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

You know sometimes i wonder if this is a lose-lose situation either way when it comes to moving forward.

Try to "Fix" what Last Jedi did (If you think it needs fixing) then you risk alienating those who like TLJ and want them to continue in that direction. Don't "Fix" (again if you think there needs fixing) and the people who are already off put by the ST don't jump back on.

I mean heck here is a person who likes TLJ and doesn't want to go back to the old ways to give a example...

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It's a bit worrying. I didn't exactly say anything particularly controversial either.

 

Don't worry. We've all done it. Several times.

 

So in the BTS features there's a different take of Luke throwing the saber way. There's the jokier, more unexpected take in the film itself where he flips it over his shoulder. And there's also Luke tossing it away horizontally which oddly makes him look even angrier and more epic. But I like the over the shoulder flip because it's done so randomly perfectly.

 

The BTS one is almost a perfect mirror of the DSII throw-away

 

Yep, this is the hole they are in but it's of their own making. Unless someone can convince me that LFL did not, by design, make the most divisive blockbuster film of its generation. They thought its boldness would pay off, financially it pretty much has, but beyond that? Far, far more murky.

The strange thing about it all is the ST really does seem to be treading the route taken by the Denningverse, on steroids, with a dash of the Legacy comics - Empire's back, Solo kid gone bad, yes - you can use anger, those dumb ol' Jedi.....

As I've gotten older, I've come to conclusion that Lucas was onto something with how he portrayed the dark side. The criticism is that merely being angry doesn't make someone evil, but I don't see ROTJ as advocating that - rather, what Lucas is talking about is anger as a basis for decision-making. In that respect, it's pretty damn awful and rarely do good decisions flow from it - Sidious knows this and he knows it works. Had Anakin had time to really consider what he was doing in ROTS, might he have stopped? Maybe, which was why Sidious keeps him isolated and active, to sling him past the point of no return willingly.

 

I thought the whole point of the Dark Nest Trilogy was that you can't be "grey" for long, using anger without turning Dark - eventually you will either have to renounce "greyness" or fall.

In FOTJ Luke certainly says that, in the context of the Aing-Tii's "Rainbow" concept. That it's a nice idea, but not applicable to Jedi - you're in the light, or you fall to darkness, but there is no grey area.

 

Ah, but we're not up to Episode IX: The Swarm Porg War.

Of course, if we're right, this requires they morph Kylo into Raynar....

 

Where does TLJ suggest this though? The end of the film is Luke winning with non-violence and at peace. That seems to be the opposite of suggesting anger is the way.

 

Luke certainly, Rey? Not so much, there does seem to be a utilitarian angle of 'use whatever you like' to both her and Kylo. End of TLJ suggests maybe Rey is over it, but there is evidence for a relapse in Ep 9 in that in TFA you could liken Rey's dueling finale with Kylo to ObiWan's flash of anger with Maul in TPM, but ObiWan then didn't repeat it in AOTC whereas Rey does seem to in the Praetorian duel in TLJ. That and earlier we see Luke be critical of her for going towards the dark without resistance. So, has she really quit it? Can she really give up what the dark side offers?

I suppose if Ep 9 really wanted to go batcrap insane it'd have Rey try to redeem Kylo, fail go full dark in rage at him, that snaps Kylo out of it, thus a redeemed Kylo has to kill a dark Rey! Hmm, nahhhh, they wouldn't... Would they?

 

But Rey is still a learner, even below Obi-Wan in TPM. She's still at the same place as Luke in TESB, who displayed a lot of anger through, and until the end, of the film. I'm not sure where your suspicion they are changing the Jedi teachings comes from? Luke didn't suggest that anger was acceptable, nor have they suggested Rey's actions were any more 'Jedi' than Luke doing it in TESB or Obi-Wan in TPM?

 

Does the darkside have any effect on Rey? By the end of TFA she only had a five minute lecture from Maz on the Force. She has a chance to kill Kylo there, but the plot says Kylo can't die that early. Then she went for her "darkside cave" easily in TLJ, there was that weird mirror scene, but then nothing. She didn't get a warning like Luke did (his own face behind Vader's helmet), rather she's forced to confront that there's no big secret about her parents, they were just non-entities.

Its not like Luke taught her much, he gave up again after seeing how powerful she was, as well as her finding out about his mistake with Kylo Ren. She has another chance to kill Kylo, and that would finish off the major darkside threat. There's no other darkside master waiting in the wings, as Luke killing Vader would have only condemned himself to the same fate as his father (which he realized and turned away from the darkside).

She's emotional but not like she got a wake-up call as severe as losing a hand. She offered Kylo a chance but he wouldn't take it, and she's only growing more powerful.

Which goes back to how Kylo is still mostly a joke. Well, not so much a joke, as just a brute force thug. He's lost both battles against Rey, so not much suspense there.

 

Well her darkness manifests itself differently. Unlike Luke she's plagued with self-doubt, and that is primarily motivated by the knowledge that her parents were no one and that she was abandoned. This inevitably leads her to not see the hope in herself but in either Luke or Kylo, and since Luke won't help her she goes to Kylo. She should be seeing it in herself, which is what the cave is telling her - don't let this question define you.

 

That's exactly what we were discussing for a while in this thread. Personally I think it would be the most interesting way to go given where they've limited themselves after TLJ. What's the major confrontation going to be in 9? Rey v Kylo again? At least having them switch sides would shake things up a bit. Rey staying light the whole trilogy, Kylo staying dark the whole trilogy . . . just doesn't seem right I dunno. Suffice it to say JJ's been left with some serious work to do.

