Not Financial Advice (NFA) Warning: Wall of Text. If you hate reading just skim through the bolded/italicized Ever since I publicized my findings on DKNG, the stock has underperformed & probably has fucked a lot of people here, especially given the overly bullish stance back in June. Unless you took my advice & got into Puts then, congrats, welcome to tendie town. For the ADHD retards, here’s what the next wall of text is going to summarize: I believe at the current price of ~$30, the stock is oversold. A tech-focused, high-growth Company that has made sports betting easy to understand with an aesthetically pleasing interface similar to how Robinhood has neatly laid out stock market gimmicks so even high-schoolers can make sense of it I believe, is underpriced at these levels. Let’s get into some details as to why the stock has underperformed: First off, the news slate revolving sports with the rumored delay/cancellation of the MLB season & the NFL watching from the sidelines is in my view, just a part of why the stock has underperformed. We’ll revisit this later in this post, but I want to focus on the drivers of the stock’s recent underperformance, & why these factors are now in the rearview mirror. Part I – The Past Has Passed – SPAC-related Equity Dilution History lesson first: DKNG went public via a SPAC merger, which has exploded in popularity recently. Anyone serious about analyzing stocks going forward needs to do their homework on this, Google is your friend. A feature of most SPAC merger to public listings that creates a headwind to near-term share prices are embedded equity dilution events, usually in the form of earn-outs (stock bonuses to execs, the SPAC sponsor) & conversion of Warrants. On 5/24, the earn-outs were triggered, adding 6m shares to the share count. On 6/26, 16.3m warrants converted to DKNG, netting them ~$188m of cash. Stepping back a little, in addition to the above, on 6/18 DKNG launched a follow-on equity offering of 16M shares @ $40/Share [1], receiving $621M in proceeds. The last part is tricky to understand from a dilution perspective. To simplify, historically it’s almost a coin toss whether a Company’s shares outperform on the onset of an equity offering. While issuing shares does dilute the existing shareholder base, it theoretically shouldn’t, if the proceeds from the offering are earmarked for investments/projects that yield outsized returns. This is the reality for the long term, theory for the short-term. For the short-term, the ‘reality’ isn’t that the proceeds will be used for investments/projects that yield outsized returns, it is more about how convincing management is to investors that the investments they intend to pursue with the proceeds will outweigh the dilutive effects of issuing incremental shares. That’s a mouthful, but hopefully you get what I’m trying to convey. All of this stuff put together – the Company has increased its share count by ~39M, but now has a whopping ~$1.4Bn of cash [2]. More on this in the next section. Part II – MLB News Should Not Fucking Matter & DKNG Is Positioned As the Leading Online/Mobile Sports Platform DKNG should not be so tied to MLB news or any of this shit as the ongoing success of the NBA/NHL season + Soccer in Europe has effectively created a blueprint on how to regulate player behavior so that they maintain professionalism amidst the pandemic. I’m going out on a whim here, but I truly think the MLB threatening a cancellation of the season is pure posturing to get these fuckers to behave appropriately. Maybe a ‘bubble’ is what it takes to get these players to focus on their jobs instead of going out & contracting COVID, but I argue that isn’t necessarily required given Soccer in Europe. So there’s already a proven path here without the need for a bubble in Soccer, so MLB/NFL should be fine, and execs need to study how they got it done in Europe. Okay, back to some facts. Anecdotally, I’ve kept in touch with a handful of sports bookies from California to New York & even internationally about what they’re seeing – all of them say that since the NBA season started on 7/30 & since Soccer (especially the Premier League) resumed in June, along with other leagues like La Liga & Serie A, they’ve seen massive increases in betting. These numbers are also showing up in the official data [3]:
Average % increase in sports betting handle from April 2020 to June 2020 (handle is the total $ wagered in sports bets) from the states that reported up to June 2020 (NJ, PA, MS, RI, WV, IA, IN, NH) of +258%!
