[QUOTE=pseudoreality;6516217]I finally got to see it. I liked it more than TFA and my issues were more with TFA set-ups that were not followed through on in this movie. Things like:
1) Who is Snoke?]/quote]
In the end Snoke was the ultimate red shirt, he was there to be powerful, look formidable and die so that Ren could make his final ascension. If you want to get technical, Snoke was really a connection to the old Star Wars that Disney wants to wipe away. Another uber force using Palpatine, that was pretty much easily disposed of. While Snoke wanted power and vengeance against the Jedi which represents the old ideals, Ren wants to find his own identity and place in the world, which is new Disney's view point of the force. They really want us to see Ren as a somewhat sympathetic villain who was betrayed by Luke and felt abandoned by his father, so he wants Vader's power to gain control over his fate.
If there is going to be a backstory, it will probably be a book or cartoon.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pseudoreality
2) What's the deal with Rey? Why was she on Jakku with Lor San Tekka and why did she have a connection with the lightsaber?
|
I think that Disney really kind of messed this up in a way, merely because of the imagery of the flashback of her life. Basically I guess the image represents the force waking up in her and how everything within the force is connected, so she could see Luke's memories from touching the light saber, but at the same time, I think that parts of it were her memories and her creations. Lor San Tekka was a nobody, another red shirt for Ren to kill to show how nasty he was in murdering someone who clearly knew him and was blocking him from his destiny. We saw Rey being handed over to the fat guy, which is clearly her memory of her nobody drunken bums of parents selling her off. The question is, what was with the ship leaving the world. We saw the destruction of the temple and the knights of Ren but we know that image was wrong because Ben was in Kylo gear, but he was still Ben when he destroyed the temple, we also saw the knights of Ren, but it sounds like they didn't come along until after the destruction of the Temple.
Again they created this massive feeling of disconnection between the TFA and TLJ because it feels like they changed Rey's and Luke's stories in mid writing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pseudoreality
3) What is the deal with the map to Luke? Half of it was in R2-D2 and half was with Lor San Tekka. If he left a map, he wanted to be found. Yet in this movie he said he didn't want to be found.
|
Lor San Tekka found the map he didn't have it all along, at least that's what was indicated at the start. Luke didn't leave the full map with Artoo, which to me means that he left Artoo before continuing on his journey to the Island which is why Artoo is blank. Again though this created a jarring gap between JJ's first movie and this one, its almost like they didn't talk or the new director took a cursory look at the first film and decided not to go down the rabbit hole and literally made a stand alone movie that didn't connect to the first one.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pseudoreality
4) Why does Captain Phasma suck so much? In the TFA they try to make her out to be a bad ass focusing on discipline, then she betrays the First Order by shutting down the defense shield letting thousands of soldiers die because someone pointed a blaster at her. Then in this movie, she still has a job/position of authority? Oh, and she sucks at fighting.
|
Was she ever really a bad ass in the first one though? She shot some prisoners, but we didn't see her fight, she surrendered in a hurry to save her bacon. Frankly she wasn't a needed character, and my guess is that they wanted to do more with her but decided that they had too many characters. In the book written about her (Here's the deal, the new EU books have all just basically been really terrible. The biggest mistake that Disney made when they killed the Legends EU is that they didn't bring across a lot of the really good writers that played in that galaxy. Because of that the new books have been really poorly written and just not really well thought out. I had hopes for the Lord of the Sith book with Palpatine and Vader, but it read like a badly written buddy cop book and I finished it and put it in my storage room.) But in the book Phasma was a warrior, a coward and a career opportunist and survivor, and she was better at the last two then she was at the first two. But because most people won't read that book. Instead she turns into a big colossal bag of poop in a shiny armor. She looks cool, she sells action figures, but if she's supposed to be one of the poster girls for female empowerment or a good villain they really failed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by pseudoreality
I liked the space battles for the most part. I the throne room scene and them cutting down the guards after taking out Snoke. My favourite part was Yoda. Overall, it felt like a combo of a ESB/RTJ remake and a reboot movie. They can now really start fresh with Episode 9.
|
These first two movies have tried to be both a reboot and a new story, and I think that they actually confused themselves, and that's why people are struggling with the movies.
Like I said, I liked a lot about TLJ. I liked the fact that Luke turned out to be basically a bitter failed Jedi who didn't figure out what the Force was really about until later in life, just before he died. Even Yoda came across as a guy who realized that he had been wrong about a great many things.
The space battles were ok, the fight scene in the throne room was ok. Overall this was a good stand alone sci-fi movie. It had a lot of charm to it, some moments of good human and human warmth. But I still circle back to the feeling that there was a major disconnection between the first and second movie that made things make no sense or become irrelevant, and because of that the first two movies when put together don't quite match up.