What is Your Opinion on The Last Jedi?

[Karha of Honor]

Didn't James Cameron rip on Wonder Woman for not being feminine enough?

Probably, but James Cameron is an idiot.

Last time i checked he was a functional human being who can craft an okay narrative.

But i really wish he would not have gone to Avatarworld for 10 years.

[SuccubusYuri]

Eh, Cameron is more a good director than he is a decent writer, the one skill can fill in where the other fails to make it look like a decent narrative. And lest we forget the part people loved about Titanic the most, he discovered he had developed it ON ACCIDENT. xD It was supposed to be a disaster film in Emerick-esque clothes xD

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Didn't James Cameron rip on Wonder Woman for not being feminine enough?

Probably, but James Cameron is an idiot.

Yeah he's only the most competent action director ever.

No, really though he lamented Wonder Woman in lieu of Sarah Connor who had a lot of maternal themes going on in T2.

Then there was a Mary Sue article that lamented Wonder Woman getting stronger attention than Sue Storm to talk I think about how skewed the superhero landscape is for women.

[PerrySimm]

The best part of this movie?



Canto Bight.



That's right.

Most folks just bag on the whole sequence, but bear in mind it was the only part of the movie that was trying to be fun. Yes, it's contrived and largely pointless, and totally jarring in the context of the rest of the story, and like the rest of the film, has plenty of internal and external logical problems. But when nearly everything else about The Last Jedi was depressing, pontificating, or just insufferable - maybe give the lighthearted part a second thought?

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

Rey could have been a good character. Ridley was a good casting choice and brings a charm and likeability to the table.

I could be wrong and I'm sure they'd deny it, but to me it feels like the writers were afraid to give the first female protagonist of Star Wars any actual flaws. At the end of the day, you're still creating a character who ought to have their own particular viewpoint, traits, principles, and their own strengths and weaknesses. But Rey has a clarity of perspective that doesn't make a lot of sense given what little we know of her background.

After only a couple days (literally!) away from the planet she was stuck on, she's already worked through her one character flaw. That flaw? Not seeing how great she is all on her own. Best flaw ever. It's telling that even in a movie about failure, the only character who isn't allowed to fail is the main protagonist.

[Worffan101]

James Cameron hasn't made a good movie in decades. Titanic was a cheap romance story that happened by accident amid a bland small-scale disaster movie. Avatar, while visually impressive, was a mediocre rehash of Dances With Wolves without the attention to detail that made Dances With Wolves relatively less than racist (i.e. the filmmakers knew they were walking on a political minefield and at least bothered to consult actual Sioux about the parts involving that people and didn't make the protagonist better at being a Native American than the Native Americans; Cameron just has white-guy-becomes-bestest-Native-American-Stereotytpe-Evar in like 6 weeks).

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Rey could have been a good character. Ridley was a good casting choice and brings a charm and likeability to the table.

I could be wrong and I'm sure they'd deny it, but to me it feels like the writers were afraid to give the first female protagonist of Star Wars any actual flaws. At the end of the day, you're still creating a character who ought to have their own particular viewpoint, traits, principles, and their own strengths and weaknesses. But Rey has a clarity of perspective that doesn't make a lot of sense given what little we know of her background.

After only a couple days (literally!) away from the planet she was stuck on, she's already worked through her one character flaw. That flaw? Not seeing how great she is all on her own. Best flaw ever. It's telling that even in a movie about failure, the only character who isn't allowed to fail is the main protagonist.

Well as I was saying earlier I feel like her motivations are decently established. I think she has principles when trying to deal with Luke, but as far as clarity she's a bit ambitious. She's needing to get better at it, understand it more, and find meaning to her life through her past.

James Cameron hasn't made a good movie in decades. Titanic was a cheap romance story that happened by accident amid a bland small-scale disaster movie. Avatar, while visually impressive, was a mediocre rehash of Dances With Wolves without the attention to detail that made Dances With Wolves relatively less than racist (i.e. the filmmakers knew they were walking on a political minefield and at least bothered to consult actual Sioux about the parts involving that people and didn't make the protagonist better at being a Native American than the Native Americans; Cameron just has white-guy-becomes-bestest-Native-American-Stereotytpe-Evar in like 6 weeks).

I didn't care for Avatar much. But ragging on it is like ragging on a Christopher Nolan movie for its fuzzy narrative when he's more about craft. Also, plenty of people are avidly impressed with the scope to which the Titanic sunk on screen.

[Winter]

Rey could have been a good character. Ridley was a good casting choice and brings a charm and likeability to the table.

Yeah, I honestly don't get the criticism that Ridley is a bad actor, or, (and this a direct quote from one critic on her performance) the worst actor in the world. I mean REALLY?! I have no real issue with her performance and TBH think the cast as a whole is really good and the few who aren't have had good performances in the past.