Note: NV is left out due to the site I sourced showing a weirdly negative number – so I dug into the official filings & show specifically, Sports Mobile betting growth from June since April has growing by at least +73% [4]
REMEMBER: This is for June only! No NBA, No NHL, No MLB, just Soccer, Golf, NASCAR & UFC. The data clearly shows that there was a ton of pent-up sports betting demand, which leads one Wall St. analyst to think that betting on the NBA/NHL could ABSORB the MLB’s sports betting handle (handle = total $ size of sports bet) [5]. Remember, the MLB season is still ongoing, with games being played. The entire focus is on the Miami Marlins & St. Louis Cardinals. Fucking retards. Additionally, I want to remind everyone that DraftKings.com is the #1 Fantasy sports website in the U.S. [6]. Also, since April 2020 site visitations are up +86% [7] & Google Search Trends for “Draft Kings” is up ~3xcompared to PRE-COVID levels [8]. What does this mean? They are piquing more people’s curiosity than prior to COVID/ongoing slate of sports. This is important because remember that ~$1.4Bn chest full of cash I mentioned DKNG had assembled earlier? Well, that money is being put to work & results are already coming in, which is exactly what DKNG intended to do with it. Part III – Legalization of Sports Betting in the U.S. I could write a fucking bible on this topic alone, but for now we’ll stick to some basics. Due to COVID, it’s easy to understand that each State’s financial situation is clearly in shit. Because of this, you better believe that these guys are going to start taking a hard look at how they can extract additional tax revenues, & what’s one of the easiest ways to do this? Legalization & taxation of gambling. The big players: CA, TX, FL & NY. First, CA pushing its legislation out to 2023 was fucked up, but here’s a twist I want to add to this: Anything that has to do with gambling in CA you better believe is lobbied against by not just the Tribal casino owners in CA, but by the deep pockets of Las Vegas money. Similar thing can be said for FL, but let’s take a look at some actions by LV/nationwide gambling companies that are starting to align financial incentives with guys like DKNG.
MGM / GVC Holdings JV in BetMGM - $450m total invested
PENN invests $163m into BS Sports
Caesars has a 20% stake in William Hill plus partnership deals with The Stars Group (TSG) & our winner DKNG for operating its sports books
So it’s safe to say going forward, nationwide legalization of sports betting will reap rewards for everyone involved, & no longer be something LV money is completely focused on safeguarding. Let’s also not forget that DKNG didn’t become the Company they are today because of their fancy app, but because their management team has a HISTORY of navigating the U.S.’s legal framework to get what they want out of it.
The Crown Jewel – The Internet Gambling Prohibition & Enforcement Act: I said it in a previous post, but I want to emphasize that them getting Fantasy Sports to be labeled a ‘game of skill’ by FEDERAL Law as opposed to gambling is just something for the history books. Fucking genius shit. When this happened I bet every casino from LV to every Indian Tribe that has one was against it, yet DKNG & other DFS providers won.
There’s more, but more recently: Getting into IL:
In IL, there’s an 18-month ‘penalty box’ for Companies that offer DFS to offer sports betting. Our guys at DKNG created a workaround to this situation with their partnership with Casino Queen [9]. DKNG being savvy again.
No good movie is too long and no bad movie is short enough. -Roger Ebert The length of TLJ was the most common criticism by far, with 50% of RT Top Critic's citing it as a problem. Thus, this is the longest entry of this series, and possibly the last, unless I do a smaller part on niche issues. Previous parts cover Humor and Canto Bight.
The movie is overstuffed with plot, and by the time the visually intoxicating and eye-popping last showdown happens, it feels like a set piece that should have been saved for the next film. At a whopping two hours and 32 minutes, “The Last Jedi” overstays its welcome just a tad.
Katie Walsh, Tribune News Service - Fresh
Writer-director Rian Johnson steps into the franchise fray and does a creditable, if uninspired, job. At about 2-1/2 hours, it’s a long sit.
Peter Rainer,Christian Science Monitor - Fresh
Rian Johnson delivers a film that’s a bit too long at 2½ hours
Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch - Fresh
Does the movie, like its predecessor, rely on familiar tropes a bit more than it should? Yes, I think it does. Is it, at a solid two-and-a-half hours, considerably longer than it needed to be? Yes, that too.
Christopher Orr, The Atlantic - Fresh
It’s simply too long at two hours and 36 minutes – and sometimes too damn much. The screen is so crowded with character and incident that you might need a scorecard to keep up.
Peter Travers, Rolling Stone - Fresh
The problem is that the narrative threads connecting them are lazily knitted and sometimes tangled or broken. The overall plot is underwhelming and there’s far too much padding, especially during the first hour. There’s a sense that Johnson is giving busy-work to certain characters while others are catching up. The Last Jedi is a great 105-minute movie stretched too thin.
James Berardinelli, ReelViews - Fresh
The midsection sags and, other than the heroes’ desperate attempts to survive, there’s no central story line to pull the various satellites of action in its wake. Some of the characters, like Captain Phasma, get frustratingly little screen time.You feel the 2½-hour length at points.
