Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi - Discussion Thread

[CaptainCrunch]

There were some really good concepts and scenes in TLJ anyone that says there weren't is probably letting his overall feelings about the movie get in his or her way, or wants to be the cool kid.


My problems weren't scenes, well there were some scenes that were cringe worthy, but the over arching story just didn't work out for me as much.



Liked


Luke being jaded and angry and frightened by how things had turned out. No matter what happened at the end of ROTJ with the redemption of his father, bringing peace to the galaxy and ending the Sith, it was all destined to go to pot as Snoke nailed it precisely when one side of the force rises the other rises to meet it. That to me is just a smart bit of Force philosophy as it points out that the Jedi and the Sith had no idea what the balance of the force meant. At the end of the day, you could argue that the Force requires a constant state of conflict between the Dark and the Light to maintain balance. A ascendant light doesn't really mean peace and harmony.



That the first two movies resisted the re rise of the Sith was something I absolutely loved, it showed the flaw in the rule of two, while thousands of years of evolution by the Sith created these incredibly strong evil force users, in the end the betrayal by one ended the Sith line and all that knowledge was lost.


The fight scenes and the battle scenes looked good and were choreographed well. Daisy Ridley has a great physicality to the role.



I kind of had a love hate relationship of the Yoda Luke scene. In some parts it was good, but the entire premise in the end that Yoda really came to the realization that the Jedi in its current form needed to die out and be re-invented could have maybe been done better.


The retelling of the story of Kylo's betrayal told from three different sides was brilliantly done, and the question of Luke creating Kylo was brilliant. The road to hell is paved with the best intentions and because of his actions Luke had spent years in hell and compounded doing the wrong thing with an even worse sin of hiding away.



What I disliked


There was a jarring disconnect between the first movie and the second with dropped storylines and facts that were created in the first story and just dropped in the second movie.



There was too much reliance on making the second movie a reboot of the best Star Wars movie ever made in Empire Strikes back. The out odded space chase, the ground battle, even the super sized Starr Destroyer.


I thought the recreation of the tree scene with the cave scene was stupid and pointless.


The opening battle scene was ruined by the whole Hugs thing and BB-8 doing the boy in the damn scene.



Poe was poorly written through the whole movie, he wasn't a misguided military officer with the best interests of the Resistance at heart, he was a petulant spoiled child, by the end of the movie, when he had become this leader, I really didn't care.


The whole Rose Finn storyline and the Casino scene was just badly executed and terrible. On top of that they could have done so much more with the explanation of sides of grey and feeding the war machine stuff. The DJ character was more annoying then anything.


Snoke was an idiot, just plain and simple and he was put there not to be awesome but to be a disposible yeoman ala star trek.


Phasma, they might as well have left her dead in the first one, what a wasted character.


They made the First Order into incompetent buffoons.



I can never understand in Star Wars movies why they stop or don't shoot. In ANH they held their fire on the escape pod, in the LJ Hux orders him to stop firing because that's enough, do they have to pay for their laser bolts?


It just wasn't a good story, and when you take scenes directly form Empire Stikes back and somehow make them seem pale in comparison that's bad script writing.

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by direwolf

I've read that fans were pissed off when he threw the lightsaber over his shoulder, but personally I thought that was a great moment. People bitching about how "Luke would never act like that." Really? How do you know? A long time has passed since ROTJ, and clearly some horrible s**t went down in the intervening 30 years that this guy feels directly responsible for, mostly involving his own nephew. For me it made sense that he had taken himself out of the game and just wanted to disappear. .

I didn't mind the lightsaber throw, obviously something happened that made Luke go into exile and that was going to be big character changing moment for him. Old Ben and Obi-Wan we meet were also two very different people 30 years apart due to character defining moments, that's fine.

I didn't like what that moment was. Luke had some concerns about his nephew Ben Solo. So he, very rationally, goes to his tent to kill him. Like how is that at all like the Luke we know? The same Luke who saw the good in his dad, the same dad who literally killed billions of people, not just the men but the women and children too. If he was able to overlook that, but not his nephew who had done nothing...how does that make sense?

Was waiting for a big reveal about how Snoke was able to not just manipulate Ben but Luke as well. But nope. Nothing, Luke just had a bad dream and went to kill his nephew - momentarily though.

The bigger issue was that was the better story line. The whole Casino royale with no payoff side quest was just boring in my mind. But some kid grabbed a mop, so therefore it wasn't useless...

