We saw a Star War! Last Jedi spoiler thread

[Ryujin]

Right. Because once you've earned your Jedi stripes, you don't have to worry about having moments of weakness ever again. You're set for life.

This was handled very well in the old West End Games Star Wars RPG. You always had the option of doing something evil or ambiguous in that game. They even made it easy to do so using The Force. If you did, however, you earned "Dark Side Points." Too many of those and you lost the character to the GM. I generally played Jedi in that game and was always careful not to kill indiscriminately. In fact due to the nature of how a Lightsaber worked in that game, the majority of one of my characters kills came from purely defending himself.

 

[Jester David]

Late to the conversation.
Read the thread after posting bout Doctor Who. And caught this post. Rattled in my head for a bit and I can't resist replying...

Reveal Rey's link to the force and to Luke's lightsaber. Have a point to her entering the dark hole, leading to either a wise lesson about the Force, or some dark revelation about herself.

That was just more Abrams mysteriousness for the sake of mysteriousness. Like 90% of Lost the mystery is far more interesting than the answer. If you go with the reasonable answer, this falls flat as it doesn't live up to the hype. Or you build things up to make the answer feel appropriately dramatic, and artificially construct a convoluted answer that just adds complexity for the sake of complexity. And also has the possibility of more plot holes.

I.e. why did the lightsaber call to her?
It was the Living Force moving her in the direction she needed to go. Or because she was there when it was destroyed, which connected her to it beyond time. Or it just called to the first person with enough Force power, and that happened to be her. All of which are solid and valid reasons that would work just fine, but aren't satisfying enough for a mystery that has been on the minds of some fans for two years.
Really, it called to her because she needed to find it, and they never thought of a better way to work it into the plot.

Remove the entire fake out with Holdo. Let the rebels be up front about their plan to escape to the planet Crait,

Poe wasn't up front with his boss. So why did his boss need to be up front with him?
Really, why would a general and leader of the entire Resistance need to justify herself to a punk pilot without a plane who had already been demoted. Poe comes up to someone he knows is an experienced general with more battles under her belt than him and mansplains the situation to her. Really, Poe's lucky she didn't dump him in the detention block for the rest of the trip...

so that Poe and Finn don't not mount some unnecessary suicide plan that ultimately doesn't go anywhere. Let the First Order be aware that they are fleeing to Crait, and be confident that they can crush them on that planet. There's really no way for them to escape from it, so the place is a death trap.

The HUGE problem with that change is it means the First Order is aware they're fleeing to Crait. This means that Holdo's plan is inherently flawed and suicide. (Why is it okay her plan won't work but Finn & Poe's plan failing has to be removed from the movie?) Instead of one sideplot, it makes the entire movie pointless.

See, I love the Poe/ Finn plan failing. How many times have we seen a million-to-one suicide mission succeed in Star Wars? They're going on their mission and you just expect it will succeed. You don't even question. Even if they get captured it will just be a set-back before they save the Resistance fleet. And the codebreaker with them who seems out for the money will of course have a heart of gold and come back for them when things seem dire.
The Last Jedi was all about flipping tropes. It was a movie about subverting expectations and pulling the rug out from people just when they're comfortable.
Finn and Poe's plan doesn't just fail... it makes things worse. The slicer doesn't have a heart of gold: he's exactly what he appears to be. So he sells out the Resistance. Finn and Poe's plan gets people killed. It almost destroys the entire Resistance. That's the point.

Well... that and it gets Rose and Finn onto the planet to introduce the kids we'll see later. So it's not just nameless kids we don't care about talking about how Luke Skywalker appeared in front of a legion of Stormtroopers and AT-ATs and avoided blaster fire. How he saved the Resistance single-handedly before teleporting away. We see how

Holdo still crashes her ship into the First Order, but she does it as soon as possible, so the rest can escape to the planet. This way she doesn't look incompetent.

That was an editing thing. Movie time doesn't pass the same as real time. It feels longer because there's shots between her deciding and acting. Things are going on simultaneously, but seem sequential because that's how they're shown.
If you just watch her scenes and the related shots, it doesn't feel as long.
Plus, y'know. Drama and suspense.