Ty Burr, Boston Globe - Fresh
The movie, though - at 152 minutes, easily the lengthiest in the series - drags in the middle, particularly when Rose and Finn go off on a complicated mission to disable an enemy tracking device. The subplot not only goes nowhere, it takes forever to do so, and makes me wonder if this new trilogy is going to have the same problem as the prequels - material for two terrific films stretched out over three.
Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger - Fresh
The film’s paunchy middle section includes a trip to a casino that might better have ended up on the cutting-room floor. The unnecessary padding accounts for the 152-minute running time, a franchise record, which will test the patience (and bladders) of even the most devoted followers.
Peter Howell, Toronto Star - Fresh
Nor is its frankly excessive 152-minute running time. There is no excuse for a long, inessential stampede of runaway space horses that has zero value beyond the sheer "Ben-Hur" spectacle of the thing.
Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune - Fresh
Johnson's many additions become too much of a good thing and The Last Jedi grows crowded, busy and long. Johnson's dialogue is flat and sounds stilted in the mouths of his younger actors, while their comic delivery can be so offhand that it dismisses the jokes.
Kate Taylor, Globe and Mail - Rotten
The film simply drags too much in the middle. Somewhere in the film’s 152-minute running time is an amazing 90-minute movie.
Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly - Fresh
Johnson at times overreaches trying to balance these separate storylines and myriad of characters into one cohesive unit. Lupita Nyong’o has nothing to do in her glorified cameo appearance, while the Del Toro section fails to reach its potential. The result is a bloated running time of about 2 ½ hours — that includes about seven different points in which I was sure the movie was going to end only to see it continue to plow ahead. You always want your Star Wars films to move at light speed, not drag in the middle.
Mara Reinstein, Us Weekly - Fresh
At other points in the 152-minute film, time should have been compressed, and wasn’t. The storytelling bogs down in a middle section having to do with finding a code-cracker who can gain access to an enemy destroyer. (A dubious character played by Benicio Del Toro isn’t sufficiently amusing.) Kylo’s inner conflicts, while central to the plot, leave him looking awfully mopey for long periods of time as he struggles to resolve them.
Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal - Fresh
With a running time of two and a half hours, “The Last Jedi” drags a bit in the second act. Ridley and Hamill are great together, but the Reluctant Jedi act plays on for at least one scene too many.
Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times - Fresh
Johnson’s effort is ultimately a disappointment. If anything, it demonstrates just how effective supervising producer Kathleen Kennedy and the forces that oversee this now Disney-owned property are at molding their individual directors’ visions into supporting a unified corporate aesthetic — a process that chewed up and spat out helmers such as Colin Trevorrow, Gareth Edwards, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller. But Johnson was either strong enough or weak enough to adapt to such pressures, and the result is the longest and least essential chapter in the series.
Peter Debruge, Variety - Fresh
Unfortunately, The Last Jedi has almost as much Attack of the Clones as it does The Empire Strikes Back in that it’s overlong, under-edited and has at least one particularly long-winded CGI flurry of a sequence that harkens back to the darkest days of the franchise. There’s no whining about sand getting everywhere and the acting is really strong across the board (Hamill is particularly great back in Jedi robes, ham and all) but The Last Jedi could definitely have used a second editorial pass.
Matt Oakes, Silver Screen Riot - Fresh
At 2 1/2 hours, Star Wars: The Last Jedi could have been tightened-up in the editing room, cutting out that bloated middle section and removing things like Maz Kanata’s cameo and the cute slave kids which feel like they dropped in from a totally different movie. When it works, it really works but when it doesn’t, it feels like bad fan-fiction with a million dollar budget.
Niall Browne, Movies in Focus - Fresh
I can only wonder what The Last Jedi might have been with Finn and Poe taking a backseat (like how the latter was absent for three-quarters of The Force Awakens) so thirty minutes could be cut and the “important” stuff made tighter. Because there is a great film within what’s ultimately a good one.
Jared Mobarak, BuffaloVibe - Fresh
Whereas the first half is a sort of a convoluted mess just for the sake to pad out the runtime especially with an inconsistent tone, "The Last Jedi" becomes a dark and exciting sequel that becomes the film you've been looking for by the 75-minute mark.
Rendy Jones, Rendy Reviews, Fresh
the film is probably 10-15 minutes too long. Yes, Snoke (Andy Serkis) was not given near enough explanation and Phasma (Gwendoline Christie) was wasted.
Robert Daniels, 812filmreviews - Fresh
It's a two-and-a-half hour movie. It needs to be good in its own right, not just setting up for the next episode.
