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

I don't understand why anyone expected lengthy, in-depth background about Kylo Ren's fall in only the second film of the ST. Fans had to wait over twenty years - around the same amount of time as X-Men fans had to wait for Magneto's, interestingly enough - before they had the sort of "reason" for Vader's evil that you're looking for for Kylo. I was young, but I nevertheless don't recall many people walking out of ESB in 1980 claiming Vader was "poorly written" because they hadn't gotten his chapter-and-verse origin story yet.

 

Fans knew in the second Vader movie, outright titled Episode 5, that they were going to get an explanation of Vader's fall. That's why ESB was titled 5. They knew even in 1980 the prequels were coming. We don't have this promise with Kylo. There's a good chance what we see is all we'll get, just like the Grand Inquisitor has come and gone in Rebels (Rebels is now over) and we never got his name or why he went bad.

As for Magneto--well that's a major reason why X-Men sold so poorly that it was cancelled in 1970. Once better writers with better writing revived the comic in 1975, it became the hit we all know today. So readers were already reacting poorly to cardboard Magneto even in the 1960s.

 

Given the number of counterexamples throughout both Legends and canon continuities - including the one about to release in theaters next week - believing that if we don't receive a character's detailed backstory upfront, or at least an implied promise of one, we never will, honestly seems a little silly to me.

 

Reminds me of something I heard on this video once

 

That's why I quoted the Grand Inquisitor as a specific example. It's not silly. The GI died years ago. We don't even have his name. Other pressing things like Count Vidian having his eyesight cured with tech but Kanan not having access to it (this affects his entire character and life) aren't even addressed, and I literally waited until Rebels was over for an answer...

Since these aren't answered and may never be, how is being skeptical about the future silly? "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me" as they say.

And the few answers we have got, such as the promised legitimate reason why Luke was hiding in 7, have been for me quite bad. So... how is my skepticism silly? I've been burned a lot. To say that touching the same pot again, you won't be burned again seems odd.

 

I dunno Ghost. If I go by the films alone, there doesn't look to have been much seduction needed!

 

I actually had an entire "fan script" in my head that Snoke was the life form that Darth Plagueis created (thus why he doesn't look exactly quite human), and basically inherited Plagueis' power. Snoke went into hiding the night Palpatine killed his "father". Rian says the name Plagueis doesn't mean anything to Rey, but it didn't mean anything to Anakin either. Rian and everyone forgets that what was meaningful was the power to stop death.

I had this whole idea that Snoke was basically a Force vampire. He'd drain the life of a healthy young innocent person to regenerate cells in himself or another being. That's how Plagueis stopped people from dying.

8 would open with Snoke draining the life of a screaming Resistance captive and healing his facial injuries. Ben Solo then reveals to the audience that, long ago, he and Luke rediscovered Plagueis' power when they found Snoke, but Luke refused to use it to save anyone as it required the sacrifice of another life. Ben's girlfriend was dying. Luke could have drained the life of a nearby Kanjiklub gangster to save her, but he refused to do it and refused to let Ben do it. Ben's girlfriend died, and Luke tells Ben "It was the will of the Force."

One night, Ben slaughters the entire Jedi Academy and tells Luke "It was the will of the Force." He then walks off to join Snoke.

Luke went to Ahch-to to try to research a non-dark side way of preventing death, to win Ben back. His research has found nothing. At the climax of 8, Kylo tells Finn "FN-2187, execute Order 66." Finn shoots himself in the head rather than kill Rey, and Rey falls to the dark side in an epic showdown as she brutally beats down Kylo and cuts off his arm.

Luke, at long last realizing the answer, heals Finn by draining his own life force. Finn gets up in tears, completely healed physically and mentally healed of his FO conditioning, knowing Luke sacrificed his life for him. Rey, sensing Luke's sacrifice and Finn's survival backs down just before she kills Kylo, and Kylo flees.

In the end, Kylo drains Phasma, who has failed again, to regenerate his lost arm. He then heals a sick young girl on the holonet by draining a Hutt gangster. The galaxy cheers and welcomes the First Order, and 8 ends on a dark note for our heroes, with the galaxy disregarding Luke's sacrifice for the quick and easy "death cheating" of the dark side.

Needless to say, none of my imagined story made it into the actual film

 

Ben was corrupted by magic Ren poison, duh.