[#-3]

Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch

/


There was a jarring disconnect between the first movie and the second with dropped storylines and facts that were created in the first story and just dropped in the second movie. I think it's a little hasty to talk about a disconnect between the stories that have not reached their ending, the seem to be building on a very simple 3 part structure. (1) looking for adventure (2) struggling to live up to the adventure that they find (3) I'm guessing its about overcoming that failure. Part 1 is OK on its own, but without part 3 the story of part 2 is just incomplete.



There was too much reliance on making the second movie a reboot of the best Star Wars movie ever made in Empire Strikes back. The out odded space chase, the ground battle, even the super sized Starr Destroyer.
odd critique from someone who liked TFA, they purposely referenced many of the scenes then upended your expectations, I thought it was a good reaction to TFA when the did everything to meet your expectation drama be damned. It's also probably an overall positive that the didn't write of all the minor rebels minutes into the movie, and the kept a handle on them.


I thought the recreation of the tree scene with the cave scene was stupid and pointless. meh, didn't really need in the movie, didn't really hurt the movie for me.


The opening battle scene was ruined by the whole Hugs thing and BB-8 doing the boy in the damn scene. Ya the opening scene really slowed the start of the movie, that probably could have been cut to 5 minutes, I kinda thought the same thing about rouge one, but didn't complete ruin the movie for either (one area where TFA wins hands down, much nicer cold opening star wars style)



Poe was poorly written through the whole movie, he wasn't a misguided military officer with the best interests of the Resistance at heart, he was a petulant spoiled child, by the end of the movie, when he had become this leader, I really didn't care.Fair Issacs acting saved it a bit for me, but he was a much better character in TFA


The whole Rose Finn storyline and the Casino scene was just badly executed and terrible. On top of that they could have done so much more with the explanation of sides of grey and feeding the war machine stuff. The DJ character was more annoying then anything. True, I think it was needed for the Poe plot to work, but really were paying for the Jedi storyline, not the fly boy, ESB knew that even having Harrison as the big actor on set.


Snoke was an idiot, just plain and simple and he was put there not to be awesome but to be a disposible yeoman ala star trek.I really enjoyed them upending my expectations, it's what made the movie for me.
So I guess we could call this a taste difference, but it was interesting to see them throw away an Alpha character like that (almost reminds me of ObiWan in ANH


Phasma, they might as well have left her dead in the first one, what a wasted character. Agree, the villains in TFA were all terrible, every one of them. I consider it an accomplishment the way they salvaged Kylo, to bad they were 2/2 on wasting Phasma


They made the First Order into incompetent buffoons. Meh, thats Star Wars. You want the two movies where they aren't total buffoons, AoTC & RoTS which were both worse than this movie unquestionably. I take the trade of quality acting & story over quality villains, its something done bad far too often but the foil does need to lose in the end.



I can never understand in Star Wars movies why they stop or don't shoot. In ANH they held their fire on the escape pod, in the LJ Hux orders him to stop firing because that's enough, do they have to pay for their laser bolts? see comment above.


It just wasn't a good story, and when you take scenes directly form Empire Stikes back and somehow make them seem pale in comparison that's bad script writing.

agree to disagree, I think upending the scenes was the entire point, and it did allot to clear the feild so they can do something new and interesting with IX


There is allot to like, the areas I agree with you on dislikes aren't driving the story for me.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by #-3

agree to disagree, I think upending the scenes was the entire point, and it did allot to clear the feild so they can do something new and interesting with IX


There is allot to like, the areas I agree with you on dislikes aren't driving the story for me.

Ask yourself though, you are building a trilogy. Is episode 2 where you want to clear the slate for the finale?

[zamler]

I can't understand how anyone could like the direction they took with Luke. Even the man that knows the character best couldn't understand him and had to consider Luke a different person to play the character.

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by zamler

I can't understand how anyone could like the direction they took with Luke. Even the man that knows the character best couldn't understand him and had to consider Luke a different person to play the character.

With all due respect to Hamil, he’s just an actor. He’s not the definitive opinion on Luke. I respect what he says but I disagree with it. And I’m far from surprised that he would’ve preferred his character to play a heroic role as the protagonist in the new trilogy instead of a bit part that basically amounted to him being relegated to Yoda 2.0.

