[Movie] Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi

[baskev]

Agreed, the writing was pretty cop out throughout the film. Rey's parent drop was, they were just normal shit folk, which could still be retcon but we'll see. The lack of info and weakass way Snoke died was trash too. It was like they sat around the writers room and went "Well, we got the fans all amped up with these questions, instead of answering them or attempting to make it interesting lets just make it a McGuffin to get them into the theater. Oh, and we can put in a ton of campy jokes, at every turn."

The writing feels very modern Hollywood. Which isn't really that great. The scene with the destroyer's chasing the resistance is absolute trash. Who cares if you can't properly back the Tie Fighters. It is literally 3 ships. Just send them out overwhelm them and destroy them. Since when is the First Order worried about loss of Storm Troopers and Tie Fighters. That entire chase scene makes no sense. Lasers loose their potency from a distance?! Since when is that a thing.

I enjoyed the movie for the most part, and I'll see it again to give it a fair shake, but as of now it isn't one of my favorite SW films for sure. The added powers Snoke got and all the telepathy going on across the galaxy and astral projection stuff was a little much as well. And drastically overused. Luke's death was trash if it was going to kill him, why not show up in person and die or do the Obi-Wan strike down. Carrie Fisher is dead and they claimed they had that taken care of in this film, yet Leia still alive at the end meaning we are getting a time jump or she dies off screen?! or they have some footage of a death scene for her laying around. There was an overkill of filler scenes that were totally unnecessary as well. I was really disappointed in Rain Johnson all around on this one.

Oh well they can't all be home runs, but this was pretty poor writing, and really seemed lazy and a long ass way to be like we get it Kylo is in conflict (duh) and Rey and him have a bond. Glad it took 2.5 hours for us to get to that. Oh and Luke is full of jokes.

Lets break your problems with the movie down:
- it was not cop out writing. Rey parents was perfect. Instead of making it really hard to mean something. They made her parents a moot point. She is now a fresh hero , instead of the daughter of (insert who ever you wanted her to be). It also leaves it open to change in the future...say that they want to give her a palpatine daughter arc or something they still have it open. If they put it : she is the daughter of grand moff tarkin , they need to explore that in the movies. If you do that for for all the hero's it would take dozens of movies to do that. And then you get people crying.....there is to much story, we do not need to see uncle ben dying 10 times etc.

- the "death" of snoke was indeed cheesy. but i think he might still be alive. Seen his fast power.

- Fleet chasing and tie stuff. First off the First order kidnapped most of their troopers. They do not have a infinite supply of clones, droids or a whole empire that was setup. So they are not that much cannon fodder. Problem 2, sending out all the tie's could leave them open to resistance fighters...and they could wreck that fleet. And yes in star wars lasers loose potency. In star wars it has been shown before that things can influence strenght of lasers.

[ohiostate124]

It was rather disappointing. He had full on command of the force with little issue about showing it.

Instant reaction force lightning. Rey getting pulled to him without him doing a thing. The dude was ultra powerful with the force.

The only defense, ill give Kylo about Snokes death was that Kylo was doing the same thing with both hands. He turned HIS saber with his right hand, while using his left to turn the opposite saber.

So from Snokes force pov, he was doing exactly what Snoke was saying.

That’s really the only way to try to explain it. But at the same time, he was talking about how he could read Kylo’s mind or something. Seems like he was too wise and powerful to be fooled by that.

[Deleted]

It was rather disappointing. He had full on command of the force with little issue about showing it.

Instant reaction force lightning. Rey getting pulled to him without him doing a thing. The dude was ultra powerful with the force.

The only defense, ill give Kylo about Snokes death was that Kylo was doing the same thing with both hands. He turned HIS saber with his right hand, while using his left to turn the opposite saber.

So from Snokes force pov, he was doing exactly what Snoke was saying.

The scene how Snoke died was pretty good, i liked it. I would have just preffered if they gave some more hints to his identity before killing him off. I thought he was going to be a major character of this trilogy but this film made him seem like some minor character. There were so many fan theories about his identity, and i didn't expect to learn much about it in this film, just a few hints to fuel fan theories more.

[Altrec]

Sharing certain story beats doesn't mean that one was trying to be like the other. Its the "middle movie."

