Where Does The Last Jedi Rank - Ranking the Star Wars Movies

No fluff this time.  Just a the rankings.  If you want to see why The Last Jedi falls where it does, check out my overview of it.

1 - The Empire Strikes Back

2 - A New Hope

3 - Rogue One

4 - The Force Awakens

5 - Revenge of the Sith

6 - Return of the Jedi

7 - The Last Jedi

8 - Attack of the Clones

9 - The Phantom Menace

Why I Didn't Like The Last Jedi

I know a lot of people loved The Last Jedi.  I am not one of them.  Let me explain why before you rip me apart.

WARNING - SPOILERS!!!!

1 - The Fin story is hot garbage.

Fin is a great character. Rose is a great character.  Put together they are even better.  So what should you do with two great characters?  Send them off on a stupid plot point, so you can harvest some stuff off if later.

I sat there watching this and wondered - Wait...you can get Finn and company off of the ship, unnoticed, but you couldn't have them save a few people in process?  Also, sending them off to find some code breaker, is just dumb.  A much better idea, would have been to have Rose accomplish the same thing with her engineer skills.  If this was Star Trek - Scotty, Jordi, or another team of engineering would have found a way.

2 - Leia needed to die. 

Instead of having an epic send off for a beloved character,  you killed the newbie.  Why?  Why even introduce Laura Dern's character?  Killing her off makes the whole comma thing seems like a total waste.

3 - Why kill Snoke?

This made no sense to me.  He wasn't in the two movies for a more than a combined ten minutes.  What a complete waste of a character.  He was a mystery until he showed up in this one.  He showed up just in time to kill him off. 

4 - People tend to get wiser with age - Unless you are Luke Skywalker.

Luke is now in his sixties and he's beyond dumb.  I know some people love how he showed weakness.  You can do that without being a total Muppet.  The other Jedi we know and love gained some measure of wisdom with age.  Luke did not.  He was as bad as a whiny teenager, crying in his room.

5 - They wasted Yoda. 

Yoda needed to come a lot sooner, instead he comes in, and lacked the impact of old Yoda.

6 - Umm... Space doesn't work like that.

Two things - 1 - Leia would have exploded.  Her eyes would have burst, her ear drums popped, and a lot of other awful things, never mind frozen solid.

Second - "We need fuel to stay ahead out of range of bad guys."  On Earth - yes, in space - no.  There is no friction in space.  If ever keeps their rockets going, you keep gaining speed.  The physics of this plot point is mind numbing.

7 - Why did we need to have a video call with someone in a gun fight, who didn't need to be in the movie?

Enough said.

8 - Rey's parents were wasted.

This could have been huge.  Instead the mystery was tossed out like rotten food.

9 - You killed a legend with hardly a mention.

RIP Admiral Akbar.  You deserved better.

10 - Phasma - the new Darth Maul

For years after killing him off in the Episode 1, the powers to be regretted killing off Darth Maul.  I think (if she really is dead) we are going to miss Phasma.  We hardly knew her.

Now you might think I hated the entire movie.  I did not.  It had some awesome scenes.  You should see it for the following.  Most of these are  purposefully vague.

1 - BB8 kicks butt, kicks some more butt, and then blows away a whole bunch of Storm Troopers.

2 - Who needs to pick up a broom?  If you see it,  you'll know what I am talking about.

3 - Warp speed Mrs. lady with the purple hair.

4 - We don't know if it tasted like chicken.

Where Did the Covers Come From?

World Killer

I took that photo.  What you are seeing is a basic straight razor you can buy on Amazon, a typical latex glove, and black ink.  The ink didn’t cover like I wanted it too, but some heavy processing in Lightroom took care of that.

Around the World

This is one is a generic fingerprint illustration that I edited after the fact and added some more details.  I had a hard time thinking of something more fitting to represent this book.  The finger print played such a large role; I had to go with it.

Imagineered Death

This one is just fun.  What you are looking at is actual binary code.  It spells out a sentence.  You can google a binary to English translator and enter that code to learn what it says.  It is something that plays into the story.

Nemesis

I knew what I wanted for this cover, but it fell flat.  This cover does not do the story justice.  Anyone who’s read this book knows exactly what this is a picture of.

The Shoals

I took this photo during an evening cruise around the Isle of the Shoals.  This is a photo of White Island.  I toned mapped this photo from three base photos.

Sojourn

I took this photo in my back yard during a thunderstorm.  Very little editing went into this photo.  A fun fact here – this photo is actually upside down.

Titan One

This is a real photo from NASA that I edited.  This is Saturn with its moon Titan in the foreground.

The Harvesters

This is not a real photo.  It’s an artist’s rendering of a super nova.  If you’ve read the book you know what this is the cover.

Changeling

This is another artist’s rendering.  This is a DNA strand.  If you’ve read the book you know how important that turns out to be in this book.

CMDTA’s Pictoral Guide to Disney World

This is a photo I took in 2008 during the holiday season.  There is almost no editing here.  It’s really hard to edit a jpeg from a simple point and shoot camera.  If you try, a lot of noise will show up.

Misadventures in the White Mountains

I took this photo around the mid-2000s.  This is a photo of the upper section of the Boot Spur trail on Mt. Washington.

Jewel Paradise Cove - Concierge Room Review

First, here is the video review from YouTube.  After that. I'll give a quick pros and cons breakdown.

Pros:
It has some nice features like a walk in closet, jacuzzi tub, and vaulted ceilings.

It has a nice really nice view of the ocean.

You can raid the mini-bar all you want.

You have access to a concierge to book things for you.


Cons:
There is a lot of wasted space in this room.

This room is mostly uncomfortable.

This room is missing a any kind of work area.

It's not worth the extra money,

No access via elevator - stairs only.


Overall - if you want to stay at this resort, book a cheaper room.

Where Are the Books?

Fair Weather, Beast, and Camden Lock were announced over a year ago, so where are they?

Well, Fair Weather is about 30% done.  It's been 30% for almost a year.  Does that mean I've got a killer case of writers block?

It depends on how you define it.  Most of the time writers block means someone wants to write, but can't.  They are stuck and don't know how to go forward.  That's not the case with me.  I know what I'm going to write, I just don't care.

I wouldn't go as far as to say I've given up, but I have no desire or motivation to write.  Quite a few factors went into this.

After three years, I have been unable to find even an agent, never mind a publisher.  I have been able to find out fifty rejection letters.  Those are always fun.   On top of that, the editor I had, moved on.  Add that to no little to no positive feedback, and you lose motivation.

Again, this is not really writers block.  I have outlines for the following ready to go, if I ever get some motivation to do so.

Fair Weather - The Woman In White Book One - Featuring Fidel Hernandez and Tina Black.

Beast - The Woman In White Book Two - Featuring Justin Yensid and Hawk.

Camden Lock - The Woman In White Book Three - Featuring  the return of Eric and Jose.

The Depths - Featuring two characters first introduced in Fair Weather.

The Russian - An Agent 23 Novel

The West Wind Blows - A History of Survival in the White Mountains (Non-Fiction)  (writing started)

The Friend - A Novel (writing started)

So I've got outlines for seven more books.  Now all I need is motivation.