Star Wars Episode 8, The Last Jedi discussion. **SPOILERS**

[RetroInferno]

Rian Johnson tried to warp our expectations so much it warped the movie, not in a good way. He tried doing something different, props for that, but in my opinion after wathing the movie it didn't work. 

I feel that everything that was done in the movie was exactly to take us by surprise, I'm not agaisn't most of what he did like Rey's parentage, Snoke being killed but the movie feels like a reaction to what people expected and I really don't like that thought process. 

Also the humor was completly off in most cases, and might I remember to everyone here that the movie opens with a prank call with mom jokes... I rest my case.

I'm not hating on the movie, they tried to explore the grey area of the force in this one with Luke and Rey but it fell on it's face hard killing the mood by switching to canto bight and very weird humor choices.

To resume the movie: lots of interesting and fun bits, but when put together it's a damn mess. 

 

[x105Black]

I feel like the theme of failure was a bad choice.  Because that choice was made, we got decisions that I strongly disagree with.  We got a movie that failed to live up to it's hype and potential in the eyes of a large portion of fans.

Fan service is not always a bad thing.  It made The Force Awakens great.  It could have helped to make The Last Jedi great as well.  Instead, Rian Johnson wanted to subvert the expectations of the audience so badly that he subverted Star Wars itself.

I would have much preferred he did that with his own trilogy down the road, rather than disrupting the third trilogy of the Skywalker Saga with his subversions.

As it stands now, I have no interest in seeing Solo, Episode IX, or the future Johnson-led trilogy.  I have no interest in purchasing tickets or hard copies of these films.  And no amount of hype can change my mind, as I was more excited about The Last Jedi than any previous Star Wars film, and hoped it was going to be the best yet.  Everything I saw leading up to the release indicated as much, but I was let down.

[DarthBrickus]

6 hours ago, x105Black said:

or the future Johnson-led trilogy. 

I have a bad feeling about this.

His portrayal of The Force was rather good, but the force powers made me cringe. Everyone is a force god now seemingly.

[Forresto]

8 hours ago, DarthBrickus said:

I have a bad feeling about this.

His portrayal of The Force was rather good, but the force powers made me cringe. Everyone is a force god now seemingly.

In what way? 

Rey and Kylo got the snozz beaten out of them by Snoke. 

Snoke and Luke an Yoda are at this point far past the top masters we see in the prequels and the only ones with amazing force powers. 

Also people keep glossing over that force astral projection is an old ability from the EU that Luke used in Dark Empire.

Edited January 8, 2018 by Forresto

[DarthBrickus]

4 hours ago, Forresto said:

Rey and Kylo got the snozz beaten out of them by Snoke. 

Snoke and Luke an Yoda are at this point far past the top masters we see in the prequels and the only ones with amazing force powers. 

Everyone ist far beyond the masters. Thats exactly my point. Where do these powers come from?

[Japanbuilder]

6 hours ago, DarthBrickus said:

Everyone ist far beyond the masters. Thats exactly my point. Where do these powers come from?

The film does fail to explain the origin one these powers but it does very poorly explain how the younger force users best their masters. 

For Luke he had cut himself off from the Force which gave Rey an advantage when she confronted him after her chats with Kylo and his side of the story. 

For Kylo it is shown clearly during the first Force connection with Rey that he knows something is off. He states to Rey: (attempting to ascertain what is happening) "You aren't doing this, the effort would kill you." It is subtle but it hints that he has some knowledge of this power or has heard of it, plus that no one does it because it would kill them or at least kill humans like Rey. Thus by process of elimination he can deduce that since Luke would have no reason to connect them it must be Snoke. Sadly, the film was poor at setting up what Kylo did with this knowledge but we can surmise given later events that he must've set up a counter somehow such that Snoke would only see what Kylo let him see. 

The film does have plenty of weaknesses which I did pick out clearer during my second viewing but overall I still rather like and enjoy the film. I also picked up a lot more to appreciate the second time I saw it. 

[Forresto]

On 1/8/2018 at 2:03 PM, DarthBrickus said:

Everyone ist far beyond the masters. Thats exactly my point. Where do these powers come from?

Snoke got bested by his own arrogance. Luke used an ability that essentially killed him due to the exertion. 

Kylo hasn't done anything that extraordinary considering he killed an entire generation of Jedi. 

Rey is the only puzzle but I hold that she was on Ach-To for at least a week. She also isn't that overpowered as people claim. Take Darth Bane that dude had next to no training when he was doing far more stuff with the Force then she ever has.

