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Yeah, I really would like to see what the decision process was to hire that guy as the son of Han Solo and Leia Organa. ^^

Honestly, general audiences (not the angry mobs or the EU fanboys, like us) seem to like him. I can see the appeal and I genuinely enjoy the raw emotion he display, sometimes - it’s different from the empty way Hayden Christensen portrayed it (a distressed Force user), in the prequels.

The guy is a good actor, I cannot deny it.

I'm not impugning his acting ability, but rather the choice of an actor of his looks for the son of those two characters and, well, yeah, the story direction they took him in (especially in the first movie). I've come around on his characters actually since the first movie came out, because it was an interesting deconstruction. However, I think that having him destroy the mask and just run around abusing his subordinates for the lulz was a strange way to go in TLJ. Then again, I obviously disagree with a ton of story decisions in that movie, so why not one more?

I not only found it interesting, I actually found it engaging. And fun. But, to each their own, obviously.

As long as you don’t post any more pictures of him.

You're only making me want to post more, man...

Btw, TLJ just introduced us to their version of Anaheim Electronics, didn't they? I don't know how it's going on in the EU (or Legends as they're called now) but it sure took them long enough to acknowledge this. Maybe coz they wanted to paint the wars in SW as no longer a simple "good vs. evil" since Rogue One started.

No, in the EU the Rebels had their own production facilities. This is strictly an invention of the new movies.

It's cute watching this new SW canon wanting to play the Military–industrial complex angle. This kind of topic is something that Gundam has done in 1985 and have mastered it ever since. So, as a Gundam fan, watching SW dipping its toe in this territory just now is quite funny due to SW being the older space-faring action franchise.

That said, I don't know if Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica have touched and highlighted the Military–industrial complex topic or a theme where a corporation is selling weapons to both sides during a war before both SW & Gundam. I'm not an avid Trekkie so, please enlighten me.

I don't know, man, I found the whole "capitalism is baaad!" and "weapon manufacturers are baaad!" angle in TLJ to be ham-fisted. It's not that I don't agree with both things, but it seemed out of place in the kind of movie TLJ was.

^ Exactly. When I said "cute" in my previous post, I meant it as being a bit awkward coz I've seen Gundam did it way better than what we got in TLJ and I don't think SW is really the right franchise to do this kind of thing. But of course, this is a new canon we're talking about. A new canon where the story is more cynical, grounded, "realistic" and also a bit more stupid compared to the OT. I mean, if you can't explore complex things well, just make it simple like the OT or (to some degree) the PT.

You guys just didn't like it and, I guess, find it "cute" and "unrealistic". I get it.
Don't mind me enjoying and finding it awesome, tho.

Hey, no problem with me. I just needed to vent a bit. Life goes on and soon we get Black Panther and Infinity War.

Eh, why would I mind? Me, Tak & Magnuskn are just expressing ourselves out here. We're not here to ruin your fun. We're here to point out the problems with the movie.

That said, many people praised TLJ for taking risks. Well, taking risk doesn't automatically make the movie better. You have to know what you're doing and know how to serve your audience. If you don't know how to serve the audience then you'll just repeat Lucas' mistake in the prequels again. That's just how popcorn movie is, especially if you're working in an established franchise. You have to find balance between inventiveness and pleasing the crowd. If TFA is an example of a movie bending over backwards so hard to be a crowd-pleaser and sacrificing originality in its narrative then TLJ is the extreme opposite of TFA. TLJ is an example of a risk-taking franchise-outing done wrong and taken too far (not entirely wrong, but mostly wrong). Why do they have to give us the extreme versions from each spectrum? Why can't we have the moderation of a balanced movie? You wanna see good examples of risk-taker movies in a franchise? Look at Shin Godzilla, Casino Royale & Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Those three movies took tremendous risks by presenting their stories quite differently from the previous outings in the franchise. So, what's the difference with TLJ? well...

1. Shin, Casino & Rise did not shit on the original story & characters. That's for sure.
2. The new protags that they introduce are actually great. In Shin's case, the protags are all the open-minded and dedicated government personnels of Japan. The new Godzilla itself is also great.
3. They did not force any jokes, subversion, romance, feminism and PC-ness just for the heck of it.
4. No useless side-quest and most of the characters are used optimally considering the roles, duration and plot.
5. The writing & execution is simply better.
6. The three of them being reboots in one way or another helps because a reboot won't mess with the lives and achievements of the original heroes in the original story. If the reboot is bad, you can just ignore it like the Fembusters & Conan Momoa. Heck, look at Jurassic World. You can say anything about it but at least that movie did not screw up the lives of Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler & Ian Malcolm. Ironic, considering Ellie Sattler is now Holdo .

The challenges faced by those three movies are even greater than TLJ. Each one of those movies have to be good and fresh enough to jump-start a franchise. TLJ already had an easy start coz the foundation was already built by TFA. But what TLJ did is almost the equivalent of burning the bridge. Why? Coz it's just cool & subversive that way .

Honestly, I got to wonder how the film got to be the way it is. Did they just hand Johnson a blank check to do whatever he wanted, as long as the new character from TFA did survive? I'm really interested to see what JJ Abrahams is now going to do with what he got handed over. Essentially, the Resistance lost and Kylo Ren is the new overlord of the galaxy. 20 people scarcely will be able to do much, unless we make a time jump of at least 5 to 10 years. Not even to mention the awkwardness of "and then Leia died between movies".

Guys, you do realize that the vast majority of people actually have mild to almost no problems at all with the movie, right? On IMDB, which is a bit more difficult to "hack" than Rotten Tomatoes, the score for the movie sits at 7,6/10 (with a little bit over 224k votes).

The ones who do complain mostly comprise the vocal minority, most of the time. You do realize that, I hope. Of course, you can keep picking it apart all you want, but it's still VERY subjective and not at all a "definitive statement", either way.

Also: of course Rian Johnson wasn't simply afforded "carte blanche" - that's not how Lucasfilm does things (just ask Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, or Colin Trevorrow) - the story group must have had at least a broad stroke of where they wanted the story to go, as defined by themselves or J.J., himself.
Now, he'll come back and finish what he, himself, started.

Sure, but "many people liked it" does not objectively make all the plot holes and bad characterization go away, either.

And I was just asking if there was a chance Johnson wrote the script without input by others. Probably not, though, as you pointed out.

Alright, I gotta ask this: What do you think the OT Empire characters would have thought of their First Order counterparts? Tarkin about Hux, Vader about Kylo Ren, Palpatine about Snoke?

They wouldn’t have thought anything: they’re all dead.
Vader, more so than any of them (he did come back to the Light, in the end, let’s not forget that).

Well, my thoughts:

Tarkin: "Get the firing squad for this incompetent pillock... oh, not necessary anymore, he slipped on a banana peel straight into the main reactor. Now... set a course for Alderaan!"

Vader: "Noooooooooooooooooo!" <one-shots Emo Ren>

Palpatine: "Your concentration is lacking! There is only place for two Lords of the Sith and that is me and Lord Vader!" <electrocutes Snoke, who was distracted by monologueing about how great he is>

What I'm saying, compared to the OT villains, the NT villains are kind of weak bitches. Maybe Snoke not so much, but we'll never know, because he let himself get distracted way too easily.