(01-11-2018 04:49 PM)CameramanJ Wrote:  Found this to be an interesting take on the state of the new Star Wars trilogy:

After watching the film mid-January with not too much previous information (i.e. spoilers) before I went in, I was both impressed and disappointed with The Last Jedi. I basically agree with this video's major points of contention, and I now see where actor Mark Hamill was coming from when he originally stated he thought that every major decision for his character of Luke Skywalker was wrong.

While I have not read the book, which I did do for the first six movies (all but one before actually seeing the films) I found the character of Admiral Holdo (Laura Dern) to be basically useless and obnoxious and forced-in (no pun intended) political correctness. The stupidest decisions in the new movies, to me, are all the new force powers that heretofore had gone unseen and unused in the previous 6 films. It is difficult to reasonably accept that no one else so critical to the original storylines had seemed to think of , let alone actually use, these new powers, and I found it very distracting in trying to absorb the story and enjoy the movie TLJ.

Along the same lines, I too was annoyed with what they did with bringing Princess Leia back alive after she had been blown out into space. It is obvious that one decision about this new trilogy had been made prior to production: each film would focus on one of the original main characters: Han Solo VII, Luke Skywalker VIII, and Leia IX. Of course there was no way they could have known that Carrie Fischer would die after shooting was completed, so they missed a plausible opportunity to end her character and will now have to resort to a likely awkward plot device to explain her absence from IX unless they reverse their stated decision not to use CG again to have her reappear.

And, boy, did I dislike what they did with Snoke after all the buildup. Seemed like extremely weak story writing to me. So much left unanswered, and Crybaby Kylo Ren (Ben Solo, who basically just needs the good spanking he obviously never got like his grandfather Anakin) is now the big bad guy? Really? Weeeeeaaak. Or General Hux (I can't stand the character or the chosen actor's portrayal, and not in the "I hate the Dallas Cowboys because they always win" but rather the "that's a really weak character and bad acting, dude" kind of dislike.) Once again they had an opportunity to make these films better, and correct or at least mitigate some of the annoyances from VII, but they chose not to even go there and I was disappointed.

I really hope they just leave "Captain Phasma" and her useless, contrived character dead. From first hearing the name, to the brief appearance in VII to how they "expanded" her in VIII, it was just dumb, dumb, dumb to me on a Jar-Jar Binks level.

I never took to the Ray character as well as I would have liked, and in VII, I found Finn's character annoying and under/wrongly developed at times. I liked Maz Kanata (wanted to see more of her instead of what they did--where did you find the lightsaber, Maz?), and although I feared the worst from more forced political correctness and United Colors of Benetton gerrymandering, I surprisingly very much liked Kelly Tran's character Rose, and was sad when I thought she was dead, but very glad when she turned out not to be. I look forward to seeing more of her in IX. Hope they don't screw her character up too much.

I did think what they did with Luke in his battle scene was cool, but dislike how they ended his character. The Yoda reappearance made less sense than it could have as it seemed his "wisdom" was somewhat inconsistent with most of what he had been teaching before, and it would have been helpful to go ahead and include brief visits from Anakin and a CGI Obi-wan (or better a Ewan Macgregor with old guy makeup one).

I liked what they did with the characters, acting and story of Rogue One so much better than VII or VIII. I think Rogue One ranks as the second or third best film (and accomplished a strong female lead character who was fully dressed at all times, so I do think that can be done well), and I hope they do better with the Solo and Obi-wan films.

I don't at this point think I'll enjoy Rian Johnson's rumored new trilogy, especially if Kathleen Kennedy and he insist on inserting their apparently oppositional politics into the Star Wars universe at every chance they get in their seeming attempt to revise the underlying values that were apparent to most all through the original trilogy and contributed heavily in my opinion to their success. The Star Wars ethos was always rooted in basically traditional values, and especially in creating a stable and believable foundation for the "good" characters. Hope they get smart and return to those values (Hmmmm, Episode IX: "Return of the Values?") Just my 2 cents.

I will wait for the DVD to come out to see it again and reassess, adjust, but overall I feel this film, TLJ, made me appreciate the prequels a lot more, and that's 'really sayin' something,' to quote Bananrama.