The Last Jedi, not the last spoiler thread

[karaddin]

@felice at your small stealth ship crack

To whoever wanted to know how the fire got started in Snokes throne room - The red wall does indeed appear to be a highly flammable screen. When Snoke takes her to the viewing portal it slides out of the way in a manner exactly fitting how a paper (or similar) screen would slide. When Rey is fighting the whip/sword guard who gets her in a bind an drags her closer, as she spins out of it and cuts through him she slices off the tip of the electric whip and sends it flying into the screen - which punches a small burning hole in it. That fire spreads very quickly (again fitting it being a paper screen) and in short order the whole thing is burning and dropping cinders through the room, which winds up being a room with a view similar to the emperors once the screen is gone. It was all visible in surprising detail - they clearly had thought it through and shown how it happened.

9 hours ago, Happy Ent said:

Did I express dismay? I tried to be perfectly descriptive and keep my own tastes out of it.

For all you might want to believe otherwise, you are not a self moving soul. Belief that one can be simply further blinds oneself to the darkness that comes before.

8 hours ago, Rockroi said:

And I predict that "Ghost Luke" will be in the next movie and he will do what he said he will do- he will spend every waking moment bugging the shit out of Kylo Ren.

I'm so here for Force Ghost Luke spending his immediate post physical existence trolling the fuck out of Kylo Ren, this would be amazing. "Hey kid, remember that time I made a fool of you in front of your entire command staff? Good times"

Speaking of which, I'm actually half expecting the FO to be falling apart at the start of the next movie if they want to subvert our expectations again. Hux and Ren hating each other has been clearly established over the first 2 movies, and although Ren whipped him into line he isn't going to respect/fear Ren the way he did Snoke. And Luke seriously just undermined the shit out of Ren with that display, it wasn't played like that was an important angle at the time but I wouldn't be at all surprised to see if that is where they go. It fits with the story they are telling about fascists with Hux.

[Darth Richard II]

Uh, I think that's her real accent, also I didn't notice a difference.

[Werthead]

3 hours ago, felice said:

There's no hint of that in the movies. From what I can find on Wookiepedia, backup hyperdrives are only mentioned in RPG sourcebooks and "Complete Cross-Sections". I prefer my theory

Believe it or not, the "Complete Cross-Sections" books are 100% canon, it's where a lot of the new ships and equipment are officially named, and since the "backup hyperdrive" is mentioned in The Force Awakens book (so new canon), that's the official, canonical explanation.

It's a cheesy retcon, but to fair it does make sense. These ships all have one single point of failure, so it is logical that they have redundant systems built in if you life depends on them.

It also prevents us from having to worry about how these ships can accelerate to appreciable fractions of lightspeed on what appear to be relatively small engines. And I could be wrong, but I believe that time dilation has never, ever been mentioned in the Star Wars universe, at all.

[Darth Richard II]

OK, someone on another site is arguing with me now that TLJ is feminsit propaganda....I think I'm done discussin Star Wars for a bit.

Also, my god, thanks to everyone here, even those I vocally disagree with, for being sane and not asshats. Really. I mean it. I love you guys. The rest of the internet is just a dumpster fire at this point.

[Joe Pesci]

Well I had to miss the opening viewing last week and just finally got to seeing it after work today. I haven't had time to read through much of these threads yet, but I am going to try to because while I thought there was plenty that I liked about TLJ, there was also plenty that I could've done without. I will say I have to give credit to Rian Johnson for being willing to take the direction of this film far from what I expected it to be, which wasn't a bad thing. Maybe a second viewing after Christmas will help... 

[Darth Richard II]

5 minutes ago, Triskele said:

Just saw it tonight and am not a book reader.  Really quick reaction before catching up on the threads is mostly disappointment.  The Luke, Rey, Ren part was solid.  Everything else was bad.  I am afraid.  

Fear leads to anger.

