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The Last Jedi (spoilers): Only a Sith deals in plot holes


Kalbear

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15 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

I am utterly shocked by this statement from an otherwise reasonable poster. Suppression of emotion, discipline, self-control: those are core conservative values. The very fact that every human has emotion makes its control a value instead of a triviality.  

I think John Stuart Mill would be surprised to find these things described as conservative values. (To clarify, discipline and self-control are definitely not values that are exclusively _conservative_. Suppression of emotion... perhaps, if one considers his upbringing, and his later writing regarding it, could be seen as conservative. But the opposite of suppression implies unchecked embrace, which certainly is not a value I'd consider liberal. And to be honest, James Mill was something of an extremist. Which I suppose one might well compare to the moribund, late Republic Jedi, but you're going well beyond conservatism to a kind of fascist rejection of emotion.)

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15 minutes ago, Happy Ent said:

My point exactly. It is time for the Jedi to die exactly because their values are conservative. The values of the Sith are emotional, individual, and require no learning/teaching/discipline. 

The values of the Sith are those of X Factor, of unskilled and stupid generation, of the progressive left. No skill is ever learned nor taught. You are the center of your own universe. Emotion is the core value. And an unknown mighty and magical “Force” has as the only goal to ensure balance, much like redistributive economic politics. It fits so well it hurts.

The Sith (I would have been happier if they never existed), are based on pure power and force. And as such an even worse fit for a working universe and social system than the jedi.

They are the regressive to the jedi conservatives. Both need to be gone for progress.

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On 12/27/2017 at 1:25 PM, Eggegg said:

My initial reaction to TFA and TLJ was that Rey was so stupidly over powered that she probably was basically a Mary Sue. It seemed ridiculous that she could take on Kylo Ren in a lightsaber fight and beat him having never swung a sword in anger in her life.

Forgive me if this has already been pointed out, I don't have time to read the whole thread right now. But doesn't Snoke point out in the new movie that Ren got his ass kicked by a girl who'd never wielded a lightsaber because of his emotional response to killing Han? Something about it messing with his force balance or shaking him to his core or something? 

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1 minute ago, RumHam said:

Forgive me if this has already been pointed out, I don't have time to read the whole thread right now. But doesn't Snoke point out in the new movie that Ren got his ass kicked by a girl who'd never wielded a lightsaber because of his emotional response to killing Han? Something about it messing with his force balance or shaking him to his core or something? 

He also got shot by Chewie, something that no stormtrooper has ever survived. 

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29 minutes ago, RumHam said:

Forgive me if this has already been pointed out, I don't have time to read the whole thread right now. But doesn't Snoke point out in the new movie that Ren got his ass kicked by a girl who'd never wielded a lightsaber because of his emotional response to killing Han? Something about it messing with his force balance or shaking him to his core or something? 

Yes. And this is pretty clear from The Force Awakens as well. He's been shot, Driver's acting shows that he's in complete emotional turmoil... and yet he is beating Rey, until she lets go and just embraces the force while Kylo Ren does the opposite. I've never understood the complaints about that fight scene.

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12 hours ago, Relic said:

Is anyone here doing that? Is not, can we maybe not get into it? The internet is filled with trolls, bots, and the occasional real racist/sexist/pieceofshit. Just as you would take off muddy boots before entering your home maybe you can leave that garbage at the door as well?

Sorry, stuff from other places is bleeding into my brain when I talk about Star Wars, The petition to shut down Rotten Tomatoes is particularly foul reading.

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Personally I'm far more excited for IX than I was. And especially excited for what Johnson does next after. 

And I largely agree with @Happy Ent on his view of how Rey is Sith like, though his negative characterizations of some of it are wrong. Rey clearly isn't emotionally managed and shares a lot of the impulses of Ren- and of Luke. Ultimately Vader is created by his emotional ties, and he is saved (a long with the galaxy) by those same ties. Yoda and Obi wan don't fight back, they cower away for 20 years. 

It's very clear that the Jedi represent an immensely conservative viewpoint, with meritocracy being far less important than following orders and obeying elders. There isn't much there about heritability mind you. No one seems to care about that. But Yoda almost refuses to train Luke because he doesn't fit what he wants. 

As I said, TLJ has the closest view of the Sith being compelling morally as villains and has by far the best most understandable villain yet. 

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15 hours ago, Relic said:

How many people here are more excited to see Episode 9 after leaving the theater than they were to see Episode 8 after leaving TFA? Cuz for me, personally, this movie made me not care about the next one. With Luke's fate being what it was, and Carrie Fisher's tragic death greatly reducing her role in the next film, there is nothing that ties me to the next movie. I simply find myself not caring about Rey or Ren all that much, and even less so about the other new characters.  Anyone else feel the same?

This is pretty much how I feel. I already wasn't very excited about the Han Solo movie and now I'm not particularly excited about Ep IX either. I do care some about Kylo and Rey, who were the parts of the movie I actually liked the most, but not very much about any of the other characters.

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Snoke and Ren aren't Sith, are they? I mean, I know there was fan speculation about Snoke being some former Sith guy who allegedly died, but that seems not particularly operative or substantive about his character given where it left off.

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19 minutes ago, Ran said:

Snoke and Ren aren't Sith, are they? I mean, I know there was fan speculation about Snoke being some former Sith guy who allegedly died, but that seems not particularly operative or substantive about his character given where it left off.

They don't call themselves Sith and don't use the naming, but they behave in Sith ways pretty consistently, even having a master and apprentice. Ren clearly wants himself to be the heir to Vader, and that means being Sith like. 