Leia should have died in outer space. I have no issue with her using her Force powers to float to safety. But with the recent death of Carrie Fisher, they had an easy out here. Why didn't they take it? Why have the character whose actress died, survive, and the character whose actor is still alive and well, die?

I don't see why Hamill being alive should have any bearing on the survival of Luke anymore than Ford being alive has a bearing on Solo remaining dead.

Why did Leia not stay dead? So she could have the reunion scene with Luke. So her final performance and scenes wouldn't be forgotten. (That and they'd have to digitally remove her from the background shots of the last chunk of the movie...) This was Carrie's final performance. We should be able to see it.

Yes, it's sad we don't get the "ending" for Leia. Oh well. I'm sure there'll be a comic or novel. Maybe they can work her into IX with some deleted scenes.

Instead of having Finn and Rose go to the Casino planet to find some hacker, and then also try and board the Dreadnought unnoticed, have them travel to the Casino planet to activate a distress beacon. It would be easy to set it up in such a way that the First Order is blocking rebel communication, so they can't call for help. Finn and Rose need to get down to the planet to remotely activate a distress beacon that will hopefully get reinforcements to Crait in time. Why over complicate things? The First Order however has a heavy presence on the Casino planet, thus adding extra tension to Finn's adventures on the planet. Throw in a battle with some AT ST walkers while you're at it, and you have everything for an exciting finale.

So... the First Order is blocking communications. Why are Finn and Rose going to a planet to call for help rather than just open space. And activating a distress beacon that tells everyone where you are when the point is to hide. And they're going to a planet with a heavy First Order presence rather than a Resistance allied one... why?
How is that remotely less complicated?

Rey and Kylo still team up against snoke, but snoke regenerates instantly. Thus his menace is not diminished (plus you can still have him show up in the third movie), and his guards actually have a reason to fight Rey and Kylo.

Why? Just so we can have the menacing Emperor figure in the series again?
Snoke was never really interesting. Neither was Sidious really. Both were just bland evil for the sake of evil. Snoke was only fascinating because he was mysterious. He was an unknown. But reveal who he was and then that mystique goes away. We have two trilogies based around the master puppeteer evil Force user who sits in a chair and schemes. This one is going in a different direction. This means Snoke isn't the focus: he's the MacGuffin. The hand the magician is waving to distract you from the sleight of hand.

Rather than Kylo immediately turning back to the dark side again, have them both become renegade Jedi.

Kylo Ren never turned away in the first place. He just killed his master like all Dark Side users tend to do.

Snoke then sends in the Knights of Ren to kill them, which leaves both Rey and Kylo critically injured, until they are rescued by Luke with his astral projection thingy. Luke then fights the Knights of Ren, giving Rey and Kylo a chance to escape. Although Luke tells Rey to leave Kylo behind, she refuses, and the two escape together on the Falcon, before Luke's clever trick is revealed. Luke then does NOT die after the astral projection, so he can still show up in the next movie.

Luke doesn't get to save Rey. Luke isn't the hero of the film or this trilogy. Rey is. She saves herself. And then she saves Luke, by pushing him back into the fight, allowing him to redeem himself and find peace.
(And Luke can still show up in the next movie as a force ghost. )

Just like how Obi Wan, the hero of the first trilogy, is quickly killed in Episode IV to make room for the new hero. Like how Yoda can fight in the prequels but is just the adviser in the original trilogy who passes on the Legacy before dying.