Tony Baker, Tony Baker Comedy - Rotten
Johnson ends up biting off more than he can chew. He's juggling too many storylines, and takes too long to move the narrative forward. Fatigue sets in about three-quarters of the way in. He doesn't heed the lesson of the chapter “Jedi” often resembles, “The Empire Strikes Back.” That film, still the best “Star Wars.,” ended with a whopper of a cliffhanger. Johnson resists the urge to leave most of his strands unresolved, and as a result his film begins to feel unwieldy when it should be picking up momentum. At two and a half hours, it could have used a trim of at least 15 minutes.
Ruben Rosario, MiamiArtZine - Fresh
but there are problems with the first half of "The Last Jedi." After an exciting initial space battle, to say that the mid-section of the movie drags would be an understatement. First, both prominent new characters Rose and DJ seemed shoe-horned in, and Rose especially doesn't seem to have a real place in this film nor does she add anything to be hopeful about in the future. And while both Rey and Poe fans will probably be pleased with where their characters go, Finn sort of takes a step back, as he is sent off on a side adventure that seems like second-tier Star Wars. It's a diversion that takes up a good portion of the film and really serves no purpose to the overall story...worse yet, it seems to contain some heavy-handed political messages not commonly found, at least not this blatantly, in the Star Wars universe. These are more than just quibbles too: Most fans will not be used to the slow, lumbering pace or the general unevenness of this film...especially coming on the heels of the action-packed pacing that JJ Abrams brought in Episode VII.
Tom Santilli, AXS.com - Fresh
Star Wars: The Last Jedi is also, at two hours and thirty-two minutes, the longest of the nine movies thus far, and deep into the second hour it can feel a little draining. There’s some stuff that feels extraneous (the whole Canto Bight sequence, which seems to exist to set up a new Lando-like character played by Benicio del Toro), and the cycle of attack and retreat — mostly retreat — gets a bit monotonous.
Rob Gonsalves, eFilmCritic.com - Fresh
At times it burns a tad too slow: two-thirds through its jam-packed 152 minutes, I felt the need for a 7th-inning stretch.
Michael Sragow, Film Comment Magazine - Fresh
Aunque este clímax habría funcionado bien como final, “The Last Jedi” no termina (desafortunadamente) después de esto. Es seguido por otros 40 minutos, con baches, en los que los héroes se reúnen y tienen que pelear una batalla final. Sin embargo, la película pierde un poco de su trazabilidad aquí, cuando los personajes, las fuerzas y las explosiones siempre aparecen exactamente donde se necesitan para la trama.
Ruben Peralta Rigaud, Cocalecas - Fresh
The movie’s main failing is that it tries to stuff too much plot into its over-long 2 hour and 30 minute run time. The result is an ending that feels endless and anti-climactic while several elements that could have been gob-smacking feel rushed and underdeveloped. It particularly does a disservice to Kylo Ren, as we’re never quite sure what his motivation is.
Megan Basham, WORLD - Fresh
I both loved it and strongly disliked it at the same time. I feel like there's a really great movie in there, all the pieces are there, everything is brilliant, but then there's a lot of extra fat that needed to be trimmed off or rearranged or omitted completely.
Steph Cozza, Aggressive Comix - Fresh
At two-and-a-half hours, with about nine separate cliffhanger endings, it’s a bit long
Bill O'Driscoll, Pittsburgh City Paper - Fresh
If you can accept the excess, the weird humour, the entirely inessential subplot, and the fact that it could stand to end a scene earlier, then the series will continue to thrive in a galaxy far, far away.
Alex Doenau, Trespass - Fresh
The script is flabby; every scene has purpose, but certain aspects feel overlong and jarring. Just like Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, it also suffers several endings too many.
Owen Richards, The Arts Desk - Fresh
At two and a half hours, this is the longest Star Wars picture to date, and I wondered if they’d tried to pack too much in.
Molly Laich, Missoula Independent - Fresh
I’m saying some of this movie seems a little half baked, and also overstuffed. If there’s any kind of movie I want to be over two and a half hours long, it’s a Star Wars movie. But, at that length, it needs to be a really good Star Wars movie, not a so-so one. The Last Jedi is so-so.
Bob Grimm, Reno News and Review - Fresh
The Last Jedi has a few good ideas but these are utterly lost amidst an over-long and utterly unsatisfying overall plot. Replete with poor dialogue, irritating tonal shifts and superfluous scenes, The Last Jedi adds very little to the saga except an overwhelming sense of disappointment not felt since the release of The Phantom Menace.
Richard Dove, International Business Times - Rotten
It is more than 150 minutes long. It has too many plot twists and too much fighting and too many characters.