[Darth Richard II]

Hatred leads to accusations of feminist propaganda and the white genocide momvement!

ok no it leads to suffering but a discussion forum I'm on officially went completely bonkers today, per above 

[Ran]

9 hours ago, AndrewJ said:

 

So if the bombers release their bombs, they absolutely will fall down the rather significant length of the ship, given their shape. When they pass out of the ship and leave it's gravity field, they should continue on in a straight line (without picking up speed) - at least until the enter the gravity field of the target, however far that may extend.

Two problems with this, IMO.

First, the bombs spread somewhat as they fall in a way that sure looks like drag from what should be non-existent atmosphere. If the only force acting on them was the initial acceleration of 9.8/m/s/s within the confines of the bomber, this shouldn't happen. They were clearly told to model on the lines of WWII and post-WWII bombers. 

Two, speaking of that speed: if it takes about a second for it to drop out of the gravity generator of the bomber, that would mean the bombs were traveling at 35kph... ? Does that feel like the speed they were going at? Does it make a lot of sense in a setting where ships can accelerate to cross interplanetary distances without going to hyperdrive? FWIW, the accelerations of ships in sub-light speeds in the OT are... well, impressive to say the least! SO impressive that a Star Destroyer could basically throw itself out of the way of these bombs by just straight-up accelerating.

There's a reason, in other words, that these things were never really done. There were some sense of rules for how these things worked, and capital ships = naval craft was one of them, and that dictated certain modes of fighting them: broadsides, ramming, boarding, torpedoes, I believe the EU had mines as well. Carpet bombing, not so much.

(Finally, the bizzare lumbering quality of these bombers is there simply for drama. There's no reason that they take so pain-stakingly long to get to their target other than Johnson wanted it that way. An X-Wing is able to zip around back and forth through the length of this vast ship in seconds, but it takes a minute or two for these things to even get over it? Meh. Which is why the whole thing should be understood as artistic license devoid of any desire to be hindered by consistency. Which, you know, happens. The ad-hoc way that the OT was created does leave gaps and holes. But anyone can see that Johnson decided to go for a visual that would never have appeared in Lucas's own films because it wouldn't work within the framework of what _had_ been decided. And look, what's the result? Almost everyone dies, a pyhrric victory, because these things were so vulnerable!)

 

ETA: Okay, I've come up with a fix for all this: these were intended as planetary bombers (hmmm at the rebels using carpet bombing tactics...), but the Resistance is so hard-up that this was basically a hare-brained, desperate scheme from Poe to try and use them in space and hoping to get them over a big enough target that there was a razor-thin chance they'd be able to land some bombs.

 

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It's definitely very silly.

I mean, yes. Artificial gravity, no, typical trope, but otherwise I agree! It was very silly.

[Happy Ent]

7 hours ago, karaddin said:

 

For all you might want to believe otherwise, you are not a self moving soul. Belief that one can be simply further blinds oneself to the darkness that comes before.

Karaddin did not so much reply as she schooled. All was silent for a long mement. Then the gnarly oak before here shivered, a tremor passing from the leaves to the branches, and finally shook the trunk. Tears of heavy sap spilled from what passed for his eyes. A shivering moan escaped him, and he toppled.

Thus fell the Happy Ent, pummelled by his own methods.

[Happy Ent]

After some more thinking: I too left the theatre disappointed and mystified, thinking for a while that it was another failure (much like the prequels, which were just an incompetent realisation of a valid idea), or just another lazy and silly piece of blockbuster crap (much like most of what we get in the movie theatre).

But I get it now.

Star Wars VIII extremely well done, competently executed, and entirely deliberate. A cultural milestone.

[A True Kaniggit]

Speaking of the capital ships acting like naval craft, were some of the shots the star destroyers fired at the resistance cruiser arcing through space? I had terrible seats in the theater and couldn't really tell. 

[Ran]

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

[Relic]

Saw it again. Still stunning visually. I think my favorite shot is the of Leia standing watching the shield doors close. So very evocative, and such a brilliant call back to ESB. The shot from behind Luke as he walks out to face Ren are fucking amazing as well.