I thought you said they were completely different? At least now you are starting to admit it is more similar than you would like us to believe. Perhaps I should have said it was trying to be ESB with some parts from RTJ thrown in for good measure because it has those as well? Maybe the third movie will truly be its own thing now that they have more or less used up all of the major story elements from the original three movies? If the third movie can do something actually original using these first two movies as a base maybe my opinion of them will change, but right now I am entirely unimpressed.

[Zoldor]

What i didn't get about the whole chase thing, why couldn't the first order just catch board them? Even if we're going to believe there was no way their ships could go slightly faster in order to catch them, did they have no smaller ships that could go faster, the ties caught them, didn't they have any boarding ships or something?

That whole scene is baffling all around, especially when they were down to one ship. How did she fuel all the transports and still have fuel to make one more lightspeed jump. The entire premise was if we jump once more we are frozen. How can she fuel all those transports and make the jump. The entire scene is my least favorite of the film, the 18 hours to travel around to some distant planet. The entire thing is really bad, how come Chewie doesn't save anyone in the Falcon and just dumps Rey off and rolls out. There is a ton of shit wrong with that sequence.

[bledgor]

There is a lot I have to say about the movie, most of it negative, but whatever I'll toss it out, SPOILERS AHEAD STOP HERE DO NOT READ FURTHER UNLESS YOU ARE READY.


To start with the time line is wonky as shit. The Rebels went form taking out the mega deathstar to being on the last few ships, and suddenly random mechanic girl knows of this legendary hero Fin, but somehow no time has passed for Rei.


They they go on this bombing run to destroy the super star destroyer were blowing up the bombers is a tiny explosion, but the bombers dropping the bombs explodes a MASSIVE SHIP, okay.


Also during this time Poe single handily flys into a fleet, out maneuvers a squadron of tie fighters to take out the turrets for the super destroyer so his team can bomb them. The entire rest of the fleet of destroyers then do jack shit to stop this invading fleet....


Leia gets BLOWN into space, goes unconscious, wakes up, force pulls her ass onto a ship, and within 18 hours is completely fine again. Okay


The whole side adventure by Fin and Rose to get this master hacker, the only one who can crack the Empire code that is horribly pointless as they find some random ass thief in prison who can do the same damn thing apparently. Also part 1 of BB-7 proving he is literally the best warrior in the rebellion as he infiltrates a prison and takes out several arm guards by himself.


The rebellion is losing ships left and right that have warp speed, and for some reason the captains/leaders have to die with the ships instead of a druid, because fucking reasons? This later leads to the final ship light speed plowing into Stokes command ship, which why couldn't the other however many ships do? Why has this never been in a thing? Why not build a giant metal ship that cant do anything but being a ship destroyer that you program to suicide kill the big baddies like the death star? Also WHY DOESN'T THE EMPIRE WARP A SHIP IN FRONT OF THE REBELS TO CUT THEM OFF?????????


Somehow Fin and company get on board where BB-7 puts a box on himself that apparently makes the druid drunk. No stormtroopers seem to care but the evil BB-7 does. Then they are betrayed by Del Toro who gives up the plans that the group have not been told about (at least on screen, but still would require Fin and Rose to be completely fine with Del Toro a man they didn't trust so badly they didn't follow him when he broke them out of prison overhearing this last minute plan from Poe as he didn't know till they were basically on board the front ship). Apparently the New Order who has been doing nothing but following and shooting shots at the Rebellion fleet for 18 hours doesn't consider checking for cloaking til they are told by the traitor Del Toro. Part 2 of why BB-7 is the best Rebel solider, as he commands an AT-ST and mows down an entire squadron of troops like it is nothing. Finn proves that losing your Stormtrooper suit makes you infinitely better manages to fight Captain Phasma and beat her 1v1 because fuck it reasons, and from last movie he managed to actually shot people while storm troopers again suck dick and can’t hit the ground.
Wat #142151


Going back to look, we got this horrible humor (ha ha is drinking another animals milk, how gross who would do that???), has to jump to a tiny ledge to use a giant ass spear to get a fish, which he would then have to use when he jumps back again? Also apparently this big bad evil on the island is a series of mirrors, SO SCARY. Also did about jack all for the plot. Meanwhile R2-D2 in basically his only scene replays footage from episode 4 to make Luke become a teacher again (for 3 days). Rei, who apparently is a nobody/family is a nobody(which they have to change in 9 or this series is just done) becomes even more badass in the force (at the end she can lift a large mound of rocks, when Luke being trained for months by Yoda the best Jedi Master evil to lift a few rocks).


