We saw a Star War! Last Jedi spoiler thread

[Morrus]

Seen it! Best of the new films yet, not as good as Empire. Some surprises.

Luke was bad-ass. Snoke was awesome.

A few bits were too silly/comedy for Star Wars (the bit where the top of the ATST ejects and it’s BB8, and then they do the super CGI run away on top of it stands out).

So - the First Order. It’s just a roving gang of a half dozen Star Destroyers? Now commanded by a teenager with a temper? It kinda feels like the galaxy could just ignore the handful of people fighting each other.

 

[Morrus]

Other thoughts:

- If you can take out a fleet of Star Destroyers by just flying a ship at light speed into them, why isn't that the standard tactic?
- Awesome to see Yoda!
- Jedi are definitely getting more powerful as the films go on!
- Snoke was better than expected. No explanation who he is. Did NOT expect to see him go out like that.
- Super space flying Leia looked and felt silly to me.
- Porgs are tribbles.
- I wonder how they'll write Leia out; she doesn't die in it.
- BB8 pretending to be a mouse droid was funny. He did go over the top who the slapstick too much though.
- Chewie may as well not have been in it.
- Casino planet sequences felt very prequel-ish to me.
- Luke was seriously awesome at the end. At first I thought he was already dead and was there as a force ghost.
- So the main three are all out of the series now. That feels a bit sad. 3PO and R2 got about a minute's screen time between them.
- I love Star Destroyers and I love Imperial Architecture.

I rank it above Force Awakens, below Empire and ANH, above RotJ. I think. Not sure yet!

 

[pukunui]

I've seen it twice now. Left the theater the first time feeling somewhat dissatisfied, but some things clicked into place after mulling it over for a while. More of it came together on the second viewing, which I enjoyed a whole lot more.

- Leia in space was terrible. One of the worst things I've ever seen in a Star Wars movie, and at first I couldn't figure out why Carrie would've agreed to something so cheesy, but then I remembered that it's Carrie.

- Yoda told Luke that Rey didn't need what was in the "Jedi texts", but he neglected to mention that Rey had already absconded with them. (Took me the second viewing to be sure about that.)

- Poe's arc was confusing to me the first time, but after the second viewing, it made a lot more sense. He clearly goes from being a hot-headed, mutinous pilot to a proper leader, which is why Leia defers to him at the end.

- Part of me wanted to be offended by all the obvious torch-passing stuff that was going on in this movie, but I found I didn't really mind it so much the second time.

- The porgs are so adorable!

- I still want to know Snoke's backstory. Apparently Lucasfilm has figured it out, so hopefully they'll reveal it at some point. The only bit I've been able to learn so far is that he comes from the Unknown Regions.

- I wasn't sure if maybe the thing about Rey's parents being junk dealers was another lie/misdirect from Ben, but given that the dark side didn't show her her parents either has me thinking that he was telling the truth. She's not a Skywalker (or anyone else important).

- Phasma is a complete waste of Brienne of Tarth's Gwendoline Christie's talents. That said, whadda ya wanna bet she shows up again in IX? I mean, she somehow survived the destruction of the Starkiller Base (after being dumped in a trash compactor), so surely she can survive falling into a fireball.

- Did I mention that the porgs are awesome?

- The "caretakers" were a bit on the too silly/extraneous side for me, especially since they just seem to appear out of nowhere the first time we see them.

- I *loved* the bit where Luke tricks Rey with the leaf. And the bit at the beginning where Poe makes fun of Hux.

 

[pukunui]

So - the First Order. It’s just a roving gang of a half dozen Star Destroyers? Now commanded by a teenager with a temper? It kinda feels like the galaxy could just ignore the handful of people fighting each other.

I know Ben *acts* like a teenager, but he's meant to be around 30 years old. Also, I got the impression that that fleet was just part of the First Order, not the whole thing. The opening crawl talks about how Snoke's "legions" rule the galaxy, and Poe et al refer to taking on *a* dreadnought (implying that the one they destroyed was not the only one).

