The Last Jedi: Here There Be Spoilers

[Ran]

21 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Worth noting that there is a scene in Rebels (Season 3, Episode 3) where Kanan (a Force-user) is blasted into space and he uses the Force to get back inside the ship, so it is precedented in the new canon. He didn't lose consciousness though.

Looked up the scene. Way, way better in terms of time span. In vacuum for 20 seconds, not 2 minutes.

 

@Rhom

Naomi did 15 seconds, as well, as I recall. That's approximately how long anyone can stay conscious in vacuum. It's an old trope of SF, actually, the vacuum exposure -- I know Arthur C. Clarke has it appear in several stories and novels, for example. "Take a Deep Breath" is the one story I remember.

[Kalbear]

1 hour ago, Rockroi said:

The Placeholders: The villains suck.  Suck out loud.  Outside of Kylo Ren (who was great), we don't know anything about these guys and don't need to know anything.  The are simply there.  And there is no greater example of how empty these villains are than Supreme Empty Vessel Snoke.  Snoke is killed by Kylo (as I had predicted) in a very exciting scene. But in killing Snoke we have a major problem: we have no idea what he was after. In Force Awakens, Snoke is hunting Skywalker; he repeats this goal just moments before he is slain. And after he is killed WE HAVE NO IDEA WHY SNOKE WANTED LUKE DEAD! None! Snoke becomes not just an unknown character, but a completely disposable one- one we never needed to get to know or understand; he was evil, sure, but evil is easy. Snoke was, ultimately, unimportant and just a vehicle to give us Kylo. That’s a big failure. Say what we will about Palpatine – he wanted the status quo and stay Emperor and bring Luke to the Dark to replace a faded Darth Vader. That is all understandable. Snoke? We have no idea what Snoke was or what he wanted beyond the power that every maniac wants. Palpatine may have been transparent, but Snoke was unnecessary - an unforgivable sin.  

The movie explains this quite specifically - why Snoke wants Skywalker - because Snoke believes that there must be a balance in the force, and he assumed that Skywalker would rise to challenge his dark side power. He didn't realize Skywalker would just give up instead. He keeps waiting for the inevitable light side warrior to emerge because there must be a balance, and he thinks if he kills Skywalker it'll give him a leg up. But the force makes it about Rey instead, so she becomes the superpower that can defeat Snoke. 

So the only reason Snoke wants Skywalker is because Skywalker is the only light-side Jedi Snoke knows about, and Snoke knows the general cycle of plot that the Force does. But Skywalker chooses a different way, which is surprising to everyone - including Snoke. After Snoke reads Rey's mind, he says that he'll happily blow that island away and give Luke the death he wants, but he doesn't care - because he's got Rey. 

Note that if you take just the OT, the Emperor's motivations until the final movie are completely and entirely opaque. It took 3 movies to figure out why he was what he was and why Anakin turned, and the answer sucked. 

1 hour ago, Rockroi said:

The movie re-introduces us to Phasma- the chromed-up storm trooper - for the sole purpose of killing her off. Its embarrassing that any of us were ever excited about such a character the series so mindlessly threw away.

She's probably not dead.

1 hour ago, Rockroi said:

I'm Sorry She Died But Her Acting Ability Died Thirty Years Ago: I did not enjoy Carrie Fisher in Force Awakens and (yes, I know she’s dead), she’s only marginally not-as-terrible in this movie. She has a couple of moments, but Fisher was not much of an actress the last 20 year of her life and she continued that sub-par trend here. While Mark Hamill works as an old Luke and Ford worked as an old Solo, Fisher is so removed from Liea that she seems like a different person. I don’t think she’s a good actress and it shows again; her delivery is wooden, slow, plodding, life-less and empty. Every time she spoke, I jumped out of the movie. Sorry, it was a thing.

Gods, how I couldn't disagree more. That scene where she's just staring out after the last ship arriving and they're shutting the door and she's looking longingly? The bit where she's just thinking about all the losses as they're in lightspeed? Her beats with Laura Dern? 

1 hour ago, Rockroi said:

So, Officially She's a Mary Sue Now, Right?:  I know this will cause controversy but I want to be honest- while I loved Rey, I lament that she has yet to have a moment where she is humbled the way Luke was pretty much every moment of ESB.  Rey succeeds at pretty much everything and her struggles are based on the inability of others, not her own limitations.  She beats Kylo the first time she holds a Lightsaber, can fly the Millennium Falcon, succeeds at every single test Luke gives her and suffers very little during the course of the movie from anything she herself does.  I know the repose to this has alwwsy been "Well, Luke barely trained with Ben and he knows how to use a LS and he destroyed the Death Star without ever having been in combat before."  And point taken.  But Luke then had his dick knocked into the dirt in the second movie- he is not only utterly destroyed against Vader; he not only losses his hand; he not only fails to save Han or Leia, Luke was thoughtfully humbled in his training with Yoda- failing to lift the ship, follow directions, failing in the cave- all culminating in knowing his teachers lied to him. 

