A/V Episode VIII - THE LAST JEDI - Official Movie Discussion Thread

I feel it too.

How do you get this from the film? He says "there was too much Vader in him," attributing it to Ben's personality.

Because he thought it was a lost cause.

This isn't at all comparable.

oh okay

 

I guess I sensed it in hans voice when he first sensed kylo, but I could be wrong. Harrison is a great actor and delivers a lot of emotion not necessarily in dialogue

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Okay, a character arc is defined by a character changing as a person from the start of the story to the completion. Now, I guess you could facetiously argue that Han and Luke both have the same character arc because the way they changed as a person at the end of the two films is they both dead.

But Han didn't even really undergo an arc since he was playing the Obi-Wan role.

Luke underwent an arc where he was haunted by a ghost from his past -- his failure to detect the growing darkness in Ben, and his instinctive reaction being to kill Ben -- and so the guilt of that weighs heavily on him and he's living out the rest of his life in exile like Ulic Qel-Droma, not trusting himself to be capable of transmitting his Jedi knowledge to another generation for fear of his failure tainting it, until Yoda tells him that his failure makes him a better teacher.

But he still doesn't become a teacher, but instead becomes exactly what Rey and the Resistance needed him to be: Luke Skywalker, a legend. And maybe he will become a teacher now as a ghost.

If that's the same as Han's arc then your view of the films is immensely reductive.

 

I don't think Luke's life on Ach-To resembles his life on Tatooine at all.

 

With respect, can we just lay off on this kind of tone here? I mean, it's ok if we disagree on the films. It's ok if you like the ST and I don't. It's ok to say that you feel the arcs are actually different. But I don't call your view of films "reductive". There's just no need for this.

 

well that's why I called it a stretch

But I feel like this complaint is basically distilled to "Luke and Han are both old men and surlier for it!" as if that's an arc.

 

I've decided this how Episode IX should end:



Kylo Ren: First, Han. Then, Skywalker. And now, you. It's a pity you "heroes" die so easily, or I might have a sense of satisfaction now.

*YOU GOT THE TOUCH*

Luke: ARISE REY SKYWALKER*

Rey: Luke...

Kylo Ren: No!

Rey Skywalker: THIS IS THE END OF THE ROAD, KYLO REN!

*AFTER ALL IS SAID AND DONE YOU NEVER WALK YOU NEVER RUN YOU'RE A WINNER!!!!*

Rey Skywalker: NOW.... LIGHT OUR DARKEST HOUUUR!

*LIGHTSABER IGNITES*

(Then the giant Transformer Death Star Snoke transferred his consciousness into blows up)


*Not saying she's his kid, I'm saying it has become a title signifying awesomeness

 

I definitely agree that there's a balancing act. Just like we don't have to know exactly how the Rebellion came to be in the twenty years between ROTS and ANH, we don't need Leia to sit us down in TFA and monologue us through the entire backstory. Some things will just be different over time. Like, the movies haven't told us everything about Ben Solo's fall, but they've given us enough to get a picture. But I don't think that's a blanket get-out-of-jail-free card for the total lack of exposition on most subjects.

They don't have to explain exactly the political maneuverings that led the First Order to be -- the books can do that. But they need to give the viewer something. Like, what does the First Order want? Are they Imperial ultraloyalists? Do they have an ideology beyond "be cartoon villains for its own sake"? Hux's Starkiller speech is a perfect opportunity to establish something, anything, for the audience about the First Order. It establishes that they want to rule the galaxy and they really, really hate the Republic, which is associated vaguely with "disorder." Would it take any effort for Hux to just add, "Though the Empire may have surrendered, we will fight on to fulfill the Emperor's vision!" or something? And then, bam, the audience understands what the First Order actually is.

The whole "oh we can't stop the movie to explain where Snoke comes from, it's not relevant" thing feels like a dodge for the same reason. We don't need a whole scene dedicated just to Snoke sitting down with Rey and bringing out a PowerPoint presentation to explain his entire backstory. There's not this false dichotomy between that and nothing at all. It can be as small as one line. When he's shouting at Hux, he can complain, "You and your handful of Imperial children were nothing until I emerged from hiding and shared my vision with you, yet you have repaid me with nothing but failure!" It doesn't have to explain everything so much as it has to assure the audience that there is an explanation there. Because right now, not only does the audience have no idea what exactly the First Order is, how it came to be so powerful, who Snoke is and why he's important . . . there's absolutely nothing whatsoever in the films themselves to give the audience any suggestion that the people making the movies have any idea what the First Order is, how it came to be so powerful, or who Snoke is and why he's important.

That's where you start to lose your audience. That's what Ulicus is talking about with the difference between making some stuff up as you go along, and making it obvious when you're just making stuff up as you go along. "It's not important how our villains fit into the universe. They're there because we need them to be there and that's it." It's just not a very compelling argument to the viewer to come along on this journey with you. Like the talk about TPM -- the Jedi don't sit down and read to Anakin from a history book to explain every aspect of the Jedi-Sith conflict. But the film also doesn't completely ignore that these factions have history. It gives you enough to get a sense of what that picture is, to understand it intuitively through a handful of lines here and there and the dynamics of the film itself, because Lucas gets how to do that. These movies haven't done that yet.