A new trilogy was always going to wreck the original cast. It had to because, to tell the story, they had to have lost after Return of the Jedi. If they won and everything worked out, there'd be no more stories to tell. So the Empire had to continue and the heroes' victory had to be diminished. The only alternative is a new threat that is unrelated to the old, which feels tacked-on and risks not feeling thematically appropriate, like what they EU did with the Yuuzhan Vong.
(This is probably why Lucas' planned episode VII to IX were smaller and more personal. So the happy ending could be maintained.)
While I would have enjoyed the fanservice of having Luke be the all powerful Jedi Master and striding into battle, the EU showed how boring that is. The perfect Luke that survives and can kick anyone's ass isn't interesting. They're a static character that is hard to write stories for. (Just like how the writers of the Clone Wars series commented on how they struggled to write Yoda-centric stories.) And the above isn't true to Luke's character who spends all his time screwing up and making the wrong decisions. Luke was always the bad pupil who never did what he was told. Why would he be a better teacher? Similarly, the later EU novels really suffered by having Han, Leia, and Luke be irreplaceable and unkillable, and just ended up repeatedly doing horrible things to the second generation as a result. If Disney hadn't wiped out the EU when it did, the novels were approaching an awkward position of having all the new characters dead or evil while having all the original characters too old to reasonably contribute.
The story needs to move forward.

The Knights of Ren will hunt Rey and Kylo in the next movie, and we can now probably squeeze a cool lightsaber fight with Luke and Rey versus the Knights of Ren into movie 3.

And instead we get Rey alone against Ren and his knights.

But, really, "squeezing a cool lightsaber fight" into a film isn't a good reason to alter a plot. Cool lightsaber fights are a dime a dozen. There's sooooo many on YouTube. They've been done. The fight against the Praetorian Guard with their funky weapons added a new spin to the fight that a generic lightsaber battle with the Knights of Ren would lack.

The rebels escape to Crait, where an actual battle with the First Order takes place. Because why have these awesome looking AT-AT's in your movie if you're not going to use them?

Empire Strikes Back established that AT-ATs were basically mobile siege weapons/ troop carriers that weren't good at shooting down small Rebel fighters. Really, in terms of plot, they're there to blast Luke. And sell Lego...

The rebels try and hold back the invasion with their inferior vehicles, but they are getting crushed. That is until Finn manages to call in reinforcements just in time,

Yay! Deus ex machina to the rescue!
Plus, the whole damn point is that the Resistance is on their own. They need to save themselves. There's no help coming. No reinforcements. No Republic. If they want help... they need to inspire the next generation. They have to do more than blow up First Order Stormtroopers.

only to get captured himself together with Rose (which leaves Finn and Rose captured at the start of the next movie).

Why?
So we can keep Finn and Rey apart even more? So they can continue to have this weird relationship despite having known each other for an afternoon and not having a single conversation about themselves...

Neither Finn or Rose take part in the battle on Crait, and Rose does not crash her ship into that of Finn. That was dumb.

Wasn't a fan of that... But it was an important lesson for Finn. He hates the First Order, and this was his opportunity to be a more rounded individual. To be more than someone who hates.
Plus, again, the hero sacrificing themselves to crash into the vulnerable superweapon is a pretty known trope. And The Last Jedi is all about reversing expectations... That's the The Last Jedi drinking game: drink every time a trope is subverted or lamp shaded.

thanks to a hidden weapon on the planet that the First Order does not know about (maybe they have one of those hammerhead ships from Rogue One?).

Yay! More deus ex machina!
And a good thing the Rebels never used that giant planetary superweapon in any of the fights they really needed it during the original trilogy...

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

From what I got in the movie was that between ESB and RotJ, Luke basically got 95% of the way to being a Jedi. He learned to be at peace, to plan instead of being reckless, and he realized that winning meant converting his father, not killing him. So most of his growth was completed. He went on the mission knowing he would be captured and that he would be brought before Vader. He wanted to in order to convince him to come back to the Light Side.

This was a complete turn around from his failure in the cave where he saw Vader and pulled out his lightsaber immediately to kill him. We see Luke in that movie not acting out of hatred or fear. He literally walks into the place he fears the most in order to save someone, not kill them.

As I said in the previous post, he lets his anger take over briefly...but it passes. He has won and become a Jedi. He is strong enough to not have moments of weakness in the future now. He got the last 5% of the way to becoming a full Jedi.


There's no Republic anymore. The Senate and all their ships were destroyed. There are individual planets left who used to belong to the Republic, but it's gone. They make that clear in TLJ. The First Order will take over the entire galaxy in a matter of weeks according to the movie, since there's no one left to resist them.

