Umm They knew where the clones came from but not exactly who ordered them. They assumed a jedi master did it because that was the only info they had at the time. They needed the troops because they were in a war. They weren't gonna stop everything and form a committee to investigate over a couple of years into it. 

None of that stuff is clear in the movie, the writing in the prequels is dog shit. I still don't even know what the hell the Trade Federation even wanted, and beyond that not sure why anyone in the audience is supposed to care. It's all poorly done. 

Don't get me started on Anakin going from relatively good guy to wholesale mass murder of Jedi children in a space of like 3 hours or so, lol. 

And yes, Shia LeBeouf and Megan Fox are more believable as a couple than Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman. That is a horrendously bad "romance" and bad thing about that is it's not like the romance is some sub plot or "B story" that can be ignored, it's the entire reason we're given for Anakin's turn to the Dark Side, lol, so if that element doesn't work, his general turn and the whole point of the prequels doesn't work at all. It would be like Titanic if the romance aspect of the movie didn't work, then the entire movie really doesn't work. 

That's a character type that they're talking about and not a gender. Again, there's no need to falsely accuse people of being sexist especially when you can't demonstrate how they are when they explained their line of thought well enough to dispel that nonsense claim. 

Episode 3 was horribly flawed but the difference for me was it was still entertaining (at least parts of it). Last Jedi just felt boring, preachy, pointless, and glum the entire time. I'll certainly give you Ep 1 and 2, those were abominations. Ep1 with the overly convoluted political plot points and subplots that go nowhere as well as Jar Jar *cringe*, and Ep2 with its lame ass love story.

Come to think of it - I think somebody already said it here, or maybe it was a different topic, but only Star Wars movies to really blow my mind were A New Hope and Empire. Even Return of the Jedi was.. meh, "alright" but it had some lame moments. The series as a whole has just been a roller coaster of mostly crap and mediocrity since then, from the films, to TV, to books, to games and EU stuff.. I'd say it's time for Star Wars to end, ironically just like Luke said of the Jedi in TLJ.. As I said before, we need a fresh new epic series to disrupt the industry much like Star Wars did 40 years ago. The ironic thing is that Star Wars now IS the very industry that it once revolutionized.

Well, he killed that whole village of sand people, kids and all over his mom being killed when he was still on the light side. In the moments before he finally turns to the dark side, he contributed to a jedi master's death by not striking down that sith. That broke the camel's back so to speak. He sides with the sith to save his wife and he goes all in. So yes, it makes sense how he was killing jedi kids not that long after.  

Yeah, 

8:30 AM - Wake Up, Have Breakfast with Padme, Cuddle and Argue Over Who Loves Each Other The Most. 

1:30 PM - Mess Around With R2

6:30 PM - DEAR GOD, I'M KNEE DEEP IN MURDERED YOUNGLINGS. 

lol. They had *three* movies to tell this story and this is what they come up with. 

The prequels biggest sin actually is just the general tone I think. None of it works as a "drama", from the very get go it feels like a cartoon and that tone continues through all three movies. Never once is there a character that feels like a remotely real human being, it's all just a live action cartoon with 2 dimensonal characters that have zero personality. To counter that, the CGI characters are all bufoons with "personality" turned up to 11. So you have human characters with no personality and cartoon CG characters that are annoying or silly all constantly. It's a terrible mix, you can't take the prequels seriously. 

I didn't like everything in The Last Jedi but simple things like Luke pausing to say "Where's Han?" and how that scene is acted/shot feels 100000x more real. When Luke sees Leia and she says "I changed my hair" and it makes Luke smirk, real people actually talk and joke like that, prequels had none of that. When Rey says "You had father! Who gave a damn about you!", again that works. There's some actual human emotion behind that. Star Wars is general is really reliant on the charisma of Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, and even Mark Hamil. Remove that and you got problems. 

Again he killed a whole village of sand people including the kids, women, and old people over his mom's death. He was being groomed to fall to the dark side by a sith lord since he was a kid. Of course, he was gonna flip out worse when his wife's life was on the line. it wasn't something that happen in a span of a few hours. 

It's true, Anakin's turn to the dark side - as was the case with virtually every other interesting storyline in the prequels - was quite badly executed.

In this particular case, a lot of the failure in the way Lucas portrayed it, was the way he put so much emphasis on Anakin's obsession over Padme's death (and acting like a general crying little bitch), that it completely overshadowed his inner conflict about the teachings of the Jedi, and Windu's ultimate betrayal of those ideals. A Jedi doesn't use the ends to justify the means. Murdering an unarmed man - regardless of his influence, power, etc - because it is likely to save future grief, flies completely in the face of what the Jedi are supposed to stand for. This is a complete exposal in Anakin's eyes. He's being told by the second highest of his order, that the teaching of the Jedi don't matter, if the stakes are high enough. So now, in Anakin's mind, if the ends justify the means, why NOT simply go to the extreme? Why not simply do away with this ineffective, hypocritical order, and instead rule the galaxy with an iron fist?

This comes across better in the novelization of episode 3, if I recall correctly, but obviously Lucas wasn't able (or willing) to put it on screen that way....instead continuing the trend of Anakin being portrayed as a whiny, weak, crying, susceptible individual who was just hoping the Sith lord that had been manipulating the galaxy all his life could perform a miracle for him. Which of course, isn't exactly the way anyone wanted to see the birth of Darth Vader.

Well, I was waiting to update going into the weekend so BOM could post their predictions. Strangely they haven't posted anything, except for Thu numbers. Oh well, here goes.

This will be TLJ's 4th weekend. We have a big scale of possible drops, going by the other $200M openers. Avengers only dropped 34% in its 4th weekend. I don't think TLJ is going to perform like that, but let's use it as a better case scenario. That would mean TLJ would make $34.7M. Its Domestic BO would then be $583.7M, a difference of $229M, or 28% off. If Foreign BO saw the same drop it would make $53.7M, which includes the ~$20M China is going to bring in for its opening weekend. This would put the Foreign total at $627.2M. TFA was sitting at $921.4M, a decline of $294.2M or 32% down. WW total would be $1.21B, a difference of 30%.

Let's do a worst case scenario using TFA's fall of 53% (I'm actually just going to go with a flat 50%.) This would mean that TLJ would make $26.3M. DBO total would be $575.3M, a difference of $237.4M or 29% off. If FBO sees the same decline, it would make $45.5M, for a total of $619M. A difference of $302.4M or 33% down. WW total would be $1.19B, a difference of 31%.

For the final BO numbers, I like looking at RO. Outside of launch TLJ had been outperforming RO by 9%. This has actually started declining, as this past week it only outdid RO by 5%. Still, let's say the 9% holds true. Starting this Fri til it left theatres, RO made $76.7M, meaning that TLJ would make another $83.6M. This brings the DBO total to $632.6M. Taking into account the possible 52% for FBO, the WW total would be $1.32B. Of course, we'll have to see if that performance falls any more against RO. Or if FBO falls back down to 50%, which would lead to a WW take of $1.27B. Or a little bit of both.

Either way, its a far cry from where Hollywood pundits thought it would be, even after the fall. They thought it would easily taking #3, if not #2, on the all time domestic charts, with $750M-$800M. And take #5 on the WW chart, with $1.6B. Even if it stays consistently 9% over RO, with FBO staying at 52%, it will only just take #5 in the domestic charts, and #9 on the WW charts. If FBO falls again to 50%, it'll just snag #10. Of course, we'll have a better picture of how it will hold up against RO after this weekend.

In my humble opinion that is still WAAAAAY more than it actually deserves.  But like I said, that is just my opinion.  It is obvious that many people disagree with me.