The Last Jedi, not the last spoiler thread

[Darth Richard II]

Haha, radiom aside, I was poking at Star Wars LEGO at Target, and looking at the Resistance Bombers i noticed there's a switch you press to drop the bombs, and I started thinking of Ran and giggling a bit to myself. Other shoppers probably thought I was crazy.

[Ferrum Aeternum]

6 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Haha, radiom aside, I was poking at Star Wars LEGO at Target, and looking at the Resistance Bombers i noticed there's a switch you press to drop the bombs, and I started thinking of Ran and giggling a bit to myself. Other shoppers probably thought I was crazy.

BUT DO THEY GRAVITY THO

 

[RumHam]

I don't generally care that much about who Rey's parents are. but if they are gonna walk back from the "nobody" thing in IX they should do it like Kylo wasn't lying. he was describing what he saw when they touched hands, the scene of her abandonment. Not realizing that that her guardians from a young age were her aunt and uncle (or whoever) who'd adopted her after her mother's death. 

Edit: or some other version of "her parents aren't her bio-parents"

[Darth Richard II]

Or they could just give her a famous grandparent.

Or be adopted.

Or be..A CLONE!

[Caligula_K3]

I just rewatched The Force Awakens, in anticipation of seeing The Last Jedi for a second time at some point during the next few days. I've always thought that TFA is extremely underrated (at least by fans): yes, it copies the basic plot structure of A New Hope with some Return of the Jedi, an yes, it's dumb that there's a bigger death star. But the writers do a very compelling job of using that plot structure to tell different and very effective kinds of stories, particularly with Finn, Rey, Han, and especially Kylo Ren. For all the criticisms that the climax is a copy of A New Hope, it's really note: Poe's X-Wing heroics are the side show that get about three minutes of screen time, while the meat of the drama is the Han/Kylo confrontation and the aftermath. It's a really strong and compelling movie all around, and a lot more consistent with The Last Jedi than some people have suggested.

 

[RumHam]

10 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Or they could just give her a famous grandparent.

Or be adopted.

Or be..A CLONE!

Yeah. They could, and that would probably be stupid.

To be clear the only opinion I'm expressing right now is that if JJ Abrahms decides "no, that's not who her parents were after alll" he should go with "kylo misread a vision" instead of the "Kylo lied" theory. 

[Astromech]

24 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Or they could just give her a famous grandparent.

Or be adopted.

Or be..A CLONE!

When Rey had her little trip down the Dark Side rabbit hole, I initially viewed the mirror images/multiple versions of Rey as foreshadowing her being a clone. 

[karaddin]

18 hours ago, Ran said:

I have heard people say this, re: arcing shots, but I didn't notice it myself.

I'm defending this movie a lot but I'm not defending this lol. I just have to write it off as "WW2 callbacks trumping realism" in a way thats dumb but doesn't take me out of the movie. I only noticed the second time because it was pointed out.

15 hours ago, Ran said:

And I agree. You know, I can buy the idea that he would decide the Jedi had to end. I could buy the idea that he did not believe himself capable of teaching a new generation, that he himself learned too idiosyncratically to be able to deal with the temptations to the Dark Side that someone like Snoke was able to offer.

That said, I cannot buy the idea that this means he has to become a hermit. He's abandoning everyone and everything that he loves to the predations of the First Order and whatever other enemies there are. The mere fact that he can use the Force and swing a mean lightsaber does not mean he needs to give up on fighting for a righteous cause. He can certainly decide to re-calibrate how he did things, he can decide to keep the secrets of the Force to himself, and so on, but as a symbol, a hero, and as a powerful defender of the New Republic, he had a lot more to offer than just teaching people.

So, yeah. If they wanted Luke to abandon everything, he'd have to have done something that made him feel that he himself was too dangerous to be around, IMO. And I suspect that's Hamill's actual view, that the character was rendered unheroic for reasons that didn't feel organic.

 

5 hours ago, Ran said:

My suspicion is that Lucas intended Luke to be at the first temple, but that he had indicated it wasn't because he had given up but rather because he had come to believe that was where he was supposed to be for some higher purpose even though he knew that he could be out there fighting the good fight.