Knowing the Casino bit was coming made going to the bathroom at that point a no brainer, and skipping that bit makes the movie better for sure. However, if you remove every single scene with Finn the movie becomes much tighter, and much much better. As bad as the casino bit is, the scene after they get caught trying to disable the tracker is even worse. Why on earth is Hux committing the ultimate bad guy blunder by giving a speech in front of ALLLLL his troops? Why is Phasma doing anything that she's doing? And why is our focus being taken off the throne room fight? Just bad.

Random nitpick - Rey is an asshole. She talks to Chewie like he was her butler or something. She barks orders at him and generally just ignores him unless she wants him to do something. Luke does Chewie dirty too. Makes no sense.  

[Relic]

@polishgenius Just to follow up on something from last thread, this should start at 2:52 and it captures my feelings on how Disney is treating SW. And fair enough I suppose. 

 

[mormont]

Oh, dear. Not the 'badly edited out of context supercut of things I wish Mark Hamill had said so I'm going to pretend he did'.

[Relic]

23 minutes ago, mormont said:

Oh, dear. Not the 'badly edited out of context supercut of things I wish Mark Hamill had said so I'm going to pretend he did'.

Yeah lots of silly cuts, but 2:50 to 3:00 is pretty much true, no matter how you look at it. It's their prerogative that they want to market fresh faces to a new generation of consumers, but we should see it for what it is and not pretend otherwise. IMHO. 

 

[Ran]

There's quite a lot more comments from Hamill in this vein. It's hard to deny that he simply didn't agree with the idea that Luke would give up and go somewhere to die.

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.

[Myrddin]

I have the complete opposite point of view. Luke becoming a hermit makes total sense.

New Hope to end of Return of the Jedi is what? Four years or so? That's the honeymoon phase of being a Jedi.

TLJ is 34 years later. That's a lot of time to try, fail, fail again, and completely change your world view. The Obi Wan in New Hope is in a very different place philosophically from Obi Wan in Phantom Menace. War does that to you. Hell, he's very different the Obi Wan at the end of Ep III.

I said it upstream somewhere, but fear has always been a motivator for Luke. It makes total sense that his fear would eventually drive him to being a hermit. Glad to see Rey drew him out in the end. Nice character arc for his swan song.

[polishgenius]

2 hours ago, Relic said:

 Just to follow up on something from last thread, this should start at 2:52 and it captures my feelings on how Disney is treating SW. And fair enough I suppose. 

The thing is, to be clear, I don't disagree at all that Disney are in the SW business primarily to make money. They obviously are.

I just don't agree that that's why they're killing off the old faces, except in the broad sense of 'they're gonna not be able to be involved anyway at some point, better to have them die on-screen'. Heck, they didn't even want to kill Han- it was Harrison Ford who insisted on that. Because the old names and faces are still by far the most marketable ones, and they have no guarantee whatsoever that Finn and Ridley are going to match them in the popular culture.
And by all accounts, Rian Johnson was given free reign to make this film as he saw fit, including Luke's arc, no studio interference involved. So the marketing side wasn't even involved in the decision.
I also don't agree that this is somehow new to the Disney era. Star Wars has always been a vehicle to sell toys as much as one to tell stories. The two things aren't incompatible, and I don't think the new films have fallen particularly over the line into the former, even TFA which I didn't love.

[mormont]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

There's quite a lot more comments from Hamill in this vein. It's hard to deny that he simply didn't agree with the idea that Luke would give up and go somewhere to die.

Well, it's hard to deny that he said that, for sure: but he also said

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But I had to do what Rian wanted me to do because it serves the story well.

And

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I was quoted as saying to Rian that I fundamentally disagree with everything you decided about Luke, and it was inartfully phrased. What I was, was surprised at how he saw Luke. And it took me a while to get around to his way of thinking, but once I was there it was a thrilling experience.