Mark R. Leeper, Mark Leeper's Reviews - Fresh
Many have complained or commented on the length of The Last Jedi. It did start to feel long towards the end, yet I don’t think it was due to the actual time stamp of the film. Instead, I believe it is because of the drawn out plots within the film itself. Many parts of the story are over showcased destroying the strength and believably in the plot.
Stephanie Archer, Film Inquiry - Fresh
This film did not need to be 152 minutes and should have been closer to the 120 minute standard established by the earlier films. I hope one day we’ll see a fan cut that is actually closer to two hours.
Chris Gore, Film Threat - Fresh
The Last Jedi is still overstuffed, slightly too long, reliant on some vaguely-defined powers, and mostly consists of an endless chase towards a shifting MacGuffin.
Vincent Mancini, FilmDrunk - Fresh
The Last Jedi is 50 fucking minutes too long, and the most excruciatingly boring movie that has ever been released in this franchise. And this is a franchise that once opened up a movie by talking about controversial tax legislation.
Tim Brayton, Alternate Ending - Rotten
The Last Jedi has some issues. Pacing is the biggest one. This is the longest Star Wars film so far, and it feels like it. Johnson does his best to hustle from one location to the next, but the narrative has a tendency from time to time to drag.
Chris Evangelista, Slashfilm - Fresh
While Luke leads the Force thread, the battle between good and evil, the rest feels a bit standard issue action film lurching through one, or two, too many cycles of near peril. This is in part down to writer-director Rian Johnson and also down to patchy leads.
Aine O'Connor, Sunday Independent (Ireland) - Fresh
Writedirector Rian Johnson’s movie is underwhelming. Where it falters is a story that borrows heavily from others in the franchise like The Empire Strikes Back. That I can live with, but I can’t live with unnecessary length. This is an overdone 2 1/2 hour movie that would have been a terrific 90-minute extravaganza. The first hour drags. The predictable second hour is just as tedious in more spots than not before Johnson finally moves you to the even more predictable slam bang action of the last half-hour.
Gary Wolcott, Tri-City Herald - Fresh
At 152 minutes, The Last Jedi is the longest of the nine Star Wars films to date — it’s also the only one where the length is felt. While all the scenes involving younglings should have been deep-sixed, the rest of the fatty tissue can be forgiven, since it simply meant Johnson wanted to make sure fans were saturated and satisfied. Yet there aren’t many vignettes that couldn’t have benefited from a judicious trim here or there.
Matt Brunson, Creative Loafing(Charlotte) - Fresh
At 2 hours and 32 minutes, the longest ever in the series, there are lots of highlights and probably a few too many endings
Pete Hammond, Deadline Hollywood Daily - Fresh
Despite the Rey-Luke drama, the first half of The Last Jedi is its most lumbering and uneven, never really clicking as it rambles through its multiple plotlines in a manner that feels simultaneously rushed and overlong.
James Kendrick, Q Network Film Desk - Fresh
However, there are moments towards the end of the film that feel as though they are just a tad unnecessary, that the race to the finale is going on just a little too long.
Irene Falvey, Film Ireland Magazine - Fresh
So what's necessary to know about the 40th anniversary "Star Wars" is that, at two and a half hours, it's at least a half-hour too long (maybe 45 minutes) and it's overfull of the usual digital battle sequences which so many of us have come to consider a wee bit old hat in the decades since "Star Wars" introduced us to a new thing back in 1977.
Jeff Simon, Buffalo News - Fresh
Johnson has sorted all of this material into an elaborate roundelay that feels endless (the movie is way too long at two and a half hours). Surely sections of the film could have been trimmed—maybe the Laura Dern scenes, which cry out for compression, or the training sequences with Luke and Rey (in which he says things like "Reach out with your feelings").
Kurt Loder, Reason Online - Fresh
The film is long, however, and begins to feel more than a little labored by the time the various epic showdowns finally take place.
A lot of “The Last Jedi” is engrossing and emotional—but there’s also the long runtime, uneven pacing, and slightly underdeveloped characters to deal with. “The Last Jedi” is often exceptional, but its desire to do too many things, tell too many stories, and continue expanding its own cast and narrative makes the film fundamentally imbalanced.
Roxana Hadadi, Chesapeake Family Magazine - Fresh
There is a great deal going on in The Last Jedi and the way it splits off the main characters into separate but intertwined stories makes for a long, over-plotted film that even starts to drag a little in the middle.
Allan Hunter, Daily Express (UK) - Fresh
A few of the goofier comic moments fail to land and true to the legacy of Lucas there’s a fair amount of eye-wincing dialogue. More importantly, the second act bows under the weight of too many narrative strands; Finn’s away mission comes off as a bit superfluous, as does Laura Dern’s Vice Admiral Holdo, and both Rose and the beloved Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo) are sadly underwritten. In a trade-off that brings scope and complexity, Johnson has sacrificed narrative efficiency.