 

Hm, I kind of agree with that, as her interactions with Han, Luke and Kylo fit that. She led a lonely life on Jakku, clinging to the desperate hope that her parents would come back for her someday, , which TLJ reveals was probably a self-delusion. If she had actually spent more than ten minutes with people other than Luke and Kylo in TLJ, maybe we could see her establish more bonds with people. Too bad Chewie doesn't count as anything other than a taxi driver for her.

I'm just not sure where her character goes from here. She already trusts the plot, er, the Force enough to leave Kylo alive, she's given up on him (as when she basically walked away from their mind link), Luke is gone (unless Force ghosts can really help that much with training, outside of a few lectures and conversations, and Luke was sure still far behind Yoda in terms of wisdom when he died so I wouldn't expect more). She could try to spend more time with Leia, but well, um, yeah, that would be problematic (and even before outside circumstances changed things I doubt they were planning to leave Leia alive either). Seems like Rey just needs an army to fight the First Order as otherwise she's pretty stable already (and is pretty much a match for Kylo too, if not better).

There are no teachers left, so seems like Rey's already graduated to being the last Jedi (since Leia doesn't seem to have much conscious control of her power). IX had better come up with a good reason for leaving Kylo alive, but well, that's unlikely. Its not like anyone else can slow Rey down aside from Kylo (since they're the last two trained Force users we know of), no other teachers to go look for, so not much else left for to do but win the war. Unless she's somehow supposed to teach broomboy and restart the Jedi Order in between movies, but I doubt they'll have that big of a time skip.

 

Why do you assume Luke's Force Ghost can't teach Rey? Qui-Gon taught Yoda and Obi-Wan. Yoda could have taught Luke as a Force Ghost.

 

Considering how Luke ended up, I doubt Luke saw Yoda again until he was about to burn down the tree. Unless Luke was intentionally blocking him out. Ugh, I just realized Luke kind of ended up like drugged out Cade Skywalker from the old EU Legacy comics.

While we know Qui-gon taught the Force ghost technique to Yoda and Obi-wan from beyond (unless that's changed in nu-canon, there was that weird Yoda trilogy in TCW), that was one technique to fully trained Jedi. Its not like Obi-wan could teach Luke everything after his death, instead sending him to find Yoda (outside of a few reminders as we saw in ANH). A few old EU sources had Obi-wan giving Luke lessons but those appearances usually didn't last longer than a few minutes.

I would like it if Force ghost Luke could play a big role in helping save the day in IX... but then that kind of undermines the newer generation, and IX should be their time to shine. Well, if the sequels had done a proper passing of the torch, then by IX things should fully shift from old to new, but the old generation is already mostly gone after having failed, so it'd be silly to go backwards and then have the older generation contribute in IX.

TLJ already had tons of Luke and Rey scenes, she has the books, she already found out Luke's dark secret, no point in Luke spending more time with her after his death. I kind of hope more for Rey interacting with the rest of the cast. Not because we must have a new Big Three, but rather that IX can't simply be Rey mowing down stormtroopers on her way to killing Kylo. Well, unless Kylo's incompetence is the only thing keeping the First Order from winning outright, that'd be hilarious.

 

Got it. I don't think I agree that Abrams missed that - his and Johnson's refusal to explicitly fill in backstory seems to be one of the things that fans are most upset about.

I think the context and the framing at the end of TFA communicate that her actions ate more akin to Luke turning off his targeting computer to blow up the Death Star than Luke hammering away at Vader for threatening Leia.

 

Wouldn't that be for Ep 9? They've got to save something to mimic from ROTJ for the next one yeah?

 

I feel like the ultimate judge will be 9 - Solo I feel, while perhaps might some effect, is such a separate project that people can distance Last Jedi from it, for the most part - though 9 might be able to get a good marketing campaign with enough space and hype to at least make it a fiancial success.

One should wonder that much like the EU that had stuff from multiple era's come out, people will be able to say ...Ok the RJ trilogy is set in the past away from the stuff I don' like (Sequel Trilogy), if that's the case of course - and sorta see each project as it's own thing. That eventually will just be in a pick and choose situation were I'll stay with the Game of thrones guys stuff but maybe stop watching anthologies, or so and so forth.

For every Denning's Novel their is a Darth Plagueis Novel waiting somewhere.

Now to be fair I like the Sequel Triology and want them to not go back in any regard and press forward full speed. But that is just me.

I feel like this video does a good job at talking about what people want from Star Wars

 

Nice video -- though he really only starts getting to his point from about 12 minutes in; the previous is mostly just recapping the franchise's history.

 

After thinking about it a bit, they actually should have showed just slightly more of Ben's Jedi massacre, and have it mirror AOTC. After dropping the hut on Luke, Ben could run out, saber ignited and behead 2 students who rush to stop him (just like Anakin did to the Tuskens in AOTC). Have Hayden shout "Ben, Ben, NO!!", ironically it being the only time Ben actually hears Anakin/Vader despite all his subsequent prayers to Vader's helmet.

I know there's still a lot of mainstream dislike for the prequels and AOTC in particular, but I think something like this might have worked and been a nice mirroring of a previous movie that makes sense.

 

And then they could cut to Hosnian Prime where Leia's working in her office and suddenly feels Ben's anger. Then Han walk in and ask her what happened.

"I feel pain, suffering, death. Something terrible has happened. Our son is pain. Great pain."

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Ah THAT'S probably why it was stuck in my head so much, it's a throw away exactly like Luke's "I'll never turn to the dark side" to the Emperor. Which is great but also you kind of want a different toss on Ach-To because the context of the two tosses are different. Palpy got the refusal, Rey gets the irritated one.

 

Yep. Luke's throwing his weapon down at his enemy's feet in ROTJ, so it makes sense he's throwing it forwards. Luke's literally tossing the past behind him in TLJ. So I think the finished film went with the right choice for that moment; the other would have been a case of fanservice over the purpose of the story.