Gatsby77

I really liked that TLJ didn't take the obvious, expected (or easy) way out -- in that scene or many others. And no -- at the end of Episode VII we had _no idea_ how Luke would react to Rey. A lot of the griping I see isn't actually about contradictions between VII and VIII, but rather that fanboys imagined how they wanted things to go in VIII, only to see their theories dashed. - Luke had every right to throw the lightsaber away and turn his back on Rey (as I've stated before, not much different from how Yoda reacted to Luke upon first meeting -- teasing him and going home to cook dinner) or how-- you know, Luke previously threw his lightsaber away in two different battles with Vader. - Even if we believe Kylo is telling the truth, having Rey be "nobody" is a strong choice -- as noted, Anakin was nobody as well. And Rey herself told Maz she was nobody all the way back in one of the trailers for Episode VII. - Leia exhibited her Force sensitivity as far back as Empire, before we even knew she was related to Luke. - Aside from the fact that we got no backstory on the Emperor in the original trilogy, positioning Kylo Ren as the true big bad -- and one who failed to be redeemed as Vader was after murdering his master -- makes it far more interesting than simply rehashing the Palpatine-Vader relationship. (Although -- personally I would have preferred the fan theory that Snoke was not Darth Plagueis but actually Skywalker himself -- again, this goes to the point that when we meet him we have _zero_ idea how Luke has changed in the intervening 30+ years since Jedi -- so his actions didn't seem out-of-character to me, given what we're told transpired in the interim. Oh, and he's a mopey, self-centered farmer? You mean - exactly like he was in Star Wars?) - I'm also convinced a lot of folks are mad that Luke was killed off when Leia wasn't. We were led to believe Leia would die in this chapter -- both from the trailer and Carrie Fisher's untimely passing. That she didn't (and Luke did) was probably the biggest twist in this film, and one for which I applaud the writers and producers. These points (and more) have been more eloquently stated by hundreds of reviewers (both fan and professional) -- but I wasn't swayed by them alone -- I formed the bulk of my opinion having simply watched the film.

Nah. You're right - it might only make $1.2 billion worldwide. You know, like Iron Man 3 did (spoiler: The Last Jedi will surpass Iron Man 3's $409 million domestic total tomorrow), and Disney's crying in their milk about that one. The Last Jedi did what was necessary for the franchise - and did it with style and panache -- and, contrary to many of the assertions by posters in this thread -- very little of what what shown in Episode VIII contravened anything shown in Episode VII, or was contrary to how a 30 years-later Luke might have behaved. Episode IX will do just fine. As I've noted before, better men than I have explained why and how The Last Jedi is brilliant from a story perspective in detail. Thus, I point y'all to Matt Prinke's answer on Quora to the question: Doesn’t “The Last Jedi" backlash remind you of Indiana Jones 4, which received a "Certified Fresh" critic score higher than that of "Gladiator" and "Interstellar" but was hated by fans?

Scott Mendelson's latest: How Can 'Star Wars' Recover From 'Last Jedi's Rave Reviews, Huge Grosses?

Compared to the difference between Jedi and Episode 1? Really??

Or that Man of Steel outgrossed Justice League four years ago with $668m worldwide.

This is epic. The question gives me pause because my gut says Batman or Superman (for some reason I prefer 1-100 of those to their counterparts in Action or Detective - and I was actively working on # 2-100 of both for awhile). But i'm close to finishing my main quest of the last 5 years -- Gold Key Magnus # 1-46 in 9.4 or higher. I'm currently just one book away, with # 37 the lone CGC 9.2. But only a single $.15 variant and zero high-grade Whitmans so far.

Hey - quit speaking ill of yesterday's 13th-place movie!

Now now, Bosco. You got the other thread locked when you started attacking each of us personally. (Forget what you said about Paperheart but you called my actions that of a "dirtbag.") For doing nothing more than continually calling you out for intentionally posting misleading financial data re. Justice League's budget. And for the record, Justice League doesn't need my help to focus on thie negatives -- the critical, boardie, public opinion, and financial results speak for themselves on that point. Still - I feel your pain. I thought The Last Jedi was masterful -- clearly a view not shared by the bulk of the boardies.

Don't let Bosco get to you. He's been trolling in defense of this film since the beginning -- and got the last thread shut down due to his ad hominem attacks.

Good news! Justice League only lost 10% from Wednesday to Thursday this week. It's holding really well at ~$365,000.

Good find. Nice quote from Lucas at the end:

Yes - Rob Cain's take, which I highlighted a dozen or so posts back. But then Scott Mendelson posted essentially a rebuttal today: https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2017/12/22/star-wars-box-office-last-jedi-is-2nd-fastest-grosser-ever-behind-force-awakens/#39a64b57cf44 His take: Its $296.5m domestic total in 7-days is the 2nd-best week's total ever, behind TFA's $390.8m If it follows the same path as TFA, it ends with $711m domestic / $1.6 bn. total (# 3 domestic). If it falls off drastically, it ends with just $650m domestic / $1.3 bn. worldwide (i.e., # 8-9 all-time vs. # 5)

Then what do you mean by "social justice?" As noted by Comix4fun above, the original trilogy was all about social justice -- a small group of rebels fighting to prevent the spread of a totalitarian, fascist government across the galaxy. And if you're referring to the theme from the casino scene, with its focus on the 1%'ers being amoral arms dealers willing to (gasp!) sell to both sides, that's little different than Lando Calrissian's actions in Empire, when he sold out Han and crew to the Empire when they offered him "a better deal."

