FrankTrollman wrote:The sequels don't feel like More Star Wars, they feel like Fake Star Wars.
This.
One of the thing that bothered me the most when I watched
The Last Jedi was how much time they used to introduce secondary characters like Admiral Holdo or Benicio del Toro.
Sure, secondary characters like Boba Fett or Admiral Ackbar have been a major ingredient of Star Wars. The thing is, those characters all the fans know had at best a handful of line and you only got to learn their name by combing through the small lines in the end credits or by reading Extended Universe material.
In comparison,
The Last Jedi is giving copious screen time to each and every character. There is an entire scene for the sole purpose of introducing Rose's sister and killing her
right after. When your clock is ticking at 152 minutes for a theatrical release and you have to make The Yoda burst his lines like a Tarantino script to fit in, you ought to question yourself about the way you're using everyone's time.
Maybe I'm just too old and that's just how movie have to be paced for a young audience in this day and ages. On the other hand, I wonder if the old Star Wars movies are not also to blame, among others, for a disease that plague its sequels and a lot of other movies, from James Bond to Batman. As trilogies, both Star Wars and LotR could feature many characters through lengthy plots ; TV series also have a growing cultural impact, but with 900+ minutes seasons. And now we're stuck with screenwriters hired to write one movie who try to cram characters and plots that could easily fill up an entire trilogy.
Also, I'm still not sure whether the heavy-ended similarities between the First Order Trilogy and the Empire Trilogy is artistic homage or desperate attempts to imitate them. I felt like they tried so hard to bake a cake that tasted the same as the old ones, but guessed the ingredient list based on how the old cakes looked once served, ultimately failing to find the correct recipe (still better than the Republic Trilogy, which basically was "What recipe? It's the same chef!"). Yeah, sure, everyone has known for some decades now that Star Wars is the Hero's Journey with thin-veiled Nazi references. Not sure though everyone realized you can tick all the boxes in the Hero's Journey and still make a crappy movie though ("Every cake has flour!").
I don't know the recipe either, but if you ask me, one of the thing that made Star Wars was how everything suggested a larger universe outside the camera field as well as before and after. In that regards, the exact moment
The Last Jedi failed me was when they stated we were seeing the entire Resistance.
... and the moment they put a slow motion in a lightsaber duel.
... and also that moment Yoda bursted his lines.