You can certainly argue that they did a poor job of showing it, and that it was overshadowed by the despair/running away angle and I probably wouldn't disagree, but I do think that they were intending this element to be there as well. Being a hermit, and not being involved in the fight, is actually integral to the philosophy that Luke espouses. It's not just that the jedi need to die, its that the galaxy needs to forget the idea of the jedi as the heroes that will save the galaxy from evil. It needs to stop wanting *heroes* at all, it needs to stop believing in legends. Even if he doesn't train any other jedi, if he comes out of hiding, picks up his laser sword and strikes down the First Order...it just further enhances the legend of Luke Skywalker. There is explicit dialog with him very bitter about how the fall of the empire made him a legend and he clearly thinks that was a very bad thing.

So yes he's a broken and defeated man who has lost his self belief, but he does believe he is serving the greater good by staying out of the fight. This is consistent even with the way he comes back - he doesn't defeat the FO himself, he just buys the resistance time to survive and makes a fool of Kylo Ren. It does add to his legend all the same, and it does inspire people, but perhaps not in quite the same way that simply beating them himself would have done. It's instilling hope in another generation.

[Fiddler]

15 hours ago, red snow said:

I'd love if that was a genuine school exam question. Would make for a good essay and probably engage kids with physics too

I had a Physical Science class in college in which we had to figure out how much sand Indy would have had to put in the bag to match the idol at the beginning of Indiana Jones.

[Ran]

@karaddin

I think you’re being very generous to TLJ’s Luke. Personally, I can’t square your read with Hamill’s stressing that he fundamentally disagrees with Johnson’s characterization of Luke having given up, to the point that he had to think of the character as practically someone else, “Jake Skywalker” as he put it, because he couldn’t fully line up the character he had played with what Johnson wanted. In the end, he did his job, because he’s a pro, but he still doesn’t feel TLJ represented what he believed Luke would have done, or apparently what Lucas’s outlines intended for Luke.

[House Balstroko]

9 hours ago, Ferocious Veldt Roarer said:

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Perfectly reasonable for him to go bitter and cynical on his self-imposed exile.

Going bitter is one thing, giving up on everyone when you told them where to find you is another

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There was no sendoff, period. I'm looking forward to what they're going to do about it in Ep. 9, for now I restrain judgement.

That’s the problem. They said on multiple occasions that Leia would not play a role in ep 9. Getting rid of her in the opening crawl would be a huge disservice to the character. 

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They were some one-liner in Ep. 7, right?

They were shown in a flashback. I believe Rey sees the Knights of Ren in her vision at Maz’s castle. 

 

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Re: setting a tree on fire with your handy pocket thunder - maybe it would be impossible in any other place in the Universe, except the piece of land where the ancient Jedi Temple was built, where the boundaries between the Jedi and the Force and the physical world could be less defined. That's the rationalization I came up with at the theater and one I can live with.

I guess we’ll have to use that as an explanation since we don’t have anything else to go by. 

 

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Re: why Yoda - well, it had to be an old master, so Anakin was straight out - he really didn't spend too much time instructing his son in the peaceful ways of Jedi. Yoda clocked more hours than Obi-Wan as Luke's Jedi instructor. And Obi-Wan would never have the chutzpah to set the temple on fire, no more than Luke would.

I’m not objecting to Yoda’s presence per say, but to the idea that the others were excluded. Plus Obi-Wan played a significant role in Luke’s development (he knew him since he was a boy) and guided him when he went up against the Death Star. His personal connection to Anakin is also worth considering.

Anakin on the other hand was his dad. Even though they never got to spend much time together he is the pivot around which the series revolves.

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Most idiotic? Objection. The chaotic nature of the Dark Side, his hubris and underestimating of his student, brought his doom, not unlike the Emperor's in ROTJ. I would say "the most fitting way possible".

Snoke never really got any character development. I get that they were trying to recreate the tension in the throne room from ROTJ, but here it feels underwhelming. Even before the prequels, we knew that Palpatine was a manipulator who seduced Anakin and the Reoublic to create the Empire. It wasn’t much, but it was still something to go by.

