The Last Jedi: Here There Be Spoilers

[Darth Richard II]

Don't think the flames would affect her given her supervarmor, or whatever.

more leia space stuff: it's mentioned in one of the behind the scenes books that she creates a force bubble and that's why she could survive for so long. They definitely could have shown that better in the film.

[Kalbear]

Just now, aceluby said:

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.

At the beginning of the movie Ren says that Rey can't force project like that, because the effort would kill her.

Luke force projects like that. The effort kills him. He does it knowing it will kill him, because, well, he's smart like that. He tailors his appearance to maximally taunt Ren (he looks just like he did when he was training Ren, not like he does at that moment). 

Like, the movie literally tells you that this kind of thing ends up with your death, and then Luke does it and dies. There's a reason no one else does it, because, well, you die when you do it. And if Ren knows that, Luke knows that.

Also, no one watched it. They ran as soon as Poe figured it out. Literally no one watched it at all. Only Leia and Rey sense Luke's death. 

[Rockroi]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

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, ...

Somebody else I watched the movie said something very similar and I see that, but thank you for the reaffirmation. 

But that's only part of my criticism; the remainder is that Snoke - unlike the Emperor in the initial series - is this gigantically powerful character who takes up a HUGE space in every movie he appears in... and we don't know why and who is ultimately utterly unnecessary and his motivations are not only unknown but unimportant.  By contrast, the Emperor is not even shown in the first episode (he is, briefly, mentioned) and in the second we know his motivation in basically one sentence - he believes Luke Skywalker can destroy him and Vader convinces him to turn him to the Dark side (later expanded to replace Vader).  Also, the Emperor is the status quo in ESB; he wants the rebels to fail because he's already in charge.  Everything after that is just more meat on the bone.

Snoke?  He's got this deep voice.  So, by rule, he has to want to be evil?  Is he a Sith?  Does it matter? How did he find Kylo?  Why did he do any of this?  How did he get into the First Order?  Remember, this is the moving force behind the First Order, Kylo, even the Resistance ... and he required all of zero back story or explanation and his death detours the story not at all (again, by contrast the Emperor's death ended the series).  

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

Gods, how I couldn't disagree more (on Fisher's acting). 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? 

If you thought she did a good job, I got no beef there.  Acting is, at some point, a subjective art.  For me, I never saw anything from her that made me believe she was Leia, but instead Carrie Fisher trying; her longing looks were somehow just as cringe worthy as her flat dialog delivery.  Also, her banter with Dern was uncomfortable because at least Dern can act and it exposed how incapable Fisher was.  She spoke like she was reading dialog off a card; her last scene of "The spark has died" talk made me feel bad for her.  At one point I actually thought they had re-dubed her dialog.  

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

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. 

I didn't get that second-part at all, but even if that were the case, she shares that burden with others.  Luke, by contarst, in ESB, has nobody to share his failuresd and defeats with.  He has to bare it all on his own.

However, I agree that had the movie played too closely on the defeat trope, people would have complained "BAH!!!  Its just like Empire!" and that's a fair point.  I had not considered that.  So in that one way I can feel like "Okay, they were doing something different."  And I DID appreciate that; that while it SOUNDED like ESB, it was not the "Copy-Paste" that Force Awakens was.  

[Corvinus85]

7 minutes ago, aceluby said:

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.

I don't understand that "he died for no reason". It was the effort of doing what he did that killed him.

[The Bard of Banefort]

I've seen people on other sites complain about "modern" language being used in TLJ, but somehow they've managed to forget all the times Han called Leia "sister" in A New Hope 

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Rockroi said:

Somebody else I watched the movie said something very similar and I see that, but thank you for the reaffirmation. 

But that's only part of my criticism; the remainder is that Snoke - unlike the Emperor in the initial series - is this gigantically powerful character who takes up a HUGE space in every movie he appears in... and we don't know why and who is ultimately utterly unnecessary and his motivations are not only unknown but unimportant.  By contrast, the Emperor is not even shown in the first episode (he is, briefly, mentioned) and in the second we know his motivation in basically one sentence - he believes Luke Skywalker can destroy him and Vader convinces him to turn him to the Dark side (later expanded to replace Vader).  Also, the Emperor is the status quo in ESB; he wants the rebels to fail because he's already in charge.  Everything after that is just more meat on the bone.