I'm confused. As others noted above, social justice has _always_ been a core pillar of the Star Wars films, original and prequel trilogies included. Unless by social/political agenda you're referring to insufficiently_thoughtful_persons on the "alt right" who are protesting how the new trilogy includes more women and minorities in lead roles...

I'd like to see a Superman movie without Luthor or Zod as a villain. I think Metallo's probably too derivative of other screen comic book big bads at this point, but what does a brother need to do to see Braniac and/or Bizarro on the big screen?

Forbes' Rob Cain is calling it a flop: He noted this morning that its daily % holdovers are collapsing faster than any of the previous eight Star Wars movies. So, he thinks it's on track to do *just* $1.2 billion worldwide, a "catastrophic" result after The Force Awakens' $900 million domestic /$2 billion worldwide. Yesterday, Forbes' Scott Mendelson was more sanguine, predicting "oh noes!" it won't cross $1 bn. worldwide until New Year's.

My understanding is that Snyder started as their guy (under the apprenticeship of Nolan for Man of Steel) but that Geoff Johns was slated to take over in the Kevin Feige role after the relative underperformance of BvS. Johns was elevated from Executive Producer (which often means consultant / producer-in-name-only) to full-on Producer for Justice League, then subsequently de-moted from that Kevin Feige-esque role after Justice League's bombing. And folks who just blanket hate on Snyder (myself included) it's worth remembering he was a producer and co-writer on Wonder Woman as well.

I don't think it's that the general public is tired of comic book movies. Look at the reception to Homecoming, Wonder Woman, Logan, and Thor:Ragnarok this year alone. I don't even think Justice League's poor reception is because folks thought it stunk -- because most folks didn't see it and thus aren't able to make that judgement. Rather, I think Justice League's poor performance is a lagging indicator that the general public didn't like BvS or Suicide Squad -- so they simply stayed home rather than see Justice League (which is arguably better than Suicide Squad). Likewise, if folks _truly_ don't like The Last Jedi, that won't show up in its box office results -- because they will have had to seen it to make that judgment. The public's (potential) distaste for The Last Jedi will show up in the box office for Episode IX if a large swath of people simply stay home.

This. I really dislike the Justice League film (and Suicide Squad and BvS) because all three of them should have been easy slam dunks, and instead we got mediocrity, utter mess, and mediocrity. You've already got storyboards and amazing source material for all three storylines -- from Frank Miller, to John Ostrander, to 60 years of goodness with JLA including epic recent runs by Geoff Johns... And instead we get weak sauce, despite oversight by Johns himself. Epic failure with what should been so so easy to get right.

Latest from Scott Mendelson at Forbes: In which he mocks the minority of nerds who hate the movie. Gems like: The meat of his sarcastic diatribe is here: Interestingly, the Birth.Death.Movies article he cites does a deep dive into the negative audience outliers at Rotten Tomatoes and MetaCritic (compared to audience ratings at ComScore or Cinemascore or IMDB - which vets its users far more carefully because it sells that data to Pro subscribers). In his random sample of 100 negative reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, the author found only 6% were prior users there, with 61% being new users (who signed up specifically to register their disapproval of The Last Jedia) and 33% having no profile anymore (meaning that they signed up to down-vote The Last Jedi and deleted their account).

No. 1) You're guessing that they all source the 45 day-old WSJ article rather than credible subsequent research by reporters in Hollywood and in financial pubs like Forbes that could (gosh!) account for how the narrative has changed since. 2) As far as I could tell, the last source for "$250 million" was a Variety article from Nov. 19. vs. 25+ pieces from credible outlets (including 5 from Variety itself) since then citing at least "near $300 million" if not "more than."

Not quite. Let's try: Bosco believes a citation from a single WSJ article from 45 days ago and a single Variety article from 35 days ago that each hinted at "near $300 million," while ignoring multiple subsequent citations that cite "$300M or more" from: Deadline Variety IMDB Wikipedia* Forbes * ironically, Wikipedia cites $300 million using multiple sources including that exact same WSJ article Bosco is using to justify his "$250 million + $25 million reshoots = $275 million" estimate.

Umm...that was Han.

I'm not simply trying to be contrarian - I genuinely thought the film was great -- and easily (by far) better than the first two prequels -- probably even better than Jedi. First, it was a necessary step in the evolution of the Star Wars saga. One of the posters a few pages back was right -- there's no true hero here. And all of our heroes -- in some way or another -- failed. Luke failed his student, Kylo Ren. Rey failed in her quest to either bring back Luke or be fully trained by him Finn failed in his mission to secure a codebreaker and again to stop the Death Star cannon For all his bravado, Poe's multiple fighter runs all failed -- costing the Resistance all of its bombers and most of its pilots and ships in the process Second, I'm curious if folks have bothered to read some of the critical reviews. These are folks who are paid to write long articles explaining why a particular film is good or bad, and defend that opinion. Here again is that Forbes piece I cited earlier. It notes 12 times that The Last Jedi deviated from the expected (and easy) choice -- and why each of those choices contributed to it's ultimately being a better film. I don't agree with all of Rian Johnson / Kathleen Kennedy / Lucasfilm's choices, but I think many of them were inspired, and collectively they were necessary to move the Star Wars universe forward.

This. The evil was already in Kylo - even if Luke had done nothing. Yes - Kylo's path might have been changed/accelerated when he awoke to see Luke (supposedly) about to strike, but Kylo was already so strong with the Dark Side that Luke was there in the first place. There's moral ambiguity there. Nothing is cut-and-dried or simple.