As for that last bit, it seems like the rest of the galaxy *is* ignoring the conflict (at least the parts not profiting from it). Leia's "allies" refused to come to her aid, after all.

 

[ccs]

The First Order.

What a sad, incompetent, bunch of morons. All of them - troops, Phasma, officers, Kylo Ren, Snoke.
It was like watching Cobra in the old GIJoe cartoons from the 80s.

 

[trappedslider]

I don't think anything Star Wars will be able to beat ESB for some of the fans, oddly I'd like to go see it again,which hasn't happened since episode I.

 

[Morrus]

I know Ben *acts* like a teenager, but he's meant to be around 30 years old. Also, I got the impression that that fleet was just part of the First Order, not the whole thing. The opening crawl talks about how Snoke's "legions" rule the galaxy, and Poe et al refer to taking on *a* dreadnought (implying that the one they destroyed was not the only one).As for that last bit, it seems like the rest of the galaxy *is* ignoring the conflict (at least the parts not profiting from it). Leia's "allies" refused to come to her aid, after all.

I know the crawl says that, but without that you’d get no sense that the First Order was anything more than a mid-sized organised gang. They don’t show anything in the movies.

Do they hold territory? Is there a government? All you ever see is a single army. And the entire command structure appears to be Snoke -> Kylo -> Hux -> Phasma -> Stormtroopers (and they're all on those half dozen ships). Are there others? Regional governors, other armies, more ships? Are there stormtroopers on Tattooine? Is there an actual government?

Are they actually ruling the Galaxy now like the Empire was? It feels more like just Snoke and his handful of ships vs Leia and her handful of ships in a corner of the galaxy somewhere. More like a small gang war than galactic civil war. The Galaxy has, what, a million inhabited planets? And we have about a dozen ships fighting each other?

Starkiller Base, for all its plot issues, showed how the FO could threaten an entire galaxy. I can’t see how a dozen Star Destroyers could though.

I get the sense there’s more info in books and comics and stuff? Is Kylo now ruling the galaxy? Nobody’s fighting the FO now, right? I guess I just want more information about the First Order!

 

[epithet]

I left the theater feeling a general unease, an unfocused anger that took me a while to understand. Now that I've slept on it, I think I have a handle on the source of my ire.

The new movies have deconstructed and destroyed the heroes of the original trilogy.

The OT heroes were Luke, Leia and Han. Luke was defined by being a jedi, and his purpose was to "pass on what [he had] learned." He failed, then gave up, then cut himself off from the force and went into hiding. Leia was defined by her belief in the Republic and her struggle to restore it. Despite the Republic prevailing over the remains of the Empire, Leia was forced out of the Republic Senate and driven into a sort of exile while the Republic disregarded the threat of the New Order to its peril. In The Force Awakens, the Republic is effectively destroyed when the Senate and the Republic fleet are blown up, and in The Last Jedi her failure becomes complete as the resistance is decimated and her allies abandon her. Han Solo was not an idealistic crusader, what mattered to him were the people in his life. Han didn't care much about the Jedi, but he cared about Luke. He didn't burn with Republic patriotism, but he loved Leia. What do they do to Han? His marriage is ruined, his only child estranged, and even his fellow scumbags seem to have all turned against him. Only Chewy and Maz seem to want to have anything to do with him, and when he tries to reach out and mend his relationships his failure becomes tragically complete, as he is contemptuously cut down by his own son.

The message is clear: the "heroes" of the Rebel Alliance are abject and complete failures, and it is up to Mary Sue and the fresh-faced millennials to clean up the mess they've made of things.

I grew up with Star Wars. I saw the original Star Wars (later "A New Hope") in 1977, at the age of 7. Han, Luke, and Leia were the heroes of my childhood, and for 30 years after The Return of the Jedi I was confident that in that galaxy far, far away, the heroes of the Rebel Alliance had restored the Republic and fulfilled their epic destinies. Now, along comes JJ Abrams and Rian Johnson and Kathleen Kennedy, and they decide that the heroes of my childhood should be rewritten as failures. Their failures don't just present challenges for Mary Sue and the millennials, they practically invalidate their triumph over the Empire. A new villain indistinguishable from a Sith Lord has created an even bigger Death Star and crushed the Republic, dominating the galaxy with his New Order which is indistinguishable from the Palpatine's Empire. It's not that new challenges have arisen, and the heroes need to rely on a new generation to face the threat together. No, its that the exact same threat has returned to invalidate whatever victories you thought the heroes had achieved, and a new generation needs to learn from the failure of the last one.

