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

[Schneeds]

Yes.  Twice.

A for Rey, she knows more about the MF than Han.  She flies it at least as well as Han, despite never flying a ship before.  She's an excellent shot with a one hand blaster, despite never shooting a blaster before.  She didn't just confuse a storm trooper, she made him do what she wanted, the first time ever doing it. She defeats numerous Royal guards the second time she's ever fought with a lightsaber.  She lifts literal tons of boulders despite never levitating anymore before.  Remember how much effort it took Yoda just to lift an x-wing? 

As for being defeated by Kylo Ren, she just loses one time.  The first time.  He then fails to break into her mind, and she beats him straight up the next time, despite never having held a lightsaber before.  She would have killed him outright.  Also in TLJ, the little "force pull duel" you're talking about was a draw..  Also, that was after she saved him by throwing her the lightsaber.  Are you seriously trying to rationalize her power?  Seriously man, get off the kool-aid.  Her character has absolutely no character development or arc because she  can already do everything.

All of your examples of Bane, are things he's doing without even knowing he's doing it.  The force is an influence in his actions and it's subtle, he just doesn't decide one day that he can do anything and than do it.  Also you're ignoring the fact that Bane is drawing purely on the darkside which is emotion based.  Killing his father?  He was doing that anyway without the force.  A card game?  So he knows when the right card is coming up, not exactly lifting boulders.  Also you completely failed to address the fact that he was actually trained and was capable of losing at things.  He loses badly in training, and is nearly killed by the Jedi, despite being in armor that makes him imperious to lightsabers. 

I'm glad you like the movie, but a majority don't because these flaws are undeniable. 

Edited January 20, 2018 by Schneeds

[RetroInferno]

Vader wasn't shot by Han, one of his wingmen panicked and bumped into him sending his craft out of control. 

In the first movie Rey lost to Kylo on Takodana, resisted and pulled Kylo's mind search agaisn't him, grabbed Luke's lightsaber from Kylo's grasp then defeated him while he was extremly wounded after he tried converting her.

The force pull duel in TLJ was a draw up until Holdo's ship crashed into it; we don't know how this fight would have ended otherwise. Kylo defeated a lot more of praetorian guards than Rey did, still she's the one who managed to break through her difficult situation then proceeded to save Kylo. 

What does Rey achieves in The Last Jedi? How about helping putting Kylo Ren into power and saving the rest of the Resistance on Crait? 

[DarthBrickus]

20 hours ago, Schneeds said:

A for Rey, she knows more about the MF than Han.  She flies it at least as well as Han, despite never flying a ship before. 

At this point, are we even sure Rey piloted the Falcon? From all we've seen she might have force-grapped the ship and swooshed it around. 

[Sucram]

On 20/01/2018 at 8:51 PM, Schneeds said:

Yes.  Twice.

A for Rey, she knows more about the MF than Han.  She flies it at least as well as Han, despite never flying a ship before.  She's an excellent shot with a one hand blaster, despite never shooting a blaster before.  She didn't just confuse a storm trooper, she made him do what she wanted, the first time ever doing it. She defeats numerous Royal guards the second time she's ever fought with a lightsaber.  She lifts literal tons of boulders despite never levitating anymore before.  Remember how much effort it took Yoda just to lift an x-wing? 

As for being defeated by Kylo Ren, she just loses one time.  The first time.  He then fails to break into her mind, and she beats him straight up the next time, despite never having held a lightsaber before.  She would have killed him outright.  Also in TLJ, the little "force pull duel" you're talking about was a draw..  Also, that was after she saved him by throwing her the lightsaber.  Are you seriously trying to rationalize her power?  Seriously man, get off the kool-aid.  Her character has absolutely no character development or arc because she  can already do everything.

All of your examples of Bane, are things he's doing without even knowing he's doing it.  The force is an influence in his actions and it's subtle, he just doesn't decide one day that he can do anything and than do it.  Also you're ignoring the fact that Bane is drawing purely on the darkside which is emotion based.  Killing his father?  He was doing that anyway without the force.  A card game?  So he knows when the right card is coming up, not exactly lifting boulders.  Also you completely failed to address the fact that he was actually trained and was capable of losing at things.  He loses badly in training, and is nearly killed by the Jedi, despite being in armor that makes him imperious to lightsabers. 