Also Luke who never even tried to kills his father, apparently has this moment of weakness to kill his nephew, gets taken out by his nephew by dropping a tiny hut on him, because Snoke who is literally fucking light years away was corrupting the boy under the supervision of Luke, while even Palpatine had to personally manipulate over many months and years to turn Anakin and tried for a longer period to turn Luke. Also apparently at the same time as corrupting Ben Snoke was turning several other students who then kill the rest of the trainees and burn the temple down only to disappear into no mans land never to be seen or talked about again (SO EASILY could have made them the guards of Snoke, making Ben's moment of killing Snoke/the guards a very powerful moment of him becoming his own thing).


Also in no mans land the mystery of Snoke, which they really need to handle in some way expertly in 9 or that turns another huge plot into complete and udder dogshit, and since my faith is nil I expect nothing.


Yoda scene was great, nothing bad to say about it. Same for the Ben/Rei vs the guards, though I would have liked it more if it was the other students from the Academy.


Finally we get to the Rebellions convenient "Sand/snow" planet that is a massive fortress the empire have to break with AT/ATs (where have I seen this and many other parts of the plot of the movie before, but done infinitely better?). The empire while getting light speed bombed have this convenient fleet of AT/AT still to invade and a mini-death star laser??? (why would you have this randomly, you had snokes command super destroyer that can nuke things from orbit???). The rebels have this clanky PoS machines they ride to destroy the laser, and for some reason random mechanic Rose is chosen to fly one. During the scene Fin makes an actually heroic choice to die blowing it up (though not melting in laser beem for some reason or suffering any injury/burn) when he pushes the throttle all the way down to bomb it somehow Rose who veered off manages to catch up and ram him to safety, how cute.


Oh I also forgot apparently Fin the janitor knows the schematics of the super deathstar and super star destroyers enough to point out where they need to go for the fatal flaws, because why wouldn't a janitor know exactly where you need to go on a planet size base and a massive ship. Also the mechanic knows how to disable it in a timely manner, what exactly did she do other than be called a mechanic, I honestly blocked it out.


Also again i can't get behind this Rei is a random person with nobody parents when her force potential was enough to scare Luke FUCKING SKYWALKER, the family that was literally born of the force jesus style in order to be super OP, and yet somehow Rei is doing more than they could with less training. If she isn't a Skywalker, bastard of Palpatine, or Kenobi then I give up.


Yes I realize that Episodes 4-6 had plot issues and weren't truly flawless films, even 7 had the same, but they didn't have this over fucking abundance of them with characters I LOATHE (Fin + Rose), which is why I could over look the flaws and enjoy the movies, but 8 was just filled with these plot stains that made it bad.

[Elim Garak]

What i didn't get about the whole chase thing, why couldn't the first order just catch board them? Even if we're going to believe there was no way their ships could go slightly faster in order to catch them, did they have no smaller ships that could go faster, the ties caught them, didn't they have any boarding ships or something?

It was like literally explained in the movie why they chose to do it that way.

[Sormine]

Snoke was Palpatine's buddy from Dark Side college. They became fast friends after meeting during fraternity pledge week, with both having decided to join the local chapter of SAE.

I mean, this is just as relevant a theory as any other.

I'm sure you could see why this is a strong indication that the theory is true.

[Deleted]

It was like literally explained in the movie why they chose to do it that way.

What was the reason? i cannot even remember.

- - - Updated - - -

That whole scene is baffling all around, especially when they were down to one ship. How did she fuel all the transports and still have fuel to make one more lightspeed jump. The entire premise was if we jump once more we are frozen. How can she fuel all those transports and make the jump. The entire scene is my least favorite of the film, the 18 hours to travel around to some distant planet. The entire thing is really bad, how come Chewie doesn't save anyone in the Falcon and just dumps Rey off and rolls out. There is a ton of shit wrong with that sequence.

