The Last Jedi: Here There Be Spoilers

[AndrewJ]

I figure we’ll need a spoiler thread for those who have seen the movie. To anyone that hasn’t: Fly, you fools!

So... Snoke turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. We never did learn his backstory and who he was. I guess we could learn more in the last movie, but it will seem a little superfluous at that point. I thought his demise was well done, though - I certainly didn’t see it coming in this film. 

On the other hand, I was saddened to see Luke depart - even if it is likely we’ll still see glimpses of him in the last movie. 

[Relic]

Initial reaction: Overall,  very solid. Happy to see it again tomorrow.

Loved every scene with Luke, loved just about every scene with Leia, disliked every scene in casino plot,  and Poe's opening. Visually it is a gorgeous movie,  probably the best looking SW to date. 

[AndrewJ]

Yeah - in the non-spoiler thread, I said strong opening, so-so middle and great final third. Mostly I just wasn't feeling the Casino stuff. But the Rey/Ren/Snoke showdown and then the Luke/Ren showdown made up for it.

Oh - and on the visuals... the shot of the Resistance Cruiser doing a light-speed jump through Snoke's flagship was incredible.

[First of My Name]

Agreed, the visuals were astounding. Leia's flight through vacuum, Ahch-To, the battle on Crait... but especially Holdo's cruiser flying through Snoke's ship. That might be my favorite shot in the entire saga.

In fact, I really liked the rest of the movie too. I'm not entirely used to the idea of how Luke ended up yet, but thought it was a daring creative choice.
Otherwise the only thing I'm not wild about is DJ and Canto Bight. I feel like we could've skipped that without really losing anything. I do appreciate the twist that it led to: Finn and Rose failing to disable the tracker in time. That was genuinely unexpected for me, because it's not how those kinds of scenes typically go.

Also, while Williams' score didn't leave much of an impression, I think this might very well be the best-acted Star Wars movie yet.

I do wonder about Episode IX. There's just not a whole lot of story left. Johnson burned through so much stuff here, especially in Snoke's throne room (which I thought was a fantastic scene) that the final chapter is feeling kind of empty. No Snoke, no Big Three, not even Holdo or Phasma. But that's a problem for 2019.

ETA: I just want to mention Leia's big moment, in the vacuum of space. Her using the Force and her theme music swelling up, and the way it was shot... I just thought this moment was absolutely fantastic.

 

 

[Lord Varys]

Snoke was just the evil hologram-Emperor dude. Why do you people have to ask questions about that guy? He was just a stand-in for Palpatine. And a bad one at that. Just as milk-face is essentially a stand-in for Hayden Christensen.

A pity he wasn't Yoda's size. That would have been fun. The guy's hologram was so overly large in TFA that I really would have liked that to happen.

But I get it why it is frustrating to know nothing about this guy. I mean, where did he come from? Why did milk-face listen to him? How did he contact milk-face?

What I really don't understand is why the fight with those stupid pseudo-royal guards took so long, and why the hell they did not immediately hail baby-face as the new Supreme Leader? After all, isn't that how it is done? The master being replaced by the apprentice, etc.? And if they wanted to bring them down why the hell didn't they call for back-up/inform everyone what was going on in the Supreme Leader's suite? I mean, this is a space ship, is it not? And there are communication devices there. The evil hologram used them earlier in the movie.

Still, I liked the twists. But baby-face and his baby-faced lackey are very poor villains. The next movie is not going to have much potential. Especially with Luke now gone, too, and Carrie Fisher not coming back despite Leia being still alive. 

Is the heroine the sister of baby-face? I'm still pretty sure she is, no?

[AndrewJ]

So... I guess I'll raise a couple of the issues that people will want to discuss ad nauseum for the next year or two.

Firstly - ESB similarities. Yeah... the movie started with the rebels (resistance) fleeing the planet while under attack from the empire (first order). But it happened differently enough for me. Then we obviously have the jedi master training the pupil, which we always knew was going to be the case. There was no way to not include that in the movie. The rest of the movie didn't follow the structure of ESB at all.