I'm glad you like the movie, but a majority don't because these flaws are undeniable. 

Rey says after they escape Jakku this exact line: "ive flown ships before, but ive never left the planet!" And thats in the movie, not deleted, so its canon. so theres that. and while her caracter sucks in TLJ for the most part, she does have an arc in TFA, to accept that her parents arent coming back and to move on and embrace her force powers. also, Kylo Ren was shot by Chewbacca and bleeding to death during their fight. and with your point about her lifting the boulders: remember when Yoda says size matters not? plus, what indicated that it took Yoda a lot of effort to move the x wing? he seems to do it pretty easily.

there are far better things you couldve pointed out about TLJ, like Rose's character, the weird editing at times, Poe prank calling Hux, Laura Dern not telling Poe her plan, etc.

[Schneeds]

I've pointed those out in previous posts. Those are bad, but do not fundamentally break the movie like the others. 

As for the TFA Kylo fight, I used your line of thinking to defend it to people prior to TLJ, and I still like TFA.  But after she beats Luke in a fight, then proceeds to dominate several of Snoke's Royal Guard, and then saves Kylo, I'm done making excuses for why she's not a Mary Sue.  It took Anakin Skywalker two full movies, a lot of years, and a ton of training with the best to become a badass.  It took Rey 15 minutes after she decided herself that she was one. It's a joke. 

[RetroInferno]

Have we talked about how weaponizing hyper space jumps breaks the mechanics of space combat in the universe yet? 

I really feel for Mark Hamill, his legacy as one of the most impactfull protagonist in sci-fi, or ever, the young and hopefull jedi, turned into a husk to be scavenged by these characters and Disney. 

You want to turn Luke into this destroyed man that wants to slowly die on an island? Fine by me, but why the awefull one liners? Why did he leave a map of his location if he didnt wanted to be found? Luke's first anticipated return in more than 30 years builded up by the last movie and the first thing he does is simply throw away that light saber as it was trash, just for the laugh? I was shell shocked with my mouth wide open when that hapenned. We don't see his damn reaction learning Han's death, it simply cuts to ''whatever''. Serious tone, pacing and lenght issues, unlikable characters, useless side plot that lasts for a third of the movie.

That trilogy is the cash train running on the railway of nostalgia and corporate greed. Great ideas in concept really poorly executed. 

Episode IX hype am I right. 

 

 

 

[Littleworlds]

The Force Awakens left me quite cold. Too much a formulaic fan-service/best-of the original trilogy, but at least it looked pretty.

Now fast forward to The Last Jedi: Now this is a completely different animal. The film deliberately disappoints all the expectations and disrupts the by-the-numbers-storytelling of its predecessor. I'm not surprised that a lot of viewers don't like that. They didn't expect that sort of film, but I find it quite refreshing actually. Commercially maybe not the best decision, but from a storytelling point of view very interesting. It showed us things from a different angle and left them very much open through most of its run-time. I think if you went into the cinema without any spoilers, you were certainly in for a couple of WTF-moments.  

The Last Jedi is not the best film in the world. The Force Awakens certainly wasn't either, but where JJ Abrams was just lazy and playing it safe, Rian Johnson set the stakes high. Not everything worked, but its by far not as outrageous as many see it.

Luke Skywalker, for example. Why don't people get the idea, that when you reach already everything a little farmer boy from Tattooine coule possibly dream of before he went 30 yrs, he might develop some hubris and do some poor judgement later in life? That is simply human, isn't it? And that he runs away from the consequences of his mistake - that's simply human as well. There is nothing wrong with this characterization, apart from people don't quite getting that a realistic personality is a bit more complex than just being the "hero". Especially in later years.

I also don't really have big issues with Rey's force powers. After all, Luke did, with just a couple of hours Jedi training, fire two proton torpedos down that Death Star exhaust port - down in a right angle! I'm sure these things don't usually do such tight turns... So a short learning curve seems to be not unlikely to the main protagonists in Star Wars - just saying... 

Same for other issues, like: Why didn't Holdo reveal her plans? Perhaps because spies? Perhaps because an Admiral should not need to justify her orders to her subordinates?