[x105Black]

48 minutes ago, Forresto said:

Luke used an ability that essentially killed him due to the exertion.

Story-wise, this seems pointless.  Why go to the lengths to show off a power that has not been used in canon before, such a powerful force ability, when it would have been far more dramatic to have him actually die in the battle?  So that he can fade out while looking at 2 suns?  He could have been mortally wounded, and had Rey bring him back to Ahch-To to die if they needed that ending.  It just didn't work right for me, and didn't really fit with Luke's character.

And sure, it may have been a power that existed in the Expanded Universe, but I read a lot of things I didn't care for in those books.  They took a lot of liberties with the force and the characters.

51 minutes ago, Forresto said:

Rey is the only puzzle but I hold that she was on Ach-To for at least a week. She also isn't that overpowered as people claim. Take Darth Bane that dude had next to no training when he was doing far more stuff with the Force then she ever has.

A week would not give her all that much training, especially considering that Luke essentially refused to train her.  She had 2 out of 3 lessons, and she is very powerful.  She is far more powerful than Luke was at this stage of the game, and he still needed more training to get to the peak of his powers in film during Return of the Jedi.

And is Darth Bane's training canon?  I don't remember much of his one canon appearance in the Clone Wars television series, but I don't recall them discussing how long he trained.

[Legochaek]

So I recently saw it and I don’t understand why they killed Luke rather than Leia. How are they going to do 9 with that much CGI ?

[Tariq j]

33 minutes ago, Lego-fire said:

So I recently saw it and I don’t understand why they killed Luke rather than Leia. How are they going to do 9 with that much CGI ?

I think Lucasfilm confirmed they aren't going to bring back Leila via CGI. So I imagine they'll have to kill Leila off screen maybe?

[x105Black]

15 minutes ago, Tariq j said:

I think Lucasfilm confirmed they aren't going to bring back Leila via CGI. So I imagine they'll have to kill Leila off screen maybe?

Another odd decision.

[CMP]

2 hours ago, Tariq j said:

I think Lucasfilm confirmed they aren't going to bring back Leila via CGI. So I imagine they'll have to kill Leila off screen maybe?

I think they're going to write Leia out of Episode 9 and have the character live on in the Expanded Universe. Killing her offscreen would just be a tremendously bad move.

There's backlash over Admiral Ackbar. Imagine if they did the same to Leia. 

[x105Black]

57 minutes ago, CMP said:

I think they're going to write Leia out of Episode 9 and have the character live on in the Expanded Universe. Killing her offscreen would just be a tremendously bad move.

If she doesn't die on-screen in Episode IX, she dies off-screen...

[CMP]

1 minute ago, x105Black said:

If she doesn't die on-screen in Episode IX, she dies off-screen...

I firmly believe that if it was their intention to kill off Leia, it would've happened in this movie. They said themselves they won't CGI her - she can't die on-screen and I don't think there's any chance they would do something as monumental as killing off Princess Leia off-screen. I think they're going to replace her as leader of the Resistance's armed forces, have her off recruiting or something during the events of Episode IX and leave the character alive for comics/books/whatever comes next.

[x105Black]

5 minutes ago, CMP said:

I firmly believe that if it was their intention to kill off Leia, it would've happened in this movie. They said themselves they won't CGI her - she can't die on-screen and I don't think there's any chance they would do something as monumental as killing off Princess Leia off-screen. I think they're going to replace her as leader of the Resistance's armed forces, have her off recruiting or something during the events of Episode IX and leave the character alive for comics/books/whatever comes next.

Everyone dies.  If they never show it on-screen, they die off-screen.  That's true if they never show the character dying at all.

Not killing Leia was a wasted opportunity in The Last Jedi.  They should have killed her character rather than have her survive and float through space, and kept Luke alive for the last film.  But that's just my opinion.

[Legochaek]

So just saw this on IMDb might not be true.(talking about Leia)

 

 

but if it is, Leia is definitely being killed off-screen. producers had a bigger role planned for Leia, prior to the death of Carrie Fisher. After her passing, family members Todd Fisher and Billie Lourd granted Disney and Lucasfilm permission to use Carrie's likeness in the form of unused footage, however at Star Wars Celebration 2017 Lucasfilm CEO Kathleen Kennedy and a friend to Carrie said that she would sadly not appear at all in the movie.