The Jedi Order doesn't really exist. The Jedi Order implies rules, a power structure...and more than one Jedi. There's one person out there who can use the Force who has a bunch of books on the Jedi philosophy. The Jedi Order is destroyed. But she isn't even a Jedi yet.

As for problems. Lots of problems can show up even with the Republic intact. There are like 100 books each with problems in them while the New Republic exists. You could have an attack from another Galaxy, yep. You could have part of the Republic breaking away and doing a civil war...though that's likely too much like the prequels. You could have some hidden dark side users becoming essentially terrorists and they have to stop them. You could have the First Order show up, but rather than have the ability to destroy the entire Republic in one shot, you could have had a huge war between large fleets.

You could have Kylo run off with his Knights of Ren and have a cool battle between them and all of the Jedi Luke trained. There's lots of stories that can be told.


They don't HAVE to face inner conflict. Writing theory tells us that there are 3 types of conflict: Man against Man, Man against Nature, and Man against Himself. You can have a compelling story where all of the growth comes from the conflict between someone and their enemies. A large number of movies do it all the time where the main character doesn't really "grow", they just survive and win against whatever is against them.

These characters already finished their three part journey in order to find their flaws, stumble because of them and then finally overcome them. You are suggesting that they need to give them back the same flaws they learned to overcome just so that they can overcome them a second time. We've seen that already. Let's do something else.


Han's crisis was that he didn't care about anyone other than himself. He treated everyone like pawns, he only cared about money. He learns to care about the galaxy, about the Rebellion and about Leia. He learns people and connections are important. That's his story arc. That's how he grew in the 3 movies.

So, the new movie picks up with Han having given up on his family. His son betrayed everyone and ran off and he left, breaking their family even more. He no longer helps with the cause and has gone back to just making money for himself. Literally everything he learned in the old movies was brought back to the starting point. His character growth was reversed...just so we could see him do it again.

Leia fought to destroy the Empire so she could establish a new Republic. Her growth was mostly external but her defeat of the Empire IS one of her moments of growth. The other ones were learning to care about Han and her brother and learning that working together was the best idea. So where are we left? The Republic she worked to create is destroyed and she no longer has Luke or Han. Her moments of triumph are still fighting for the Republic, looking for Han, trying to reunite her family and seeing Luke again. Those are only triumphs because they ripped them away so they could reestablish them again.

Luke is the same way, he goes from being impulsive, reckless, quick to anger, and naive to calm, collected, thoughtful and mature Jedi. Where are we in TLJ? He's gone back to being whiny, quick to anger and is quick to decide to kill Ben and quick to decide to run off and die by himself. He doesn't even consider himself a Jedi any longer. 30 years later he's forgotten everything he learned and has gone back to being the Luke with all the flaws we saw in the first movie.



Luke was flawed before...but he showed up on Cloud city when his friends needed him. He was flawed before but showed up to confront the Emperor in RotJ. He's done that. Watching him do it again is pointless. Han learned to show up when he returned to help them at the end of ANH and joined the Rebellion full time instead of running away, which is what he was doing before and during ANH. He shouldn't have to prove that he can show up. He already did that. Leia was always fighting. True. She WON, however. That's was the culmination of her storyline. Now she had to lose so she could fight all over again. But we've done that already.

The characters were flawed and they grew past those flaws. That was kind of the point of the first 3 Star Wars movies.

You are on fire!!!! Amazing analysis.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Of course he grew, no one's claiming otherwise, but he didn't become a wise Jedi on-screen in any of them. He was still a hot-headed risk taker in RotJ, as evidenced by the continual set of risks he ran from Jabba's Palace through Endor to the confrontation with Vader and the Emperor. None of that was what a calm, collected, and centered Jedi Master would choose to do.

The argument you're making here doesn't deflect from the fact that Luke of teh OT isn't how you (and others) keep trying to portray him: as someone who would never have a moment of weakness.

My problem isn't that he has moments of weakness. My problem is that his moment of weakness is pretty much the opposite of his moments of growth. He faced Darth Vader and turned him to the Light Side. Darth Vader wasn't just some hypothetical bad guy. He was a bad guy. He had killed the entire Jedi Order (many of the Jedi personally), and was indirectly responsible for the death of billions. That is the kind of guy he faced, the kind of guy he turned.