I think a lot of the "plot holes" are actually rather minor, or can be explained with some reasoning. I'm not going to say its a perfect film, but so far every Star Wars film had its issues and plotholes. The prequel, the more 

[samurai-turtle]

Why does everyone think Luke magical put two torpedoes down an exhaust port. Did everything one forget he used to bullseye wamp rats in his skyhopper. And they were not much bigger than the exhaust port, so he had practice making such shots. 

[Littleworlds]

17 minutes ago, samurai-turtle said:

Why does everyone think Luke magical put two torpedoes down an exhaust port. Did everything one forget he used to bullseye wamp rats in his skyhopper. And they were not much bigger than the exhaust port, so he had practice making such shots. 

He shot at the rats. That usually doesn't includes letting a projectile going straight downwards, 90° from their firing angle - or does it?

Hitting the port isn't hard. At least one other pilot did it too on his run, but sending them down is. And no-one else did that.

[samurai-turtle]

47 minutes ago, Littleworlds said:

He shot at the rats. That usually doesn't includes letting a projectile going straight downwards, 90° from their firing angle - or does it?

Hitting the port isn't hard. At least one other pilot did it too on his run, but sending them down is. And no-one else did that.

I would think the rats are moving around trying not to get hit. But do we know how the torpedoes where guided with computer programming or Luke manually doing it. Or the really off the wall idea the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi pushing down their. 

Well no else got chance after Luke.  Some could say Luke got lucky with the shot. And if Tarkin (or Vader) weren't so cocky they should of sent out more Tie Fighters to stop the bombing runs. Or even better, "jump" the Death Star away from that one planet it was hiding behind to a more ideal spot to destroy Yavan 4. (Their is a lot of room in space.) I guess you get cocky when you think you have the ultimate weapon, witch it the empire's biggest weakness. 

(I am wondering if this talk should go on here or in a different place.) 

[Littleworlds]

25 minutes ago, samurai-turtle said:

I would think the rats are moving around trying not to get hit. But do we know how the torpedoes where guided with computer programming or Luke manually doing it. Or the really off the wall idea the ghost of Obi-Wan Kenobi pushing down their. 

Well no else got chance after Luke.  Some could say Luke got lucky with the shot. And if Tarkin (or Vader) weren't so cocky they should of sent out more Tie Fighters to stop the bombing runs. Or even better, "jump" the Death Star away from that one planet it was hiding behind to a more ideal spot to destroy Yavan 4. (Their is a lot of room in space.) I guess you get cocky when you think you have the ultimate weapon, witch it the empire's biggest weakness. 

(I am wondering if this talk should go on here or in a different place.) 

I'm sure Luke used the force. The whole sequence of his attack run made this clear. He was crystal clear set up to be the one who does the slam-dunk And that's my whole point: in the movies the protagonists have an uncanny ability in picking up how to use the force. I think it can be interpreted as a raw, unrefined way and that a lot of the Jedi training is about keeping the mental balance and not get carried away by the instant power at someone's fingertips - plus its a film and therefore things get abbreviated, things get simplified, things get dramatised.

All in all, btw I think that people should not get too upset with The Last Jedi. Its the middle part of its trilogy and like in the original trilogy the middle part is the one with - crisis. It pans out differently this time, but it ends with a glimpse of hope.

[RetroInferno]

Errrrm it was Obi-Wan’s ghost that led Luke on when to fire those protons torpedos blindly, It was the whole point of his sacrifice in the movie. It wasn’t Luke’s piloting skills that saved the day.

[Littleworlds]

12 minutes ago, RetroInferno said:

Errrrm it was Obi-Wan’s ghost that led Luke on when to fire those protons torpedos blindly, It was the whole point of his sacrifice in the movie. It wasn’t Luke’s piloting skills that saved the day.

That's pretty implausible as it would take the agency from the main protagonist to a side-character. Luke was guided by Obi-Wan to use the force. He didn't tell him "C'mon boy, give me the stick and let an ol' Jedi do his stuff." He just told Luke to rely on himself. That was the scene was about. 

[samurai-turtle]

I think my point is Luke had some practice making odd shots. Or an other example is William Tell and shooting the apple off the head. I am sure it was the first time he did it, but he made other shots that could be just as hard. 