I agree with direwolf here. No one can say with any authority what Luke would have done. He’s a fictional character and given the reasoning they gave for his behaviour and his backstory made sense to me.

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

I agree with direwolf here. No one can say with any authority what Luke would have done. He’s a fictional character and given the reasoning they gave for his behaviour and his backstory made sense to me.

All characters are fictional though. You took issue with Batman vs Superman's characterization of Batman by having him kill. That Batman was less established then Luke and actually had more support in why he would have changed his tune considering the flashback insinuations. Here we had Luke have a vision that completely change the type of person he has been established in 3 movies?

It seemed like it was just a twist for a sake of a twist to keep up with the likes of Vader being Luke's father, Leia being Luke's sister or Kylo being Han/Leia's son. Having Kylo Ren turn evil because of Luke was suppose to be a talking point gasp moment but instead just turned flat.

But really, that was a rather minor problem with the whole story. Like why didn't they just tell Poe their plan? It's not like a secret you keep from your higher ups.

[Iceman57]

Apologies for starting this debate up again but I really wanted to like this movie and I've even tired convincing myself i can by watching it three times but imo it's just too impossibly bad, lol. I love Looper & Brick but the Last Jedi is all over the place with it's tone, everyone fails at whatever they're needlessly trying to accomplish while the choices, omg the choices each character makes just do not make any sense which takes me completely out of the movie experience.

I feel Rian Johnson tries to be unconventional for all the wrong reasons and decided to make everything that is different in the story relatively pointless. Other then the awesome lightsaber battle in the throne room it's actually the worst thing a movie can be and that is boring.

I don't even understand why Disney & Co. thought it would be a good idea to hire three different writers/directors to create what is suppose to be a coherent & connected trilogy. Understandably each director would want to put their own imprint on the movie they're in charge of but obviously that only creates incohesive story telling as is clearly shown between the Force Awakens and the Last Jedi.

Very disappointing 😞

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Ask yourself though, you are building a trilogy. Is episode 2 where you want to clear the slate for the finale?

I'm willing to reserve judgement until I see the last episode, but whoever writes that doesn't have a lot to work with.

The First Order is decimated: it now consists of a few ships. The rebellion is likewise decimated and consists of a few ships.

Phasma, Snoke, Luke, and Solo are all dead.

The Jedi and the Sith are done.

Rey has no backstory to explore. We aren't getting a backstory for Snoke.

All that's really left is finishing off The First Order, dealing with Leia, and working out the relationship between Ray and Ren....and I guess the love story between Finn and Rose?

[Cecil Terwilliger]

Originally Posted by Oling_Roachinen

All characters are fictional though. You took issue with Batman vs Superman's characterization of Batman by having him kill. That Batman was less established then Luke and actually had more support in why he would have changed his tune considering the flashback insinuations. Here we had Luke have a vision that completely change the type of person he has been established in 3 movies?

It seemed like it was just a twist for a sake of a twist to keep up with the likes of Vader being Luke's father, Leia being Luke's sister or Kylo being Han/Leia's son. Having Kylo Ren turn evil because of Luke was suppose to be a talking point gasp moment but instead just turned flat.

But really, that was a rather minor problem with the whole story. Like why didn't they just tell Poe their plan? It's not like a secret you keep from your higher ups.

The Batman comparison is a good one but you have it backwards. Not killing is been a core part of the Batman character with a ton of canonical stories backing that up over the years.

When it comes to Luke, not only is the part of his character less defined than killing is for Batman, but we also have only 3 movies as canon. What integral and key tenet of the "Luke" character did they betray in TLJ? Not giving up? Not having regret? Not becoming a hermit? Being a hero for all his life no matter what horrible things happen along the way?

We simply don't have enough information to say with any certainty that TLJ betrayed a key part of Luke's character. It all comes down to whether you like the direction and whether you think the justification in the movies was sufficient for why he gave up. And that's fine if you don't like that direction but let's not pretend that, based on the information the movie provided, it was a betrayal of Luke's character.

BvS wasn't supposed to be some elseworlds Batman character where he's lost his sense of self and Snyder was showing us a world where Batman kills using guns. It was betraying a key tenet of the character for many years in order to make a movie with 'splosions and marketable toys. They did absolutely nothing to establish why all of a sudden we had murderer Batman instead of the Batman we all knew.