If they had given Snoke a backstory and a more engaging finale, I wouldn’t object to him meeting his demise in LJ, but here it felt like it happened too soon.

 

 

How do I break down a single quote so that my reply doesn’t feature in the box? I have no problem doing it on another forum like City-Data, but I’m having trouble here.

[Denvek]

10 hours ago, Ferocious Veldt Roarer said:

Most idiotic? Objection. The chaotic nature of the Dark Side, his hubris and underestimating of his student, brought his doom, not unlike the Emperor's in ROTJ. I would say "the most fitting way possible".

There were two quotes I found really fitting about that scene - first and obviously, "Your overconfidence is your weakness" from ROTJ, but also one that shows up in the novelisation of ROTS (the only novelisation I've ever read that's actually better than the film). "Treachery is the way of the Sith."

[mormont]

17 hours ago, Ran said:

"Almost all". I see that! That's a concession that not all of them are qualified and are pretty direct. I think we've got a winner!

I have bad news.

That qualification's in there because I've seen people quote other things Hamill's supposed to have said, but since I haven't seen the original quotes in context I'm not sure whether they're being accurately reported. It's possible they are, hence my 'almost all'. But I haven't, personally, seen any that are clearly unqualified and direct.

17 hours ago, Ran said:

Re: qualification, he's being diplomatic because he's a professional, and because the reality is he has no power over the situation, and in the end it's an opinion?

And because it's not his job to write the movie, and he understands that.

17 hours ago, Ran said:

It's incontrovertible that Hamill did not, and continues to not like (as of the release of the film), that aspect of what Johnson decided for Luke's history post-OT.

It's incontrovertible that he had reservations, certainly. It's also incontrovertible that he has clearly indicated that they lessened as filming progressed, that he finds the end product 'exciting' and that when discussing his feelings about this issue, he's pointed out that he also had reservations about ep 7 and he admits he was wrong about that.

I think to say that he 'continues to not like' that aspect is overstating the case. At worst, I'd say he's uncertain about it.

Other than that, karaddin's post about sums my views up too.

16 hours ago, divica said:

And I think the majority of the people that like the OT agree with you and Mark.

I don't know about that at all. I don't think anyone in this thread, for example, likes the OT any less than you or Ran, but a significant number of us don't agree, just the same.

9 hours ago, Ferrum Aeternum said:

I think what I liked the most about the movie this time was that each major character had a defined arc. By the end, Rey, Kylo, Poe and Finn had all been through experiences that will help shape them going forward. 

Here's where I would get into one of my criticisms of the film, because at least on first viewing, I think that Finn got short-changed. He does not really get a defined arc. At best, he closes his arc from the first film: but really, he just repeats it. He doesn't progress: it feels like he's marking time.

[karaddin]

3 hours ago, Ran said:

@karaddin

I think you’re being very generous to TLJ’s Luke. Personally, I can’t square your read with Hamill’s stressing that he fundamentally disagrees with Johnson’s characterization of Luke having given up, to the point that he had to think of the character as practically someone else, “Jake Skywalker” as he put it, because he couldn’t fully line up the character he had played with what Johnson wanted. In the end, he did his job, because he’s a pro, but he still doesn’t feel TLJ represented what he believed Luke would have done, or apparently what Lucas’s outlines intended for Luke.

This may well be true, I decided in the last few years that there is enough to get upset about in life and if I can choose an interpretation of media I'm watching just for entertainment then I do. It leaves me much more satisfied and happy, even if it gives the creators more credit than they are due. This doesn't apply as much to themes/political ramifications etc, but the overall shape of what Johnson was trying to do with this movie does fit this interpretation - even if the execution of that representation did not.

I haven't closely followed Mark's comments to know it in the detail you did, what you've said above in addition to what mormont has said could be squared if this wasn't immediately apparent to Mark but what I've argued came out during the filming process and he's happy with the end product?

[Relic]

Has anyone watched Red Lett Media's take on this film? Always amusing.

Their take on the Snoke throne room scene is pretty on point, starting at 14:40 .

 

[Ran]

17 minutes ago, karaddin said:

I haven't closely followed Mark's comments to know it in the detail you did, what you've said above in addition to what mormont has said could be squared if this wasn't immediately apparent to Mark but what I've argued came out during the filming process and he's happy with the end product?