I'm also not at all enamoured by the JJ Abrams signature clumsy misdirection thing. Either Snoke is not permanently dead (perhaps because of some Plagueis thing) and we'll get some idea of who he is, where he came from, and how he brought about the resurgence of the Imperial Remnant as the New Order, or this new trilogy has made a super-powerful dark side master a generic villain. Either Rey's parents are much more than just baby-selling junk scavengers, or there is no legacy of the Skywalker lineage. In other words, either we got a load of clumsy misdirection (and outright trolling) or the whole story of the trilogy sucks.

Now, I know Rey is, on some level, supposed to be a Skywalker. Force users can come from anywhere, but the two most powerful force users we've ever seen are probably representative of the two sides of the Skywalker legacy. Also, The Force Awakens was pretty blatant about it when Kylo goes poking around in Rey's mind: he sees her driven by longing for a reunion with her family, and comments on the related dreams of the ocean, and the island. Unless Rey is related to the keepers or the porgs, she's got to be kin to Luke. Similarly, introducing Snoke as a character who has apparently survived multiple mortal wounds (including having his head cracked open at some point) makes it seem less unlikely that simply cutting him in half will keep him dead for very long. That's what I mean by clumsy misdirection--neither Snoke's abrupt bisection nor Rey's "you're not important to anyone but me" ancestry revelation are persuasive (to me,) but I also can't really claim to have much confidence, at this point, that this plot will be redeemed in the Episode 9 instead of just going all in on the "wipe out the past and start fresh" thing.

As it stands now, Han died for nothing, Luke is an emo ghost that died without having actually trained anyone, and Leia is the leader of a support group for survivors. And that's not cool.

 

[Joker]

From what I understand, they're going for a Saturday morning cartoon feel. Disney is making a streaming service and pushing for a shorter window between theatrical release and streaming availability. As short as two weeks. Coupled with the serial nature of the franchise, I wouldn't expect anything drastic to happen to any characters, either to them or their development. Like the MCU movies, by and large, there aren't going to be any real stakes in this property.

 

[Legatus Legionis]

.

 

[Morrus]

Is anyone surprised how the SJW wants to destroy anything good from the past, including fictional heroes.

Please tell me that "SJW" doesn't stand for "Social Justice Warrior" in this sentence.

 

[reelo]

Please tell me that "SJW" doesn't stand for "Social Justice Warrior" in this sentence.

It probably does.

Let me just add that I thoroughly enjoyed the film. My generation (I was born in 1980) had their trilogy. Two, even. It's time for our children to have theirs. My 7yo loves Kylo Ren, Poe, Finn and Rey. With Han dead, Luke a ghost, and Leia certainly absent from the next installment, the slate is clean for new adventures.
I've love Star Wars with all my heart since I was 10 or so, but I'm not angry nor salty about TLJ.

"Let the past die. Kill it, if you have to."

Sent from my Nexus 6P using EN World mobile app

 

[pukunui]

I get the sense there’s more info in books and comics and stuff? Is Kylo now ruling the galaxy? Nobody’s fighting the FO now, right? I guess I just want more information about the First Order!

Yeah. From what I've been able to glean, Snoke didn't have a permanent base. He just roamed around on that giant stealth bomber. He's an alien from the Unknown Regions that took over the remnants of the Empire that fled there after the Battle of Jakku. There are suggestions that Starkiller Base was Ilum, but Lucasfilm has provided no proof yet. I am hoping that they will reveal Snoke's backstory at some stage, whether it be in a novel or some other book or whatever.