But his nephew, who he only sees a great potential for a future on the Dark Side, he contemplates to kill for a moment. I already have a rpoblem with that, but let's give him that. But once he gets to his better self, but has to face Kylo and he loses his trainees, he gives up on the Jedi idea completely? He completley gives up helping his friends and everything he has worked for? That he rushes to help others against the better judgement of his masters, yes, I could see that might still be in him. But it being turned around into running off, leaving his sister and his best friend and their son hanging?

If he had to deal with a long line of pupils that turned to the dark side that he all had to fight and kill (or at least imprison), maybe I could see him turning bitter and finally giving him up when even his nephew turns.

Torn down?

How so? The Jedi Order is still going on, the New Republic still exists, if badly hurt, and there's still a chance that the son of Han and Leia will turn back to the light (I'm not sure what I hope about this, honestly). Did you really want a trilogy where everything was as awesome as you imagined it, with Han and Leia being happily-ever-aftering and Luke being a kick-ass Jedi Master at the head of a new Jedi Order? What, praytell, do you think would the conflict be? With all of the superheroes around, what could possibly function as a suitable crisis? Invasion from outside the galaxy (obviously EU sarcasm is obvious)?

To tell a hero's story, the hero has to fail at some point. They have to face that failure and overcome. We can't have the cast of the OT be perfect from the get go, they needed to be in crisis to tell a compelling story. Anything else leaves them as utterly fake. So, Han's crisis is his son. He rises to the occasion by reaching out to Ben, and dies for it (and I'm pretty sure he knew that was a likely outcome, so double points). Leia's crisis is the Republic. It has to be in jeopardy for her to have something to fight for. She rises to the occasion and doesn't back down. Luke's crisis is himself, as it's always been. And he rises to that occasion and shows that he's truly earned the title Jedi Master only at the end of TLJ, where he accepts himself finally.

So, no, the OT isn't burned down, because what was built in the OT wasn't those institutions, but rather characters -- characters who were and are flawed, and yet still show up for the job. I love Luke far more now than I ever did, because he was flawed but still showed up. Han, too. His death coming from walking towards pain and danger instead of running away was awesome -- a really summation of the movement he started in E4. And Leia, Leia is the least changing of all of them. She always fought, and she's still fighting, and I am deeply saddened that we'll never see the culmination of her arc the way it should have been. I have a feeling it was moving towards her giving the fight to others to carry, to finally resting. Also, I really, really hate that Google thinks Leia is misspelled. Everything the OT built is here, and these characters cannot breathe the honest and painful way they do without it. Don't think that the OT is some institution of victory or happily-ever-after because it's not. It's about characters and their journey, not their destination. This new trilogy is closing the journeys of those characters, and providing endings they earned along the way.

3 Options I would have preferred probably:

1) The characters are recast. (Give the old actors camoes in other roles). The story continues and we are now about rebuilding the Republic in some way, and new threats on the horizon.

2) We're so much later that the original characters are really gone. A new threat is emerging, but there really was a restored Republic that worked succesfully for a long time and our heroes got to enjoy "basking in their success".

3) The heroes are as old as now, a new threat emerges, and the heroes give the heft of saving the galaxy to a new generation of heroes.

Or maybe
4) Reimagination of Star Wars.

But having all the hero efforts to be wasted and undone, and seeing them all in sad to bitter positions with little hope for them to see success in their lifetime again... No, that doesn't really feel like a choice I would make.

 

[Ovinomancer]

My problem isn't that he has moments of weakness. My problem is that his moment of weakness is pretty much the opposite of his moments of growth. He faced Darth Vader and turned him to the Light Side. Darth Vader wasn't just some hypothetical bad guy. He was a bad guy. He had killed the entire Jedi Order (many of the Jedi personally), and was indirectly responsible for the death of billions. That is the kind of guy he faced, the kind of guy he turned.