They could have had enough fuel to do that tiny distance though, it wasn't like they were doing a light speed jump across the system, the ship only had the reach the Supremacy.

[Altrec]

There was gay and lesbian propaganda? I missed that, must be looking for things in many places. Missed the political stuff as well, as, every SW movie is pretty political and basically the same shit political story since the first one. I think you are finding patterns in places they don't actually exists.

Who cares if there is asian actors in there, it is a galaxy of many people. In fact, lucas toyed with the idea of using only Asian actors for the first trilogy. I think you are seeing marketing and propaganda in places it doesn't exist.

The most blatant political thing I remember(I know there were others but they didn't have lasting impact) was when they were talking about the casino planet being where the truly evil people hang out and it switches to a scene of an alien with Donald Trump hair. Love him or hate him whatever, but could we please leave crap like that out of movies in a galaxy far far away?

[babalou1]

That’s really the only way to try to explain it. But at the same time, he was talking about how he could read Kylo’s mind or something. Seems like he was too wise and powerful to be fooled by that.

[spoiler]He was reading his mind. Kylo was thinking about lining up the saber for the perfect strike on his enemy. Vague enough thoughts without specifically thinking "Im going to cut my master in half"[\spoiler]

Anti-Mind reading 101.

[Slybak]

I think the problem is when you build a character up to be the big bad evil in the movie you need a slight information on them. And then they just die with no clear mechanism for handing off to another villain. The emperor had Vader as an already established powerful character that was intimidating. With Snoke, Kyle is still pretty untrained and not so powerful,

Did Vader do anything like that in ANH?

I mean Rey just completely overpowered him the last movie.

Why he lost to Rey is explained perfectly well in TLJ.

Everything led snoke up to be the powerful bad guy and he was killed just like that.

Vader displayed far less power in killing Palpatine than Kylo Ren did in killing Snoke. While both were killed while being distracted - overconfidence and hubris being the principle vulnerability of Big Bads in Star Wars - Vader just brute forced it, and it wound up mortally wounding him.

How did he come to power, how did the First Order come after Sidious. There are so many plot holes of how we get from ROTJ to now.

Again, try to imagine leaving Eps 4-6 with only what you learn from the movies. We don't know how the Empire came to be, only that it replaced the Republic and that Vader getting rid of the Jedi was an important component of that transition. The details are consistently explored later, because having long scenes of exposition is not entertaining, as evidenced by how much of them occur in the Prequels.

[ohiostate124]

I’m still trying to figure out how the bombs dropped straight down onto the dreadnaught while they were IN SPACE. How was the girl able to breathe there with that huge opening at the bottom of the ship that led directly to outside the ship?

[Deleted]

I’m still trying to figure out how the bombs dropped straight down onto the dreadnaught while they were IN SPACE. How was the girl able to breathe there with that huge opening at the bottom of the ship that led directly to outside the ship.

Im guessing it uses similar technology that allowed small spaceships to pass in and out of ships hangars, while keeping the air in the ships hangar?

[Zoldor]

Lets break your problems with the movie down:
- it was not cop out writing. Rey parents was perfect. Instead of making it really hard to mean something. They made her parents a moot point. She is now a fresh hero , instead of the daughter of (insert who ever you wanted her to be). It also leaves it open to change in the future...say that they want to give her a palpatine daughter arc or something they still have it open. If they put it : she is the daughter of grand moff tarkin , they need to explore that in the movies. If you do that for for all the hero's it would take dozens of movies to do that. And then you get people crying.....there is to much story, we do not need to see uncle ben dying 10 times etc.

- the "death" of snoke was indeed cheesy. but i think he might still be alive. Seen his fast power.

