Is it the one with the Luke/Kylo fight? That was pretty much the only thing I found exceptional in any way in the sequels, using Force projection like that to fuck with Kylo. Until the end where he became too sad to live or whatever and died (seems to run in the family).

I liked it because it didn’t feel like nostalgia slop. It felt like trying to take things in a new direction, while still rooted in the universe. Like the best of legends stuff tbh, in intentions and execution. Without being bound to actual legends stuff, making it just nostalgia slop (rise of Skywalker…).

I liked it was just a good movie as well. Great acting, great editing, great cinematography.

I grew up loving Star Wars, but I was never the attached type in general. I will always have the original trilogy, the clone wars tv show, the prequels to watch. Nothing changed about them with what happens in the Last Jedi. I don’t feel offended by a new thing being different.

Idk, it just felt so much better than Force Awakens, which felt like pure nostalgia slop. I actually had hope Star Wars would “get good again”.

I’d say I liked it for similar reasons I like Andor. But I actually do love Andor, and only like Last Jedi.

Maybe it also helped that I watched it in a cool movie theater while traveling and was pretty high…

And the whole “subverting expectations” thing… I don’t think Rian was trying to be edgy or be like “haa fuck you and your ‘expectations’”. J.J. just set up a terrible and fucking boring story with his first movie.

And Rian setting up Rey to be a nobody, and that it doesn’t matter if you have holy royal blood or some bullshit, was GREAT. That anyone can be the hero, not just the “destined one”. Like it was perfectly set up for the first new Jedi to be completely different, led by Rey guided by a changed and “grey” Luke, and the first pupils being the slaves and slum children. Idk… isn’t that much better than whatever the fuck was happening in the first and last movies…?

Because it’s something different.

Every single Star Wars movie is basically the same thing over and over. Same cuts, same sequences, same energy, same everything. The Last Jedi shook it up and honestly I think that it was a good idea because the material was shaken too.

In the Prequels you had the story of the Jedi v the Sith but both were very confident. Both were established.

In the Original Trilogy you’ve got Kenobi and Yoda with a guiding hand helping to smooth things out and ease the path.

The Force Awakens shows the Resistance on about the same level as the Rebels in the OT in how they’re managed and their goals. But then suddenly they’re obliterated. While everyone keeps saying that Starkiller Base is just another Death Star, they neglect to point out that this one worked. It wasn’t destroyed last second to help save other planets. It let off its first offensive, burning a number of planets from the void and into nothingness. This wasn’t the Rebellion pushing to save their lives. This was a Resistance who now had just lost everything in the blink of an eye. All of their governmental backing, all of the support they had from elsewhere. Suddenly the First Order had just leapfrogged over them and they were in a scramble.

So they pull out and try to regroup. They evacuate their base and everyone gets ready to leave but suddenly First Order ships are nearly in orbit and they’re about to start shooting you from the sky. You have to run, now, but tensions are high and everyone is on a hairtrigger. Thinking in a moment of high panic (again, he’s never been in a situation like the Original Trilogy or Prequels), Poe makes a gut decision to help protect his people. His decision leaves his people heavily defenseless and even more of the Resistance is killed. So they start running. They pull back and flee and when they breathe a single sigh of relief, they’re right back on them. They no longer have the safety of running away and they’re strapped for resources. Then in that moment when you’re trying to figure out what the fuck is going on, your flagship is attacked and your Commander in Chief has been taken out of the fight.

Now, I can go into how Poes decisions make sense for his character and how him mutinying against Holdo made sense for him but was objectively the bad call, how Holdo was actually doing the best she had and everything else but that’s not my point. My point is that everyone is in disarray and there is no one around from the typical Star Wars era to help them.

But then you cut to Rey and Luke on an island and the wipes are Star Wars-y. The vibe Star Wars-y. Everything felt more in line with what we see from typical editing and what have you because Luke is there. He’s been through the shit. He knows how to go through this. He’s been helped and guided and is now doing the same for Rey.

Which is why when Luke and Rey suddenly shows up on Crait to help, everything starts falling back into those Star Wars patterns. The music swells in the same way, the cuts start looking Star Wars-y, the long lingering shots… The camera is telling the story of the energy of the movie and the panic of the Resistance. The more confident and assured they become, the more “Star Wars-y” things become.

I think that a lot of people do believe that Rian Johnson just made a different movie for the sake of making a different movie. But this dude made Knives Out. He knows how to make a movie and knows how to tell a story through direction, how to move that on. I think a lot of people were just really upset with how things were turning out for how they wished it and didn’t see a lot of what Rian was doing.

What trash in the originals?

Agreed. People will go insanely critical on the Sequels and Rey/Kylo but then just make jokes and dismiss Luke and Leia. But sure. The original trilogy was super planned out. That’s why the lightsaber combat suddenly changed between episodes and why Lucas ended up re-editing the originals a dozen times to piss everyone off.

This is the way

Clone Wars gives a lot of necessary context that just isn’t there otherwise.

Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith suffer greatly by feeling like the 1st and 3rd movie of a trilogy that we just don’t have the second part of, so Clone Wars bridging that gap (and giving Anakin character development so that his fall to the dark side means something beyond “Emo former-slave farmboy has bad dream and goes on child killing spree”, seriously Anakin sucked before Clone Wars redeemed him.)

I like Phantom Menace, but it’s too heavily disconnected in the timeline from the other two movies in the trilogy for it to really work with them, which is funny because if you ask me what my favorite Star Wars film the list would be.

Occupying Slot #1 - All of them for different reasons Occupying Slot #9 - Attack of the Clones

Honestly I think in a decade or so we’ll come to see the sequels become beloved much like the prequels were, and for similar reasons (younger genreation that grew up with them, memes, and media that fills in plot holes now existing)

The clone wars makes more of a mess of the prequels than the movies on their own IMO.

In general the show was mid, the last two seasons were alright but that’s it. And to be fair they were limited by what they could tell or explore in it, and they probably did the best they could, but tartakovsky’s version will always be the superior one in my eyes.

Subverting expectations also needs to serve a purpose. If you have people use a window instead of a door to get in a house, it subverts expectations, but if nothing comes from it then it’s meaningless. Most of TLJ feels like subversions that don’t actually change anything.