[Movie] Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi

[Cosmic Janitor]

We always knew she was force-sensitive. And her actually developing some sort of power after many, many years isn't that surprising. Especially when Luke is your brother.

Is there any information about using force in space? I imagine pulling yourself in a vacuum using the force to be extremely easy. I'm sure someone here can mention an example from a book or something. A duel in space perhaps, somewhere deep in the expanded universe?

Only thing I could find on google search is that Luke was taught teleporting objects in some novel, and there's apparently a dark side power called "force travel" that lets you travel by creating a rift in space. I assume that's not canon, no idea.

The thing that annoyed me about this scene was (besides missing this excellent opportunity) that she was out there for way too long without air and already started freezing over, not to mention that the sudden decompression of her lungs would usually also have caused major damage to her lungs. Very much like with the bomber scene, this was just piss poor execution on the part of the set designer and/or screen writer. If they hadn't completely forgotten about force fields, had given her a less silly pose and something like a force-bubble, this would be way less silly, since everyone and their grandmother was already expecting her to show some force stuff.

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Why did the writter of the TFA story lines not continue on them in TLJ ? When you write something as big as star wars, I dont understand why 80% of it wasnt touched on. Even if it wasnt written as a arc, you can still write as if...

According to some sources Johnson started writing the script for TLJ while TFA wasn't even done with post production, let alone him having seen it. Apparently he didn't deem it important enough to rectify some things later. That both of them didn't talk with one another might be due to lucas films hire&fire tactics.. but that is just speculation on my part.

[Babadoo]

They made a huge mistake ignoring Lucas' script he offered them. He might not be the best director but he fuckin knows how to write a good Star Wars story.

[Cosmic Janitor]

They made a huge mistake ignoring Lucas' script he offered them. He might not be the best director but he fuckin knows how to write a good Star Wars story.

Do we know what is in that script? By the looks of it they really wanted to continue with new people, so it depends on how well that script would have fit with what they had 30+ years after the fact.

[I Push Buttons]

According to some sources Johnson started writing the script for TLJ while TFA wasn't even done with post production, let alone him having seen it. Apparently he didn't deem it important enough to rectify some things later. That both of them didn't talk with one another might be due to lucas films hire&fire tactics.. but that is just speculation on my part.

Seems more likely to me that JJ and his people (with Disney's blessing) left TFA deliberately open ended and ambiguous so the next person could take it in any number of directions.

Unfortunately, Rian Johnson is a hack and he decided to just completely abandoned most of those loose threads instead of building on them. And interviews keep emphasizing Disney giving this guy free rein to do as he pleased, that was probably contractual and Disney was powerless to affect any change on the story... Not that they would want to probably, with all the SJW pandering.

[Cosmic Janitor]

Seems more likely to me that JJ and his people (with Disney's blessing) left TFA deliberately open ended and ambiguous so the next person could take it in any number of directions.

Unfortunately, Rian Johnson is a hack and he decided to just completely abandoned most of those loose threads instead of building on them. And interviews keep emphasizing Disney giving this guy free rein to do as he pleased, that was probably contractual and Disney was powerless to affect any change on the story... Not that they would want to probably, with all the SJW pandering.

I wouldn't go that far*, though I'm interested in some documentary and investigative work in a couple of years from now that will bring to light how the current state of the franchise came to be. Especially with all the shit that seems to happen behind the scenes of the solo movie I'm curious.

*it depends on how true the rumoured rian trilogy actually was and if this was just a ploy to get more people on board with this movie or if they actually thought it was that amazing.

[shaunika123]

Snoke - don't care about who he is/was. We got no backstory for Darth Maul, for example. And honestly, Snoke had about as much depth as Maul did.

and that's a good thing suddenly? I mean you do realize you're citing the phantom menace as a positive paralell right?

[tyrlaan]

and that's a good thing suddenly? I mean you do realize you're citing the phantom menace as a positive paralell right?

Not as a positive, more as a neutral statement. Sure more backstory for Snoke would be great, but it's not like this is the first time a SW movie gave us a character with no story behind him/her. I suppose I could use Boba Fett as an example instead if it makes you feel better.

[Babadoo]

Do we know what is in that script? By the looks of it they really wanted to continue with new people, so it depends on how well that script would have fit with what they had 30+ years after the fact.