 

I guess you should know, Ulic Qel-Droma (that is your username right?) having fallen to the dark side by Sith poison yourself.

 

Kylo Ren's backstory is he turned to the dark side because he's an angsty putz who doesn't think he got enough attention from his family but had a creepy old father-figure in the shadows who told him he was very special his whole life.

 

So....like grandfather, like grandson?

 

More or less. I think the "he wanted to save Padmé" gets too much credit when "he resented the Jedi for not appreciating him enough and didn't think anybody could possibly really understand him so that every rebuke he got was received as an iNJuStiCe!" is much closer to the mark.

 

It only seems that way in ROTS only. TCW brought in that the Jedi drove Ahsoka from the Order, and lied to him about Obi-Wan's "death" by Rako Hardeen. So the Jedi and even Obi-Wan lied before, and could be lying at any time because they already proved they would lie when convenient.

The 'being a Master' fight in ROTS seems petty only because Ahsoka isn't mentioned. Anakin would have been a Master if Ahsoka hadn't been given up for the death penalty by the Jedi without the Council doing anything more than the bare minimum detective work (Anakin got down and dirty and figured out it was Barriss). Anakin is then blamed for not being worthy of being a Master for something the Council themselves did--mistreat Ahsoka, who was innocent and framed, to the point that she left (so now Anakin can't train someone to Knighthood and become a Master the normal way).

 

Time between the release of Episode V and the final chapter (to date) of Anakin's backstory in The Clone Wars: 1980 - 2014 = 34 years.

Time between the release of Episode I and the briefest canonical hints of Maul's backstory in Son of Dathomir: 1999 - 2014 = 15 years (arguably still hasn't happened).

Time between the release of Episode II and the canonical explanation of Dooku's history: Still hasn't happened, scraps only, 2002 - 2018 = 16 years to date.

Time between the release of Episode III and the canonical explanation of Grievous' history: Still hasn't happened, scraps only, 2005 - 2018 = 13 years to date.

But you're willing to throw in the towel on Kylo Ren after less than three years?

You shouldn't need someone to tell you explicitly that the richest guy in half the galaxy (Count Vidian) has access to medical care that isn't available to a Rebel Jedi in hiding (Kanan). And you're ignoring how much backstory we do have on the Grand Inquisitor (and how it is currently being explored) just because we don't know his name (and in my opinion, we should never learn it, but that's a different argument).

 

We got the Battle of Galidraan in 2002, on why Dooku turned. It was in a Dark Horse comic, Jango Fett Open Seasons I believe.

A book in 1999 told us that Maul was raised from childhood by Sidious to be evil.

Grievous' history was given in Labyrinth of Evil, again before ROTS came out.

Anakin was an exception, but "Episode V" was basically an IOU to the audience that Lucas made good on (and then got bashed in the mainstream for I guess).

I suppose we now do technically have an explanation on why Kylo turned evil with the lightsaber thing. But it seems a lot weaker than Dooku (Jedi told him to genocide Mandalorians), Maul (raised from birth to be evil so he knew nothing else), and Grievous (believed the Confederacy saved him from his shuttle accident caused by the Republic and wants revenge).

It's not so much Kanan can't pay for it, but that the tech isn't even mentioned. Ezra shows how far he will go to steal and fight for his friends, but the option of stealing tech for Kanan isn't even mentioned. Not even mentioned. It's completely out of character for Ezra not to mention it.

 

Why is this relevant, or opposed to what I wrote?

Is this really why you think the Council doesn't appoint him a seat among him or grant him the rank of Master?

 

Did you read Dark Disciple? They reinstated Master status to Quinlan Vos, who killed a lot of innocent people (and the Council knew of this). He killed clones, and another Jedi. Not in self defense. But to illegally break Dooku out of a justified legal imprisonment.

I quote from the novel itself regarding Quinlan:

He was brought before the Jedi Council, and there, exhausted and soul-sick, confessed every one of his crimes... planting the bombs in the asteroid... killing Bayons and the clones aboard the Vigilance...the murder of his friend Akar-Deshu.

And this is all canon by decree of Story Group (the same canon as Ep. 8, which this thread is discussing). Look at the above book quote, read it several times, and ask: did anything Anakin did that the Council know of even come close to Qiunlan's atrocities? If not, then the Council by its own rules should not have reinstated Quinlan as a Master over making Anakin one (since all Council members were masters by canon).