To me the change they made to the Batman character for those awful, awful movies is more akin to if they had Luke turn on Han and Leia and join Kylo in ruling the galaxy. That would be a betrayal of the character we all knew. Simply removing himself from the fight because of the damage he did in helping create the galaxy's new dark side villain seems like a sensible character arc.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

The Batman comparison is a good one but you have it backwards. Not killing is been a core part of the Batman character with a ton of canonical stories backing that up over the years.

When it comes to Luke, not only is the part of his character less defined than killing is for Batman, but we also have only 3 movies as canon. What integral and key tenet of the "Luke" character did they betray in TLJ? Not giving up? Not having regret? Not becoming a hermit? Being a hero for all his life no matter what horrible things happen along the way?

We simply don't have enough information to say with any certainty that TLJ betrayed a key part of Luke's character. It all comes down to whether you like the direction and whether you think the justification in the movies was sufficient for why he gave up. And that's fine if you don't like that direction but let's not pretend that, based on the information the movie provided, it was a betrayal of Luke's character.

BvS wasn't supposed to be some elseworlds Batman character where he's lost his sense of self and Snyder was showing us a world where Batman kills using guns. It was betraying a key tenet of the character for many years in order to make a movie with 'splosions and marketable toys. They did absolutely nothing to establish why all of a sudden we had murderer Batman instead of the Batman we all knew.

To me the change they made to the Batman character for those awful, awful movies is more akin to if they had Luke turn on Han and Leia and join Kylo in ruling the galaxy. That would be a betrayal of the character we all knew. Simply removing himself from the fight because of the damage he did in helping create the galaxy's new dark side villain seems like a sensible character arc.

Batman has deviated from his code at many points through the years. BvS was supposed to be one of those points, following some tragedy with Robin. The creators obviously messed that up big time and delivered some cryptic and unfinished story line on that issue. BvS was supposed to feature a dark and bitter Batman who finds his roots, but it just wasn't done well.

[Oling_Roachinen]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

The Batman comparison is a good one but you have it backwards. Not killing is been a core part of the Batman character with a ton of canonical stories backing that up over the years.

Not in the DC extended film universe, whatever it's called. Nothing was canon except for Man of Steel.

The same way that none of the original canon material for Star Wars was canon except the 6 movies (maybe some other media).

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

When it comes to Luke, not only is the part of his character less defined than killing is for Batman, but we also have only 3 movies as canon. What integral and key tenet of the "Luke" character did they betray in TLJ? Not giving up? Not having regret? Not becoming a hermit? Being a hero for all his life no matter what horrible things happen along the way?

Trying to kill his nephew. Sure, it's not stated explicitly that Luke doesn't kill his family, but you know I hope that goes without saying for most fictional characters. But the whole Luke not killing Vader and giving into the darkside is pretty much the climax of 8 hours of movie. So to have it happen to him in a flashback with no real reason was certainly betraying his character.

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

BvS wasn't supposed to be some elseworlds Batman character where he's lost his sense of self and Snyder was showing us a world where Batman kills using guns. It was betraying a key tenet of the character for many years in order to make a movie with 'splosions and marketable toys. They did absolutely nothing to establish why all of a sudden we had murderer Batman instead of the Batman we all knew.

BvS spoilers:

Spoiler!

Either you know Batman, and caught the potential Jason Todd, dead Robin stuff, which over 20 years jaded Batman into the killer he became. Or you don't, and you still know he's seen some stuff. I don't want to defend it too much, obviously, but the idea that a deranged vigilante would start killing after seeing his allies die and crime go unpunished for so long makes more sense than not.

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

To me the change they made to the Batman character for those awful, awful movies is more akin to if they had Luke turn on Han and Leia and join Kylo in ruling the galaxy. That would be a betrayal of the character we all knew. Simply removing himself from the fight because of the damage he did in helping create the galaxy's new dark side villain seems like a sensible character arc.

Going on a Jedi sabbatical seems to be par for the course. Again, it's not where Luke ended up. It's how they got there.

You said it yourself. "If they had Luke turn on Han and Leia...that would be a betrayal of his character" I have a feeling that Han and Leia might have considered Luke turning on them if they killed their completely innocent child. But I'm not a parent.

Even a retcon of Luke being influenced heavily by some external force (Snoke being the obvious) in the next movie would do a lot to change this.

But why didn't they just tell Poe their plan?

[#-3]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Ask yourself though, you are building a trilogy. Is episode 2 where you want to clear the slate for the finale?