8 hours ago, RetroInferno said:

Errrrm it was Obi-Wan’s ghost that led Luke on when to fire those protons torpedos blindly, It was the whole point of his sacrifice in the movie. It wasn’t Luke’s piloting skills that saved the day.

I thought the point is to use your (or Luke's) instincts. 

10 hours ago, Littleworlds said:

All in all, btw I think that people should not get too upset with The Last Jedi. Its the middle part of its trilogy and like in the original trilogy the middle part is the one with - crisis. It pans out differently this time, but it ends with a glimpse of hope.

What really bugs me about the whole thing, is the way people are crying over the movie. I seen someone trying to petition to get rid of the whole movie, talk about a crazy "joke". Now when I watched the movie, I had the thought during the casino world part "Something is off here". But it was not so bad that I wanted to scrub the entire movie from my memory. Now if you want to watch movies that need to go away, watch the "Bayformers" series of movies. During the last one I just not care what happened at all. And going in I new it was not that great, I had the mentality of watching a Trainwreck (you want to see how bad it is). Plus I consider myself a Transformers fan and I really did not like any of the "Bayformers" movies. 

[Schneeds]

20 hours ago, Littleworlds said:

I also don't really have big issues with Rey's force powers. After all, Luke did, with just a couple of hours Jedi training, fire two proton torpedos down that Death Star exhaust port - down in a right angle! I'm sure these things don't usually do such tight turns... So a short learning curve seems to be not unlikely to the main protagonists in Star Wars - just saying... 

Well for starters, his few hours of training is still more than Rey got in two movies.   Also, that was literally the only impressive thing he did in the entire movie.  He got KO'd by a Tuscan raider.  He got thrown down by a bar thug.  He was lousy with the remote.  His blaster accuracy was atrocious, and his flying skills were mediocre (he nearly killed himself on his first run in). 

Rey didn't even have a learning curve, let a lone a short one.  The first time she held a lightsaber, she beat Kylo Ren straight up.  And the whole "he was injured" argument doesn't hold up.  One, his movement didn't look impaired at all, and two, pain should make him stronger. 

Given that fact, one might think they would actually have Kylo Ren complete his training, so as to offer an actual antagonist and some suspense.  But nope, RJ just keeps him as is.  Rey hasn't had any character growth up to this point, and since she's already better than Kylo, where does she go from here?  Terrible story writing. 

[Forresto]

22 minutes ago, Schneeds said:

Well for starters, his few hours of training is still more than Rey got in two movies.   Also, that was literally the only impressive thing he did in the entire movie.  He got KO'd by a Tuscan raider.  He got thrown down by a bar thug.  He was lousy with the remote.  His blaster accuracy was atrocious, and his flying skills were mediocre (he nearly killed himself on his first run in). 

Rey didn't even have a learning curve, let a lone a short one.  The first time she held a lightsaber, she beat Kylo Ren straight up.  And the whole "he was injured" argument doesn't hold up.  One, his movement didn't look impaired at all, and two, pain should make him stronger. 

Given that fact, one might think they would actually have Kylo Ren complete his training, so as to offer an actual antagonist and some suspense.  But nope, RJ just keeps him as is.  Rey hasn't had any character growth up to this point, and since she's already better than Kylo, where does she go from here?  Terrible story writing. 

He blew up the most advanced battle station in the galaxy because it was set up in his story that he can bullseye womprats on a crappy air speeder. We never see this and oddly enough I don't think we've ever seen that depicted in canon or the EU, we just hear he can do it and accept it. 

Or somehow his experience as a farm kid taught him how to shoot a rope from a small gun and leap a bottomless gorge whilst holding someone and somehow now fall or drop her in the thirty foot distance from one platform to the next.

Or somehow his experience farming, shooting with a rifle, and firing the cannons of a crappy airspeeder enable him to have the skill of firing the turret of an entirely alien ship to him, and destroy multiple Tie Fighters flown by elite pilots.

Until Scarif, and the heavy losses the Rebels took, we never had a great reason other then assuming Biggs put in a good word, for why Luke was even given an X-Wing. That's not how the military works or how even rebels work. A crappy airspeeder is not training for an interstellar snub fighter that requires a lot of finesse in the vacuum. 