Nothing Anakin did that the Council knew of (they didn't know about the Tusken massacre but they knew about Quinlan's massacres) warranted Quinlan being a master and Anakin not being one. I agree, if they knew about the Tuskens the Council had a reason not to make him a master. But with Quinlan a master, unless they have proof of the Tuskens they'd either have to promote Anakin or demote Quinlan. At the least Quinlan should have been demoted if not expelled from the Jedi Order.

 

Not canon.

Not canon.

Not only not canon, but contradicted by canon.

There are at least six months between "Twilight of the Apprentice" and "Steps Into Shadow". The fact that they didn't waste screen time on it doesn't mean it didn't happen, and that's if Ezra even knows about that technology. It's not "completely out of character" for a kid who had until then been presented as kind of a dummy (I say with all affection) to not know something.

 

Ezra was probably the only smart guy who told the Mandalorians "Take off that armor" when Sabine's weapon was being used against them. Practicality wins over tradition.

You are right, none of those are canon now but they were canon at the time (C-canon to be precise, which was canon unless contradicted by T-canon or G-canon). "Star Wars doesn't reboot" was what Leland Chee said. We quoted him and his holocron in those days the way people quote Story Group now.

 

Going by the films is exactly why it's needed. Luke almost tried to kill Ben because of how much Snoke had already twisted him by that point. How was Snoke able to do this? What was Ben's motivation for going dark? Those are related, essential, and as-of-now unanswered questions.

 

That Ezra is two years older than the Ezra who decided that the creepy guy who lives on a Sith planet is someone you want to make friends with.

"I don’t read that stuff. I haven’t read any of the novels. I don’t know anything about that world. That’s a different world than my world. But I do try to keep it consistent. The way I do it now is they have a Star Wars Encyclopedia. So if I come up with a name or something else, I look it up and see if it has already been used. When I said [other people] could make their own Star Wars stories, we decided that, like Star Trek, we would have two universes: My universe and then this other one." - George Lucas, Starlog #337

 

That's Lucas' personal opinion and even here he says he keeps it consistent. The policy of LFL was that it was canon. Lucas said that he personally thinks Anakin got his scar in ROTS by slipping in the bathtub ( https://www.thoughtco.com/how-did-anakin-get-his-scar-2958028 ), but neither Legends nor canon has referenced this and Legends has a different explanation for the scar.

By this reasoning, 7 and 8 aren't canon because Lucas has said it's not what he'd do (he said so in several interviews: https://www.theatlantic.com/enterta...ar-wars-vanity-fair-the-force-awakens/392669/ ). I thought, then in Legends and now in Disney, that corporate rules on canon override Lucas' thoughts (unless they decide to go along with them, i.e. Stewjon).

 

Pure semantics and marketing. Those stories were marketed as canon at the time, just like the stories published today are marketed as canon.

 

He keeps names consistent is specifically what he says there. And if the canon relationship were what you insist it was, then The Clone Wars would have been a very different show. Jango Fett would still be a Mandalorian. Grievous wouldn't have a shrine dedicated to the robot body he despised in Legends, nor would he have gone on about how great it made him. Hell, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith would have been very different, since we already had married Jedi and Knights on the Council for a long time by then.

(And as far as I'm concerned, the fact that we haven't seen where Anakin's scar came from means Lucas is probably right and he got it in the bathtub. Those Skywalker men have never been that bright.)

The "canon levels" were a gentle way of telling the fandom that it wasn't actually canon. Clearly it was too gentle.

 

So how do you define canon? By corporation or by Lucas? Because if it's by corporation, then yes Legends was canon by LFL pre-2014. On that same note, Disney is now canon post-2014 and Legends is not.

If it's by Lucas, then probably the only canon is 1-6 and maybe TCW. Aside from the link above I gave where he says the current ST isn't what he'd do, we have: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-lucas7-2008may07-story.html .

So I'm curious if you define canon by corporation or by Lucas? Because if it's by Lucas I assume you don't consider the ST canon; and if it's by corporation I don't understand why you would blame us for going along with Legends stuff being canon pre-2014 (there was no Disney yet and LFL was the only corporation and it put a canon label on the EU).