 

Edited January 11, 2018 by Lego-fire

[Forresto]

Upon a fourth viewing of the Last Jedi you realize that while it may seems like there was an over subverting of expectations, the script foreshadows a lot of what happens at the end 

On January 9, 2018 at 9:41 PM, x105Black said:

Story-wise, this seems pointless.  Why go to the lengths to show off a power that has not been used in canon before, such a powerful force ability, when it would have been far more dramatic to have him actually die in the battle?  So that he can fade out while looking at 2 suns?  He could have been mortally wounded, and had Rey bring him back to Ahch-To to die if they needed that ending.  It just didn't work right for me, and didn't really fit with Luke's character.

And sure, it may have been a power that existed in the Expanded Universe, but I read a lot of things I didn't care for in those books.  They took a lot of liberties with the force and the characters.

A week would not give her all that much training, especially considering that Luke essentially refused to train her.  She had 2 out of 3 lessons, and she is very powerful.  She is far more powerful than Luke was at this stage of the game, and he still needed more training to get to the peak of his powers in film during Return of the Jedi.

And is Darth Bane's training canon?  I don't remember much of his one canon appearance in the Clone Wars television series, but I don't recall them discussing how long he trained.

Sure but every movie introduces a new force ability or two, at least the movies of any significance.

Heck we did'nt know force lightning was a thing until Return of the Jedi, and even then not until the very end of the film. At least the Last Jedi foreshadowed all of the later force abilities earlier in the film. What Luke did was what Snoke did earlier with Kylo and Rey. When the emperor electrocutes Luke its a total WTF moment, at least prior to the EU and prequels making the force lighting synonymous with the dark side and not unique to Sideous. 

As for Darth Bane we don't know much about him in canon but he's an extremely popular EU character. The reason I bring him up is because his story shares a lot of similarities to Rey's. He was also overpowered as heck before he received even a lick of training. I brought him up not to deflect your point, but to demonstrate Rey isn't an anomaly. 

Rey I don't think is a jedi in the sense that she's finished her training more as she has everything she needs to teach herself from here on out. Which I may point out is what happened to Luke in-between a New Hope and Empire, and in the months between Empire and Return of the Jedi. 

Luke barely gets much formal training.

[samurai-turtle]

As for Leia they could do something like it was done in Star Trek and Leonard Nimoy just talk about it on screen. 

Something else I was wondering about this movie. And how it was annoying people is how it is being advertised. I only remember one movie trailer with actual film footage. The other ads just hint at it. Offended one is the phone and "stickers" commercial with that annoying nose singer and all those cosplayers saying cliche lines. The next offender(s) is the car commercials the "Rogue" Nissan. Surprised it started with Rogue One: a Star Wars Story and just keeps going on to the next one. The first example of the annoying commercials is the less annoying one. The one with the Asian family and the car stopping in front of "Stormtroopers". The more annoying is with the other family and I am going to call the daughter "Ray" and the father "Luke". That one was promoting some automated system but I don't remember what it was, because it didn't really mention what it was and all you would think is something about Star Wars. The think in my head is: "People are going to see this movie no matter what, we don't need to spend much advertising money on this". 

[RetroInferno]

9 hours ago, Forresto said:

Upon a fourth viewing of the Last Jedi you realize that while it may seems like there was an over subverting of expectations, the script foreshadows a lot of what happens at the end 

Sure but every movie introduces a new force ability or two, at least the movies of any significance.

Heck we did'nt know force lightning was a thing until Return of the Jedi, and even then not until the very end of the film. At least the Last Jedi foreshadowed all of the later force abilities earlier in the film. What Luke did was what Snoke did earlier with Kylo and Rey. When the emperor electrocutes Luke its a total WTF moment, at least prior to the EU and prequels making the force lighting synonymous with the dark side and not unique to Sideous. 

As for Darth Bane we don't know much about him in canon but he's an extremely popular EU character. The reason I bring him up is because his story shares a lot of similarities to Rey's. He was also overpowered as heck before he received even a lick of training. I brought him up not to deflect your point, but to demonstrate Rey isn't an anomaly. 

Rey I don't think is a jedi in the sense that she's finished her training more as she has everything she needs to teach herself from here on out. Which I may point out is what happened to Luke in-between a New Hope and Empire, and in the months between Empire and Return of the Jedi. 

Luke barely gets much formal training.

Taking old cannon into account as to explain how powerfull Rey is kind of pointless though. 

She bested Kylo Ren in the first movie, even though we can assume Kylo had way more trainning he was also bleeding to death and heavily injuried, she can take that win. 

But honestly when she pulled a mind trick in the first movie it was a big no from me, then she kills several of Snoke's guards and saves Kylo Ren, then lifts 50 huge megablocks boulders when Luke could barely make a small pile of rocks with the help of Yoda. I just feel that her progression with '''''learning''''' the force is awefull so far. 