Press junket interviews that were coming out now with Mark's remarks are post-filming and I'm thinking are perhaps either in close timing to the release or perhaps even post-critic screenings -- not sure on that. So his view that he still hasn't entirely accepted it, but it's only a movie, he's not the writer, etc. is his current position. Is he happy with it? Well, I certainly think he's happy that they produced the film Disney wanted, which is what their job was, and what a lot of people poured a lot of effort into for a long period of time. That the job he took on included portraying aspects of the character that he did not feel were right is an aspect he's not entirely happy with, but he's not throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

He's being quite professional but not taking that to mean obsequiousness, which is quite refreshing when for the most part actors in junkets will act as whatever project they're promoting is perfection.

 

ETA: Another link to the relevant interview, as I see the earlier was cut:

@Relic

Their faces at the end. Such resignation.

[Wouter]

I saw the movie yesterday. My first reaction was slight disappointment - allthough there were strong parts, overall it wasn't as engaging or fun as TFA to me.

In TFA, the new characters were fresh and there was an especially thrilling series of scenes between Rey and Finn from the moment Rey meets Finn on Jakku, over the gradually louder whining of the TIE engines to an extremely spectacular dogfight down to the repairs of the damaged Falcon. The interaction between Han and Rey later on was also golden. I didn't see a scene or series of scenes that was as engaging, in the new film.

Sure, the scene where Snoke got killed was great (even though it started out as a virtual retake of the similar scene with Vader, Luke and the Emperor), loved how it gradually became clear that Snoke was correctly reading Kylo's intentions but misreading whom he considered a dangerous enemy. Much of the scenes with Rey, also on the island, worked. The last Jedi has great visuals, too. But things like the casino sidemission work against the movie - Rose and Finn did not work that way Rey and Finn did in the last movie, or even the way Poe and Finn did. Speaking about Poe, his parts in this movie were also disappointing.

Poe's strike on that Dreadnought may actually have been a great win for the rebellion though, because not only did he take out a deadly and reasonably practical weapon, it also killed the seemingly only competent commander of the First Order. The behaviour of other high-ups in the FO hierarchy was pretty hard to rhyme with those creating and/or running an otherwise highly capable force: Snoke is not only more overconfident and arrogant than Palpatine, he also was stupid enough to humiliate Hux in the midst of his men, all while proclaiming that Hux could be a useful (mad) dog that should not be discarded. Hux himself comes off as a lackwit in the beginning, not only letting himself be stalled by Poe for no reason at all, but failing to open fire and launch his fighters from the moment his fleet left hyperspace. And while Kylo did show himself to be capable, he is still emotionally unstable and unable to control his bursts of anger. It also seems a very dangerous move to keep Hux besides him, waiting for the inevitable stab in the back.

Like many (and Mark Hamill), I was a bit disappointed with Luke's attitude, too, allthough some of his scenes were good and the mock fight with Kylo was a great moment. Kylo didn't come over very well with his underlings, which was probably Luke's intention as well. It also fits with all the infighting in this movie (first order and rebellion alike).

Rey's parentage: like many have written before, when we left the cinema two years ago, this was the first thing we started talking about.

In TFA, we have:

-Rey insisting that she is waiting for her family and that they'll be back "one day". The otherwise level headed Rey feels this so strongly that she even turns down Han's job offer for it.

-When Kylo is informed that BB8 made it off Jakku, he is extremely agitated by the mention of "a girl" helping him. He wants detailed information on her, apparently already having linked her to the "awakening" (see the next point).

-Snoke to Kylo "there's been an awakening. Have you felt it?" => I presume Snoke means Rey and her first flight with the Falcon, which was no doubt Force-assisted.

-Maz asks Han "who's the girl?". We aren't shown the answer onscreen.