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FWIW, Abrams and Serkis both indicated Kylo and Snoke aren't Sith. Curious as to the conversations behind that precise decision.

Apparently the official character encyclopedia also claims Snoke encouraged Ren to learn both from Jedi and Sith techniques/views/philosophies/whatever, so he's apparently a Dark Side Force user with an ecumenical bent.

 

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1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

They don't call themselves Sith and don't use the naming, but they behave in Sith ways pretty consistently, even having a master and apprentice. Ren clearly wants himself to be the heir to Vader, and that means being Sith like. 

The Jedi did the master and apprentice thing too. The only difference was that at some point some sith came up with the "rule of two" where there could only be two at a time. There could be a pretty big difference between being a sith and being "sith-like." if the knights of ren are still around it seems like they're not worried about the rule of two for one thing. Maybe they just thought "Darth" was a lame title.

I read somewhere that the tie in books suggested that the emperor was being drawn to some dark side force out in unknown space. I suspected that was snoke, or even his people if they had a culture based on the dark side. In fact having other members of his race appear in IX as non-sith dark side users could be a way to retroactively answer some of people's questions about snoke now that he's dead. 

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Quote

 

It destroys the tendency to focus on special families, heritage, showing everyone can contribute. Everyone has a chance to shine. We don't need to be Luke Skywalker anymore, since the force is everywhere.

 

That was true before though. Obi-Wan's upbringing was never canonically established in the film so, aside from his accent there's no indication he's from anywhere important. Naboo's nobility appears to be elected (however the hell that works), so Palpatine wasn't necessarily from a special family either. And we don't know what Mace Windu and Yoda's background was like either.

In the EU just about everybody was from a humble background: Kyle Katarn etc. Rebels has Ezra coming from a dirt poor background as well.

The only thing that's really established as important is Anakin coming from the midichlorians and then Luke and Leia deriving from him and Kylo Ren from Leia, but the new films seem to have completely dropped the midichlorian thing so who even knows if that's a thing anymore.

The lesson "but anyone can now be a Force user!" is really a poor lesson to learn from the film because that's been the case for years.

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43 minutes ago, RumHam said:

The Jedi did the master and apprentice thing too. The only difference was that at some point some sith came up with the "rule of two" where there could only be two at a time. There could be a pretty big difference between being a sith and being "sith-like." if the knights of ren are still around it seems like they're not worried about the rule of two for one thing. Maybe they just thought "Darth" was a lame title.

I read somewhere that the tie in books suggested that the emperor was being drawn to some dark side force out in unknown space. I suspected that was snoke, or even his people if they had a culture based on the dark side. In fact having other members of his race appear in IX as non-sith dark side users could be a way to retroactively answer some of people's questions about snoke now that he's dead. 

In the offcial material for TLJ it is mentioned Snoke came from the Unknown Regions, and also that he trained an apprentice before Kylo, so you could be on to something there.

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22 hours ago, Rubicante said:

... I think the reason I like The Empire Strikes Back so much is that Luke is constantly failing, which seemed a lot more realistic to me.  He gets knocked out by a Wampa, has his snow speeder shot down, crashes his x-wing on Dagobah, has a difficult time training with Yoda, and gets his hand cut off fighting Vader.  Rey really hasn't had this moment in the sequel trilogy.  Snoke tosses her around like a doll, but that is short lived.  She is right back to kicking ass ...

Luke also fails constantly in A New Hope, and when he wins it's because of teamwork, not simply his own magical awesomeness:

  • Beat up by the sand people - rescued by Obi-wan.
  • Beat down in Mos Eisley cantina - rescued by Obi-wan
  • Getting tased by training ball droid - guided to victory by Obi-wan
  • Dominated by trash compactor monster - rescued by trash compactor gears clanking to scare it off
  • Being crushed by trash compactor - rescued by Threepio and Artoo
  • About to be blasted out of the sky by Vader - rescued by Han
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1 hour ago, Werthead said:

That was true before though. Obi-Wan's upbringing was never canonically established in the film so, aside from his accent there's no indication he's from anywhere important. Naboo's nobility appears to be elected (however the hell that works), so Palpatine wasn't necessarily from a special family either. And we don't know what Mace Windu and Yoda's background was like either.

In the EU just about everybody was from a humble background: Kyle Katarn etc. Rebels has Ezra coming from a dirt poor background as well.

The only thing that's really established as important is Anakin coming from the midichlorians and then Luke and Leia deriving from him and Kylo Ren from Leia, but the new films seem to have completely dropped the midichlorian thing so who even knows if that's a thing anymore.

The lesson "but anyone can now be a Force user!" is really a poor lesson to learn from the film because that's been the case for years.

Yeah, exactly. The 'heritage' thing appears to be entirely around the Skywalker line; it's not remotely established as even a thing in any of the other movies, and virtually everyone we encounter outside of Skywalker violates it regularly.  The Jedi even say at one point that they usually find the kids young and take them for training based on some standardized tests.

Similar to the Sith; there's no specific sign that Palpatine came from anything other than humble beginnings, Anakin certainly did, and there's no sign of Maul coming from anything particularly special. There's very little in the way of royalty or particular lines based on heritage. What there is appears to be respect based on titles and positions; the Jedi care a lot about who is seated at the table of the masters and who gets there, the Empire has a lot of authoritarian lines, there are various weird royal titles that are inherited, etc. 

I tend to think it follows the Ratatouille line - which is not that anyone can learn to cook well, but that a great cook can come from anywhere. Innate talent and drive and passion and skill matter hugely in Star Wars, and always have - but that doesn't mean you have to be born into a great family. 

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