Rey is a scavenger on a desert planet who has no social skills and is a tech geek. So of course she can fix things, that's why she's still alive in the first place, its all she does and if she couldn't fix old junky tech Unkar would've left her for the sand wisps a long time ago. Apart from that she worked directly for Unkarr at some point and is familiar with his ships, with the implication being she has flown the falcon before. Why can she fly it as well as she does? Well we don't know how many times she's flown before, we only know that she has. How many womp rats did Luke bullseye?  Same thing, all we know that he's done it and we don't need to know how many times to understand his ability.

The only part of Rey's capabilities that makes little sense is her capability with a lightsaber. She's a little too good for how little she's trained.

To be fair though she hasn't actually won a lightsaber fight to Kylo, she won a mental force battle that requires concentration to an unstable dude who just killed his father (leaving him more conflicted and unstable), and has been shot with what the movie establishes is a gun that fires heavy last projectiles. I mean seriously he was hit with a gun that sent stormtroopers flying through the air and he's still standing? That's impressive.

She beat three* Praetorian guards, who she fought almost one at a time while Kylo took on three at a time. Advantage Rey. 

Look I agree that is the one scene its definitely a stretch for what her capability should be, but to have her impaired would've ruined perhaps one of the top greatest fight scenes in Star Wars, if not most films in recent years. To me its up there with some of the crazy fights from John Wick. The Cinematography and camera work is gorgeous especially right after Rey and Kylo look at each other and go back to back with the guards rushing them. 

Plus Snoke's guards are far more useful then Palpatine's. Where the heck were they when their boss got pitched down a bottomless pit?

 

Edited February 2, 2018 by Forresto

[Littleworlds]

3 hours ago, Schneeds said:

Well for starters, his few hours of training is still more than Rey got in two movies.   Also, that was literally the only impressive thing he did in the entire movie.  He got KO'd by a Tuscan raider.  He got thrown down by a bar thug.  He was lousy with the remote.  His blaster accuracy was atrocious, and his flying skills were mediocre (he nearly killed himself on his first run in). 

Rey didn't even have a learning curve, let a lone a short one.  The first time she held a lightsaber, she beat Kylo Ren straight up.  And the whole "he was injured" argument doesn't hold up.  One, his movement didn't look impaired at all, and two, pain should make him stronger. 

Given that fact, one might think they would actually have Kylo Ren complete his training, so as to offer an actual antagonist and some suspense.  But nope, RJ just keeps him as is.  Rey hasn't had any character growth up to this point, and since she's already better than Kylo, where does she go from here?  Terrible story writing. 

I get your point of course. Rey is quite developed in the force right away in The Force Awakens. I think thats partly JJ Abrams clumsy storytelling (and things like that you can't take back in The Last Jedi. She can't "unlearn") and partly that the SW universe is much more developed now than it was when it first came into the cinemas. The audience is more accepting of flashy force powers from a nobody on a desert planet now than it would have been back in the days when SW wasn't a cultural phenomenon it is now. Luke probably needed the journey as much as the viewers did to learn about the force. Now its common knowledge.

But I'm not going to defend the new trilogy here: They could have done it better, but I blame JJ Abrams really for setting things up that way.

3 hours ago, Forresto said:

He blew up the most advanced battle station in the galaxy because it was set up in his story that he can bullseye womprats on a crappy air speeder. We never see this and oddly enough I don't think we've ever seen that depicted in canon or the EU, we just hear he can do it and accept it. 

Or somehow his experience as a farm kid taught him how to shoot a rope from a small gun and leap a bottomless gorge whilst holding someone and somehow now fall or drop her in the thirty foot distance from one platform to the next.

Or somehow his experience farming, shooting with a rifle, and firing the cannons of a crappy airspeeder enable him to have the skill of firing the turret of an entirely alien ship to him, and destroy multiple Tie Fighters flown by elite pilots.

Until Scarif, and the heavy losses the Rebels took, we never had a great reason other then assuming Biggs put in a good word, for why Luke was even given an X-Wing. That's not how the military works or how even rebels work. A crappy airspeeder is not training for an interstellar snub fighter that requires a lot of finesse in the vacuum. 

