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Originally Posted by I_H8_Crawford
I must be in the extreme minority, but I enjoyed the Finn/Rose part... not the action specifically, but for the following reasons:
1) It was cool to see the rich elite in the Star Wars Universe - up until then it was always military vs poor rebels.
2) The idea that the elite weren't bothered by this war, and weren't bothered by planets literally being blown up as they made money on both sides
3) Most importantly - this arc was useless and unnecessary, and IMO that was the point. The entire theme of the movie was "sometimes doing the heroic thing is the WRONG thing to do" - Poe got nailed for it after destroying their fleet of bombers for one destroyer take down. Finn and Rose went to do the standard "heroic" thing, and not only were they unsuccessful, they ended up costing the lives of many of the rebels as it was Del Toro's character who alerted the FO to the small ships departing the main one.
Hard for me to put into words ATM, but I like the idea that TLJ took the trope of the plucky heroes overcome all odds and save the day, and turned it into the plucky heroes end up decimating their own side due to them not wanting to "play it safe"
Now, Snoke and Phasma going out like punks... I didn't like that so much. I agree with CC that Kylo Ren is a pretty boring villain.
Overall I give TLJ a big "meh" - that's how I felt when I left the theatre, and it's how I still feel.
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The concept of the scene itself was fine, it was the execution that was the problem. It was way too long and slap sticky. It just reeked of some corporate exec demanding the movie be more lighthearted.
The closest thing I can think of was the extended Jaba's Palace scene in the special edition of ROTJ. That scene was unnecessary and cringy. The scene in the TLJ was about 10x longer than that. Them adding in Bencio Del Toro's bizarre cartoony character was also unnecessary. He wasn't quite Jar Jar Binks annoying, but he was certainly of that same vein.
I get that the idea of a rich elite is important, but realistically in order to maintain that wealth you'd need an industry or property to do so. If you've got a governing power capable of blowing up planets running around rogue, that is very bad bad for business. The elite would have to be heavily involved in politics. That was actually the message from the prequels, with all the trade federation stuff (which was also poorly executed...but not as bad as the casino scene). Palpatine had to manipulate industry in order to gain political control.
You're presented with a very basic and superficial depiction of wealth in TLJ. You're supposed to accept that this class exists, but not think about how they fit into the bigger picture of a galaxy ruled by a heavy handed fascist regime...which TLJ doesn't actually depict as all that powerful, as they only have a few ships...that all end up getting destroyed in the film. Somehow they rule an entire galaxy though.
Maybe that's my problem with the movie as a whole, you're not supposed to think about anything. What separates a movie like the original Star Wars from the Jurassic Park franchise is that it creates excellent ground to think about things.