Christopher Machell, CineVue - Fresh
If “The Last Jedi” has a main flaw it’s that it’s too long at just over two-and-a-half hours. When the film is cross-cutting between the escape of the Resistance and the showdown with Snoke, one might assume this was the climax of the film. In fact, there’s much more to come.
Daniel M. Kimmel, New England Movies Weekly - Fresh
At 152 minutes, "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" is too long, and could have been trimmed by at least 10-15 minutes.
David Kaplan, Kaplan vs. Kaplan - Fresh
Despite being overlong and drenched in déjà vu (replete with conversations about one’s parents, whether or not one will ‘turn’, whether one is the last hope or the new hope, etcetera etcetera) I appreciated a lot of The Last Jedi, in the same way I appreciate re-reading a decent book – respecting the structure and craft of it, and feeling no sense of surprise.
Luke Buckmaster, The Daily Review/Crikey - Rotten
At 152 minutes, “The Last Jedi” is probably 20 minutes too long yet never fails to entertain.
Maria Sciullo, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - Fresh
If some of these detours drag on a bit, hampering momentum and bulking up The Last Jedi’s not-entirely-necessary two-hour-and 32-minute runtime, well, at least the various locales are fun to look at.
Rebecca Pahle, Film Journal International - Fresh
a running time of 152 or so minutes that easily could have been tightened down quite a bit
Jim Judy, Screen It! - Fresh
While many complained – justifiably – that the previous entry, The Force Awakens, was nothing but a remake of 1977’s A New Hope, the same sort of narrative déjà vu is at play here, to a certain degree. Equally troublesome is Jedi’s bloated running time. Clocking in at 2 ½ hours, the movie seems longer than it actually is due to the fact we’re going over well-covered narrative territory.
Charles Koplinski, Illinois Times - Rotten
It’s too long by a good 30 minutes, feels like two films mashed together, has about five endings and it seems to be taking cues from the George R. R. Martin school of right-angled plot twists.
Patrick Kolan, Shotgun Cinema - Fresh
Overly long and consistently clunky, The Last Jedi ultimately proves a bit of a mixed bag. Too often the dialogue is exposition heavy and played for easy laughs.
Tom Glasson, Concrete Playground - Fresh
The Last Jedi is overlong, heavy-handed and fun if mostly uninspired.
James Verniere, Boston Herald - Fresh
At 151 minutes, the film is overlong and repetition sets in, not just for this film but for the series in general
Laura Clifford, Reeling Reviews - Fresh
The Last Jedi is the party that never wants to end. It keeps going and going – and going – until there is no corner of the house left to decorate. It pushes all the buttons. It is constantly in competition with itself (it comes with two huge ending sequences). It is also baggy in places, and that’s not something I’d expected.
Chris Wasser, The Herald (Ireland) - Fresh
At the same time, it does take a while for “Last Jedi” to get up to speed. Some of the humor feels a little distracting and the lengthy final product suggests a tighter execution might have felt more resonant.
Josh Terry, Deseret News (Salt Lake City) - Fresh
Or maybe it's just a case of "The Last Jedi" itself overstaying its welcome with a running time topping two and a half hours.
Greg Maki, Star-Democrat (Easton, MD) - Fresh
This is the longest Star Wars movie yet, clocking in at 150 minutes, and it has at least one ending too many, and a middle that sags a bit.
Rain Jokinen, MullingMovies.com - Fresh
We’ve seen this story before. Sure, “stuff” happens over the film’s 157-minutes but our main characters remain pretty much in the same place. You’d swear time stands still.
Dana Barbuto, The Patriot Ledger - Fresh
“The Last Jedi” is the longest of the “Star Wars” efforts (152 minutes) and feels it
Brian Orndorf, Blu-ray.com - Fresh
At 152 minutes, it’s also way too damn long. And Rian Johnson should not have been allowed to write and direct. The script is a problem — it has only two really great “moments” which isn’t enough for 152 minutes. But it also doesn’t feel quite right — the language, the iconography, the weirdly campy humor at the beginning — it doesn’t feel a part of the Star Wars universe.
Ray Greene, CineGods.com - Rotten
But the character moments and the explorations of moral ambiguity aren’t quite compelling enough to compensate for the slow pacing in the middle (one thing a Star Wars movie should never be is dull), and it takes too long to get to the most rousing action sequences.