It's not a perfect analogy, certainly. Though I think Hela and Snoke/FO line up pretty well, and that's the main thrust. But while ROTJ doesn't have really blatant sequel hooks a la frozen Han or Odin-Loki, it does set up threads for the viewer to expect any sequel to follow up on. Luke restoring the Jedi. Leia's Force-sensitivity. The Rebellion restoring the Republic. Han and Leia's romance. Lando's continued existence. Most of them are not completely ignored the way the bigger issue of status-quo connectivity is (though Leia's Force-sensitivity certainly comes close, and obviously the whole reason I included the Lando reference is that he's a main character the ST has completely refused to include). But they do receive, at the least, the treatment that The Dark World's dangling threads actually got in Ragnarok's first act, which is to be blown off and dismissively resolved as quickly as possible so that the movie can go off and do something different. Luke restoring the Jedi? Eh, not really, they died. The Rebellion restoring the Republic? Yeah, but we blew it up before it could get in the way of our Rebellion rehash. Which is not a whole hell of a lot better.

 

But can we talk about what would possess the dude to taste what could've been, for all he knew, dirt? Like, who is this guy?

 

You think that'd end this internet conflagration when we're the only ones that read books?

I could also see this happening and then ep 9 craps all over it - oh the last guy? HE LIED!

 

@Havac

I don't disagree, the NR and Starkiller were the weak parts of the film.

re: Snoke, I don't have anything besides anecdote but based on personal experience the people that I've heard complain about it are mostly EU readers or at least more than "casual" movie goers and fans. I'm waiting to see what Jason Fry gives us in the novel -- which I don't expect to be extensive for future exploration, unless the story group has written off the character entirely and let him finish him off, so to speak.

FWIW, I don't disagree with a lot of the criticisms you guys have, and I've provided some of my own like Artoo being sidelined; I just enjoyed the films and wish you guys did.

Other than that, there's a certain poster whose name starts with the last letter of the alphabet, and I feel like some other posters are starting to sound like that poster, and while it's amusing for one person to do it, it's kind of annoying now that there's something of an army forming

If we do get a full backstory to Snoke, I'm really expecting them to be done with the character.

 

I now have this vision of Ultra Magnus doing a 819-slide mind-numbingly boring version of the Snoke account.

Probably, but I'm not really seeing any good escape options from the hole they're in. They do a full, character story like the other books and some will be hacked off by the fact it's a one book and done, but if they use him across a number of pre-ST stories they'll get slagged for milking the character to a degree unsupported by the films.

 

A mother****ing boss, that's who. I hope he gets a huge NEU backstory and it turns out that he hails from, like, a planet of Salt Royalty and he's got the honor of wearing the Saltbloodstripes or something.

 

There are some differences, the biggest of which being that as you pointed out Luke can stick around as a force ghost and still effect the story. Still I would argue that the core is the the same for both of them.

They both suffered a failure with Ben and are haunted enough by it to ditch everything they cared about and run away. Granted Luke went significantly further than Han down this particular road. They both play reluctant mentor to Rey ( though yes Luke was significantly more reluctant ), and they both overcome the personal demons in thier past in order to be a hero one last time.

 

Of course Artoo is sidelined; we have BB-8 and his ADORABLE antics now. You are all required to worship at the altar of BB-8 and his overpowering CUTENESS. Artoo would just get in his way. He cannot be allowed to distract from BB-8 and his coin-spitting powers of badassdom.

 

Let us all praise Rian for telling JJ "No" when he planned on sending BB-8 with Rey.

 

And damn him for inflicting an eternal Plague of Porgs.

 

I hope Artoo gets a Big Damn Hero moment in Episode IX.

Like, Kylo has Rey's back to the wall. She still hasn't built a lightsaber. All hope is lost. BB-8 has been destroyed.

And then BOOM, ARTOO JETPACKS INTO FRAME AND OUT POPS LUKE'S GREEN LIGHTSABER AND INTO REY'S HAND

. . .

And then I call JJ out for copying RotJ. BWAHAHAHA.

 

Han isn't motivated by any sense of failure in becoming a smuggler; his marriage fell apart because his son was Rosemary's baby. If he felt guilt in that film, it was over the fact that he realized he could have done more. But to suggest that he went back to smuggling over that guilt is mixing up the causality. He felt guilty for going back to smuggling.

I do worship BB-8.

And the Porgs.

you all suck

 

Your faith in your porgs is yours.

 

I'M SURE YOU ARE

 

I can't wait for all the hype to begin once the title of 9 is revealed--Star Wars Episode IX: The Wrath of Snoke.



I mean, we're all but told he was the source of the Dark Side in those Aftermath books right? He can't be that easy to kill?

 

Star Wars -- Episode IX: There is no Dark Side, it's the dark side.

 

Star Wars Episode 9: The Trial and Execution of Rey Nobody.

A different type of film, with more art house style filming, directing, and writing. It opens with Rey in a jail cell awaiting execution. The majority of the movie is shown in flashback as Rey reminisces on how she self-trained an army of Jedi, took on the First Order--and it went horribly wrong, Poe, Finn, Leia, everyone--gone. The Jedi books burned and all digital copies erased.

However, it's revealed some of the stormtrooper corps have pirated copies of the books. They read them digitally under those helmets.

Rey goes out to meet the stormtrooper firing squad. They fire. Then roll credits (it's unclear if she's hit or not).