{"id":241,"date":"2017-12-15T15:34:00","date_gmt":"2017-12-15T15:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/2017\/12\/15\/star-wars-the-last-jedi-my-thoughts\/"},"modified":"2017-12-15T15:34:00","modified_gmt":"2017-12-15T15:34:00","slug":"star-wars-the-last-jedi-my-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/2017\/12\/15\/star-wars-the-last-jedi-my-thoughts\/","title":{"rendered":"Star Wars: The Last Jedi. My thoughts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Spoiler alert: spoilers abound. So many spoilers. Spoilers spoilers spoilers.<\/p>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\nDon&#8217;t read this if you haven&#8217;t seen the movie, you dope.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\nMy thoughts:<\/p>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\nTo quote the person I saw it with: <i>I didn&#8217;t <b>love<\/b> it<\/i>. I liked it. There were good moments. But I didn&#8217;t love it.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\nMy overall problem with it: it didn&#8217;t really further the story. The longest of all the Star Wars movies is something I could sum up in five sentences:&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>the Resistance is down to just a handful of people,&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>Kylo \/ Ben kills Snoke and tries to get Rey to team up with him, but she doesn&#8217;t,&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>Rey&#8217;s parents were nobodies, she has no familial connection with Skywalkers or Kenobis,<\/li>\n<li>Luke lets himself die and become one with the Force \/ Universe \/ whatever because he is just done with it all,<\/li>\n<li>there is no Last Jedi. There will always be Jedis because there will always be people who believe in the Force.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That&#8217;s it! No need to see the movie, because that&#8217;s all you need to know to watch Episode IX in 2019. Those are the only things that forwarded the plot or the character development.&nbsp;<\/p><\/div>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\nWell, you need to know that those dice are totally canon. It&#8217;s an obscure reference that only deep fans will get.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\nSure, there&#8217;s some great action scenes, some beautiful scenery and&nbsp;screen compositions, and they don&#8217;t overdo the&nbsp;Porgs, something I was quite worried about. And I teared up a few times regarding Carrie Fisher &#8211; her scenes are heart-breaking and weirdly, unintentionally, foreshadowing of her death. There are also a lot of jokes &#8211; too many, in fact.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\nBut two hours and 32 minutes &#8211; plus FOUR HOURS round trip on a train and bus with TOo many scary tweekers and I almost missed the bus back to Forest Grove and would have been stuck at the Hillsboro transit center for an hour, until after 1 a.m., if I had missed it &#8211; for this movie, a movie I could summarize in five bullet points?<\/div>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\nWe deserved so much more:&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<li>Who is Snoke? Where did he come from? How is he such a master of the Force? Why does he look like that? Why do all these people follow him?<\/li>\n<li>Where did the First Order come from? Why do people join them? The Imperial Forces were the government of the galaxy, and they seemed to evolve from the Old Republic&#8217;s formal military, with a lot of support from the citizens of the galaxy. But where did these guys come from so quickly and suddenly?&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>Why is Rey such a master of the Force without any training at all?<\/li>\n<li>Where did the other Jedis go that mutinied with Kylo?<\/li>\n<li>What the hell was Captain Phasma&#8217;s purpose EVER in these two films? Was she really necessary at all?<\/li>\n<li>You really can&#8217;t think of more to do with C3P0 and R2D2?<\/li>\n<li>What the hell with the &#8220;Godspeed&#8221; comments? There has never been a &#8220;God&#8221; in the Star Wars films &#8211; you wish someone well by saying, &#8220;May the Force Be With You.&#8221; But this time, we get at least two &#8220;Godspeed&#8221; comments? Okay, since you&#8217;ve introduced the concept of God after eight movies without such, we have to ask: Who is this God? Is it a He or a She? Is there just one? Do all the planets believe in the same one? What is this God&#8217;s relationship with the Force?<\/li>\n<li>Really, the First Order ships&nbsp;can&#8217;t move up just a little bit quicker so their cannon ammunitions can&#8217;t hit tiny ships just out of reach?<\/li>\n<li>The tracking-through-Hyperspace thing: who came up with that? It seemed to come out of nowhere &#8211; Kylo? He thought of that? He&#8217;s an engineering whiz? And, some nobody mechanic can figure it out as soon as she hears about it whereas everyone else has no idea?<\/li>\n<li>How come, when faced with&nbsp;an entire group of Imperial \/ First Order ships, there hasn&#8217;t always been someone saying, &#8220;Hey, let me save everyone&nbsp;by doing a suicide mission and jumping to light speed right into one of the ships!&#8221;? There have always been plenty of people willing to go on fruitless suicide missions because something <i>might<\/i> work &#8211; by contrast, this strategy seems to be pretty damn foolproof!&nbsp;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<div>\nI couldn&#8217;t wait to see <i>The Force Awakens<\/i> for a second time. Same with <i>Rogue One<\/i>. This? Yeah, I&#8217;m good with one viewing.&nbsp;<\/div>\n<div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spoiler alert: spoilers abound. So many spoilers. Spoilers spoilers spoilers. Don&#8217;t read this if you haven&#8217;t seen the movie, you dope.&nbsp; My thoughts: To quote the person I saw it with: I didn&#8217;t love it. I liked it. There were good moments. But I didn&#8217;t love it.&nbsp; My overall problem with it: it didn&#8217;t really [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/241\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotebroad.com\/blawg\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}