-Then we get the infamous vision. Rey is, somehow, drawn to Anakin's lightsaber (later taken by Obi-wan, who gave it to Luke who lost in the Bespin fight). When she touches it, she gets a series of visions. I don't think we have ever seen a lightsabre producing this effect on a Force-user, normally a lightsabre is just a tool without powers of its own, so this really sticks out as something out of the ordinary even for Jedi. Rey first is in a hallway, possibly part of an (intact) imperial spacecraft - something that shouldn't  be on Jakku, in any case. This changes to what may be grounds of Luke's academy, with Luke placing a hand on R2D2 (implying that he planted information in the Droid, which will later be needed to find him). In the same setting (or at least very similar), we see a masked person killing another with a lightsabre. The camera zooms out to reveal a group of masked people (presumably "the knights of Ren"), though only one of them (Kylo) holds a lightsabre. Kylo seems to notice Rey in the vision and walks towards her. The vision shifts and now we see a very young, crying Rey, held by the guy she ends up working for as a scavenger on Jakku. Young Rey looks at a transport ship taking off, and the scene heavily implies that her parents or (former) guardian(s) are on it and also that it is going into space. [This part especially is not consistent with Kylo's claim that her parents were poor and died on Jakku; such people are very unlikely to have access to space travel.] Finally, Rey sees a glimpse of the fight that she will have later with Kylo in the snowed woods on Starkiller base, just after we hear an older, male voice says "Rey, these are your first steps".

-Maz says: "this lightsabre was Luke's, and his fathers before him, and now it calls to YOU!". Followed by: "you already know the truth. Whoever you're waiting for on Jakku, they are never coming back".

-When Rey finally enters the resistance base, R2D2 suddenly restarts. This is before BB8 rolls towards him, the droid is clearly shown to reboot on his own, regardless what may have stated later. That's in the movie.

All in all, more than fair to say the movie was constructed to get theories going. And if some say that this was only implied, well, TLJ has also only implied that her parents are "nobodies". Ep IX could easily say that Kylo lied or was mistaken. The vision on Ach-to is also open to interpretation.

Given on the one hand that Rey was so convinced she had to wait on Jakku, and that she apparently saw people leave in a spacecraft that she desperately didn't want to leave, and on the other hand that Anakin's lightsabre was connected to her in a unique way, there ought to be more to the story. If it's not parentage, then maybe she was already trained from a young age by someone who got scared, or she is Anakin reborn or something. The whole connection between Kylo and Rey, centered around Anakin (as they fight over his lightsabre and literally tore it in half), should mean something.

Even if Rey's parents are not people with a great name nor with great skills or accomplishments, that doesn't mean they are nobodies. They are still the parents she has missed for so long, she would still want to know why they left her (would Kylo's claims be enough? I don't think so), what their names are, what happened to them. After all, our parents are "nobodies" as are we ourselves. That doesn't mean we don't care about them.

There are theories that link Rey's parentage with the new online shooter game Battlefront II, the game has a first-person mode with a storyline that apparently introduces possible candidates as mother and father. Regrettably, the same game has also become known as EA's "Star Wars themed online casino for minors", due to the awful "lootbox" system it uses in a so-called "pay-to-win" system. Which brings me to another point on TLJ: when it was pointed out in the casino scene that those people are arms dealers, that was such unsubtle moralising that it took me out of the movie. It's pretty ridiculous that a casino would only have arms dealers anyway, Disney and EA cadres would not be out of place there

 

 

[House Balstroko]

12 hours ago, Denvek said:

There were two quotes I found really fitting about that scene - first and obviously, "Your overconfidence is your weakness" from ROTJ, but also one that shows up in the novelisation of ROTS (the only novelisation I've ever read that's actually better than the film). "Treachery is the way of the Sith."

Agreed. Stover’s adaptation was far better than the movie. Anakin’s turn makes a lot more sense as his motivation is explained better. I find the dialogue vastly superior with far less cringeworthy moments around (I was some of those sc ends were in the movie). It’s bigest weakness overall is that it is still bound by the story Lucas came up with, so it carries over some of those weaknesses.

[Jen'ari]

Ugh.

[Darth Richard II]

19 hours ago, Astromech said:

When Rey had her little trip down the Dark Side rabbit hole, I initially viewed the mirror images/multiple versions of Rey as foreshadowing her being a clone. 

Man, if I didn't know at this point they're making it up as they go I'd say that was a good catch!

Great scene though.