Rey is a scavenger on a desert planet who has no social skills and is a tech geek. So of course she can fix things, that's why she's still alive in the first place, its all she does and if she couldn't fix old junky tech Unkar would've left her for the sand wisps a long time ago. Apart from that she worked directly for Unkarr at some point and is familiar with his ships, with the implication being she has flown the falcon before. Why can she fly it as well as she does? Well we don't know how many times she's flown before, we only know that she has. How many womp rats did Luke bullseye?  Same thing, all we know that he's done it and we don't need to know how many times to understand his ability.

The only part of Rey's capabilities that makes little sense is her capability with a lightsaber. She's a little too good for how little she's trained.

To be fair though she hasn't actually won a lightsaber fight to Kylo, she won a mental force battle that requires concentration to an unstable dude who just killed his father (leaving him more conflicted and unstable), and has been shot with what the movie establishes is a gun that fires heavy last projectiles. I mean seriously he was hit with a gun that sent stormtroopers flying through the air and he's still standing? That's impressive.

She beat three* Praetorian guards, who she fought almost one at a time while Kylo took on three at a time. Advantage Rey. 

Look I agree that is the one scene its definitely a stretch for what her capability should be, but to have her impaired would've ruined perhaps one of the top greatest fight scenes in Star Wars, if not most films in recent years. To me its up there with some of the crazy fights from John Wick. The Cinematography and camera work is gorgeous especially right after Rey and Kylo look at each other and go back to back with the guards rushing them. 

Plus Snoke's guards are far more useful then Palpatine's. Where the heck were they when their boss got pitched down a bottomless pit?

 

Very good points! It really comes down to (often) arbitrary writing decisions really.

[x105Black]

9 hours ago, Forresto said:

The only part of Rey's capabilities that makes little sense is her capability with a lightsaber. She's a little too good for how little she's trained.

To be fair though she hasn't actually won a lightsaber fight to Kylo, she won a mental force battle that requires concentration to an unstable dude who just killed his father (leaving him more conflicted and unstable), and has been shot with what the movie establishes is a gun that fires heavy last projectiles. I mean seriously he was hit with a gun that sent stormtroopers flying through the air and he's still standing? That's impressive.

She beat three* Praetorian guards, who she fought almost one at a time while Kylo took on three at a time. Advantage Rey. 

Look I agree that is the one scene its definitely a stretch for what her capability should be, but to have her impaired would've ruined perhaps one of the top greatest fight scenes in Star Wars, if not most films in recent years. To me its up there with some of the crazy fights from John Wick. The Cinematography and camera work is gorgeous especially right after Rey and Kylo look at each other and go back to back with the guards rushing them. 

Plus Snoke's guards are far more useful then Palpatine's. Where the heck were they when their boss got pitched down a bottomless pit?

I can buy that Rey can use a lightsaber.  I can't buy how well she handles the force with so little training (much less than Luke).  And she did beat Kylo Ren in that lightsaber battle, but I can buy the whole injury angle for why Kylo wasn't able to fight to his potential, as well as the idea that he wanted to turn her rather than kill her.

So, I had no problem with her holding her own in the Last Jedi fight scene with Ben versus the guards.  I did have a problem with the fact that there were no lightsaber battles where 2 people with lightsabers fight each other and blades clash.  The fight of Luke versus Kylo Ren was an astral projection dancing with a man to buy time. 

I believe Palpatine sent his guards out of the room.

6 hours ago, Littleworlds said:

I get your point of course. Rey is quite developed in the force right away in The Force Awakens. I think thats partly JJ Abrams clumsy storytelling (and things like that you can't take back in The Last Jedi. She can't "unlearn") and partly that the SW universe is much more developed now than it was when it first came into the cinemas. The audience is more accepting of flashy force powers from a nobody on a desert planet now than it would have been back in the days when SW wasn't a cultural phenomenon it is now. Luke probably needed the journey as much as the viewers did to learn about the force. Now its common knowledge.

But I'm not going to defend the new trilogy here: They could have done it better, but I blame JJ Abrams really for setting things up that way.

I didn't think Rey was too overpowered in The Force Awakens.  She did a mind trick on a weak minded Stormtrooper, and she fought a severely wounded man.  JJ Abrams did a great job with that film, and set up a lot of story threads.  Unfortunately, Rian Johnson clipped all of the most interesting threads and added a lot to Rey's force capabilities with no real training.  She had a couple of lessons, but even those were brief and essentially useless.  She lifts a hundred rocks with ease, and Luke had trouble lifting his X-Wing out of the swamp.