I would also like to know what happened to the Knights of Ren. Snoke refers to them in The Force Awakens, but they don't appear in The Last Jedi. It is unclear if Ben founded the knights or if he just joined their ranks and rose to be their leader.

The new movies have deconstructed and destroyed the heroes of the original trilogy.

Yes. As much as I enjoy the new films for what they are, this aspect of the stories bothers me as well. The state of the galaxy in the new trilogy renders everything everyone did in the original trilogy (and in Rogue One) more or less pointless. It's almost as bad as the Legacy Era from the EU.

Either Rey's parents are much more than just baby-selling junk scavengers, or there is no legacy of the Skywalker lineage.

Ben Solo is the Skywalkers' legacy, and it seems to me that if he was lying to Rey about her parents, then so was the dark side itself, because when she asked to see her parents in the cave, it just showed her herself.

I think I would have preferred the new trilogy to stand more on its own merits. All the torch-passing that goes on, especially in the Last Jedi, just leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth.


EDIT: Also, when Luke tells Rey that he hid in a remote corner of the galaxy so he could die, it blows a gaping hole in the plot of TFA: if Luke didn't want to be found, why the hell is there a map leading to his location?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Is anyone surprised how the SJW wants to destroy anything good from the past, including fictional heroes.

They want the heroes to give in to evil, give in to their selfish side, and not care about others. To give up the fight. Let evil win.

This is the message I got from these last two star wars episode movies.

So I would not be surprised at all if episode IX has the evil empire/first order (new world order) take out the resistance once and for all and have whatever secret weapons Emperor Palatine had with the unknown region do the same with the republic.


Tis a shame, as I expected more from Disney.

Amazing. Every single thing you just said was wrong.

 

[Morrus]

Yeah. From what I've been able to glean, Snoke didn't have a permanent base. He just roamed around on that giant stealth bomber. He's an alien from the Unknown Regions that took over the remnants of the Empire that fled there after the Battle of Jakku. There are suggestions that Starkiller Base was Ilum, but Lucasfilm has provided no proof yet. I am hoping that they will reveal Snoke's backstory at some stage, whether it be in a novel or some other book or whatever.

So he was a local warlord. The stakes are just... so much lower. The First Order isn't anything like the threat of the Empire - it's more like it's a well-trained biker gang. And they're fighting the A-Team. And the world at large doesn't really notice, except that one atrocity they managed to commit.

EDIT: Also, when Luke tells Rey that he hid in a remote corner of the galaxy so he could die, it blows a gaping hole in the plot of TFA: if Luke didn't want to be found, why the hell is there a map leading to his location?

That map was ridiculous even then. All you need is the coordinates. You either know them or you don't; it's a binary thing. A map doesn't help.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Other thoughts:

- If you can take out a fleet of Star Destroyers by just flying a ship at light speed into them, why isn't that the standard tactic?

Because it sacrifices a ship, which are so expensive and take so long to build that the Resistence is still relying mostly on the ships from the Rebellion, and it requires at least one person to die in the process.

It also may just be difficult to pull off, without instead to just jumping past the other ships.

- Awesome to see Yoda!

I was worried i wouldn't like it, when I saw his head, but it was great.

- Jedi are definitely getting more powerful as the films go on!

Not sure I agree. I don't think any of them did anything that was more powerful than what we saw in the prequels. Maybe in TFA with making the blaster bolt freeze in the air? Nothing Snoke did was more than just a strong mastery of "making things float".

- Snoke was better than expected. No explanation who he is. Did NOT expect to see him go out like that.

He was one of my favorite parts. He straight up dunked on himself with Kylo Ren, in the most "arrogant Dark Sider" way possible.

- Super space flying Leia looked and felt silly to me.

I mean, she's just pulling objects in space toward her with the force. It was cool to see her use the force, since we've known since the OT that she "has it", and it was a really simple usage. Her not dying in space fits with things we saw Jedi do in the Clone Wars, but also the whole things fits within the confines of basic physics+using theforce to move objects. If she'd flown in spite of gravity, that would have been lame.

- Casino planet sequences felt very prequel-ish to me.