Rey? Oh, she is a little teary eyed that her parents were nobody.  She gets cut by one of Snoke's Disposable Defenders.  Kinda poor, but not a major problem towards my enjoyment of the film. 

That's totally fair, though she (like Luke before her) is about finding her path forward. And a lot of her conflict is in losing the heroes and the parents she held true. At the end, her surety is what she loses; she's sure that she can turn Ren, that he is the key (and says so), and thinks all of this is leading to his triumphant return, that she can do what Luke failed at - and she fails. 

She doesn't hit the same kind of downfall that Luke does in TESB, but if she did people would say it hits too much of TESB's notes. Instead, the failure is that all the hopes and dreams that they had - on the resistance, on being heroes, on returning Ren to the light - all die due to their plans. Their failures are a lot less harmful to them directly, but they're probably a lot more weighting on them. 

[Myrddin]

1 hour ago, BigFatCoward said:

It was stupid beyond belief, not that it wasn't enjoyable. The final nail in the coffin was Finn's awful 'chrome dome'.   

I bet Johnson was a GI Joe fan as a kid.

[Kalbear]

3 minutes ago, Myrddin said:

I bet Johnson was a GI Joe fan as a kid.

Yes, 'nerf herder' is definitely a better line

[Myrddin]

"chrome dome" was a common insult thrown at Destro. Or Conra Commander. Maybe both. 

[Rhom]

Welp... Joe Abercrombie didn’t like it

 

[Corvinus85]

1 minute ago, Rhom said:

Welp... Joe Abercrombie didn’t like it

 

I guess not enough grimdark for him. It was probably the porgs.  

[Ran]

Not only is nerf herder objectively better, it’s also a phrase that was surely never spoken in history until that time, so way more original! 

[felice]

9 hours ago, HelenaExMachina said:

How does Rose cost them Luke? I understand your point about the unnamed rebels but genuinely don’t see how she cost them Luke.

Luke dies to buy them a few minutes to escape. If Rose had let Finn take out the battering ram, the door to the rebel base wouldn't have been breached, and Luke's sacrifice wouldn't have been necessary.

[Ran]

Or maybe Finn would have proved ineffectual even in his kamikaze attack. Given the tenor of the film, pretty good odds that it would have been a fruitless death.

That said, it’s a little bit of a hole, Luke using so much will and energy to buy a few minutes... without, you know, suggesting they use those minutes. Instead it’s left to the sharp mind of Poe Dameron to divine Luke’s purpose...

[aceluby]

Just now, felice said:

Luke dies to buy them a few minutes to escape. If Rose had let Finn take out the battering ram, the door to the rebel base wouldn't have been breached, and Luke's sacrifice wouldn't have been necessary.

Luke's 'sacrifice' wasn't necessary period.  He wasn't even there and just died for no reason.  Then there needed to be two minutes of dialogue to explain it because it didn't make any sense.

That scene and the Leia space walk scene were the two dumbest choices in the film.  Just completely unnecessary.

[The Bard of Banefort]

I really liked that Rey was a new character unconnected to older, well-known characters, but I do hope there's more to her backstory. After all, if Rey's parents used all their money to buy booze, how did they afford a passage off the planet? And how did they end up dying on Jakku if they had already left? I'm sure there's a simple way to explain away all of this (ex. Unkar paid an exorbitant amount of money for one child slave, allowing them to be able to afford to leave the planet, get hammered, then return to the planet and conveniently die unnoticed) but I hope there's more to the story. Unless, of course, the person Rey was yelling at to come back was someone other than her parents. . . 

 

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, aceluby said:

Luke's 'sacrifice' wasn't necessary period.  He wasn't even there and just died for no reason.  Then there needed to be two minutes of dialogue to explain it because it didn't make any sense.

That scene and the Leia space walk scene were the two dumbest choices in the film.  Just completely unnecessary.

If Luke doesn't sacrifice himself, the resistance doesn't escape. Finn likely can't run a random speeder into an operational cannon and do anything to save it. Luke has to buy them that time, and distract them from the Falcon. Luke is basically doing the same thing that Gandalf and Aragorn do - making a distraction so shiny that Ren must go after it, and it alone. 

Luke also wanted to go out in a way he wanted. He wanted to say goodbye to his sister and apologize. He wanted to torment Ren (and by the way, having a force ghost Luke taunting Ren all the time would be SO AWESOME PLS). 