Snoke?  He's got this deep voice.  So, by rule, he has to want to be evil?  Is he a Sith?  Does it matter? How did he find Kylo?  Why did he do any of this?  How did he get into the First Order?  Remember, this is the moving force behind the First Order, Kylo, even the Resistance ... and he required all of zero back story or explanation and his death detours the story not at all (again, by contrast the Emperor's death ended the series).  

I'm not sure that Snoke was the moving force behind the First Order, honestly. The impression from Hux that I got was that they were doing this as part of the Empire, and Snoke teamed up and gained power in the group because he was a badass. I honestly don't know what the history is on the First Order, though I believe the Wendig book answers it. 

That said, it's a reasonable point. I personally liked it because Snoke's motivations and connection with people was just not as interesting as Ren's are, and as such he is totally disposable. This is the first time we've seen the apprentice overcome the master and stay evil, and that's something talked about in Sith lore forever and ever - but we get it here. In that way, Snoke only existed as something to be beaten by Ren. 

Heck, it's not even clear if Snoke corrupted Ren or if Ren sought him out after the betrayal. 

But anyway, I thought Johnson made a good point in his EW interview about this - that as long as Snoke is around, Ren is a second fiddle of sorts and not the big bad - and Ren is a FAR more compelling big bad - which meant Snoke had to go. So we get his motivations on why he wants to find Skywalker (namely, he thinks that Skywalker is the only thing that can beat him), we get his reasoning on his mistreatment and keeping Ren (again, Skywalker and as a lure for Rey once he figures that out), and otherwise he's a generic evil villain in the mold as all of them have been in Star Wars. 

And then he gets cut down like a chump because of his hubris and arrogance, defying all our expectations on his arc, and it's awesome. Again, if he doesn't die here, people will be all 'ooh, too much like TESB'. This was genuinely surprising because we expected him to be such a big deal, and he isn't. It was shocking and satisfying to see him die, followed by one of the most kickass saber sequences ever.

[dog-days]

I didn't have any problems with Luke's characterisation or his final stand. I thought both were excellent, and really elevated the film. 

The latter typified the better aspects of the Jedi mindset, as someone (@kalbear ?) has already indicated. My take on it was that he was perhaps dying already, and certainly felt himself to be the wrong person to lead a new rebellion. Not so much Achilles in his tent as the Fisher King 

He came to the site of their imminent ruin to bring what the surviving, battered resistance needed - hope.  Yoda said something like: "You Skywalkers, with your eyes always on the horizon" - and Luke dies with his face to the horizon and twin suns. The (annoying, superfluous) brat at the end is seen staring up at the night sky. Luke dies so others can look up and hope and dream. 

I assume that he felt through the Force that Poe was looking for a secret exit, and that Rey would arrive and help the survivors escape. 

Apart from the idealistic stuff, Luke also managed:

- to humiliate the (only recently established) leader of the First Order in front of his own troops and generals.

- to further destabilise Ren: those golden dice and that face when Ben saw them, and saw them disappear. 

[Stannis Eats No Peaches]

Yeah I definitely read it as the effort that killed him.

I’m surprised at the number of people putting Rogue One above TLJ and a bit saddened by all those putting the prequels ahead.

It’s interesting that the reactions from normal moviegoers vary so much, considering that the critics’ reactions were overwhelmingly positive.

[aceluby]

4 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

At the beginning of the movie Ren says that Rey can't force project like that, because the effort would kill her.

Luke force projects like that. The effort kills him. He does it knowing it will kill him, because, well, he's smart like that. He tailors his appearance to maximally taunt Ren (he looks just like he did when he was training Ren, not like he does at that moment). 

Like, the movie literally tells you that this kind of thing ends up with your death, and then Luke does it and dies. There's a reason no one else does it, because, well, you die when you do it. And if Ren knows that, Luke knows that.

Also, no one watched it. They ran as soon as Poe figured it out. Literally no one watched it at all. Only Leia and Rey sense Luke's death. 

Again, that makes no sense.  He died after and Rey says he was at peace when he did so.  If it was the effort that killed him, why wouldn't it kill him during the projection (or add that bit into the dialog explaining wtf happened)?  And if it was indeed that the force projection means eventual death, why would the process be peaceful and why did he have enough energy after the fact to get situated before eventually becoming a force ghost?

Regardless, the fact that there had to be dedicated dialogue just to be sure everyone knew that the major character for 40 years actually did die shows that the story telling was done poorly.  Every person in our group of 8 didn't know wtf was going on when Luke died and why it happened.  They could have accomplished more with less there.  It was unnecessarily complex.