Same, though I suspect that you're not as happy about that as I was. It's all one universe, there definitely should be things that remind a viewer of the world painted by the prequels. [/quote]
- Luke was seriously awesome at the end. At first I thought he was already dead and was there as a force ghost.
- So the main three are all out of the series now. That feels a bit sad. 3PO and R2 got about a minute's screen time between them.
- I love Star Destroyers and I love Imperial Architecture.

I rank it above Force Awakens, below Empire and ANH, above RotJ. I think. Not sure yet![/QUOTE]

I'll never understand why people rank Empire above Jedi, but otherwise I agree.

I'll add, that the three new main characters, and Rose, were all excellent, IMO. Even Kylo Ren was exactly what I hoped he'd be.

I loved how badly Snoke got himself killed. And the unanswered questions were great. Who is he, what is he, how is he even alive, why is he so obsessed with the Skywalkers? I kinda hope that some of those never get answered. I don't like my movies to wrap everything up in a satisfying package.

And the fact that Ren turned against Snoke, but not from the Dark Side, was great.

My only real complaint was the apparent nods to the idea of the Light and Dark both being required for balance, rather than balance being a matter of the Dark Side being defeated. If they double down on that in the next one, it's gonna seriously hamper my enthusiasm for the franchise.

 

[Morrus]

Because it sacrifices a ship, which are so expensive and take so long to build that the Resistence is still relying mostly on the ships from the Rebellion, and it requires at least one person to die in the process.

One ship on autopilot vs. a fleet of star destroyers. Not doing that all the time is simple incompetence.

I mean, star destroyers are historically easy to kill, but even so.

I mean, she's just pulling objects in space toward her with the force. It was cool to see her use the force, since we've known since the OT that she "has it", and it was a really simple usage. Her not dying in space fits with things we saw Jedi do in the Clone Wars, but also the whole things fits within the confines of basic physics+using theforce to move objects. If she'd flown in spite of gravity, that would have been lame.

And yet it still looked stupid.

I'll add, that the three new main characters, and Rose, were all excellent, IMO. Even Kylo Ren was exactly what I hoped he'd be.

Absolutely. Rey, Finn, Poe, Snoke, Kylo, Rey. All excellent.

I loved how badly Snoke got himself killed. And the unanswered questions were great. Who is he, what is he, how is he even alive, why is he so obsessed with the Skywalkers? I kinda hope that some of those never get answered. I don't like my movies to wrap everything up in a satisfying package.

I'm also happy with not everything being answered. I prefer the Clone Wars before they showed them to me.

My only real complaint was the apparent nods to the idea of the Light and Dark both being required for balance, rather than balance being a matter of the Dark Side being defeated. If they double down on that in the next one, it's gonna seriously hamper my enthusiasm for the franchise.

It's all just mumbo-jumbo. When it comes down to it, people do good things or bad things. Balance isn't a thing.

 

[Mercurius]

I haven't seen the film yet but from everything I've read, it just re-affirms my feeling that the new trilogy is nothing more or less than decent quality fan faction. TFA was a fun movie, but it lacked the originality and heart of the original trilogy, and even the scifi creativity of the sequel trilogy. It was like one of those reunion sitcoms where they get the gang back together again, but it doesn't feel the same. Or like watching 72-year old Mick Jagger sing "I Can't Get No Satisfaction," when we all realize the problem is that he's had far too much satisfaction.

Sort of like Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

One ship on autopilot vs. a fleet of star destroyers. Not doing that all the time is simple incompetence.

I mean, star destroyers are historically easy to kill, but even so.

Do we know that it can be done on autopilot? Star Wars doesn't even seem to necessarily have autopilot, and if it does, it's not good enough to obviate the need of a real pilot. Hell, the world doesn't make any sense when we start thinking about AI, because why do they even need pilots?

But when you have limited ships, you cannot use that tactic as a normal course of action. And again, it didn't look like she was just punching a couple buttons that then waiting for the end. She looked pretty busy, and everyone seemed surprised, including her allies. The implication seemed, to me, to be that what she was doing took both skill and timing, and knowledge of astrogation.

