A. A. Ron

Where's @BloodBoal these days?

I'm curious what those of you who wait to see TLJ will think of it in the wake of the divisive reviews. To be fair though, it still seems that most audience members were not as bored with it as I was.

ESB > ANH > TFA > ROTJ > TPM > R1 > ROTS > AOTC > TLJ After a respectably strong start for Disney with TFA, I feel Star Wars has again begun to decline in quality with each new installment. Yes, I rank TLJ last overall. I do consider its acting to be generally better than that in the prequels and R1 and I believe the film to have additional merits as well -- notably in its use of Mark Hamill and John Williams. It just does not hold my interest as well as even the prequels do overall. For me as well. Imagination, characters and atmosphere. Nope, I completely disagree with everything you said here. TFA wasn't the most imaginative film, especially in terms of story, but its characterizations were leaps and bounds ahead of anything in TLJ -- which was apparently content to coast on nostalgia from previous films instead of making any real effort to endear me to its characters. Truly, the only aspects of this movie that I would call "imaginative" or "explorative" were the designs on Luke's island, the visuals on Crait at the end and the idea of Luke's projection battle with Kylo. I thought this last idea was neat, if problematic continuity-wise. The rest, probably a solid half to two-thirds of this film, I found to be an incoherent bore. And no, 30-45 exciting or thought-provoking minutes, if there were even that many, doesn't make up for the rest of the 155 minute runtime.

I'd want JNH or Howard Shore. Somehow I don't see Cameron going for a Zimmerite. I expect Simon Franglen. What if the score was composed by JNH and Simon Franglen together with a small army of orchestrators?

Reads exactly as I remember it. Well, maybe not quite: ALIEN NUNS (singing) How do you solve a problem like the Jedi? How do you strike a balance in the Force? How do you find the words that mean the Jedi? Some affable fuckups? Some well-meaning wimps? Or worse?

If Jay set something like this up, I'd be somewhat interested. The problem is it may well sell for $1,000 or more. At that point, I'd want the item sold again, so we can get some of our money back.

No score is worth that much complete and in high res surround sound.

Seems the opposite to me. It was dumb as hell -- sorry, I meant it was "alright as hell" -- but everyone I talk to seemed to love it.

Y'know, put off as I am with Star Wars, I'd want to see that.

I wouldn't be proud of it.

Riiiiiiight.

Honestly, as much as I love both Johns, I think I'd rather Powell get to do it all himself. He is the composer I'd want scoring the rest of the franchise. Well at least they can see it coming this time. God knows why they were so proud of TLJ.

Most of the audience will assume JW composed it all, just like they did with Rogue One. That is of course assuming they know who JW is in the first place.

That's just it, these tracks HAVEN'T BEEN "officially released." They're being specially distributed for voting members of the various organizations Disney hopes will shower The Last Jedi with nominations and awards this spring. As such these mp3s will doubtless be removed from Disney's websites at some point and there will be a note on the CD labeling it as the property of Walt Disney Company, which they can demand be returned to them at any time. Only the one commercially available soundtrack album is official at this point.

The microedits either match the film or remove content from previous scores. Old themes don't count as original score for The Last Jedi as they weren't composed for The Last Jedi. I thought FYCs generally used the actual cue names. Is there any reason to think "Old Friends" isn't the name Williams gave that cue at the recording sessions?

Is that a problem?

That doesn't even make sense, especially because the Empire has a different theme in ANH. Edit: Ninja'd.

TLJ will only be a grail if we don't get an FYC promo to flesh out the album. Even if we don't, things like Harry Potter and even older scores like The Eiger Sanction will be more important to me, for a couple years at least.

Alright as hell, you mean!

While that's true, I think that's still the best answer I can give you on this one. I personally thought TFA made up for its lack of imagination with good performances and solid production values. It wasn't surprising that the mouse would want to play it safe with their first couple outings. I suppose before I'd seen it I really thought the filmmakers were going to try to wow us with this film. As so often happens, I bought into the hype from the director, the actors and the marketing team. Then the critics chimed in giving the film nearly universal acclaim... And here we are with a film that half the audience disliked. Disney and the people who liked it are offensively incredulous, blaming internet trolls for the negative reviews. While I understand calling my assessment a cop out, I have no better explanation. Every disappointed fan I know of has a different point of view on what went wrong with this one. It really is fascinating. Well, if TLJ offers any indication of what this group thinks "fits" with the existing installments, I'm out. These people clearly don't like Star Wars for the reasons I did.

I think that legacy is elusive because fans were drawn to these films for wildly disparate reasons. Because of this and because of its ungodly large audience, each new installment will offend somebody. I suspect the biggest problems with this particular outing are the same as those of any modern franchise blockbuster -- it doesn't take itself seriously enough. Or it takes itself seriously at the wrong moments. That may not be a fair complaint to make, but fan complaints, just like the fan praise aimed at this movie, are largely emotionally based and have little to do with true objectivity.

It's a great score! I just like the other 7 more. Just one more Johnny! You can do it!

A boring and wholly unfounded opinion. Most of us wanted to love it. I personally very much enjoyed TFA, redundant though much of it was. I've just realized something else wrong with the timeline of this trilogy. In TFA, half the galaxy doesn't even seem to take the First Order all that seriously -- that's apparently why "the Resistance" is so small. I guess this was all supposed to change when the bad guys took out 5 key republic planets with the Starkiller. The opening crawl for TLJ says that the First Order has basically taken over the whole galaxy now, with only the tiny Resistance to oppose them... But no time has passed between the two films, so how could they possibly have conquered everything? Doesn't make a lick of sense.

Since ROTJ, you mean. TFA toned a lot of that down and gave me hope it would stay down. Oh well.

Yeah, no. If anything, this film was too much like a Marvel film and not enough like a... I don't know... Star Wars film. Where was the tension? The suspense? The menace from the bad guys? Rollicking adventure for the good guys (looking at you Poe & Finn)? Retread or not, TFA gave me enough that I could let myself care for Rey, Finn, Poe and little BB-8. This movie gave me very little of that and just kinda coasted on my love for these characters which was earned in other films. The editing and pacing was a mess -- throughout. At least half of the film was a complete waste of time -- basically everything Poe, Finn, Rose and Holdo got to do. The rest was dotted with sub par dialogue and prequel/fan fiction level writing -- space Leia, ghost Yoda, BB-8 inexplicably using his head to fix an X-Wing, BB-8 inexplicably saving Finn & Rose by hijacking an AT-ST. And boy does the film drag on Canto Bight and again before the characters finally arrive on Crait. The only thing more baffling to me than how this script got approved is that it seems to be loved by fans and critics alike. I wanted to adore this movie and after loving TFA for what it was, I thought that would happen. Thank God we at least got a good JW score and a nice coffee table art book out of the production.