Secondly, Rey's parentage. I pretty much tend to accept it at face value. I realised immediately there's a chance it is misdirection and Ben is lying or seeing a false memory or whatever. But I don't think that will turn out to be the case. They want to say that anyone from any beginnings can become a great hero (for example, the kid with the broom-stick at the end). But I know very well that people won't back down one iota on their pet theories. Queue two years of ongoing debate.

Edit: oops - and I just noticed Lord Varys's last sentence. So I guess you beat me to the punch on that one. But yeah - I'm not in agreement there (even though I was among the earliest to raise the possibility, while everyone else was suggesting she was Luke's daughter)

[Relic]

Essentially they could have cut Finn out of this movie completely and it would have been better for it. Just about everything that happens with him is nonsensical. 

 

[Lord Varys]

The underlying TESB structure is another sign how derivative this new trilogy is. The new movie wasn't as bad as TFA but it is still just a variation of a theme: What if Vader did kill the Emperor? What if Luke actually joined his father?

And, quite frankly, the entire scenario of the continuous escape throughout the entire movie was pretty much nonsense. It is going to become ever more ridiculous during each re-watch. The twists and surprises are what allows the movie to go.

How they wrote Luke is another big letdown. This is Luke Skywalker, not some moron. As is pointed out in the movie itself - the man went in the lion's den and tweaked Vader and the Emperor at their respective tails. Why on earth should this man break so completely just because of a vision? Why would a man who was willing to forgive Darth Fucking Vader - who assisted in blowing up an ENTIRE PLANET - ever so much as contemplate murdering an innocent child? That doesn't make any sense.

Luke failing as a teacher is one thing. Luke doing shit like that makes sense. Not to mention that Luke doesn't give any indication in the OT that he had issues with the Jedi being stupid enough to allow Darth Sidious to kill them all. He must have known what happened back then, more or less. It is not that Clone Wars only took place after the OT, right? That was only the case for us.

And, frankly, the motivation of milk-face is still an utter mystery to me - and presumably anybody else in the audience. For one, it is utter stupidity that anybody wanting to be 'evil' would want to emulate Vader. Vader was a moron and 'a sick man in an iron mask' as the Clone Emperor put it so aptly in 'Dark Empire'. He failed at fulfilling his potential when he let Obi-Wan nearly kill him, and he failed at being a Sith Lord when he allowed Luke to redeem him. And milk-face knows all that. He knows the history of Vader. Why would he want to be like him?

If I wanted to be 'evil' in this world I'd emulate Darth Sidious, not Vader. A better version of the old 'somebody is seduced by the dark side' story would have been if milk-face himself had been the new Emperor - not the weirdo apprentice of a Palpatine stand-in.

But then, why not explore something new, for a change? Why give us the same shit again and again? Star Wars was the Good Rebels vs. the Evil Empire back in the 1970s. It doesn't have to be this way now. 

[Werthead]

Please call the characters by their name. It's a bit weird to give that oddball nicknames that don't really make sense.

Anyway, a strong movie. I think I'll settle on it being bolder but ultimately slightly less successful than The Force Awakens, even though it's less derivative. Without Abrams and his total disregard for plot logic on board I was hoping for a more coherent movie on the worldbuilding and canon side of things, but nope, it's still total bollocks. Without fuel concerns the First Order fleet would have overhauled and destroyed the Resistance very quickly. Or they could have sent say two of their Star Destroyers on a micro-jump ahead of the Resistance and cut them off. Or just sent a thousand TIE Fighters to obliterate them. The chase is illogical, unnecessary and stupid that undercuts a lot of the tension of the film.

Also, hyperspace does not fucking work that way as you fucking established in the last fucking film.