[Corvinus85]

5 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I'm not sure that Snoke was the moving force behind the First Order, honestly. The impression from Hux that I got was that they were doing this as part of the Empire, and Snoke teamed up and gained power in the group because he was a badass. I honestly don't know what the history is on the First Order, though I believe the Wendig book answers it. 

That said, it's a reasonable point. I personally liked it because Snoke's motivations and connection with people was just not as interesting as Ren's are, and as such he is totally disposable. This is the first time we've seen the apprentice overcome the master and stay evil, and that's something talked about in Sith lore forever and ever - but we get it here. In that way, Snoke only existed as something to be beaten by Ren. 

Heck, it's not even clear if Snoke corrupted Ren or if Ren sought him out after the betrayal. 

But anyway, I thought Johnson made a good point in his EW interview about this - that as long as Snoke is around, Ren is a second fiddle of sorts and not the big bad - and Ren is a FAR more compelling big bad - which meant Snoke had to go. So we get his motivations on why he wants to find Skywalker (namely, he thinks that Skywalker is the only thing that can beat him), we get his reasoning on his mistreatment and keeping Ren (again, Skywalker and as a lure for Rey once he figures that out), and otherwise he's a generic evil villain in the mold as all of them have been in Star Wars. 

And then he gets cut down like a chump because of his hubris and arrogance, defying all our expectations on his arc, and it's awesome. Again, if he doesn't die here, people will be all 'ooh, too much like TESB'. This was genuinely surprising because we expected him to be such a big deal, and he isn't. It was shocking and satisfying to see him die, followed by one of the most kickass saber sequences ever.

Snoke's death at the hands of the his apprentice is also a reminder of the Sith rule of two. There may not be anyone calling themselves Sith, and Kylo looks to start something new, but the way the dark side works still, and always will, involve treachery and betrayal.

[Corvinus85]

3 minutes ago, aceluby said:

Again, that makes no sense.  He died after and Rey says he was at peace when he did so.  If it was the effort that killed him, why wouldn't it kill him during the projection (or add that bit into the dialog explaining wtf happened)?  And if it was indeed that the force projection means eventual death, why would the process be peaceful and why did he have enough energy after the fact to get situated before eventually becoming a force ghost?

Regardless, the fact that there had to be dedicated dialogue just to be sure everyone knew that the major character for 40 years actually did die shows that the story telling was done poorly.  Every person in our group of 8 didn't know wtf was going on when Luke died and why it happened.  They could have accomplished more with less there.  It was unnecessarily complex.

He was at peace when he died, not that the process was peaceful. Rey felt him go, becoming one with the force, she did not feel what he was doing at the time of when he was force projecting.

It seems to me that you failed to understand this part of the film, and you choose to blame it on the writing.

[dog-days]

5 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

And then he gets cut down like a chump because of his hubris and arrogance, defying all our expectations on his arc, and it's awesome. Again, if he doesn't die here, people will be all 'ooh, too much like TESB'. This was genuinely surprising because we expected him to be such a big deal, and he isn't. It was shocking and satisfying to see him die, followed by one of the most kickass saber sequences ever.

I did enjoy it when Snoke was casually impaled by the lightsaber. Someone hadn't been to health and safety class before handling a dangerous implement! And I said it when it was announced, and I'll say it again now: Snoke is a truly dreadful choice of name. I snorted with laughter whenever it was mentioned. I'm not sure if we were supposed to or not. 

One of the reasons I like Ren as a character is that he's often kind of hopeless, but not always - often we're shown him as an overgrown teenager with tantrums who plays at being his grandad. At other times, we're reminded that Ren has the capacity to be more inventive and sly than his clan. In TFA, he used the Force to read minds. Where Anakin/Vader picked the Emperor up and threw him down a reactor shaft, Ren assassinates his master without breaking sweat. 

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, aceluby said:

Again, that makes no sense.  He died after and Rey says he was at peace when he did so.  If it was the effort that killed him, why wouldn't it kill him during the projection (or add that bit into the dialog explaining wtf happened)? 

Because he exerted all his power into doing that, and then he died after. Why did Yoda randomly die? Why did Vader take, like, 20 fucking minutes to die while Luke carries his ass around the Death Star, and only dies when he takes off his helmet, but then is at peace when he dies?

