To whom was that directed ND?

TrPrado

My problems with TLJ have nothing to do with the plot/canon twists and everything to do with it being a bloated mess with too many characters and lame dialog.

Leia defying the laws of physics and surviving being jettissoned into space was the dumbest part of the movie. Like the force doesnt put your body in a state of being impervious to basic physics. Youd die like instantly.

I disagree with the idea that it was bloated. There was a lot going on, but it all flowed out from the story pretty well.

It was cheesy as shit anyway.

Yea, brain, that was the one part I was talking about.

Why was that necessary? So we can kill off admiral ackbar lol

The bad guy is nerfed to be a caricature that isnt so scary kids will be having nightmares. Vader was a better villain because they were ruthless but patient. Kylo is a pretty low quality bad guy. Snoke was absurd. And the guy who is the admiral of the first order is too ginger to be that angry

since the cat is out of the bag (thanks Brain), why could Leia do that with no training yet... Palpatine, the Sith Lord, couldn't fly up the Death Star II reactor shaft after being thrown off a ledge.

I mean, I guess? That didn't really bother me too much. It's just, other people can like, lift entire spacecraft out of swamps, but Leia can't survive in a vacuum for a couple seconds?

I mean, even a person without the force would survive in space for up to 30 seconds. Really not a huge deal in a franchise that is entirely about space wizards.

Uh ND its been twenty years. Why do you assume she had learned nothing in that time lmao. But I agree it was just dumb anyway

because the film clearly refers to Luke/Rey as the Last Jedi not Leia. If Leia had been trained then Luke/Rey wouldn't be the Last Jedi, would they?

I mean there are dozens of technical story problems like this. It's unbelievable.

Uh if by survive you mean retain last seconds of brain function then... I guess thats true

No that's not what I mean. You wouldn't even lose consciousness for about 30 seconds.

Im fine with leia just dying there instead. And of course it becomes rated R.

Remember if you are trained for about 1 day by Luke then you are a Jedi so since the film does not refer to Leia as a Jedi then she wasn't even trained for a day by Luke.

But again, I agree it was a little silly, but really even as someone who liked the film, I felt like it had WAAAAAAY more serious problems than that.

oh yeah, there are a million problems with this film (exaggeration, but quite a few problems on the story end)

Its just a movie. I just didnt like that part.

I also disagree with that. I think it had one important problem problem with pacing, and story structure (there were just too many parts that felt like "oh! This is the climax!" and then there was like, more).

But I still had fun watching it.

My other quibble was that the film really wanted to make the stakes super dire, and so like, things the characters did had like, really major consequences, but it also lets those characters off the hook for their mistakes very easily.

"You’re all so horribly wrong. Great script. Story was fantastic. There weren’t plot holes unless you fell asleep. It’s like saying Dunkirk was riddled in plot holes."

Okay then: ***WARNING SPOILERS***

1. The bombs were not launched out of the bombers, they were simply released from side holders...in space. And the planet was sideways so they wouldn't have fallen into the dreadnought, they would have simply stayed in place. A careless detail that Lucas was very careful about in the initial 6 films.

2. Yoda can summon massive bolts of lightening powerful enough to cause a fire that can knock Luke down. And with this it opens the door to a plot flaw NOT just in this movie but in the previous 6. Which is, why didn't Yoda summon lightening on any of the sith or appear to Luke and say, hey your nephew is being turned to the dark side, etc? By increasing Force Ghosts to anything able to influence the world they royally fucked up for the sake of a slightly over-dramatic scene.

3. Luke goes to the effort of literally killing himself to provide Leia and the rebels a means of escaping the first order by showing up as a distraction so they could escape through another exit. And he doesn't remember to tell them where the hell it is, or that they should take some demolition equipment for the boulders blocking it? And this makes less sense when you realize that Poe's assumption that because Luke was there, there had to be another exit was wrong since he was not actually there...

4. The golden medallions actually clinked and made noise when Ren picked them up, after Luke was dead, then they faded. If those had physical texture, then why didn't Luke/why couldn't he fight Ren/why'd the lightsaber pass through. And how did those 2 things stay for moments after Luke was dead/clearly out of energy even before he died?

5. They had every opportunity to kill off Leia, but instead they blast her out of an airlock which seemingly renders her out cold. Every other Star Wars movie shows the Force needs concentration to work, yet she's old cold in space surviving until she wakes up enough to summon herself back to the ship (just ignoring the fact that there wasn't an airlock and everyone inside would have been sucked out when that door opened to let her back in.