But his nephew, who he only sees a great potential for a future on the Dark Side, he contemplates to kill for a moment. I already have a rpoblem with that, but let's give him that. But once he gets to his better self, but has to face Kylo and he loses his trainees, he gives up on the Jedi idea completely? He completley gives up helping his friends and everything he has worked for? That he rushes to help others against the better judgement of his masters, yes, I could see that might still be in him. But it being turned around into running off, leaving his sister and his best friend and their son hanging?

If he had to deal with a long line of pupils that turned to the dark side that he all had to fight and kill (or at least imprison), maybe I could see him turning bitter and finally giving him up when even his nephew turns.

Vader was Luke's father. This bit is the crux of their relationship and what actually turns Vader, not Luke's daring heroism. That's just a catalyst, but the functional relationship is father/son. That's what was so powerful and resonated.

And, yes, Luke felt he was past all such things, but suddenly, in the moment of crisis when he faced the darkness inside Ben Solo, he still reached out to pain and anger and fear -- he wasn't the person he though he was, hoped he was, he was a person still capable of error. And the result of that error was catastrophic -- his nephew murdering the other students, destroying Luke's temple, and setting out to join the powerful Darkside Force user among the 1st Order. All because Luke had a moment of weakness and failed to keep Ben Solo from the Dark side. That utterly shook his faith, both in himself, because he failed himself there in addition to Ben, and in the Force, because he faith in it didn't save him this time. So he quits, totally in character as established in the OT.

But, eventually, he learns a harsh lesson -- that failure isn't the end or the beginning, but a step along the way, and so faces his failure and it's costs, accepts them, and moves forward. It's a moment that sums up Luke's entire journey - he moves from faith in the Force to faith in himself, something he's always lacked - and culminates in his greatest success.

3 Options I would have preferred probably:

1) The characters are recast. (Give the old actors camoes in other roles). The story continues and we are now about rebuilding the Republic in some way, and new threats on the horizon.

2) We're so much later that the original characters are really gone. A new threat is emerging, but there really was a restored Republic that worked succesfully for a long time and our heroes got to enjoy "basking in their success".

3) The heroes are as old as now, a new threat emerges, and the heroes give the heft of saving the galaxy to a new generation of heroes.

Or maybe
4) Reimagination of Star Wars.

But having all the hero efforts to be wasted and undone, and seeing them all in sad to bitter positions with little hope for them to see success in their lifetime again... No, that doesn't really feel like a choice I would make.

Again with this wasted effort. Luke turned Vader. Still happened? Instead, you seem to be upset because you were told as part of the new backstory that he started a Jedi Temple (where did he strive for this in the OT?) and that failed. Which part of the OT does this invalidate?

Leia wanted to beat the Empire. Done, and still done. Now, we're upset that a completely new threat, which superficially resembles the old Empire but is something different, has arisen to threaten the 30 year span of the New Republic?

Han wanted to be a hero. He was. Not invalidated. And he got to finish his story going out a hero again. In the meantime, we're told as part of the new backstory that he married Leia and had a kid and lived happily until the kid went nuts and killed a bunch of people. But this doesn't invalidate anything in the OT for Han, and he gets to close out his story by returning, making up with Leia and being a father to Ben. Ben, of course, is a bad guy, so it goes badly.

Nothing in the new films invalidates anything in the OT that you didn't invent yourself and bring into the movie.

 

[hopeless]

Sometimes tearing down everything that came before isn't such a great idea!
In TFA it was about finding Luke if that was true why reveal SKB?
Once they knew where he was they could use that abomination to insure he would never be a problem, but instead they blew up the New Republic capital apparently demolishing that entire organisation and fleet.
Unlikely but we've yet to discover what happened to them.
Battlefront 2 apparently reveals oh right spoilers!

Anyway they have a fleet and apparently can man them ignoring the fact kidnapping entire families doesn't make them loyal so maybe that's how the Resistance finds it backup?
Biggs Darklighter of the future and his friends hmm I wonder how secure those new imperial ships are?