Josh Bell, Las Vegas Weekly - Fresh
I don’t want to be too generous. I would cut 15 minutes out. There are editing choices that leave the film feeling choppy when it should feel smooth.
David Poland, Movie City News - Fresh
In truth, it takes a very long time to get from the film’s exhilarating start to that moving sign-off. Stars Wars: The Last Jedi lasts fully two-and-a-half hours, and there were moments towards the end when I felt like one of those poor Cubans listening to Fidel Castro at the height of his oratorical vigour: just as you’re planning your route to the exit, it lurches into yet another new lease of life.
Brian Viner, Daily Mail (UK) - Fresh
Editor Bob Ducsay moves the individual sequences along with dispatch; it isn’t his fault that at two-and-a-half hours the movie overstays its welcome. That’s the fault of Johnson’s decision to pile climax upon climax as if they were on sale at Screenplays-R-Us, apparently unwilling to jettison any of the ideas he’s had for propelling the story forward.
Frank Swietek, One Guy's Opinion - Fresh
Which leads into another problem I mentioned briefly earlier -- the pacing. Watching the first hour, I had the uncomfortable sense that maybe it needed trimming by about ten minutes or so, and that Rey's and Luke's story kept stalling and going in circles for a while. Then, the pacing in the last hour is so spot-on, it confirms all of those earlier feelings. Adding to the problem is the choice of starting point for the film. I realize kicking off with a more action-driven sequence has benefits, but it felt disorienting since we remember how the last film ended and probably want to pick up that thread first. It was an easy call, I feel, and the film's choice merely confirms my own sense that there was a better option.
Mark Hughes, Forbes - Fresh
The 2 hr and 30-minute runtime really hurt the film. I feel like there are just certain spots throughout the film where it just drags. It hard to pinpoint exactly when and where they occur on just one viewing but I was definitely bored at times.
Scott Menzel, We Live Entertainment - Fresh
“The Last Jedi” suffers from “The Lord of the Rings” syndrome — it seems like it might never end. It also poaches scenes, ideas and moments from “Harry Potter,” “The Hunger Games” and “Guardians of the Galaxy.”
David Frese, Kansas City Star - Fresh
At 152 minutes, “The Last Jedi” runs long, with a bit too much time spent on Ahch-To. And Hamill — who shares the weathered, lion-like look of modern-day Robert Plant — turns in a true love-it-or-hate-it portrayal of an aged Skywalker.
Ross Raihala, St. Paul Pioneer Press - Fresh
At over two-and-a-half hours, the film had me reconsidering if I really needed a Finn v. Phasma fight, or a five-act structure. So consider the urgency. A wordsmith in his own right, Johnson seems to be dumbing himself down here for the sake of the brand. He manages to pose some of the most complex ideas on morality and war this franchise has ever attempted, but is forced to breeze through and cap them off with trite buzzwords.
Conor O'Donnell, The Film Stage - Fresh
The film is overlong at two and a half hours, and you may well catch yourself thinking “this could probably have been cut.”
Jonathan Hatfull, SciFiNow - Fresh
Yes, it’s probably half an hour too long. There is a whole section that feels out of kilter and harks back to the CGI naffness of the prequels — and is also virtually pointless to the plot.
Jamie East, The Sun (UK) - Fresh
The middle section loses its shape and is subject to longueurs.
Ian Freer, Empire Magazine - Fresh
The Last Jedi is the longest Star wars movie, and it does feel like it. The third act is a beating drum of moments that each seem like they could be a satisfying climax.
Susana Polo, Polygon - Fresh
Where the film falters is in its pacing. Even jumping between three storylines, there’s a lack of momentum at times as no one is really going anywhere. The Resistance fleet is crawling away from the First Order; Rey is in a stalemate with Luke on Ahch-To; and obviously things aren’t a breeze on Canto Bight. And yet the dramatic tension of the first two storylines hold up intact. The fleet storyline plays like the excellent Battlestar Galactica episode “33” and everything is Ahch-To is great because Johnson is doing some fascinating things with the character dynamics between Rey, Luke, and Kylo Ren. But the Canto Bight stuff is a bit of a drag, and then you feel it in final act of the film where, despite some amazing moments, you can’t shake the feeling that The Last Jedi is probably a bit too long even if it’s difficult to know what to cut.
Matt Goldberg, Collider - Fresh
There's a lot going on - too much. The film could have used a hard edit to lose about 20 minutes or more. Resistance ships explode and the fleet's fuel running low, but it doesn't keep us on the edges of our seats. Poe, Rey and Finn- the new heroes we're supposed to fall in love with - are uncharismatic and bland.