Sorry, had to get that off my chest. Hyperspace means travelling into a different dimension and the jump entry point is pretty much instantaneous, as shown by the Falcon jumping out of the freighter's cargo hold in the last movie without tearing a hole in the side of the ship. So Laura Dern's sacrifice is undercut by it making zero sense. Her ship wouldn't have cut through the Star Destroyer, it would have just disappeared. If there's a special "hyperspace kamikaze" mode then great, but why didn't someone use that to take down either Death Star (which is only twice the width of Snoke's unnecessarily-massive flagship), the Executor or Starkiller Base?

Also, autopilots are not a thing in the Star Wars universe, apparently. Every ship needs some manually piloting it, even when there's no reason for it (like the second ship that goes down having evacuated the crew and the captain stays on board to die for no reason).

Also, how did Poe get Rose back to the base ahead of the massive mechanised machines and dropships behind him, without them 1) squashing him, 2) running him over or 3) simply overtaking and ignoring him?

Anyway, the character development was pretty decent and it was good to see some changes to the formula. Poe Dameron's plan was a bit of a stretch and it failing was a rare moment of realism, although it was undercut by the stupidity elsewhere and the fact that the plane to taken down Starkiller Base last time out was even dumber and was pulled off. Flinn didn't have a huge amount of stuff to contribute beyond helping inspire the kids on that planet. For a second I thought they were going to kill him off to take out the cannon, which would have been a bolder choice (killing off the old crew is one thing, but one of the stars of the new trilogy would have been much more interesting), but they wimped out of doing that.

I think the Rey/Luke/Ren/Snoke dynamic saved the movie and made for a really interesting relationship, especially Rey and Ren's psychic exchanges. Ren killing off Snoke was a great move and Rey and Ren taking out the guards made for the film's best fight scene. Ren taking charge and immediately beating up Hux was also welcome (but keeping him alive as per Snoke's recommendation at the start of the film). The Force ghost fight with Luke was quite entertaining, as it utterly humiliated Ren and made him realise how he'd been had. That was fun. Luke joining the Force in front of the double suns of his island home was also really appropriate. And the callback to Leia's message was really well-judged.

Quivering-bottom-lip Porg is my personal hero of the movie. They were amusing, especially since one of the first things we see is Chewbacca cooking and eating one! Evil BB8 was a letdown and Phasma was pointless. Why even have her in the movies? BB8 himself was also pretty cool in this movie, and it was good to have it confirmed that R2 is swearing like a trooper half the time he's beeping away. Also a musical score which more leaned on established tunes rather than new ones. Probably my favourite musical moment was the callback to 

Also, I enjoyed the Yoda cameo. "Page-turners, they are not." I might be wrong on this, but was that a puppet and not CGI? Nicely done.

Overall, the actual Resistance/First Order plot was again let down by sheer, moronic plot stupidity but the character-based and thematic stuff was all quite well done. It does leave things quite a blank slate for Episode IX though. Aside from a final Rey/Ren showdown, there doesn't seem much else for that movie to do.

[Red Tiger]

LOL @ Snoke and Rey's parents being absolute nobodies. Im gonna see it in about 2 weeks, I don't mind spoilers.

[Werthead]

4 minutes ago, Red Tiger said:

LOL @ Snoke and Rey's parents being absolute nobodies. Im gonna see it in about 2 weeks, I don't mind spoilers.

This put me in mind of Pug in the novel Magician. Sometimes someone just steps up, y'know?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

11 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

But I get it why it is frustrating to know nothing about this guy. I mean, where did he come from? Why did milk-face listen to him? How did he contact milk-face?

We didn’t know anything about the original emperor either.

11 hours ago, Lord Varys said:

Is the heroine the sister of baby-face? I'm still pretty sure she is, no?

If they follow the books then I believe the answer is yes. I never read them, but my step-brother had nearly every Star Wars book there was, and he said the third trilogy was about the Leia’s twins and their struggles with the force IIRC.

25 minutes ago, Red Tiger said:

LOL @ Snoke and Rey's parents being absolute nobodies. Im gonna see it in about 2 weeks, I don't mind spoilers.