4 minutes ago, aceluby said:

And if it was indeed that the force projection means eventual death, why would the process be peaceful and why did he have enough energy after the fact to get situated before eventually becoming a force ghost?

See above. The process wasn't peaceful - Luke was clearly in major pain - but he was at peace when he died, which is a far cry from where he was when Rey meets him. 

4 minutes ago, aceluby said:

Regardless, the fact that there had to be dedicated dialogue just to be sure everyone knew that the major character for 40 years actually did die shows that the story telling was done poorly.  Every person in our group of 8 didn't know wtf was going on when Luke died and why it happened.  They could have accomplished more with less there.  It was unnecessarily complex.

I guess I didn't think it was particularly complex at all, and I thought they pulled off the force projection amazingly well. It's a great thing to see on rewatch too - how he looks different, younger, how he doesn't actually do any interaction with things, Poe asking 'how did he get in'? and that being answered.  We even get Ren interacting with the salt and the red crystals and Luke not. It's a great Sixth Sense vibe that works well. I'm sorry you didn't like it or get it, but the movie explains it and it didn't seem that weird to me. 

[mormont]

1 hour ago, aceluby said:

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

Cold, dead soul.

1 hour ago, The Bard of Banefort said:

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?

They didn't. The implication is that the whole 'they went away but they're coming back' story is exactly the sort of thing an abandoned orphan like Rey would invent.

Turning to the 'Rey is a Mary Sue' argument, sorry, but no. If you're saying that, you don't understand the term at all.

Rey does not turn out to be a secret princess/Skywalker/whatever, which is one of the basic traitsof a Mary Sue character. Instead we find out she has no secret birthright at all.

Rey does not defeat either big bad in the film. Kylo Ren defeats Snoke, and Luke in turn defeats Kylo Ren. Rey, meanwhile, is relegated to rescuing people while Luke gets the badass showdown. Rey is helpless against Snoke. She is wrong about being able to turn Ben, and Luke is right. A Mary Sue would have defeated Snoke after turning Ben, who would have fallen in love with her, again an absolute hallmark of a Mary Sue. She doesn't even get Luke to leave his exile. Again, a Mary Sue character would have had an iconic character like Luke agreeing with everything she said right off.

The only argument that Rey is a Mary Sue appears to be that she's a skilled pilot as well as a Jedi. Which is common in the Star Wars universe.

ps Rey steals Snoke's escape vehicle to get to the Falcon: there is a specific line of dialogue about that.

[Slurktan]

4 minutes ago, mormont said:

ps Rey steals Snoke's escape vehicle to get to the Falcon: there is a specific line of dialogue about that.

Where is that one line of dialogue?

[Martini Sigil]

There were about a dozen things in this movie that made me shake my head at... but the astral-projection light-saber fight was among the laziest bit of writing I've ever seen... and that came directly on the heels of Finn riding directly into the destruct-o-beam of the canon which was destroying a big metal door behind him...

[Corvinus85]

3 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

Where is that one line of dialogue?

After Hux comes in the throne room.

[Kalbear]

14 minutes ago, Martini Sigil said:

There were about a dozen things in this movie that made me shake my head at... but the astral-projection light-saber fight was among the laziest bit of writing I've ever seen... and that came directly on the heels of Finn riding directly into the destruct-o-beam of the canon which was destroying a big metal door behind him...

Like, okay, I get that some people didn't like the force ghost thing. I don't quite get why, but I get it.

But lazy?

Where they explicitly put in things to make you question whether or not it's a plot hole, gave you hints that it was what it was, set it up early as something that kills you if you try, emphasized with camera shots and choices of fighting that Luke wasn't touching anyone and made that badass in the process - that's lazy?

 

[Rhom]

20 minutes ago, Slurktan said:

Where is that one line of dialogue?

Yes, I remember that as well.

Maybe a quick scene of her climbing in said escape pod and looking back wistfully at Ben would not have been amiss, but it was in there.

[aceluby]

8 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Like, okay, I get that some people didn't like the force ghost thing. I don't quite get why, but I get it.

But lazy?

Where they explicitly put in things to make you question whether or not it's a plot hole, gave you hints that it was what it was, set it up early as something that kills you if you try, emphasized with camera shots and choices of fighting that Luke wasn't touching anyone and made that badass in the process - that's lazy?

 

If anything it was unnecessarily complex that added no more value than if he actually was there.  For me, it actually distracted from the emotion the scene was going for, which is why I had an issue with the decision.