Honestly I'm just done with this trilogy; I have zero interest in seeing the ''finale'' or whatever it's gonna be, all the ''grey'' areas exlored and ''killing the past'' themes we saw in the last jedi are going to get axed so we may all come back to ''Kylo Ren is evil, Giant beam weapon and whatever.

Disney screwed up royally hiring two directors so far working on a trilogy with polar opposite ideas; JJ soft rebooted A New Hope, then Rian throws everything the last movie builded down the shitter for the sole purpose of shifting expectations and do his own thing. 

 

 

[Forresto]

9 hours ago, RetroInferno said:

Taking old cannon into account as to explain how powerfull Rey is kind of pointless though. 

She bested Kylo Ren in the first movie, even though we can assume Kylo had way more trainning he was also bleeding to death and heavily injuried, she can take that win. 

But honestly when she pulled a mind trick in the first movie it was a big no from me, then she kills several of Snoke's guards and saves Kylo Ren, then lifts 50 huge megablocks boulders when Luke could barely make a small pile of rocks with the help of Yoda. I just feel that her progression with '''''learning''''' the force is awefull so far. 

Honestly I'm just done with this trilogy; I have zero interest in seeing the ''finale'' or whatever it's gonna be, all the ''grey'' areas exlored and ''killing the past'' themes we saw in the last jedi are going to get axed so we may all come back to ''Kylo Ren is evil, Giant beam weapon and whatever.

Disney screwed up royally hiring two directors so far working on a trilogy with polar opposite ideas; JJ soft rebooted A New Hope, then Rian throws everything the last movie builded down the shitter for the sole purpose of shifting expectations and do his own thing. 

News update since I last responded yesterday from the new Darth Vader comic. Jucosta Nu (the jedi librarian from Attack of the Clones) tells Vader its impossible to snuff out the light side of the force as the force will find a vessel. Basically like the Avatar in the Avatar the Last Airbender series. 

This would imply that in the galaxy you can never wipe out the light or dark side as its implied if the dark side is wiped out then the force will raise up a darksider. Its basically the Star Wars version of the conservation of energy.

Rey is powerful because the force determined that she is the balance to Kylo while Luke was the balance to Snoke. She was just fortunate an inciting incident happened at her planet.

You have a problem with some boulders? Anakin survived pod races that kills most sentients, builds fully operational droids that are sentient I might add, and is one of the galaxy's best pilots at the age of ten blowing up a massive flagship while he's a slave with zero support and training. 100% Canon. His whole story is how he's meant to be overpowered as all heck. Anakin is a war hero because he constantly won battles no one else could win. 

The Last Jedi addresses how much better Kylo is at everything. She can't even pull a lightsaber out of his force pull, demonstrating that he can match her strength. She kills a few guards? She was fighting them one at a time while Kylo was taking on three at once and still kicking their butts.

The reason he lost  their duel in the Force Awakens, which is addressed by both films, is that Kylo is unbalanced and unfocused. He's fully capable of squashing Rey but his lack of focus, arrogance, and desire to turn Rey to the darkside (and not fight to kill) was a disadvantage against Rey who knows precisely what she is and can strike without conflict.

Kylo is arrogant in the first movie, and as a massive Imperial fan myself, I hate to say it but that's the one theme for the Empire and their equivalent organizations that leads to their downfalls. 

~

I disagree that Rian Johnson threw everything that the Force Awakens set up because JJ Abrams set everything up with no answers precisely so the next director could write what they want. All of those mystery in the Force Awakens aren't real. They never had answers.

I cant convince you to go see the next trilogy film nor do I particularly care to, do you. I love the Last Jedi because it did its own thing rather then Empire Strikes Back 2.0. I don't really like the Force Awakens and TLJ has made it so JJ can't just do Return of the Jedi 2.0. 

For the first time in a long (long) time Star Wars is open to something entirely new and different, and that potential is exciting!

 

 

[x105Black]

There is a plausible reason set up for Anakin's power.  It is explained from the start.

The Force Awakens was one of the best Star Wars movies.

[Forresto]

50 minutes ago, x105Black said:

There is a plausible reason set up for Anakin's power.  It is explained from the start.

The Force Awakens was one of the best Star Wars movies.

He's literally the immaculate conception. There is no set up for Anakin's power other then that the force willed it, spoken by Qui Gon Jin on screen in the Phantom Menace which is the exact same thing with Rey. Snoke says as much "Darkness rises and the light to meet it."