Julie Washington, Cleveland Plain Dealer - Fresh
Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a long work of art that doesn't know when to quit
Scott Mendelson, Forbes - Fresh
If there's a problem, it's only that it's a little too long at two and a half hours (a first for the franchise), which might prove challenging for younger viewers. It turns out you can have too much of a good thing after all.
Matthew Turner, Hero Collector - Fresh
Tran is a rock-solid addition, but here, and elsewhere, one is reminded of the deftness of editing on both (yes, both) previous trilogies. Intercut sequences that moved swiftly in earlier films feel clumsy. Where once the passing of time was cannily implied yet compact on screen in, say, “Empire,” in “Last Jedi,” well ... you can fit a lot of movie into 152 minutes.
Joe Gross, Austin American-Statesman - Fresh
But The Last Jedi’s two-and-half-hour sprawl still includes an awful lot of clunky, derivative, and largely unnecessary incidents to wade through in order to get to its maverick last act. This is especially true when it comes to the plausibility-straining mission of stormtrooper turned Rebel Alliance fighter Finn and puckish series newcomer Rose Tico.
Sam C. Mac, Slant Magazine - Rotten
Some tighter editing would have relieved most of my mid-movie tension — as well as my bladder concerns as “The Last Jedi” stretches to an unnecessarily long 151 minutes. If not for that spectacular final act, it would be tempting to refer to it as “The Lasts and Lasts and Lasts Jedi.”
Christopher Lawrence, Las Vegas Review-Journal - Fresh
The Last Jedi is a whopping two-and-a-half hours, and it would have been much improved if an editor had taken a lightsaber to its less crucial sections. To cut a long story short (and I wish Johnson had cut his own long story short): if you’re getting bored halfway through The Last Jedi, hang on in there. Just when you think it’s about to end, it really gets going.
Nicholas Barber, BBC.com - Fresh
For the first half of a punishingly long film, we repeatedly cut back to Star Wars Island where Rey is begging Luke to train her as a Jedi.
Donald Clarke Irish Times Rotten
There are times, however, when the wow factor and compelling character beats give way to the feeling that Johnson lost the run of himself with the film's duration, and that the longest adventure in Star Wars history really didn't need that distinction.
Harry Guerin, RTÉ (Ireland) - Fresh
Several characters remain underdeveloped, and appear as well dressed plot devices which contribute to an unevenness hard to justify in the 151 minutes running time.
Jon Lyus, HeyUGuys - Fresh
Even Johnson’s sense of fun and mischief can’t sustain the film for two-and-a-half hours; the warring gets boring. One scene is replayed three times with different interpretations but it’s hardly Rashomon and a movie this long can’t afford to dawdle. No one could mistake The Last Jedi for an outstanding contribution to cinema, or even to escapism, but it has its attractions.
Ryan Gilbey, New Statesman - Fresh Indeed it does, Ryan. And that concludes part III. TL;DR:TLJ is TL.
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Our Community Guidelines and policies apply to all YouTube content and define what you can and cannot do on YouTube. Thanks for watching.United Airlines Flight 232 was a regularly scheduled United Airlines flight from Denver to Chicago, continuing to Philadelphia on July 19... Bienvenue sur la chaîne YouTube de Boursorama ! Le portail boursorama.com compte plus de 30 millions de visites mensuelles et plus de 290 millions de pages vues par mois, en moyenne. Boursorama ... Share your videos with friends, family, and the world Former Secretary of State John Kerry got into a contentious exchange with Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) over Kerry's college degree and the evidence of climate c... To keep it pithy, there is no Constitutional violation - so there is no reason to remove the President. O'Reilly lays out President Trump's decision-making p... Cops threatens to arrest me if I didn’t put my gun up!!! Share this video!!! Présences est la chaîne du magazine de la CCI de Grenoble. Retrouvez des vidéos sur l'économie locale et l'actualité des entreprises de la région grenobloise. #top10 #worldaccordingtobriggsTop 10 reasons NOT to move to Missouri. Don't go to Branson, Missouri. Hope you enjoy this video about the state of Missouri. .... We have another week's worth of gambling news to share, starting with another missed opportunity for online poker in New York state (1:05). There are also so...
![[Politics] - Illinois House passes legislation sought by Mayor Lori Lightfoot in her effort to land a casino in Chicago](https://a.thumbs.redditmedia.com/BiRDjEgKBDgzZH-n45ZuEwcPUD9b5DnRKSLeZfsLUa8.jpg "[Politics] - Illinois House passes legislation sought by Mayor Lori Lightfoot in her effort to land a casino in Chicago")