And yet it still looked stupid.

I couldn't possibly disagree more. It was fantastic, and perfect, IMO. I would have been fine with that being her end, though, floating in space, bathed in moonlight. ONly thing missing from Carry Fishers' wishes for her own death would be that she wasn't being strangled by her own bra. (seriously, she was the best human)

Absolutely. Rey, Finn, Poe, Snoke, Kylo, Rey. All excellent.

And really, hasn't Star Wars always been about characters? The world never made sense, the plot was always kinda predictable and lame, but the characters have been awesome.

I'm also happy with not everything being answered. I prefer the Clone Wars before they showed them to me.

I will give the show credit for doing a better job of humanizing Anakin and showing his progression than the prequel movies did, to be fair.

It's all just mumbo-jumbo. When it comes down to it, people do good things or bad things. Balance isn't a thing.

Try telling that to annoying fans who insist that "grey jedi" are canon.

 

[epithet]

...Ben Solo is the Skywalkers' legacy, and it seems to me that if he was lying to Rey about her parents, then so was the dark side itself, because when she asked to see her parents in the cave, it just showed her herself.

I think I would have preferred the new trilogy to stand more on its own merits. All the torch-passing that goes on, especially in the Last Jedi, just leaves me with a sour taste in my mouth.


EDIT: Also, when Luke tells Rey that he hid in a remote corner of the galaxy so he could die, it blows a gaping hole in the plot of TFA: if Luke didn't want to be found, why the hell is there a map leading to his location?

Ben Solo is a dead end. He killed Han, there's just no coming back from that. I think the big take-away from the Rey-Kylo dynamic is that Kylo is as unredeemable as Rey is incorruptible. They seem clearly to me to represent opposite sides of the Skywalker coin, but only Rey can really have a future. As soon as Kylo killed Han Solo, it seemed to me that the only way this could all end was for Kylo to be the one to kill Snoke, knowing that it would be his end as well, because Kylo refused to allow Snoke to destroy Rey (who he would have already realized is his cousin) and thereby truly honor his grandfather's legacy which he spent so much of TFA misunderstanding.

The Force Awakens set out the paths of Kylo, Rey, and Finn. Finn rejected the New Order, and his destiny is to bring about its downfall. Rey has spent her entire life seeking her family, and her destiny is to find it and to embody the Skywalker legacy. Kylo has always sought to be as strong as Darth Vader, and we all know that the ultimate expression of Vader's strength was when he sacrificed everything to defeat the master of the dark side (Palpatine) and protect the scion of the Skywalker legacy. That's Kylo's destiny.

I am baffled by people who think that it is somehow a good thing for Rey to come from worthless parents. She's not just strong with the Force, she's operating at Luke levels. She's The Chosen One. Star Wars is an epic tale of Force and Destiny, where things unfold according to prophecy and the will of the Force guides the hand of fate. Rey's destiny is to become the next Skywalker, one way or another. If she isn't a Skywalker in name, then that only means that Lucasfilm has gone out of its way to crap on George Lucas and wreck everything he made, because the role of the Skywalker scion/Chosen One is quite obviously what Rey is filling.

With regard to the map, though, I have to defend at least the possibility of a coherent story element. Luke was searching the galaxy in his X Wing, which we saw in the water of Ah Choo. He has to have been using the Force to navigate, however, because he didn't have R2 with him. An X Wing needs an astromech because it lacks a navicomputer, but a Jedi can use the Force to navigate hyperspace. That means that there wouldn't necessarily be a known X,Y,Z coordinate of Ah Choo, but instead a series of seat-of-the-pants jumps that would originate in a known or recognizable star system and end up at Luke's final destination. Now, with that said, the only way that works is if somehow that list of directions and distance could find its way from Ah Choo to Lor San Tekka. Maybe Leia had arranged for Luke's X Wing to transmit that information after every jump, but those transmissions never made it all the way to her. Given a chance to hammer out the details, I could totally make that work, and I desperately cling to the hope that Lawrence Kasdan is better at this than I am.