From what I remember it would also focus on young new characters, it would also take few ideas/characters from the prequels. Apparently this movie would not mirror ANH like TFA did. It would also take few ideas from EU, apparently Kyle Katarn had a good chance to appear in it!

[shaunika123]

Not as a positive, more as a neutral statement. Sure more backstory for Snoke would be great, but it's not like this is the first time a SW movie gave us a character with no story behind him/her. I suppose I could use Boba Fett as an example instead if it makes you feel better.

boba fett wasnt the prime main villain of the story though.

and the prequels might as well not exist unless for guides on how not to make star wars movies.

[Altrec]

[On Not Telling Your Subordinates What's Up:[/B] I don't see why Holdo should feel the need to tell a captain the plan, especially when rebels are trying to sneak off in escape pods, and if any of them managed to escape knowing the plan, they would get screwed (as they did). I suspect Poe would have tried his plan anyway. On the mutiny being pointless: it wasn't. The whole thing was an important arc and character development for Poe and Finn, and served the themes of the movie. Their failure also led to big consequences.

She didn't need to give details of the plan, but easily could have said that there was one other than having hope. People were escaping and committing mutiny because she didn't bother to show there was a plan or show that she is actually in charge and doing something. Her ambivalence and seemingly taking no action lead to everything that happened. It is good that she died because with "leaders" like that the resistance was doomed anyway.

On Luke: Clearly a lot of people are upset that Luke after 30 years wasn't the bees knees, but I personally loved what they did with him, and his story and arc is the most obvious example of the themes that are everywhere in this movie. The reason for having Luke draw his lightsaber and push Ben the whole way to the dark side was to have Luke fail. One of the themes of this movie is about being able to rebuild after failure. On the fishing pole, I don't see why this requires force powers. Luke died because his story was over and he was at peace, haven given the last bits of the Resistance and Rey get away and rebuild.

Luke's story ending isn't the problem. It was how it happened that people are disappointed with. The character was done a massive disservice in my an many others opinion. He didn't feel like Luke broken or otherwise.

On Leia: I know some couldn't take it seriously, but I liked it, it was nice to see her finally use force powers. I think some people are vastly overestimating how much power she needed to do what she did, perhaps you can wonder about her being able to survive as long as she did, but being able to pull herself towards a door in space doesn't really make me scratch my head.

It was a silly scene, and they could have found a different way to show her using the force.

On Ackbar: He shouldn't have been Holdo, the "twist" wouldn't have worked if it was a senior character people knew and liked. You can argue whether his death deserved more spotlight, but I don't really think it would served much more than the somewhat meme-ish fanbase he has made for himself.

The "twist" didn't work anyway. It was a stupid red herring designed to give Poe/Fin more depth in a convoluted and idiotic way. Holdo didn't need to exist.

On Knights of Ren: I actually thought it was the red guard, but apparently not. I suspect we will see them in IX.

I hope so otherwise it is just another wasted and/or lost storyline. Given the number advantage Kylo and knights have over Rey a more fitting end to Luke's story would have been for him to sacrifice himself to stop his former pupils so Rey could face Kylo alone in the end for example. Sadly I suspect there is little hope the Knights will even be brought up again, or if they are it will be something bizarre and misplaced.

On Snoke: I loved what they did with him, it was ballsy, but made perfect sense for the overall story and themes, and heck, it is totally in line with how Sith usually do things. I don't really need to know what they are going to write on his Wookiepedia page, I bet that info will come if you want it, but this story didn't need it, in the same way we didn't need to know who the Emperor really was in the original trilogy.

I disagree. Snoke unlike the Emperor needed more backstory. In the original movies the backstory wasn't needed because all we needed to know was there was an evil galactic empire and he was the leader. With Snoke we have 6 movies that proceed his introduction that shape the story world we are watching and Snoke doesn't fit in without some backstory to explain his existence. Where was he all this time and when did he make his existence known? Why does Luke know of him, and why did Luke abandon everyone and close himself off from the force all the while knowing Snoke is out there?