 

[Morrus]

I think “burned it all down” is the new “raped my childhood”. It’s hard to take such hyperbole seriously. Sometimes the internet isn’t a good thing.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Vader was Luke's father. This bit is the crux of their relationship and what actually turns Vader, not Luke's daring heroism. That's just a catalyst, but the functional relationship is father/son. That's what was so powerful and resonated.

Ben is his nephew, the child of his twin sister and his best friend. Luke is the guy that abandons the Jedi training he so desperately wanted to save them.

And, yes, Luke felt he was past all such things, but suddenly, in the moment of crisis when he faced the darkness inside Ben Solo, he still reached out to pain and anger and fear -- he wasn't the person he though he was, hoped he was, he was a person still capable of error. And the result of that error was catastrophic -- his nephew murdering the other students, destroying Luke's temple, and setting out to join the powerful Darkside Force user among the 1st Order. All because Luke had a moment of weakness and failed to keep Ben Solo from the Dark side. That utterly shook his faith, both in himself, because he failed himself there in addition to Ben, and in the Force, because he faith in it didn't save him this time. So he quits, totally in character as established in the OT.

But, eventually, he learns a harsh lesson -- that failure isn't the end or the beginning, but a step along the way, and so faces his failure and it's costs, accepts them, and moves forward. It's a moment that sums up Luke's entire journey - he moves from faith in the Force to faith in himself, something he's always lacked - and culminates in his greatest success.

But "quitting" and "giving up" doesn't really seem to do what Luke do. His faith was already utterly shattered in Empire Strikes Back. Everything he believed about himself was put into question. And to make things worse - his best friend was just frozen in carbonite. But he didn't stop there and ran away for a few decades. He worked with his friends to get Han out.

---

Yesterday I watched the movie again with my sisters and some friends (this time in German). There are still a lot of scenes that I like. I really wasn't convinced by Kylo Ren in TFA, but I think Driver really performed well here, and so did most of the cast. Mark Hamill was definitely very enjoyable. On that level quite enjoyable IMO and Star Wars could use more of that.

Also, it's definitely possible to see some hints that something is up with Luke in his confrontation with Kylo Ren (but on the level that I am clueless about when I watch the scene uninformed.)

I don't really like t he scene where Rose is stopping Finn from his suicide attack, but I think it's reasonable to see it as being a pointless attempt at the time. The mini-superlaser is already heating up considerable at the time, I could easily see that Finn would never arrive it in time to do any damage.

However I am a bit confused on when the Hacker figured out about those cloaked escape ships, since there really doesn't seem to be any clear dialog about it between Finn's team and the Command Ship.


I am stil a bit surprised that a person that apparently lived on one of those mono-climatic desert planets can swim. Maybe that is really a force thing? It's not training or experience, just... The Force? Kinda like Anakin was such an accomplished pod racer despite humans normally being "too slow" for the pod races compared to other species?

 

[pukunui]

However I am a bit confused on when the Hacker figured out about those cloaked escape ships, since there really doesn't seem to be any clear dialog about it between Finn's team and the Command Ship.

I was a bit confused about that too, but on subsequent viewings it became more clear. I don't think Poe/Finn/Rose ever use the term "cloaked" in front of DJ, but Poe does tell them that Holdo is fueling up the transports and abandoning ship. I suppose DJ just put two and two together and figured that the transports would have to be cloaked in order to have any chance of escaping.

As an aside, this is an interesting example of the advancement of technology in the GFFA, since the transports can be cloaked, whereas just 30 years before, we are told that ships the size of the Millennium Falcon can't have cloaking devices.

 

[Jester David]

There's no Republic anymore. The Senate and all their ships were destroyed. There are individual planets left who used to belong to the Republic, but it's gone. They make that clear in TLJ. The First Order will take over the entire galaxy in a matter of weeks according to the movie, since there's no one left to resist them.

That bugged the crap out of me.
They blew up one system. Out of thousands. (Even in TLJ it just says "the Republic is decimated" meaning 90% is still around.)

That's like blowing up Washington and declaring that the USA is gone. And if the Washington DC was just nuked, it wouldn't be easy for, say, the Taliban to just take over the States.

The worldbuilding in The Force Awakens was super lazy, and TLJ didn't try to fix anything or explain.