There was a clear sense that the story-line was rushed to keep pace with the movie a year to line Disney's pockets. Various things like the first 5 seconds of Yoda animation looking like shit, further degraded the overall film. Add in the shitty lightsaber fight with the guards (which was undeniably a step back from Revenge of the Sith), the meaningless penguin looking creatures (who would have been sad that Chewie killed 2 of their kind, not because he was going to eat 2 of their kind), the humor that didn't quite fit in, and the cop-opt of explaining Snoke by killing him off and you have what was quite easily the worst Star Wars film ever produced.

Another year of writing time and a better job with the effects/choreography in the fights, and this could have been a good movie. Quite a shame. Almost as bad as the broken in game purchase garbage that Disney just produced as a Star Wars game.

Year 1: Script and casting
Year 2: Shoot and production
Year 3: Post-production and toy-marketing

Disney did not follow the plan.

“1. The bombs were not launched out of the bombers, they were simply released from side holders...in space.”

They fell towards the largest, closest object, which is how gravity works. The dreadnought wasn’t small.

“2. Yoda can summon massive bolts of lightening powerful enough to cause a fire that can knock Luke down. And with this it opens the door to a plot flaw NOT just in this movie but in the previous 6. Which is, why didn't Yoda summon lightening on any of the sith or appear to Luke and say, hey your nephew is being turned to the dark side, etc? By increasing Force Ghosts to anything able to influence the world they royally fucked up for the sake of a slightly over-dramatic scene. ”

Lot to unpack here. The lightning was already happening naturally, Yoda just attuned to nature and it hit the tree. His use of lightning wasn’t anywhere NEAR the same as someone like Palpatine using it through the dark side. He was already a permanent inhabitant of the Force, he just kinda is now. Also, he didn’t confront Luke because Luke had to learn from his own mistakes.

“And he doesn't remember to tell them where the hell it is, or that they should take some demolition equipment for the boulders blocking it? And this makes less sense when you realize that Poe's assumption that because Luke was there, there had to be another exit was wrong since he was not actually there...”

I don’t like chopping things up story-wise to the Force, but it absolutely works. He knew Rey would take care of the boulders, and he knew that there would be a trail of foxes they could follow.

“4. The golden medallions actually clinked and made noise when Ren picked them up, after Luke was dead, then they faded. If those had physical texture, then why didn't Luke/why couldn't he fight Ren/why'd the lightsaber pass through. And how did those 2 things stay for moments after Luke was dead/clearly out of energy even before he died?”

It was made by the connection between Luke and Leia, not just Luke. She could have kept it going.

“5. They had every opportunity to kill off Leia, but instead they blast her out of an airlock which seemingly renders her out cold.”

Actually totally agree, but I didn’t feel like this was a big enough deal for me to say the whole movie doesn’t work story-wise.

ND:

Leia had 30 years to attune herself to the Force, since she started to display them a bit in Return of the Jedi. But she decided that those powers were not the basis of her life the way it could be for Jedi. You can be attuned to the Force without being a Jedi, Leia felt her calling as the servant of the Republic, and the Force was more of a casual thing for her.

Episode 4:

A single x wing sets it's taragetin computers on the core of the Death Star. It goes into hyperspace. Death Star blows up.

And... scene

Why was this never used before...?

Because that would feel cheap and unearned, in a way that, at least for me Holdo's sacrifice didn't?

This kinda technical quibbling really doesn't strike me as a particularly good approach to film criticism? It's like the whole "Why didn't Lord of the Rings just solve everything with Eagles" thing. There is an in universe explanation that makes perfect sense. But it doesn't really matter. Stories should be dramatically satisfying first and foremost. Details of consistency on the technical specifications of spaceships? That's a tertiary or quaternary concern AT BEST I think. Does Laura Dern's performance and the story arc of the film earn that story beat? If you don't think it does, say that (I think it totally does, but reasonable people can absolutely disagree on that point). Don't go into some nonsense about "But hyperdrives don't do XYZ." Who cares?

Also to give the kind of technical answer that I hate: Holdo's ship was much larger than an X-Wing.

The whole Laura Dern thing really annoyed me. Her character wasn't necessary. Waste of time when there are precious few minutes for a movie. And for what?? Yeah, I look forward to seeing her in Ep9.

@Jeff Kuta - That's an interesting perspective. And I can see how if you weren't connected to her role in the story why the film wouldn't have worked for you.

For me, it's not about her character's place in the overall continuity. Her character and really connected very strongly to the themes of like, good prudent leadership, and solidarity in times of crisis, and her role in Poe's overall character arc. Which is important, because he really didn't get one in the last film, but he is, at least ostensibly part of the new central protagonist trio.