I enjoy the world of the Force Awakens and the characters, I just don't think it built its world enough. What's the political situation of the galaxy? I don't need twenty minute prequel-esque discussions but I need at least a two minute scene to give some significant clues. I'm very immersed in the new canon so I wasn't confused at the state of the galaxy in the Last Jedi one bit but I should'nt need to read comics and books to get the gist of things. However I respect that you love the film and I don't hate it in the least. 

However JJ never intended to answer any of the questions he asked so I think its unfair then to blame The Last Jedi for doing its own thing when that's all it could do. There was no direction moving forward. What's disappointing about Snoke isnt that his background isn't explained, its that he was never given a background in TFA other then enigmatic fascist leader.  

Edited January 12, 2018 by Forresto

[RetroInferno]

Star Wars is open to something entirely new?

JJ is coming back for the final movie of a trilogy he had no vision for a sequel or answers, and he has to work with the ending of the last Jedi which aside from setting up that the Resistance is gonna have allies from the outer rim coming for help; has absolutly nothing to tease for the finale.

In comparison; Empire sets up these things for it's sequel: Luke just learned something horrible about his father, we have to rescue Han, Vader wants to use Luke to overthrow the Emperor, Luke will train to become a Jedi. We want to see what's next.

The last Jedi has: We have allies coming to help us from the outer Rim, Rey's got a few books too about the force. 

Final movie with JJ is gonna be kill the evil Kylo Ren and the next spherical super weapon. 

The set-up for a sequel really makes me feel like I couldn't care less. 

 

[Schneeds]

On 1/11/2018 at 2:44 PM, Forresto said:

As for Darth Bane we don't know much about him in canon but he's an extremely popular EU character. The reason I bring him up is because his story shares a lot of similarities to Rey's. He was also overpowered as heck before he received even a lick of training. I brought him up not to deflect your point, but to demonstrate Rey isn't an anomaly.

Did you actually read the Darth Bane trilogy?  He has absolutely nothing in common in Rey.  He went from being a massively strong brawler who worked in a mine, to being a soldier in the Sith army (Gloomwalkers) where he obviously got training as a solider, to spending 2/3 of the first book training on Korriban with Sith Masters.  In training, he loses a fight to a non master Zabrak and would have been killed, if not for the instructor. 

Compare that with Rey.  She's a junk salvager.  How is that in anyway relevant to combat?  It's not.  Also, she is literally better than everyone at everything.  With zero training.  Darth Bane is legendary, yet had numerous failures and loses.  Rey has yet to fail at anything. 

[Forresto]

2 hours ago, Schneeds said:

Did you actually read the Darth Bane trilogy?  He has absolutely nothing in common in Rey.  He went from being a massively strong brawler who worked in a mine, to being a soldier in the Sith army (Gloomwalkers) where he obviously got training as a solider, to spending 2/3 of the first book training on Korriban with Sith Masters.  In training, he loses a fight to a non master Zabrak and would have been killed, if not for the instructor. 

Compare that with Rey.  She's a junk salvager.  How is that in anyway relevant to combat?  It's not.  Also, she is literally better than everyone at everything.  With zero training.  Darth Bane is legendary, yet had numerous failures and loses.  Rey has yet to fail at anything. 

Have you? Bane was always OP.

Bane, with zero training, uses the force to crush his father's heart and help him in fights. He manipulates the moods of rooms and people he gambled against. He had premonitions and detected when people were going to attack him with weapons. He's a better soldier because he's innately powerful at the force.

Rey, with zero training, uses the force to temporarily confuse a stormtrooper and then later Kylo Ren, while the latter is distracted.

Otherwise Kylo Ren beats Rey twice in the Force Awakens, and then beats her in their little force pull duel in the Last Jedi. When Kylo isnt being arrogant and cocky, he has won in every single one of their encounter with Rey constantly on the defensive or on the run. Rey accomplishes nothing. 

Bane is a miner on a harsh world who has to fight for what he gets.

Rey, is a scavenger on an even harsher world where everyone is fighting to survive. People living in the wreckage of the battle kill and strip anyone who crashes in their territory, territory Rey is shown to be scavenging in. Do you really think she hasn't grown up fighting her entire life? Its established she can use a staff very effectively through that whole movie which implies lots of experience fighting with it much of her life.

So name me one thing Rey actually accomplished? Her victory over Kylo is no less believable then Vader being shot by the Falcon in the trench run, she caught him by surprise with an ability he never knew she had.