I can’t remember what psychology class it was in, but we looked at a handful of studies about spoilers in books and movies and the majority in each study said they found spoilers to increase their enjoyment. It’s the same reason why people tend to like movies more after a second viewing.

[Werthead]

 

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If they follow the books then I believe the answer is yes. I never read them, but my step-brother had nearly every Star Wars book there was, and he said the third trilogy was about the Leia’s twins and their struggles with the force IIRC.

 

 

The books are dead and gone. Rey isn't Ren's sister because Ren's parents are Han and Leia, and I'm sure they didn't just completely forget about having a second baby.

I think this explanation will be legit: Rey's parents were downbeat assholes who gave her to Plutt to work as a junkyard slave to pay off a debt and they died out in the desert. If they retcon his in IX so Rey is the heir to the planet Barziwoop or is Ren's cousin's uncle's brother's stepfather's former roommate it will be a major letdown.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

10 minutes ago, Werthead said:

 

 

The books are dead and gone. Rey isn't Ren's sister because Ren's parents are Han and Leia, and I'm sure they didn't just completely forget about having a second baby.

I think this explanation will be legit: Rey's parents were downbeat assholes who gave her to Plutt to work as a junkyard slave to pay off a debt and they died out in the desert. If they retcon his in IX so Rey is the heir to the planet Barziwoop or is Ren's cousin's uncle's brother's stepfather's former roommate it will be a major letdown.

Clearly you’ve forgotten the visionary movie The Man in the Iron Mask.

[aceluby]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Also, hyperspace does not fucking work that way as you fucking established in the last fucking film.

Sorry, had to get that off my chest. Hyperspace means travelling into a different dimension and the jump entry point is pretty much instantaneous, as shown by the Falcon jumping out of the freighter's cargo hold in the last movie without tearing a hole in the side of the ship. So Laura Dern's sacrifice is undercut by it making zero sense. Her ship wouldn't have cut through the Star Destroyer, it would have just disappeared. If there's a special "hyperspace kamikaze" mode then great, but why didn't someone use that to take down either Death Star (which is only twice the width of Snoke's unnecessarily-massive flagship), the Executor or Starkiller Base?

I just watched 7 last night and you're misremembering things.  1) There was a monster on the front of the MF and it definitely tore in half during that scene.  And 2) the cargo ship was open for the MF to take off through.  They also talk about flying through things in hyperspace in the original as well.  "This aint like dustin crops boy!"

[Werthead]

7 minutes ago, aceluby said:

I just watched 7 last night and you're misremembering things.  1) There was a monster on the front of the MF and it definitely tore in half during that scene.  And 2) the cargo ship was open for the MF to take off through.  They also talk about flying through things in hyperspace in the original as well.  "This aint like dustin crops boy!"

I just went back and rewatched this and you're right. It wasn't exactly obvious though (the hanger bay doors open very surreptitiously in the background of the scene). The creature dying I put down to exposure to the acceleration splattering it.

However, the exit and entry points to hyperspace are still very close to the forward motion of the ship. It's not hundreds of kilometres away (which would be required for Admiral Dern's plan to make sense). It also doesn't answer the question of why the First Order didn't jump in front of the Rebel ship to cut it off.

Most critically, it doesn't explain why, if this manoeuvre was possible, they didn't use it to take out Starkiller Base, the Death Stars or other superweapons. Get an unmanned bulk freighter, put it on autopilot and ram it at lightspeed into the Death Star core or into Starkiller Base's magic doohickey that Poe had to take out.

[Ran]

20 hours ago, Relic said:

Initial reaction: Overall,  very solid. Happy to see it again tomorrow.

Loved every scene with Luke, loved just about every scene with Leia, disliked every scene in casino plot,  and Poe's opening. Visually it is a gorgeous movie,  probably the best looking SW to date. 

