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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Quickleaf" data-source="post: 7327051" data-attributes="member: 20323">I respect the heck out of Joseph Gordon-Levitt as an actor, but this should perhaps be taken with a grain of salt as (he admits) is a personal friend of writer/director Rian Johnson. Justifying Luke turning into a bitter defeated old man, he claims "No one is a perfect hero or a perfect villain, we’re more complicated than that, every one of us." Sure! But that doesn't mean taking the character in an uncharacteristic unsympathetic direction that undermines the virtues that Jedi are about! <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/erm.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":erm:" title="Erm    :erm:" data-shortname=":erm:" />I would not recommend The Last Jedi at all, and would rank it marginally above the prequel trilogy and definitely below The Force Awakens & RotJ. Overall, it felt horribly amoral & unsatisfying to me.Wasted potential. There are so many storybeats that feel undeveloped and confused. Most of all Gwendoline Christie's acting talent is horribly wasted on Captain Phasma. I get that trans-media marketing is in these days, but whoever wrote Phasma's role in this film (and TFA for that matter) ...well, I have no idea what they were thinking.Erratic pacing. Throughout the film I had trouble following what was going on and even more trouble getting invested in the story. Why? Most of all because TLJ never hits its stride with pacing. Scenes cut abruptly. The point behind going to the casino is quickly lost. Maybe it was an editing problem?Too many characters. Too many characters with not enough time to get to know & care about them. Was her name Mae, the one who fell for Finn? I wanted to get into her character arc, thinking that at some point it would tie back to the death of her sister...but the film never gets there. Over-reliance on CGI & special effects & explosions. I get it, Star Wars has all this stuff. But that's not what makes the movies great; it's the myths and characters. The film opens with a space battle where it's hard to care what's going on – there is a reason A New Hope builds up to the big space battle at the end. The Poggs (? whatever those little things were) seemed straight out of an anime. The casino scene reminded me of shades of the prequel trilogy with its egregious CGI.Accents & breaking the Star Wars milieu. That "Texan" in the casino? WTF? That's the sort of thing we saw already in the prequels and don't need to see again. And what about the Code Breaker's mannerisms, saying "yeah man" and "cracking"? That felt completely out of place! Forced and sometimes formulaic dialogue. Especially the lines given to the new actors...those often felt awkward, like I was watching a sitcom or some other genre. Even the screenwriting of Luke Skywalker didn't feel at all like his character & was only saved by Mark Hamill's great performance.Luke Skywalker deconstructed. Why? Why treat the character with such disrespect? I fully agree with Mark Hamill’s thoughts about Luke Skywalker’s character. Rian Johnson’s vision was completely at odds with that, and I felt the story suffered because of Rian Johnson’s writing (it was *not* Star Wars) and direction (the pacing was erratic and never hit its stride). Jedi don't give up, period.Strange cinematography choices that felt un-Star Wars. The most egregious of these were the "National Geographic" cutscenes during Rey's training...cool in another sci-fi or sci-fantasy film, but not Star Wars-y at all. And the silence with – purple-hair lady? what was her name? – sacrificing herself by warping into th First Order? Fell totally flat for me because the film hadn't spent the time to get me invested in her character. Pretty graphics though.Storytelling that was just a mess. "Sacred Jedi texts"? where did those come from? why should I care? Who was Snoke? Oh wait, it doesn't actually matter. Who were Rey's parents? Oh wait, it actually doesn't matter. How does Leia do the spacewalk thing? We don't need to explain that, look how cool the CGI on her face looks! Ooo, aaah. The whole film builds up the mystical bond between Rey and Kylo...building up the chance for his redemption (or her fall to the dark side)...and instead they are right back where they started with little change to their characters. What was the point of what we just watched then?On the surface it *looked* like "Star Wars", but the nihilistic and cynical themes did not feel like Star Wars to me. I didn't leave the theater uplifted like after watching Empire Strikes Back or even Rogue One, for example. Everything felt muddled and grey and gloomy - and that's not the Star Wars I know and love. Is this really what a new generation wants? I sincerely hope not.</blockquote>

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