Meh I'm not convinced that 2+2ers are the ones complaining.

ChrisV for information

I feel like the opinion ITT is pretty representative of longtime fans online, with like 2:1 negative reviews. And a lot of the positive ones are something like "this part wasn't very good, and the jokes are pretty corny, and I hated this other subplot, and I probably won't pay to see it again in theatres, but anyway 9/10 better than Empire".

RT audience score is down to 49%, and IMBD rates it as worse than every other Star Wars aside from TPM and AotC.

The people leaving reviews on RT are particularly savage. Probably >75% rating it as rotten.

The positive reviews (where they exist) from the public writ large and relatively high Cinemascores, etc. are somewhat understandable: any 300 million dollar budget sci-fi movie with big action set pieces, some characters / lore people are familiar with, the John Williams score, etc. etc. is going to play well-enough with audiences that people won't be immediately repulsed.

So let's put it this way: if you're arguing the positive reviews are pretty thin -- a mile long and an inch deep -- I agree.

A historical analogy: I'm old enough to remember the immediate The Phantom Menace reactions. And there were a small, vocal minority of people who were adamant it was pretty garbagey, but *most* people came away with a "oh, that, that was...sure something. Pretty OK we guess?" Critics didn't savage it.

It wasn't immediately thought of as a consensus, critical flop the way it is now. That idea took time to gestate and harden, and I think actually only cemented into pop culture after Attack of the Clones, once people realized the really bad stuff in TPM wasn't a fluke. In my cultural memory, it was really Attack of the Clones that had people go back and retroactively dismantle TPM, once it was apparent that boring political exposition, CGI critterization of every scene, wallpaper acting, merchandising, boring story stuff, etc. was going to be a feature. It was after Attack of the Clones that everyone realized the prequel trilogy was the drizzling ****s and wrote it off, and went back to TPM and re-scrutinized it. As I recall, Attack of the Clones was so bad, it was the first time I remember being going back to Return of the Jedi to be like -- oh, look, see, all the hallmarks of Lucas laziness, focus on toy sales, repetitive themes, bad dialog, etc. are apparent there too.

Anyway, on the whole, I think it was a bit unfortunate people really **** all over the prequels at that moment since I think Episode III is better than it's given credit for, redeemed the whole thing a bit, even though it sort of has a lot of the same failings.

That isn't to say that I think The Last Jedi is doomed to be thought of as a failure, long-term. But I do think if Episode IX is 'divisive' in the same ways, just a bunch of empty JJ Abrams Mystery Boxes layered into the already seemingly empty ones, pointless subplots, undeveloped characters, and generally unsatisfying -- I do think people will retroactively deride TLJ and TFA, actually, and you'll see a critical and public re-examination and everyone will reach some consensus the whole thing was bad. Which might be too bad in the other direction, because I think TFA is pretty good if you ignore TLJ doesn't build on it at all, and a lot of the TFA plot might in fact be pointless, and the stuff you enjoyed was kinda ruined by the rest.

That is to say: I don't think the initial positive critical reactions and general audience pleasing nature of TLJ are going to withstand long-term critical scrutiny, particularly if Episode IX is kinda **** too. *Some* of the positive professional critical reactions are absolutely because Lucasfilm let Rian Johnson troll the audience; that's OK for critics to conclude, but that's not going to build to long-term audience endearment of the product. And *some* of the general, public-at-large positive reaction is simply because of the generic Star Wars motif stuff (setting, theme, sci fci action, music) that fades pretty fast and won't carry it's legacy for long -- see TPM.

Not sure that's an accurate take. I remember a big backlash to Phantom Menace at the time. Its RT score is 55%. It's not like this one that unaccountably is still sitting up at 90%. I went and read some of the very positive reviews to see if I could see what people liked about it and I'm just baffled. It's like they saw a different movie.

I did find this excellent, mostly negative review. I'll just excerpt this:

Read it all though. I endorse it in its entirety, with the exception of where he says that every scene with Luke in it was good.

Actually I'm also going to excerpt this, which captures perfectly my annoyance at the intrusion of politics into the plot:

I think that nails it. Political messages in films are like morals in films - they're good and lend a film depth when well-handled, they're repulsive and eye-rolling when awkwardly tacked on and poorly handled. Examples of well-handled political messages in sci-fi films off the top of my head include WALL-E and District 9.

It tends to be the case in internet political arguments (in comments sections and on social media) that it doesn't really matter whether an argument makes sense or holds water, it just matters if it has the right conclusion. I wonder whether a similar thing is going on with critical reactions to politics in film. I saw a number of positive reviews making reference to the STRONG ROLE OF WOMEN in the movie, with women putting Poe in his place and whatnot. This is appropriate material for some kind of meta-analysis of the film, but it doesn't belong in a review imo because it has no bearing on whether the film is actually any goddamn good. It sort of reminds me of those reviews that come out from Christian groups where whether a film is good or not is graded partly on how wholesome its messaging is.

btw, I think The Last Jedi vs The Phantom Menace for the title of most boring Star Wars film is a real heavyweight fight. I'll need another viewing of TLJ to sort it out. At least in TPM, the things happening on screen are usually consequential to the plot. TLJ has entire sections that are not merely boring but also totally irrelevant.