But, as the last scene goes, he also apparently broadcast it to every force-sensitive person in the galaxy. and he made this a statement to them to resist. Sometimes you do need a hero, who dies, and some times you do need a leader. 

[Werthead]

Quote

 

Naomi does it on purpose and plans out how to survive spacing herself in book 5 of The Expanse.

 

There's also that scene in Season 1 where the guy nonchalantly opens his helmet to adjust something. That's still just a couple of seconds though.

Quote

She's probably not dead.

 

 

She fell through a massive exploding fireball and out the bottom of the ship into the vacuum of space with a hole in her helmet. Mayyyybe she had magnetic boots and was able to loop round, land somewhere and get back in an airtight part of the ship but it'd be a bit of a stretch.

Hmm.

[A True Kaniggit]

13 minutes ago, Werthead said:

 

She fell through a massive exploding fireball and out the bottom of the ship into the vacuum of space with a hole in her helmet. Mayyyybe she had magnetic boots and was able to loop round, land somewhere and get back in an airtight part of the ship but it'd be a bit of a stretch.

Hmm.

Yeah, but last time we saw her in TFA she was getting thrown into a garbage chute on a planet that blew up shortly after. I won't believe she's dead until I see a body. 

[Corvinus85]

54 minutes ago, felice said:

Luke dies to buy them a few minutes to escape. If Rose had let Finn take out the battering ram, the door to the rebel base wouldn't have been breached, and Luke's sacrifice wouldn't have been necessary.

 

50 minutes ago, aceluby said:

Luke's 'sacrifice' wasn't necessary period.  He wasn't even there and just died for no reason.  Then there needed to be two minutes of dialogue to explain it because it didn't make any sense.

Luke showed up because he sensed Leia's need, and he knew that he needed to confront Kylo eventually, and did it on his own terms.

Rose stopping Finn has nothing to do with it. It's highly doubtful Finn would have succeeded, and even if he did, it would only have delayed things. The First Order could have just grabbed another space cannon.

But Luke showed up when Leia learned no help was coming, and she had lost hope.

[aceluby]

36 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

If Luke doesn't sacrifice himself, the resistance doesn't escape. Finn likely can't run a random speeder into an operational cannon and do anything to save it. Luke has to buy them that time, and distract them from the Falcon. Luke is basically doing the same thing that Gandalf and Aragorn do - making a distraction so shiny that Ren must go after it, and it alone. 

Luke also wanted to go out in a way he wanted. He wanted to say goodbye to his sister and apologize. He wanted to torment Ren (and by the way, having a force ghost Luke taunting Ren all the time would be SO AWESOME PLS). 

But, as the last scene goes, he also apparently broadcast it to every force-sensitive person in the galaxy. and he made this a statement to them to resist. Sometimes you do need a hero, who dies, and some times you do need a leader. 

Your explanation makes no sense.  He's not physically there and doesn't need to sacrifice himself for them to escape.  His distraction has absolutely nothing to do with his death.  It makes absolutely no sense that he'd go through all the trouble to create a force skywalker that can hug and kiss without anyone knowing you're not really there, to provide a distraction that wasn't really needed since pretty much everyone watched the damn thing, only to die at home moments later.

It's just bad story telling.

[Kalbear]

9 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

Yeah, but last time we saw her in TFA she was getting thrown into a garbage chute on a planet that blew up shortly after. I won't believe she's dead until I see a body. 

And Boba Fett survived the Sarlacc. 

Just saying we didn't see her die, we saw her fall, and falling is apparently like really trivial damage in Star Wars. 

[felice]

34 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

But, as the last scene goes, he also apparently broadcast it to every force-sensitive person in the galaxy. and he made this a statement to them to resist. Sometimes you do need a hero, who dies, and some times you do need a leader. 

Hmm... that would make a lot of sense, and explain why it took so much effort. Perhaps he even woke the ability to actively use the Force in all the Force-sensitives that had the potential, Buffy-style? I don't think the film did a good job of communicating any of that, though, if it's the case.

Why did Luke choose the first Jedi Temple as a place of exile if his intention was to cut himself off from the Force? Would have made more sense for him to go back to Tatooine to be a moisture farmer or something like that.

[aceluby]

Just now, Corvinus said:

 

Luke showed up because he sensed Leia's need, and he knew that he needed to confront Kylo eventually, and did it on his own terms.

Rose stopping Finn has nothing to do with it. It's highly doubtful Finn would have succeeded, and even if he did, it would only have delayed things. The First Order could have just grabbed another space cannon.

But Luke showed up when Leia learned no help was coming, and she had lost hope.

I have no issue with Force skywalker coming in.

What I have issue with is that he did it and then died for no reason, with no other explanation than "he was at peace".  Dumb.