Feel much the same, though I liked the casino angle a bit more even if, at the same time, it was saggy. But Poe's opening was just over-the-top corny for me, and then there was weird stuff like bombs just falling down towards the ship when it's space (? I know in TESB they had TIE bombers dropping bombs on an asteroid, but one could assume those had some propulsion whereas here these were clearly just... dropped). 

I think you may be right about how good it looks. Johnson is an excellent craftsman, and he borrowed some of rich, deep colors (particularly blacks) that were a hallmark of some of the more memorable scenes in TESB.

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Oh - and on the visuals... the shot of the Resistance Cruiser doing a light-speed jump through Snoke's flagship was incredible.

Gorgeous image. Didn't make a lick of sense, but yeah, beautiful. And the silence of it.

7 hours ago, Relic said:

Essentially they could have cut Finn out of this movie completely and it would have been better for it. Just about everything that happens with him is nonsensical. 

 

The thing that bugged me most is that 80% of the remaining Resistance is picked off like bugs because... ta-da, idiot plot! Holdo, for no apparent reason, keeps secret her plans, thereby leading Poe to come up with his mission to Canto Bight, which brings Finn and Rose in contact with DJ, who them sells out the Resistance when the table turns. If Holdo had just said, "Okay, this is what we're doing", none of this side plot would have happened. One could handwave it away, I suppose, with the notion that maybe there's a traitor aboard who can signal Hux about their plans or whatever -- and actually, the hunt for a traitor at the heart of the Resistance could have been a more interesting side-plot! -- but nope, far as I recall, not a single reference to why Holdo just... uh, decided to hold the cards so close to her chest to the point that there was a mutiny and a shoot out.

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Please call the characters by their name. It's a bit weird to give that oddball nicknames that don't really make sense.

Agreed. Adam Driver's fantastic as Kylo Ren/Ben Solo, too.

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Anyway, a strong movie. I think I'll settle on it being bolder but ultimately slightly less successful than The Force Awakens, even though it's less derivative. Without Abrams and his total disregard for plot logic on board I was hoping for a more coherent movie on the worldbuilding and canon side of things, but nope, it's still total bollocks. Without fuel concerns the First Order fleet would have overhauled and destroyed the Resistance very quickly. Or they could have sent say two of their Star Destroyers on a micro-jump ahead of the Resistance and cut them off. Or just sent a thousand TIE Fighters to obliterate them. The chase is illogical, unnecessary and stupid that undercuts a lot of the tension of the film.

Maybe micro-jumps aren't all that doable? I can't recall if we ever see one in any of the films. Maybe you'll travel thousands of AU in a blink and will be way too far away to get a hold of them.

 

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Also, hyperspace does not fucking work that way as you fucking established in the last fucking film.

Yes, I was bothered by this. Gorgeous visual, but doesn't make any sense with the rules established in the films. I know Abrams didn't care too much, but this is a huge hole in previous films. Sending a few big blocks of metal with hyperspace engines attached to slash through Death Stars would have made the plots of ANH and ROTJ fairly moot.

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Also, autopilots are not a thing in the Star Wars universe, apparently. Every ship needs some manually piloting it, even when there's no reason for it (like the second ship that goes down having evacuated the crew and the captain stays on board to die for no reason).

At worst, you think they could have a droid just being told to hold down the gas pedal...

 

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I think the Rey/Luke/Ren/Snoke dynamic saved the movie and made for a really interesting relationship, especially Rey and Ren's psychic exchanges. Ren killing off Snoke was a great move and Rey and Ren taking out the guards made for the film's best fight scene.

I didn't like that these guards were so faceless. And what has become of the rest of the Knights of Ren? I mean, maybe these guys are them, but given the hint that these are other students Ben took with him to Snoke, surely it would have made more sense to: 1) jazz up the fight with more use of the Force and 2) Have Ben interact with some of them before hand so you get a sense of who these people are who are so mindlessly devoted to Snoke.

 

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Ren taking charge and immediately beating up Hux was also welcome (but keeping him alive as per Snoke's recommendation at the start of the film). The Force ghost fight with Luke was quite entertaining, as it utterly humiliated Ren and made him realise how he'd been had.

