (relatively speaking) the Tomato Audience Meter more than the Critic score. Critics today down an awful lot of kool-aid and overpraise every Disney release -- look at the absurd numbers all the Marvel movies put out. Or how about a dog like ALIEN COVENANT -- over 70% "fresh"? What the HELL were they watching?

Viewers always will always, ultimately, make up their own minds -- and LAST JEDI will make an awful lot of money because everyone will go and see it regardless. The damage it's going to do to the brand as a whole though, especially among hardcore fans (and there are a still a lot of them out there), will be felt on the yearly sequels/spin-offs Disney is hellbent on producing. (Good news for them are kids will like it anyway because they're so used to watching the mediocre tripe studios produce every year, and they're being raised in one of the weakest filmmaking eras in cinematic history)

That last scene wasn't meant to be inspiring -- it was a set-up for Johnson's trilogy I'm guessing, and a warning to everyone they will be making these movies until all of us have moved onto The Force's Great Beyond along with Muppet Yoda!

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Re: STAR WARS EPISODE VIII: THE LAST JEDI - Official Thread SPOILERS!

#69 Post by AndyDursin »

Just thinking again this morning that the rush to make these films is a real problem. This script needed cutting and work to get it into shape. I read through Paul's review and he's spot on, the casino sequence was awful and even the Rey/Luke sequences were redundant. Still they were markedly better than all the Finn sequences which were just deadly. I agree also that Poe is such a dud as a character, I liked him more in the last installment and I guess that's why he didn't have more screen time.

Anyway the Space Leia bit is now the nadir of this entire series. As bad as Clones was, there wasn't a single moment as horrific as that one!

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Re: STAR WARS EPISODE VIII: THE LAST JEDI - Official Thread SPOILERS!

#70 Post by Paul MacLean »

I am in total agreement...except I have to be honest, I really like Rose. She's sweet and innocently idealistic. Maybe she comes off as cloying to some people, but she was the character I was most emotionally engaged with.

As far as John Williams' score, I've listened to the CD twice now. It is frenetic and "ADD", with its sudden shifts and quick "sound bite" quotations of familiar themes. I agree, in many ways bound to the current vogue of film scoring.

Yet, it has its gems as well. Properly pared down, there is a very good album in there. I think it is better than The Force Awakens (and I find it more listenable than War of the Worlds, Munich, Memoirs of a Geisha, Indy 4, Tintin, War Horse, The Book Thief, Lincoln or The BFG).
Last edited by Paul MacLean on Mon Oct 28, 2019 10:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: STAR WARS EPISODE VIII: THE LAST JEDI - Official Thread SPOILERS!

#71 Post by AndyDursin »

I like her -- and I know why you do! -- but Id like to see her somewhere else. Every time she and Boyega started a sequence I felt the urgency to hit fast forward (lol), the entire casino sequence was just terrible and terribly executed. I just didn't like any of their scenes.

I also found it ironic Abrams went to great lengths to stress a "practical" component to shooting TFA and yet this movie was dominated by CGI and green screen. With such a rushed production schedule on these films there's going to be more and more of that.

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Re: STAR WARS EPISODE VIII: THE LAST JEDI - Official Thread SPOILERS!

#72 Post by jkholm »

Saw it this afternoon and enjoyed it. Time will tell if my opinion will change. My initial complaint is that the movie is way too long. I actually thought the movie was going to end as soon as the Resistance landed on the salt planet and then it went on for another twenty minutes.

I liked the scenes where Snoke was killed and Rey's parentage was revealed to be irrelevant. About time a movie made a meta commentary on fan theories. Can we not enjoy a movie without constantly being fed plot tidbits to mull over until the next installment? (Obviously the answer is no as I bet THE LAST JEDI will be an anomaly in this regard.)

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#73 Post by AndyDursin »

Asked my barber this morning what he thought: "it's Disney. The kids at the end, Princess Leia in space? Are you ----- kidding me. I'm tired of Disney's endless set-ups for 'the next one' like the last scene. Nobody clapped. 6 out of 10 if I'm being generous".

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Re: STAR WARS EPISODE VIII: THE LAST JEDI - Official Thread SPOILERS!

#74 Post by AndyDursin »

Front page review in this week's column:

http://andyfilm.com/2017/12/21/christma ... s-edition/

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Re: STAR WARS EPISODE VIII: THE LAST JEDI - Official Thread SPOILERS!

#75 Post by Monterey Jack »

Saw it a second time with my brother tonight, expecting the last week's barrage of hysterical burn-it-all-down bullcrap to dump a lot on the experience, and you know what?

It's BAFFLING why people are bagging on this so much.

Damn it, this is a pretty great Star Wars movie, and I'm sorry so many feel it's a let down. It's the Babe: Pig In The City of the SW franchise, a sequel that takes so many radical risks with an "established" way of treating the series that it's kind of breathtaking. Not all of it "works", but I give Rian Johnson a ton of credit for making "his" Star Wars, warts and all, and in the era of micro-managing that's caused both of the "spin-off" features to essentially get re-assembled from scratch by meddling Disney studio heads to conform to "what the audience wants", that is something rare to behold. It's a bold, assured film that, for me, was a terrific time at the movies.

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