I watched TLJ about a week ago. I walked out of the theater with a kind of Meh feeling. It didn't blow me away, I didn't walk away talking about how great it was. In fact, it didn't do much of anything for me.
I'll watch it again when it's free. Just to see if there's something, some big something I'm missing but, as of now, TLJ has left me with the biggest MEH feeling I've had about any of the SW movies.
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Thanks for posting the links. I read both, and still think they miss the mark. Which is ok, this might be one of those things that people are just going to have to agree to disagree on. You say you think KK/Lucasfilm will course correct, but to my way of thinking, I don't see that they've really veared off course.

Rey being a no-body.
Love it. I'm not sure why so many people thought the force was limited to a very select few or only force families. Before Order 66 there were hundreds of Jedi from all sorts of different races, etc. And those are only the folks who chose to follow the jedi way of life, which is pretty strict. I have to believe there would be plenty of people out there in the Star Wars Universe, like Ahsoka, who ultimately decided the Jedi weren't for them. It's the real-world equivalent of having a very strong devotion and calling to God, but not wanting to give up family (or sex for that matter!).

Rey, and Broom Boy using the Force without any training
Doesn't really go against what we know... Where in any of the prior Star Wars movies etc, did it say you had to have extensive training in order to use the Force? You had to have extensive training to be a Jedi master, but not to use the force. Because being a Jedi master meant having control of all the other crap - outside of force use - that comes along with being a Jedi (control of emotions, etc. etc.) and living by the Jedi code. This is the part that Anakin constantly failed at. He even said to Amidala that he exceeded Obi-wan in the use of the Force and yet Obi-wan held him back from being a Jedi. Use of force is not limited to Jedi/Sith. Jedi/Sith is, and always has been IMO, just a label distinguishing the philosophy the force user subscribes to. I've always viewed the force in the Star Wars universe as a "gift" that some posses and others do not. Similar to some IRL have a gift of singing or athletics or mathmatics. Some are stronger than others and more naturally gifted, no question. But just because you aren't signed to a major recording label, doesn't mean you can't be the greatest singer that ever lived.

Luke not adhering to the Jedi ways any longer
I don't see this as a "shitting" on the OT as others do. For all intents and purposes, Luke was the last Jedi - in fact, my least favorite line in the whole movie was at the end when Luke says, "I will not be the last Jedi!" or whatever he said there... He doesn't know that Rey has taken the books, and I don't believe he meant to survive that encounter and finish Rey's Jedi (not force) training, so from his perspective, the "religion" known as the Jedi order, probably would be ending.

Regardless, I don't see it as a great betrayal of the OT for Luke to have come to a conclusion that the Jedi Order largely failed in it's mission and had many flaws in it's philosophy. Real life religions are often taking hard looks at the teachings of the past and modernizing them etc. Mormonism, Catholicism, etc. evolve. And some practitioners of those religions sometime step-away altogether because they grow to have different beliefs based on their own research and reflection. With absolutely no one else to guide him, Luke has had that kind of transformation. It doesn't dishonor the characters in the OT. You don't see Yoda getting all bent out of shape about it.

Who knows what happens next? I will be interested to find out. Does Rey try to recreate and re-build the Jedi-order using her own interpretations of the Jedi texts? Does she create something entirely different? Or does she simploy get what she can from the texts to help her in her fight against Kylo and the always tempting pull to the dark - and do nothing else with that information? Don't know. Looking forward to finding out.
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Semi-related to this topic. Now we know the true reason why Lucasfilm killed the EU. While I liked some of the stories and characters (I, Jedi, the Thrawn trilogy and Hand Duology and more), some of it was just dopey and dumb, hence its death.

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Upon announcing its acquisition of Lucasfilm and all its assets, Disney then decided to retcon the entire Star Wars Expanded Universe, leading to the formation of a new continuity consisting of all six original movies, The Clone Wars, and any material released from that point on. Future license content and existing EU material would also be lumped under the one umbrella (read: Star Wars Legends), as the Mouse House sought to blaze a path of its own.

That’s something that Lucasfilm Story Group member, Leland Chee, addressed in a recent interview with SyFy (via /Film), in which the executive pointed to the EU death of Chewbacca as a justification for Lucasfilm’s decision.

"For me it came down to simply that we had killed Chewbacca in the Legends — a big moon had fallen on him. Part of that [original decision] was Chewbacca, because he can’t speak and just speaks in growls, he was a challenging character to write for in novels. Publishing had decided they needed to kill somebody, and it was Chewbacca.

But if you have the opportunity to bring back Chewbacca into a live action film, you’re not gonna deprive fans that. There’s no way that I’d want to do an Episode VII that didn’t have Chewbacca in it and have to explain that Chewbacca had a moon fall on his head. And if we were going to overturn a monumental decision like that, everything else was really just minor in comparison."
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I found the EU to be very... young adult novelish.

The kind of books that authors don't put their REAL names on.
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It doesn't even matter. You can still read those stories and pretend they happened and enjoy them. I certainly do.
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I believe that the novelizations shouldn't be made totally obsolete. Star Wars Rebels is an example that good ideas or elements can always be included in the main canon
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I never read any of the Star Wars EU Young Adult Novels, mainly Timothy Zahn and a few others.
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You weren't reading the right ones.

So, we lose years of quality material for the fucking Wookie? That's great, Chin; just fucking great.
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I never read that novel but I did hear about it and thought it was weird.

What’s gained by killing Chewie, of all people?

It seems to me that it would have been easier to “retconn” that story rather than the entire EU.
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I don't think the Mouse wanted to deal with the Yuuzhan Vong storyline.
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My main problem with the movie was Finn. When he's about to sacrifice himself at the end.....I had that "oh shit" moment where I thought they were going to do something I didn't expect. And then boom. Dumbass chick saves him. :-)
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I hated that part of the movie.

He was finally doing something. He was sacrificing himself to save everyone else. And here comes dumbass chick and basically says "Screw everyone else. I want you to live."
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GRRL power!
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Well, we will need somebody to fuck shit up in the next movie..... probably too late to introduce another pure idiot major character into the trilogy at this point.
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