Yes.

When were they going to clear the slate to tell a new story?
Or would it be preferable that they just copied the plot points of the original trilogy exactly?

They plucked the throne room scene out of RoTJ, Kylo in Vaders image killed the Emperor analog, the he still rejected the light side. That alone tells us this will be a different part 3 from the original series. I like that allot.

[Fuzz]

Originally Posted by #-3

Yes.

When were they going to clear the slate to tell a new story?
Or would it be preferable that they just copied the plot points of the original trilogy exactly?

They plucked the throne room scene out of RoTJ, Kylo in Vaders image killed the Emperor analog, the he still rejected the light side. That alone tells us this will be a different part 3 from the original series. I like that allot.

Uh, the clean slate was episode 7. Abrams set up a bunch of stuff that, following typical story telling principles, would be expanded upon and investigated in episode 8, and reach a conclusion in episode 9. Should episode 9 throw away whatever happened in episode 8 and start clean again? It makes no sense to build a story arc and throw it away in the middle.


There is nothing wrong with having 3 directors and writers handle 3 episodes, but they need someone making sure it is coherent and follows a plan. Not having a master plan for these 3 is a huge mistake.

[#-3]

Originally Posted by Fuzz

Uh, the clean slate was episode 7. Abrams set up a bunch of stuff that, following typical story telling principles, would be expanded upon and investigated in episode 8, and reach a conclusion in episode 9. Should episode 9 throw away whatever happened in episode 8 and start clean again? It makes no sense to build a story arc and throw it away in the middle.


There is nothing wrong with having 3 directors and writers handle 3 episodes, but they need someone making sure it is coherent and follows a plan. Not having a master plan for these 3 is a huge mistake.

Just because you can't see the plan doesn't mean there isn't one, judgement on that needs to be reserved until you see part 3.

And doing a defacto remake of a new hope is hardly a clean slate.

I actually think the need to explain every little background thread hanging out their is the main problem with ep 1 -3. It's ok to leave things lingering, its ok that Snook was a big player in the Star Wars Universe with a small on screen role to play, it's fine that there isn't some graph explaining where Reys parents came from. We've seen the alternative and it's worse.

[Fuzz]

Over-explaining was absolutely a problem with E 1-3. I don't think anyone wants that level of detail.



I think it's fairly obvious there isn't a plan, but I guess I'll prepare to be proven wrong. The disconnect in tone and story between 7 and 8 doesn't really lead me to believe their is one though.

[blankall]

Originally Posted by #-3

Just because you can't see the plan doesn't mean there isn't one, judgement on that needs to be reserved until you see part 3.

And doing a defacto remake of a new hope is hardly a clean slate.

I actually think the need to explain every little background thread hanging out their is the main problem with ep 1 -3. It's ok to leave things lingering, its ok that Snook was a big player in the Star Wars Universe with a small on screen role to play, it's fine that there isn't some graph explaining where Reys parents came from. We've seen the alternative and it's worse.

So the plan all along was to introduce Phasma and Snoke and just kill them off, as some kind of fake out to the audience?

[#-3]

Originally Posted by blankall

So the plan all along was to introduce Phasma and Snoke and just kill them off, as some kind of fake out to the audience?

Why assume a movie is bad or incoherent just because it did something you didn't expect?

It's a very ungenerous interpretation of the film. Having your expectations and assumptions about the future upended in itself is not a bad thing, as I said I actually quite enjoyed the subversion of expectation.

Snoke dying was required to move Kylo from a bottom rung Star Wars villain to a top tier one. That moment after the big fight when Rey peps up and says now lets go save the day, then her face as she realizes that isn't the story shes in, and Kylo finally voicing this allusive motivation of the Sith in a way you can believe. It's really the best moment in Star Wars for me. It just blows me away that people hate the death of Snoke because its not the story they expected.

Planned or not I'm pretty excited to see what they do with Kylo as a character that looked redemption in the face and turned away from it, now we know this isn't the Darth Vader story, where in the last moment the character will find their way back to the light side through compassion for someone else.

[nik-]

I'm they killed off Phasma because that was a terrible character.

[Oling_Roachinen]

But they inexplicably brought back that terrible character. She was on the Death Star 3.0 when it blew up presumably. There was 0 reason to bring her back only to kill her again. Other than to serve as a 'strong female character' and that her toys sold well.