I liked the camera showing the subtle shifts in their feet. Very much part of the language of Asian martial arts films.

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Also, I enjoyed the Yoda cameo. "Page-turners, they are not." I might be wrong on this, but was that a puppet and not CGI? Nicely done.

I think some of it was CG but I really felt that some of it was a puppet. Or maybe they decided to use CG but to given it the restrictions of puppetry, so you get him sitting or show his upper body moving as he walks but avoiding stuff like his bouncing around like a Gummi Bear

 

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Overall, the actual Resistance/First Order plot was again let down by sheer, moronic plot stupidity but the character-based and thematic stuff was all quite well done. It does leave things quite a blank slate for Episode IX though. Aside from a final Rey/Ren showdown, there doesn't seem much else for that movie to do.

Yes. The failure to really dig into how the First Order came about, Snoke, whatever weakness there was in the Rebellion, etc., feels like a part of the problem. The stakes feel forced without having an understanding of why things have become what they have become, but in Abrams' quest to basically just redo the original trilogy, they just hopped over it. ANH works in this sense because it really is a blank slate, and so the stakes are clear. Why the slate was wiped clear post ROTJ, we've no idea, and so the end point of this remains kind of nebulous. Like, if the Resistance wins, are we going to get the Second Order and the Revolution going at it for the next trilogy? Maybe skip right down to the Fourth Empire and the Insurgency...

 

ETA: Also, I think I'd happily watch a film about Justin Theroux's debonair Master Codebreaker, who appears to be Star Wars' answer to A.J. Raffles (down the Nivenesque mustache).

[RhaenysBee]

I enjoyed watching this movie a lot. At least this movie minus the last half an hour in which I started asking for it to end. I got the Star Wars cup and the BB8 straw and whatnot, the movie was exciting, there were a number of epic, mouth opening scenes, good humor, nods to previous Star Wars movies, so the Star Wars experience was real. I liked it, I would watch it again, and I would give it like 7 stars out of 10. 

Having said that, this movie suffered from every single sickness of 2010s movies and it was way too long as well. 

You don’t necessarily want to read all this, be warned. 

Spoiler

won’t even say anything about the relationship between common sense and visuals, on a game of thrones forum we don’t need to be reminded that visuals > common sense every day. Like HOW do you survive being blasted out into space or flying ten inches under laser power that melts a five meters thick metal door?  

And we all learned that men are all mindless playboys who want to play the hero and they only ever hinder women in saving the day. But can we at least address the fact that not communicating the purpose and the plan to our subordinates no matter how noble it might be isn’t exactly a good example of leadership? Because that’s like stuff they teach at college. You have to communicate your purpose if you expect people to follow and play along instead of going their own way. Otherwise you are just expecting them to blindly follow like a... supreme leader is the word I’m looking for here? So great, Poe is a dumbass man, but Laura Dern was a shitty leader anyway. 

Then there’s the issue of what needs to be addressed and what doesn’t. Finn’s relationship with a two minute screentime character falls into the category of what doesn’t. Still not sure if that cave did anything at all to advance Rey in any direction. And I would have been quite happy to find out what knocked Kylo out and how did Rey teleport onto the Falcon from Snoke’s throne room. Also, is his golden gown ironable like the rest of the uniforms? 