I just think Johnson's decisions to make a failure-themed movie, and to specifically make the characters face the most difficult element he could think up, were bad decisions.  He should have focused on telling the story in a logical and satisfying way instead, because to me and many others, his theme of failure failed.

[Schneeds]

10 hours ago, Forresto said:

Rey is a scavenger on a desert planet who has no social skills and is a tech geek. So of course she can fix things, that's why she's still alive in the first place, its all she does and if she couldn't fix old junky tech Unkar would've left her for the sand wisps a long time ago. Apart from that she worked directly for Unkarr at some point and is familiar with his ships, with the implication being she has flown the falcon before. Why can she fly it as well as she does? Well we don't know how many times she's flown before, we only know that she has. How many womp rats did Luke bullseye?  Same thing, all we know that he's done it and we don't need to know how many times to understand his ability.

The only part of Rey's capabilities that makes little sense is her capability with a lightsaber. She's a little too good for how little she's trained.

To be fair though she hasn't actually won a lightsaber fight to Kylo, she won a mental force battle that requires concentration to an unstable dude who just killed his father (leaving him more conflicted and unstable), and has been shot with what the movie establishes is a gun that fires heavy last projectiles. I mean seriously he was hit with a gun that sent stormtroopers flying through the air and he's still standing? That's impressive.

She beat three* Praetorian guards, who she fought almost one at a time while Kylo took on three at a time. Advantage Rey. 

Look I agree that is the one scene its definitely a stretch for what her capability should be, but to have her impaired would've ruined perhaps one of the top greatest fight scenes in Star Wars, if not most films in recent years. To me its up there with some of the crazy fights from John Wick. The Cinematography and camera work is gorgeous especially right after Rey and Kylo look at each other and go back to back with the guards rushing them. 

Plus Snoke's guards are far more useful then Palpatine's. Where the heck were they when their boss got pitched down a bottomless pit?

 

Fin:  "How did you do that?!?"

Rey:  "I don't know!"  :)

Again, if Kylo was injured, it didn't clearly didn't affect his movement.  People want to find ways to rationalize the absurdity of the fight, but there just aren't any.  As for the Royal Guard scene, I guess it looks flashy, but actually look at the fighting.  Look at the fighting techniques... it's absolutely ridiculous.  It looks like an episode of Dancing with the Stars.  John Wick's choreography was based in reality.  Have you seen the guy run a three gun course?

Even if you believe Rey has been a pilot and flown the falcon, even if you believe that being a junk salvager some how made her a scrappy and capable fighter, it still doesn't account for her force abilities.  The fact of the matter is, Rey simply thinks to herself "the force!" and is able to all of a sudden do anything.  All of a sudden she can control storm troopers, become a crack shot with a blaster when she doesn't even know what a safety is, use a light saber better than the main villain, beat a jedi master, beat numerous royal guards, lift infinite amounts of objects.  Where is her character development?  What isn't she good at?  Why am I supposed to give a damn?  As much as I dislike Emo Ren, at least he has flaws and seems real. 

Would Star Wars be as good as it is, if in ANH after Luke's Aunt and Uncle died, he could simply do everything?  No.  That's not Star Wars.

 

[Forresto]

I think this comes down to a fundamental difference in how we view the Force and I don't think we're ever going to agree  and that's okay. Just know I'm pushing back not because I'm trying to win am arguement, I'm trying to explain my interpretation and why these aspects o the films don't bother me.

The reason I have a problem with the lightsaber part of Rey is because a lightsaber is a tool, an implement that requires finesse to handle. You don't just pick up a sword and know how to duel people who have been training their whole lives the next day.

The force is different. The force is more spiritual. I think reading Siddartha by Herman Hesse, and studying Buddhism in high school shaped my views on it. You don't need to be a jedi or have lots of training to be a powerful force user, it's more how attuned you are to the force, how connected your being is, how at peace you are with your existance.

It's why Anakain is Obi Wan's equal despite Obi Wan having ten years more training. Annakin is more Rey is more attuned to the force. It's more then that but this post is already too long as is 

The thing about the sequels is that the light side and dark side dynamic is flipped. Darth Vader is interesting because he's fairly unconflicted (movie canon) till Return of the Jedi while Luke is conflicted between light side and dark side until finally going mostly light by the end of Return. In the sequels Rey is the straight and narrow Darth Vader and Kylo Ren is the dynamic interesting character. 