On Rey's Parentage: Watching the movies purely by themselves, I don't feel like we were baited into thinking they were important at all, that's just fan speculation being disappointed when the answer turned out to be what it was. But I really liked it, and it made perfect sense for Rey's story and character. Super relatable, too. Force power isn't necessarily based on having super force-stronk parents.

They did build a certain amount of hype into who her parents were. I didn't really care either way, but they did kind of set themselves up for some criticism.

On Bombs: I don't really care, I'm sure somebody can throw technobabble at it (I believe it was mentioned that they were magnetic + something else).

I didn't have much issue with this scene even though it was pretty poorly thought out. A ship out of control and someone trying really hard to drop the payload(and taking awhile to do it) somehow hits the exact target they needed to hit to take out the entire ship is pretty absurd, but it is all small potatoes compared to the rest of the problems the movie had.

Sorry you feel that way, but I totally disagree. Ships chasing ships was enough to "fuel" Battlestar Galactica for most of its run time as far as I know. To each their own.

Battlestar had them jumping around all over the place and avoiding the Cylons. TLJ took the jumping part away and had an 18 hour long car chase. If they had done something like that in Battlestar I'm pretty sure the Cylons much like the First Order would have jumped a few ships in ahead of them to cut them off and destroy them. Of course then again the First Order could have just finished them off with fighters and bombers, but they apparently couldn't risk a few pilots to take out the last of the resistance stopping them from taking complete control of the galaxy. I'm sorry but that entire chase was just stupid.

[Ryytikki]

For those who are questioning the bombs, theres a very simple explanation that actually works without need for technobabble:

1) Their ships must have some form of artificial gravity (the bomb pilot fell down the stairs/kicked the ladder to make the switch fall)
2) Once the bombs left the artificial gravity field, they would keep moving in that direction because of newtons 1st law (in layman's terms, things dont change which way they're moving unless something else makes them)

As for the rest of the movie, it all felt very thin and undeveloped. Snoke died before we knew anything about him other than that he was "evil" so most of his actual intentions etc were never fully explored, leaving him feeling like nothing more than a plot device, the entire thread with fin and his new friend going to that planet to get the hacker ultimately felt like the director went "well we gotta have them do -something-" and while it touched upon the shittiness of the universe at large, didnt really feel like it added to the story very much, and the movie really felt far smaller than the original/prequel series, as my wife said to me it was more like "star small battle in one tiny bit of space with maybe a trip to another planet once" than "star wars"

That being said, the movie had some great comedy, the scenes with phasma were badass and that one bit with the cruiser jumping to lightspeed was utterly perfect

[Cosmic Janitor]

How did TALK do in the box office anyway? Did it do as good as episode 7?

First week was good as expected, second week the drop off was enormous but it's still strong due to the sheer size of the franchise.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...feast-for-fans
http://comicbook.com/starwars/2017/1...x-office-drop/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottme.../#7b1edc7e7cf4

[Rukh]

Something that I didn't think on much at the time, but man. Poe should be executed.

First he got the bomber fleet destroyed through insubordination, and Leia just demoted him but left him on the bridge. It was murky if the result was beneficial or not, but he CONTINUED to be insubordinate. He sent his undercover team that ended up meeting up with an untrustworthy figure that sold them out and got half the remaining alliance killed. He also nearly prevented the shuttles from launching, getting everyone killed. His insubordination definitely made things much harder on the surviving rebels and very nearly ended the alliance entirely. If he had acted like an actual officer, just the purple commander lady would have died and everyone else would have escaped.

[Archon14]

If he had acted like an actual officer, just the purple commander lady would have died and everyone else would have escaped.

And the purple lady wouldn't wreck the First Order fleet using lightspeed travel. One of the reasons why it was actually important that Poe, Finn and Rose were set on a mission that failed.

That's where their mindsets clashed. Leia and the purple lady were set on saving as many people as possible, while Poe wanted to do as much damage to the First Order as they possibly could before they escape.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Shhh people don't understand nuance. To them hiding because it's prudent while still having hope is the same as hiding because you are ashamed of failing.

How is letting the galaxy fall and other ginger jedi’s Trying to flee the empire get slaughtered prudent or having hope? And what does that hope do? It didn’t help the 10000’s of people who were killed while yoda was sitting in a swamp or obiwan was farming dirt.