And what can I say? I would truly, truly appreciate if the subtlety of important plot points somehow reached up to the subtlety of social issues being shoved down my throat with the popcorn. Like, I get it, Chewie found light and from now on he will only ever eat salad and use vegan fuel in the Falcon. And the bunny eared, race horse cats were set free from captivity, boy I wish those poor Tauntauns would have been served the same justice. Don’t get me wrong, now, I don’t like cruelty against animals, I’m just trying to make a point here, so bear with me. So we are taking a stand for animals, for women in military, for women in leading positions, against discrimination, slavery and gun manufacturing. Good for us, but can we also take a stand for our own plot? Did Luke just die? But how? And why? Ten minutes later. Oh yeah, Luke died. But how again? Never mind. Was Kylo really unconscious or he was pretending? And how did he become unconscious? How did Rey escape? Does Finn like Rose too? Does R2 do anything at all, or he is retired and all he does is beep at Luke about what’s on bbc news? Like, can we first concentrate on telling the story and only then jump on hashtag bandwagons? And my absolute favorite of this bunch was the look closer, wealth is dirty. Really? Really? A blockbuster franchise is telling me that wealth is dirty? Like, you’re telling me I couldn’t find a puppy eyed janitor on the Star Wars set who sweeps the floors in double shifts for 4 bucks an hour and tell me how this and that editor yelled at him the other day? Come on, man, just stick with the story. I didn’t pay for this ticket to be told to think about my life because humanity is a disgrace. If I want to be told that, I’ll pay to see an art movie which is actually the right context for that. 

And while there are all sorts of messages about society issues all throughout the movie, I never got one message of what the story is about. There was a point in the Rey and Luke / Rey and Ben discussions when I thought the message of the story is things aren’t black and white after all, and the balance is made by accepting to be gray (which would have been an insane step for Star Wars) instead of the never ending fight between light and darkness. But then they defeated the red ninjas (which took waaaaaay too long for two chosen ones, might I add) and Kylo chose to be an asshat again and by the end of the movie we were back where we started, bad guys vs good guys. So was the movie about animal cruelty after all? 

And are you seriously telling me that both Rey AND Snoke are nobody? I mean heroes sure come from nothing, we’ve established that FOUR TIMES. But that’s not the same as heroes (and bad guys) come from anywhere and everywhere. Is there truly no continuity? Random girl from randomest planet popped out from her random mom and happened to be one of the most powerful jedis of her generation? And twenty years after one was defeated another mighty Sith Lord just popped out of nowhere and built an empire? Palpatine’s empire had been in the works for several decades before it became an empire, did Snoke do it fifth of that time or did these guys ever cross paths at all? It just seems to unlikely that everyone is no-one. 

 

Well that was awfully long wasn’t it? And I’m sure very blasphemous at certain points. Oh well. I’ll shut up now. 

 

 

 

 

[Derfel Cadarn]

10 minutes ago, RhaenysB said:

I enjoyed watching this movie a lot. At least this movie minus the last half an hour in which I started asking for it to end. I got the Star Wars cup and the BB8 straw and whatnot, the movie was exciting, there were a number of epic, mouth opening scenes, good humor, nods to previous Star Wars movies, so the Star Wars experience was real. I liked it, I would watch it again, and I would give it like 7 stars out of 10. 

Having said that, this movie suffered from every single sickness of 2010s movies and it was way too long as well. 

You don’t necessarily want to read all this, be warned. 

  Hide contents

won’t even say anything about the relationship between common sense and visuals, on a game of thrones forum we don’t need to be reminded that visuals > common sense every day. Like HOW do you survive being blasted out into space or flying ten inches under laser power that melts a five meters thick metal door?  

And we all learned that men are all mindless playboys who want to play the hero and they only ever hinder women in saving the day. But can we at least address the fact that not communicating the purpose and the plan to our subordinates no matter how noble it might be isn’t exactly a good example of leadership? Because that’s like stuff they teach at college. You have to communicate your purpose if you expect people to follow and play along instead of going their own way. Otherwise you are just expecting them to blindly follow like a... supreme leader is the word I’m looking for here? So great, Poe is a dumbass man, but Laura Dern was a shitty leader anyway. 

Then there’s the issue of what needs to be addressed and what doesn’t. Finn’s relationship with a two minute screentime character falls into the category of what doesn’t. Still not sure if that cave did anything at all to advance Rey in any direction. And I would have been quite happy to find out what knocked Kylo out and how did Rey teleport onto the Falcon from Snoke’s throne room. Also, is his golden gown ironable like the rest of the uniforms? 

