Ask Lemmy

No, I stand by the fact that it is a good movie. Just because it has some flaws doesn't make it universally bad. It's not even close to the worst movie in the franchise either. Rise of the Skywalker grabs that without hesitation (That outright is a TERRIBLE movie) but the Prequels are all significantly worse in both writing and direction than The Last Jedi. Revenge comes a lot closer and I'd say personally is tied with TLJ on coherence. George Lucas was a moron. He never had a plan but people constantly think he did. Within all three of the OT movies alone he keeps changing everything from characters to lore. The Prequels got worse because he had no one to temper him. That being said, this is about TLJ.

That being said, there's no issue with the writing there in my opinion. Leia and Rey do have a touching moment, sure, but that was in the Force Awakens not The Last Jedi. Leia also straight up never gives her that bracelet on screen because JJ Abraams is a complete and utter fuckwit. The scene in TLJ is between Finn and Leia where Leia reveals the beacon to Finn. He asks how Rey would find us and Leia and shows him. He says "A cloaked binary beacon." She says "To light her way home." You are right in that the scene does continue immediately into the First Order tracking them but how they tracked them was completely different. The beacon tells Rey (and only Rey) where Leia is when tracked. But Snokes vessel outright tracked them through lightspeed itself. They didn't check the location of her and then jump to her. They actively followed the fleet through hyperspace itself without needing end coordinates. This was shown later in the movie and Leia directly says it by saying "They tracked us through lightspeed.* Something that hasn't been shown to be possible on screen.

Yeah. They're in the same scene but that wasn't an accident. There wasn't people behind the scenes who were that monumentally braindead. That scene was written that way with the purpose of making people think that the two would be related. Now I will give you that it's not well written how they use that throughout the rest of the movie but it was put there on purpose. It was to make people doubt Leia (supporting him through the Poe arc, which worked way too well despite the fact that he did not have a singular leg to stand on with his entire argument despite everyone and their mother thinking he was right) and seem like the clear and obvious fix. They completely dropped the ball there, I admit. But overall I didn't have a problem with that scene specifically. Just how they used that scene. Especially considering that tracking device was never actually used. Seriously. They added in and then never really used it. I don't know if it ended up on the cutting room floor or what. The intention was clearly to fuck with the audience because Rey doesn't ever find the Resistance using that bracelet. She meets up with Kylo on Snokes ship and Kylo is the one who gives her the coordinates.

The logical writing progress would have been to have Finn doing his thing (that arc, I grant you, is fundamentally worthless. The whole casino segment is a waste of screentime and only manages to produce a couple of light gags which all focus on BB-8) and Poe advancing on Leias position during his mutiny. He gets to Leia and gets the bracelet, destroys it and they jump to lightspeed. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief and then the First Order shows back up anyway, having tracked them. Holdo has a scene of "I told you so", probably just by staring at him without saying anything, and then everyone freaks out on what to do. Leia is still out and Holdo is in command so she decides to try and ram them with the last lightspeed jump of the cruiser that they somehow manage to movie magic in the last second from all the X-wings, life support, yadda yadda. Forcing the rest to evacuate to Crait. Movie continues on as normal.

The issue to me isn't that the writing didn't make sense. It did. My issue was that they expected the audience to connect too many dots on their own. Ended up with people making different connections than were intended. Too many things were left on the cutting room floor while stuff like that Casino segment was allowed to go on for way too long. Or the kiss between Finn and Rose which was just fucking bizarre. So much so that even Finn in that scene has a look on his face like "What the fuck are you doing?" But with all the issues that TLJ has? I still find it to be a way more coherent story and more interesting one than either of the first two Prequels. And Rise of Skywalker because that movie is idiotic. Like a good script doctor could have fixed it and made it a decent movie but they made so many weird fucking decisions and bizarre writing choices that literally nothing about it makes sense. What pisses me off is people then blame Rian Johnson for the problems of Rise too when half of that was on the studio for not being able to make up their mind on directors/writers (that movie has way too many writers) and the other half falls squarely on the fanbase for reacting as strongly and negatively as they did to the first two sequels.

91% of film critics agree it's a good movie. That's more than feel that way about Return of The Jedi. And way more than any of the prequels.