I could be wrong and I'm sure they'd deny it, but to me it feels like the writers were afraid to give the first female protagonist of Star Wars any actual flaws. At the end of the day, you're still creating a character who ought to have their own particular viewpoint, traits, principles, and their own strengths and weaknesses. But Rey has a clarity of perspective that doesn't make a lot of sense given what little we know of her background.

After only a couple days (literally!) away from the planet she was stuck on, she's already worked through her one character flaw. That flaw? Not seeing how great she is all on her own. Best flaw ever. It's telling that even in a movie about failure, the only character who isn't allowed to fail is the main protagonist.

Well, technically speaking Rey isn't the First female protagonist of Star Wars. As I said before, Mara is the protagonist of The Thrawn Trilogy as she is the one with the most development, is the one who moves the plot forward the most and has the most overall screen time in the Trilogy. Also Ahsoka is pretty much as important to the Clone Wars as Anakin and Obi-Wan so I would count her as well and those are just the two most famous outside of the films and in regards to the films while Luke is the main protagonist Leia is every bit as important as he is and has just as much character development.

And using these three does highlight the issue with Rey even more as all three have more flaws and more personal motivation then Rey does. Leia is fighting because she has been doing so for most of her life and hates the Empire and everything they stand for. Ahsoka is a lot like Anakin as she's seen how great the Jedi can become and wanted to become like them as it would be a better life then what she left behind. And Mara wants to kill Luke as she believes he killed the Emperor and in doing so he ruined her life.

But as the story goes on all three are forced to go through some sever trauma that pushes them to their breaking point. Leia loses her home and is tortured, Ahsoka is framed for a crime and is hunted by the very Jedi she once worshiped and Mara slowly learns that The Emperor never cared for her and that he was truly horrible to her and even in death he is still ruining her life.

The issue with Rey isn't that the film won't allow her to fail, it's that it won't allow her to be truly hurt. One of the reasons I dislike Rey's sudden obsession to redeem Ren is that it under cuts her anger at him for the death of Han, putting Finn in a coma and trying to torture her just a few days or hours ago depending on how you view this film's time line.

This is all some sever trauma that she goes through that could lead to some great character development as she works to over come this trauma and looks past her own personal wants and see what it really means to be a Jedi... OR she could forgive Ren for all the horrible things he's done because he's being polite to her after 10 minutes of talking to him... (sigh)

The thing about Wonder Woman in the 2017 movie is that she was raised to believe the best in people and grew up with a lot of nice people and that Ares caused people to do horrible things. By the end of the film her faith in people is shaken and she is forced to except that some times people do horrible things without anyone controlling them. Ares makes it clear that he didn't cause people to start fighting the war he just gave them ideas to do it more creatively.

This is what is missing from Rey, she goes through a traumatic event in one movie and in the next it all means nothing as she almost instantly forgives Ren for every horrible thing he's done as it it was nothing. Take this in contrast with Asami Sato from The Legend of Korra.

After her father turned on her it took her four years, both in and out of universe, to even consider forgiving him and he had to really change in order to earn that forgiveness. Asami was affected by what her father did, and almost losing her company, and her boy friend cheating on her, and almost losing Korra after she learned she was in love with her. These things matter and helped to develop her character which is why she is so popular in the series.

Rey does start off on the right foot by hating Ren and even tries to shot him the moment she sees him because, say it with me now, HE MURDERED HAN SOLO AND PUT FINN IN A COMA!!!

This is something that effected her character and yet Last treats it as if it means nothing cause all she needs is for him to spin some BS about being a victim and not long after that she pulls a lightsaber on Luke because he MIGHT have hurt Ren. Again, it took Mara a whole Trilogy just to get to being friends with Luke and it took effort on both their parts to get to that point.

Ren just needed to go, "Luke tried to kill me and I think you're really cool."

Again, the performance is good but the writing, for me, feels contrived.

[Worffan101]

Ridley's fine, it's just that the material she's working with is fuck-awful. especially for her--Rey rarely speaks, and when she does it's normally immediately plot-relevant. There's also way too many grand wordless tracking shots that go for way too long, generally surrounding Rey's scenes which cuts into her screen time.

[PerrySimm]

It's telling that even in a movie about failure, the only character who isn't allowed to fail is the main protagonist.

Not so sure about that. Even though on the surface, Rey appears to kick six kinds of butt, she failed in her primary mission: to retrieve Luke. The training sequence, the mirror pool, etc just wasted vital time as the Resistance was bleeding out.

In ESB, Luke is forced to make a difficult decision to break from his training. He hesitates to leave, whilst also not having the training or confidence to pull his X-wing out of the swamp. He arrived too late to save his friends and evade Vader.

Rey, on the other hand, insists on getting trained by the grand master, and barely considers the plight of the others, until Kylo invites her up to the First Order flagship. There, the most interesting potential arc of these movies was lost when Rey failed to join the... well, if it's not the 'dark' side, then the 'burn it all' side has still gotta be close to it.