- Fleet chasing and tie stuff. First off the First order kidnapped most of their troopers. They do not have a infinite supply of clones, droids or a whole empire that was setup. So they are not that much cannon fodder. Problem 2, sending out all the tie's could leave them open to resistance fighters...and they could wreck that fleet. And yes in star wars lasers loose potency. In star wars it has been shown before that things can influence strenght of lasers.

they knew there was no more resistance fighters, as they destroyed most of the bombers and killed off most of the x-wings. Then when Kylo was out there it was basically just him, they just nearly destroyed everyone and they had them fall back despite having almost no one fighting them. It is a really bad scene setup mostly to teach Poe a lesson, form the bond between Fin and Rose, and kill off every old character besides Leia. They still have a pretty massive army as well if they intend and seem to be doing well at taking over the Galaxy. Stolen from birth and indoctrinated. Then Ren even mentions maybe they should use a clone army, so I'm not sure I'm buying them being worried about the amount of troopers they have. The amount of ships following, Ties on each one, and including Snoke's ship there is no reason to not swarm 3 ships, that you've been chasing, after decimating the major portion of their attack squad. It just isn't that good of a scene and leaks like a siv. But so do a lot of SW scenes. This one is one of the worst to date though.

Rey's parents wouldn't bother me as much if they didn't try and lead us up to them being important characters. They were merely McGuffins, also odd that a family would sell a kid for drinking money but own a ship to fly away on. Her background bothers me less than Snoke not even giving a nod or hint as to how someone as powerful as him was just hanging around during the Original trilogy and that he got some fairly expanded powers. The Emperor would have known of him if nothing else and with those powers been fairly damn concerned about him. His tongue sticking out at the end also fairly corny. I thought he was going to res himself for sure for a second, but I think we've seen the last of him as Kylo is now the one. With the time skip they are hinting at I doubt we find much more about him. I see Pasma coming back before him, as her role has essentially been look like a badass but fail like a golden era comic villain at every turn.

[Slybak]

The most blatant political thing I remember(I know there were others but they didn't have lasting impact) was when they were talking about the casino planet being where the truly evil people hang out and it switches to a scene of an alien with Donald Trump hair. Love him or hate him whatever, but could we please leave crap like that out of movies in a galaxy far far away?

I really liked the overall message of that sequence - the most wretched hive of scum and villainy in the galaxy is not cantina with petty smugglers and pirates, but a pleasure planet where grotesque war profiteers amuse themselves with animal torture and child slavery - it just didn't really fit the movie. Its the kind of theme that I think would work better for the upcoming Han Solo movie.

[Elim Garak]

What was the reason? i cannot even remember.

Initially rebel fleet tried to fight off the first order fleet, but they were too close and destroyers were just shooting at them at point blank range, there were fighters and stuff involved from both sides, including Kylo Ren in a starfighter and his team taking out the entire Rebel leadership (cept for force powered Leia).
But the rebel fleet figured out that they are faster and they gained some distance between them and the first order fleet. So the fire from the destroyers were just mitigated by the shields, and first order fighters had to retreat because without the destroyer support they were easy targets for the rebel cruiser and fighters. Kylo Ren retreated as ordered.

Rebel fleet was low on fuel, which they were burning thru at higher rate to keep the distance.

Gaining on them could've been done but it would not have been that much faster than just waiting for their fuel to run out, which they did and safely picked off each rebel ship one by one.

So even though General Hux was a moron specifically chosen by Snoke so he can easily manipulate him - he followed the advice from the other captainy dude and they just happened to be right.

In fact I think that was the best operation of General Hux, he was also quite spot on to order the fleet to fire on transports as soon as he was informed of them.

[babalou1]

I’m still trying to figure out how the bombs dropped straight down onto the dreadnaught while they were IN SPACE. How was the girl able to breathe there with that huge opening at the bottom of the ship that led directly to outside the ship?

I just imaged that there was some kind of motorized elevator for loading/unloading that gave it the momentum to drop straight down.

Or the shield kept it pressurized + with gravity generators. They would have just falled and momentum would have kept them going straight down.

[Deleted]

[spolier]Any theories / reasons why the resistance call for help was ignored? They said the signal was received by their allies in the outer rim, but they didn't respond.

I think the allies in the outer rim are few in number and not well armed, and didn't want to risk everything in that fight so chose to ignore it so they could remain hidden. [/spoiler]

[Darththeo]

I’m still trying to figure out how the bombs dropped straight down onto the dreadnaught while they were IN SPACE. How was the girl able to breathe there with that huge opening at the bottom of the ship that led directly to outside the ship?

If you watched 8 movies prior that had sound in space, that is what bothers you?