2 hours ago, x105Black said:

I just think Johnson's decisions to make a failure-themed movie, and to specifically make the characters face the most difficult element he could think up, were bad decisions.  He should have focused on telling the story in a logical and satisfying way instead, because to me and many others, his theme of failure failed.

As for the rock thing, correct me if I'm wrong but that's the only impreesibe thing she does with the force. Thats not all that impressive compared to Snoke, Luke, and Kylo.

As for themes of failure, that's Empire Strikes Back.

The Rebellion escapes but is shathere for the moment.

Yoda fails to teach Luke.

Luke fails to complete his training, defeat Vader, etc...

Vader fails to turn Luke.

The Falcon is on the run the whole movie.

Han gets capured and frozen. 

Leia and Chewie lose Han. 

C3PO gets torn apart.

Lano loses on his end of the deal with Vader and loses Cloud City.

Ozzel, Needa, and Piett all fail Vader.

The list goes on. The only people who come out on top are the Empire, the Emperor, Boba Fett, and Jabba. That's it. It's pretty dismal for everyone else.

[x105Black]

1 hour ago, Forresto said:

I think this comes down to a fundamental difference in how we view the Force and I don't think we're ever going to agree  and that's okay. Just know I'm pushing back not because I'm trying to win am arguement, I'm trying to explain my interpretation and why these aspects o the films don't bother me.

The reason I have a problem with the lightsaber part of Rey is because a lightsaber is a tool, an implement that requires finesse to handle. You don't just pick up a sword and know how to duel people who have been training their whole lives the next day.

The force is different. The force is more spiritual. I think reading Siddartha by Herman Hesse, and studying Buddhism in high school shaped my views on it. You don't need to be a jedi or have lots of training to be a powerful force user, it's more how attuned you are to the force, how connected your being is, how at peace you are with your existance.

Siddartha was a fantastic book.  However, I disagree.  I think that you can have an innate potential with the force but no real understanding or control (Anakin), but you need training of some sort in order to reign it in and use it to perform actual force powers.  This is different from sword fighting because any idiot can pick up a sword and swing it around without practice, and they could still potentially be a viable threat.  And if that person is a decent fighter in a skirmish already (Rey), it wouldn't be too hard to extend that to a lightsaber battle.

1 hour ago, Forresto said:

As for themes of failure, that's Empire Strikes Back.

Empire Strikes Back does it well.  That's the difference.  We are left wondering what will happen next because everything is in such disarray.  I don't feel that with The Last Jedi.  Instead I feel they added the broom boy scene to talk about hope and give it an uplifting ending, almost as if it was the last movie of the trilogy.  The good guys got away because Rey used her untrained and implausible force abilities to lift a bajillion rocks and then fly them away, and Luke fades into the force after pretending to fight his nephew.  Bad guys have died, good guys are going off to do good things.

So while Empire was successful with its themes of failure, The Last Jedi fails.

[Schneeds]

On 2/2/2018 at 2:44 PM, x105Black said:

Empire Strikes Back does it well.  That's the difference.  We are left wondering what will happen next because everything is in such disarray.  I don't feel that with The Last Jedi.  Instead I feel they added the broom boy scene to talk about hope and give it an uplifting ending, almost as if it was the last movie of the trilogy.  The good guys got away because Rey used her untrained and implausible force abilities to lift a bajillion rocks and then fly them away, and Luke fades into the force after pretending to fight his nephew.  Bad guys have died, good guys are going off to do good things.

So while Empire was successful with its themes of failure, The Last Jedi fails.

Yep.  The theme of failure doens't really work when your main protagonist can't fail at anything.  If Rey had been in Empire, she simply would have beaten Darth Vader and everyone would have been left wondering what the point of ROTJ is.

[Digger of Bricks]

 

[RetroInferno]

The Rose and Finn sketches in the HISHE video made me laugh so hard. 

''It's not about winning, it's about saving the one you loves'' as the giant laser cracks open the base.

Wait, isn't it the exact same scene in the movie? 

Ironic

[x105Black]

That HISHE was so satisfying to watch.