And what can I say? I would truly, truly appreciate if the subtlety of important plot points somehow reached up to the subtlety of social issues being shoved down my throat with the popcorn. Like, I get it, Chewie found light and from now on he will only ever eat salad and use vegan fuel in the Falcon. And the bunny eared, race horse cats were set free from captivity, boy I wish those poor Tauntauns would have been served the same justice. Don’t get me wrong, now, I don’t like cruelty against animals, I’m just trying to make a point here, so bear with me. So we are taking a stand for animals, for women in military, for women in leading positions, against discrimination, slavery and gun manufacturing. Good for us, but can we also take a stand for our own plot? Did Luke just die? But how? And why? Ten minutes later. Oh yeah, Luke died. But how again? Never mind. Was Kylo really unconscious or he was pretending? And how did he become unconscious? How did Rey escape? Does Finn like Rose too? Does R2 do anything at all, or he is retired and all he does is beep at Luke about what’s on bbc news? Like, can we first concentrate on telling the story and only then jump on hashtag bandwagons? And my absolute favorite of this bunch was the look closer, wealth is dirty. Really? Really? A blockbuster franchise is telling me that wealth is dirty? Like, you’re telling me I couldn’t find a puppy eyed janitor on the Star Wars set who sweeps the floors in double shifts for 4 bucks an hour and tell me how this and that editor yelled at him the other day? Come on, man, just stick with the story. I didn’t pay for this ticket to be told to think about my life because humanity is a disgrace. If I want to be told that, I’ll pay to see an art movie which is actually the right context for that. 

And while there are all sorts of messages about society issues all throughout the movie, I never got one message of what the story is about. There was a point in the Rey and Luke / Rey and Ben discussions when I thought the message of the story is things aren’t black and white after all, and the balance is made by accepting to be gray (which would have been an insane step for Star Wars) instead of the never ending fight between light and darkness. But then they defeated the red ninjas (which took waaaaaay too long for two chosen ones, might I add) and Kylo chose to be an asshat again and by the end of the movie we were back where we started, bad guys vs good guys. So was the movie about animal cruelty after all? 

And are you seriously telling me that both Rey AND Snoke are nobody? I mean heroes sure come from nothing, we’ve established that FOUR TIMES. But that’s not the same as heroes (and bad guys) come from anywhere and everywhere. Is there truly no continuity? Random girl from randomest planet popped out from her random mom and happened to be one of the most powerful jedis of her generation? And twenty years after one was defeated another mighty Sith Lord just popped out of nowhere and built an empire? Palpatine’s empire had been in the works for several decades before it became an empire, did Snoke do it fifth of that time or did these guys ever cross paths at all? It just seems to unlikely that everyone is no-one. 

 

Well that was awfully long wasn’t it? And I’m sure very blasphemous at certain points. Oh well. I’ll shut up now. 

 

 

 

 

The new canon books reveal that the First Order was set in motion in the Unknown Regions shortly after Jedi by remnants of the Empire, resourced by Palpatine in the event the Empire fell.  Nothibg about Snoke however.

ETA: Given Snoke manipulated Ben and Rey giving false force visions, anyone else think he did the same to Luke to trick him into attacking Ben?

[RhaenysBee]

5 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

The new canon books reveal that the First Order was set in motion in the Unknown Regions shortly after Jedi by remnants of the Empire, resourced by Palpatine in the event the Empire fell.  Nothibg about Snoke however.

That’s a shame. It would have been comforting to know that at least there’s something about him in the canons (which I don’t follow, but still) 

Spoiler

I still haven’t given up on Rey’s roots having some importance though... kylo could have easily been lying.

my first random idea walking out of the cinema was that she could be Han Solo and emilia Clarke’s daughter because maybe Han wasn’t the faithfulest of husbands. Then I remembered Han isn’t the one with the Jedi blood. But hey, I’m fine with anything as long as it’s not, she is no-one.