I like The Last Jedi. I really do. But since the first time seeing it in theaters, there have been things that bother me that keep me from liking it more. Aside from my specific issues with the casino planet and the entire side quest, perhaps my biggest issue is this: I've just never been able to escape the feeling that, in putting together the main story arc with the fleet, somebody was like, "Hey, I saw this really obscure sci-fi series that I'm sure nobody else would have seen, and they had this episode where the entire fleet of good guys is running for their lives, but the bad guy fleet found out a way to track their lightspeed jumps, and shows up every 33 minutes to try to wipe out the good guys. I think we should do something like that. And don't worry about people making connections between any obvious similarities. I'm sure nobody ever saw that other show."
I look forward to a similar reflection of disappointment in 2 years with The Rise of Skywalker, the film you claimed had 'nothing wrong with it'
If that's what you take from my posts about either movie, then I don't think you really get what I have ever tried to say about either one. But nice job trying to troll my posts, I guess? *shrug*
I appreciated Johnson's movie much more than JJ's two. TLJ was the best of the three for me due to it being more daring with the characters, especially Luke. I get why people were turned off by it but I think what Luke did to trick Ren was a far greater display of power as a Jedi than being physically present to have a cool light saber dual....plus Luke becoming one with the Force was really well done.
But the handling of Snoke was horrible....and again, I've yet to see any reason to buy in to Rey being as powerful as she is. Nothing earned....just written with convenient little tropes.
All three movies spent more time and did a better job of showing Kylo Ren/Ben Solo's journey and that's why he was the best character from those three movies. His arc was 'earned'
To me, the JJ films were both better. But I still love all three, so that isn't a knock on Johnson's. In TLJ, I
loved the Luke/Rey arc. I also really liked the chase arc, for the most part. I just felt, and still do feel, that it just suffered from being too derivative of an iconic episode of an iconic show that, unfortunately for Star Wars, was just done better in that universe than it was in the Star Wars universe. When something like that happens, comparisons are inevitable, and the franchise that is less successful in doing that story is inevitably going to suffer the most from the comparisons.
As far as the character arcs that you mention:
Luke: With you 100%
Kylo: Yeah, it was satisfying. And I agree with you on it feeling
mostly earned. But I still felt like the motivation for him to turn around so quickly and so drastically wasn't quite set up as well as it should have been. The event itself--that duel with Rey and then the vision of Han--was awesome. But I needed to see more seeds of doubt in Kylo before that, and I didn't. He went from "I want to burn it all down because...I want to burn it all down" to "welp, I guess I
am Han and Leia's son after all, so..." I dunno. I know the pieces were there. I just didn't
feel it like I wanted to, so the turn didn't feel 100% justified. I felt the same way about Anakin's eventual turn in ep. III: the pieces were there, and I could intellectually understand what they were doing. But the execution of making me feel the
emotional impact justifying his turn was lacking, so I didn't really buy into it.
Rey: I hear you. And I'm just going to have to disagree. Yeah, her arc didn't feel "earned." But, to me, it didn't
need to. I'll just leave it at that.