Boring is a difficult concept. Jar Jar Binks fills me with such rage that I can't, in all honest, say I'm bored watching TPM. Similar to TLJ. If I were to go and watch a generic disney film I'd allow myself to switch off and just get bored, but I was unable to do that with this film, the many problems kept on stopping me.

I remember my first watch of TPM. I went away satisfied, but what really saved the film was the confrontation between Maul and Obi Wan/Jin - it's definitely in the top 3 lightsabre duals in SW (I'd probably go 1, Luke/Vader I; 2, Maul/Obi Wan+Jin; 3, Mace/Sidious).

I watched each of the prequels in the theater and I was never even close to as bored as I was during last Jedi. They weren't good but they weren't boring either.

I was ridiculously bored during TLJ. The only plot and character I carried about at all was Rey.

Pretty good review bit.

I definitely remember being wayyyy more pumped about TPM right after seeing it...there was just this whole "zomg Star Wars is back after 16 years" vibe that kinda took over everyone's brain. That slowly faded over the next couple of days, it was when I started thinking about when I'd want to go back and see it again (I mean I saw each of the OT at least 3x in theaters when I was a kid) that I realized that I had no desire to. Other than the final lightsaber duel there was literally not one scene I wanted to see again.

To this day I've only rewatched the movie once, and that's because my kids wanted to see what the deal was with the prequels (and it didn't make them want to see the other two, which I've still only seen once).

Here is one rundown of why some people hated the movie. It gives five main areas of criticism: too much progressivism, the jokes are too jokey, the movie is uninterested in fan theories, individual plot lines/moments don't make sense, and the characters' journeys aren't what was expected.

And ignores the main reason. It's a bloated, boring mess.

All I ask is make a good movie, with a story I can get into. TLJ fails miserably in that respect. 'I, Tonya' is a very good movie. It makes me sad to draw that distinction, because I have loved Star Wars from the beginning.

Looking back, as I believe I've said before, the Ewoks is when it started to slip. "wt actual f, teddy bears? **** you, Lucas" I remember my thought line clearly.

Jar Jar sealed it. **** Lucas, he sucks, now his franchise sucks.

Rogue One brought me back. There you go, that's how you do this.

So I feel particularly bitter that TLJ returns to suck form, even though it's no longer a Lucas product. And I don't trust The Mouse.

SW is dead to me now. That hurts like losing a pet.

Edit: TFA sucked because it was too, 'wow, Star Wars is cool!' but that didn't surprise me because Abrams had already trashed Star Trek the same way.

Of those 5, only "individual plot lines/moments don't make sense" are what actually makes it a bad movie.

"Too much progressivism" and the "jokes are too jokey" depend entirely on your political views and sense of humor; "Movie is uninterested in fan theories" is just a way of hand-waiving some poor story telling and "characters' journeys aren't what was expected" is not the same as "no character development" or "Characters behaving inconsistently", which is a major issue with the film.

Not necessarily. At least not with political views. I'd consider myself a fairly left-leaning liberal (The European liberal, which is based on the worl "Liberty", not the murican liberal, which is based on the word "AIDS"), and I can't stand shoehorned politics in movies, TV-Shows, you name it.

Even if I agree with most of what the producer/director shoehorned in to make brownie points with his in-crowd, it's still shoehorned in and it's a massive turn-off for me.

In this context, "too much progressivism" means "too many characters who aren't white males".

some of you guys are investing way too much time bitching about movies that you absolutely don't have to watch

There was definitely some politics. There always is. The arms dealer stuff def was cringeworthy preachy. By comparison I didn’t mind “this is how democracy dies... to thunderous applause” from Padme

The cast being diverse is only noteworthy because it’s so damn noteworthy. As in, if other movies weren’t so predominantly white and secondarily male, we’d never notice but we are conditioned so much that it’s like OMG they have an agenda with these women and two token black and Asian characters!

.

An indictment of TLJ haters ITT as aspie nerds with too much time on their hands would probably carry more weight if not delivered by a dude with a Star Wars avatar and 10,000 posts in OOT who decided to do a posting analysis of a Star Wars thread.

I don't hear anyone complaining about Alien being too progressive because Ellen Ripley is not a white male. Ellen Ripley just happens to be a well-written character who's also a woman.

But if a character's entire persona is "I'm not a white male, and that's why the creator put me in this movie", then yeah, shoehorned in and gtfo with this ****.

Lol I mean that’s such a stretch and basically making my point.

lol did you watch the movie yet?

Arms dealer stuff and "we saved the animals that's all that matters" were so bad. Especially while their friends are about to die.

Yep. The problem here is that Disney wanted to a checklist of every minority in the film and then added characters until they could check every box. Not surprising that they ended up with a bloated mess and several characters who have nothing to do that is relevant to the story.