Well this is a pleasant surprise:
https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/10693648

You’re not alone, I liked it too. Still need to see Rise Of Skywalker.

I didn't hate it, and in fact it's one of my favorite subplots, but it was just very weirdly paced in an already cluttered movie.

Oh, for sure. The fact that so much of the film is this tense They're Right On Our Tail chase thing, and then there's this plot with a casino and DJ and whatnot, it can feel jarring. It's a huge ask, pacing-wise, to have a movie-long chase sequence that characters can leave and come back to, and that can make the side-plots... it can definitely feel disposable. It wasn't until after a few watches where I started to appreciate what it was saying. Structurally, though, it's hard to make it feel sewn in to what else is going on.

I really enjoy Last Jedi, both visually and for what it's trying to say as a movie, but my bigger wonder here is that somehow we're a page into Star Wars discussion and I haven't had to use my big book of "How not to get angry at the pixels on the screen" yet. This is a good sign.

https://challengerscomics.com/images...d/build28a.png

Mark your calendars: Today was the day that a group of people, from all over the world, came together in a thread on a message board to talk about Star Wars and stayed civil. Legends were born today. I'm not looking at the members of the TokuNation forums, I'm looking at the heroes of the TokuNation forums.

Whether the movie was good or bad, that Double Rider moment Rey and Kylo had was boss.

I've never been a Star Wars fan.
I've seen all the movies (Barring the latest one), but I never considered myself a fan. Don't really care about it. I enjoy the spectacle, sometimes the plot can be gripping, but as a whole, it's just never been a franchise that I've connected with.

So with that said, I honestly can't really see why there's so much vitriol over the Last Jedi. I felt it was just a fun action movie. Weirdly paced, but it was nice. A decent subplot, a tense main plot, and just an overall good time.

And yet, if you bring it up, people talk about how it ruined a franchise that, I feel has been mediocre at best since Return of the Jedi...

That... about sums it up. Your entire internal timeline is thrown off by how much is realistically happening: The Resistance is at best cruising for 12 hours, meanwhile about a week is passing on Anch-to, and then you have the events on Canto Bight.

I mean time being relative, it's not impossible for all of this to be happening within the span of the few hours the Resistance was on the run, but it is... A LOT to reconcile at once. Compare the similar situation in ESB, where we have two sets of events to focus on at once and thus it is much easier to get one's head around.

When it comes to Star Wars, I stick with the original 3 movies (non-special editions), the 2003 Clone Wars show, and several old EU books & games. I lost interest in Star Wars after 2007ish because of franchise burn out. Even after the prequels, you had those annoying Star Wars parodies from Family Guy and Robot Chicken. At that point, I was like "Can we give this series a rest please".