"The Force Awakens" (with SPOILERS)

I love box office numbers, so I'm wondering what "The Last Jedi" returns for the weekend. I'm guessing it tops $250M domestically.

 

CNN Money is projecting about $215 million. Top 2-4 opening depending on final numbers. Force Awakens is No. 1 with $248 million.

 

Good stuff. I loved the balance between heavy and humor.

For me and Star Wars, it’s Empire and everything else. But I enjoyed this one a helluva lot.

I was in a crowded, rowdy theater. Will likely see it again to catch some missed moments.

People complained Force Awakens was just like the original. It definitely was a (purposefully) mirrored story of the hero’s journey.

Last Jedi takes a lot of leaps and risks. I think it worked well.

 

Pretty much everyone I know/trust on social media really enjoyed the flick.

Everything has people who hate it. Just not seeing it from peeps I know.

That, and twitter makes everything worse.

 

I dislike it more than I dislike TFA. The questions set up were brushed aside with little or no explanation. Forced humor. Overstuffed plot with an anticlimactic climax that feels like the filmmakers tried to do something profound just for the sake of profundity. Overstuffed plot (which in watching I gained an appreciation that Abrams avoided this).

But whatever. Glad y'all enjoyed it.

 

To each their own but I really enjoyed it. The plot was not that hard to follow, it was basically two stories with a couple of side plots to break things up. Otherwise we would basically had a bottle episode of a TV show wrapped up in a movie. Visuals were good. Humor was great. Action was fantastic. Yeah a few holes, but I feel like I was left with very similar feelings after Empire. I look forward to more people seeing it so we can really get spoilery with our breakdowns but I really enjoyed it.

But I will bring up this one point:

Spoiler: Spoiler question

So it looks like Ray is not a Solo or a Skywalker. They went a long way to setting you up for her and Kylo being siblings but instead they treated Ray's feelings about her parents as many of us had: as something more than they were. Are we going to learn that Kylo's pronouncement that her parents were nothing more than garbage people, dead and long forgotten, or will we learn he was really just trying to tap into her anger? I think it is safe to say she is not Luke's or Han's or Leia's daughter but could she be someone else who meant something to the rebellion?

 

That would be a cheat. He was telling her the truth.

The prior poster said they set up “questions” and then brushed them aside. They only became “questions” because in today’s post “LOST” internet culture, everyone thinks everything is a mystery to be unraveled. Snoke was the leader of the First Order. Full stop. And that’s enough. It used to be enough. Can you imagine how the early references to “the Emporer” would be treated now?

 

Please don't go into spoilers without the alert tag. At least until I get to see it.

 

I’m going to see it next week, but I just assume that, with something like this, the geeks won’t be happy until they suck the enjoyment out of the entire experience for everyone else.

 

I’m getting that vibe. Was it flawed? Indeed. Every “Star Wars” movie has to juggle characters and maintain B and C stories. But I’ve watched the prequels a lot recently, and this thing is “The Godfather” compared to those.

For me, seeing Luke Skywalker’s story continue was worth the 34-year wait. Those EU novels ruined things for a lot of people because now people want there to be deep connections and back stories and REVEALS! every five minutes. They build up this fan fiction mythology in their heads and get pissed when it doesn’t happen.

 

The EU novels are certainly a problem. Disney made a choice that was a slap in the face to anybody who read them, just tossing them out as canon. I understand the decision, but fans paid for a lie. Those stories were sold with the promise that they were part of Star Wars canon and then that promise was thrown out the window.

I read some of them, but not all. I simply look on it all as two separate realities, which is what Disney should have done. Allow the old EU continuity to exist, but also create a new one. It worked with Star Trek, at least when they told good stories. Comic books have done that as well. The MCU borrows quite a bit from Marvel Comics continuity, but it isn't beholden to it. Some of the diversions, such as the Mandarin in Iron Man 3, annoyed me as a fan, but not enough to ruin my enjoyment of the movies. The stories I read still (mostly) exist, so I can easily separate the two.

Disney missed the boat on that one, though given the financial success of the current route, it is hard to argue with the choice they made.

 

I agree with that, which is what I liked about how they handled her parentage. Like I said, it was their way of saying, "don't take it so seriously." The only reason her parentage became such a hot question was the audience.

To your point about Snoke, my wife asked me what his backstory was, and I said we have no idea, and that's OK. He's just the guy who leads the First Order. I imagine they could mine his backstory in an anthology film, but for these movies, it didn't really matter.