[tyrlaan]

boba fett wasnt the prime main villain of the story though.

and the prequels might as well not exist unless for guides on how not to make star wars movies.

And clearly neither was Snoke.

Or we could use the Emperor as the example if you prefer, who had no backstory until the dreaded prequels gave him one. (You seem to have this mistaken opinion that I think they were great movies or something just because I mentioned Darth Maul. To be clear, I vehemently disliked 1, 2, and 3)

She didn't need to give details of the plan, but easily could have said that there was one other than having hope. People were escaping and committing mutiny because she didn't bother to show there was a plan or show that she is actually in charge and doing something. Her ambivalence and seemingly taking no action lead to everything that happened. It is good that she died because with "leaders" like that the resistance was doomed anyway.

It's not like mutiny was already going on and she was like "hm, I think I'll keep my plan quiet". Mutiny happened because Poe thought he knew better than everyone else and he found some followers to be stupid with him. IMO, the biggest criticism you could make stick on Holdo is pre-judging Poe based on what she likely was told about him from Leia, but honestly Poe had earned her disdain when he caused so many casualties earlier in the film.

The "twist" didn't work anyway. It was a stupid red herring designed to give Poe/Fin more depth in a convoluted and idiotic way. Holdo didn't need to exist.

Huh? Not sure how it was a red herring.

I disagree. Snoke unlike the Emperor needed more backstory. In the original movies the backstory wasn't needed because all we needed to know was there was an evil galactic empire and he was the leader. With Snoke we have 6 movies that proceed his introduction that shape the story world we are watching and Snoke doesn't fit in without some backstory to explain his existence. Where was he all this time and when did he make his existence known? Why does Luke know of him, and why did Luke abandon everyone and close himself off from the force all the while knowing Snoke is out there?

So how many years went by between ROTJ and TFA? 20? 30? Whatever the number, it's a lot of time. Which means plenty of time for a lot more than just Snoke to have shown up as a sith. Literal decades have gone by between trilogies, so not sure why it's crazy for new characters to appear or why they're obligated to have a backstory (when SW has, as someone else pointed out, been rife with characters without backstory). All we need to know in this trilogy is that Snoke was the guy who corrupted Kylo. It's really no different than the Emperor/Vader relationship in the original trilogy.

Something that I didn't think on much at the time, but man. Poe should be executed.

First he got the bomber fleet destroyed through insubordination, and Leia just demoted him but left him on the bridge. It was murky if the result was beneficial or not, but he CONTINUED to be insubordinate. He sent his undercover team that ended up meeting up with an untrustworthy figure that sold them out and got half the remaining alliance killed. He also nearly prevented the shuttles from launching, getting everyone killed. His insubordination definitely made things much harder on the surviving rebels and very nearly ended the alliance entirely. If he had acted like an actual officer, just the purple commander lady would have died and everyone else would have escaped.

Yup, Poe is officially a piece of shit and got off waaaay lighter than he should have. Completely agree.

[Lorgar Aurelian]

Let’s not forget than Obi-wan was there to watch over Luke

Him watching Luke was a load of crap, he doesn’t train Luke as a real Jedi or do any thing of value for years on end.

[Archon14]

It didn’t help the 10000’s of people who were killed while yoda was sitting in a swamp or obiwan was farming dirt.

I think it's established by now that certain figures hope for a miracle, ignoring thousands of normal people who have to fight and die regardless of whether that miracle comes or not.

We were shown in Rogue One what happens when there are no "chosen ones" to save the day. But it also showed us that people could actually accomplish something without having to rely on powerful figures.

[Archon14]

Without Luke using the force the efforts of those in RO would have been for naught.

Sure, but the characters in RO fought anyway, not knowing for sure if the plans will change everything, be unobtainable, or just replace their suicide mission with a mission impossible later on.

Meanwhile, Kenobi and Yoda chilled. And no matter what happened in OT, normal people had to make sacrifices to make everything possible, and that should count just as much as the miracle that happened afterwards.

[Deleted]

To be fair with Yoda and Obi-Wan, Disney paints their exiles better than Lucas ever did. Both help the Rebels (Ezra's team) in different situations, Yoda teached from distance Ezra and then told where Malachor was, while Obi-Wan kills Maul when he was looking for the key to defeat the Sith (aka Luke).