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

At the very least, going back to my suggestion a few pages ago, Ben should not have gotten a lightsaber yet but some sort of self defense stun blaster.

 

Where are people getting the idea from that Ben/Kylo had a fully built saber in the academy?

Ren's saber in TFA is a hodge-podge, piece of crap that looks unfinished. It screams 'bad do it yourself' job. The energy flow isn't regulated, it cracks out the side, only just keeping itself together - much like its wielder!

 

It would have been negligent to leave him without training to control his abilities and his feelings. That it doesn't wind up working doesn't change the fact that training him was the only responsible thing to do.

He...uses it. In the flashback scene. And his new saber appears to be, if not actually his original lightsaber rejiggered to work with the cracked Sith crystal, at the very least is based on the original design.

 

Thanks, must have somehow entirely forgotten about it.

That poses a puzzle for me then: As he has that, which proves he can build a proper saber, why have the piece o' crap in TFA?

 

I think the exhaust vents on the side - and their accompanying wiring and hardware - are explained as having to compensate for his use of a cracked and unstable Sith crystal in this saber. He wanted to use this particular crystal enough that he had to cobble together ugly stop-gap modifications to make it work. Dollars to donuts it's Darth Vader's, cracked when the Death Star exploded.

His lightsaber - and I'm just realizing this as I type this and it's kind of making me emotional - is, like his dad's beloved Falcon, a piece of junk that has it where it counts, heavily modified for efficiency rather than aesthetics or reliability.

 

Stylistic choice? Maybe he just likes the look?

Tell that to the hyperdrive

 

Don't ever tell Kylo that! I like your idea.

 

They really hate that ship.

 

If a man draws a gun on you (or sword) then you are within your rights to assume they're going to use it.

Why Han never needed to shoot first.

Greedo had his gun on him and that's enough justification for Han to shoot.

 

If you are at sword school and your sword teacher is carrying a sword, are you really within your rights to first lunge at him with your own sword, then try to murder him by burying him alive?

 

And then kill all students who don't want to follow you and burn down the school

 

He is the hero we need and wanted.

 

Notwithstanding, Luke was not intending to use it.

 

The Luke we knew never would

But the Luke we knew would never abandon his sister to fight Space Nazis alone.

 

Which also didn't happen. Leia doesn't know that the First Order is a thing during Bloodline; she just knows "something" is coming when she starts the Resistance. The incident at the temple also had not happened yet (or happens during Bloodline, it's currently unclear). Luke leaves during peace time, at the end of a quarter century of it. He goes to a planet without the Holonet or wifi or even newspaper delivery and he cuts himself off from the Force; he has no way of knowing about the First Order until Rey arrives on Ach-To.

Look, I get that the backstory of this trilogy is very lightly sketched at the moment, but since that's the case, why keep filling it in with the worst possible version of events? Especially when it often contradicts the little bits we do have?

 

I am not trying to put the worst face on it.

But I am also not going to cut it any slack either. Mark Hamill wasn't happy with it either and I understand he knows Luke pretty well.

 

And then he saw the movie and loved it. From experience it can be impossible to tell what a movie is actually like when in the midst of making it, even from reading a screenplay. Nobody was thrilled with the first Star Wars while they were making it either, after all, though Marcia Lucas did her best to keep everyone's spirits up (also according to Mark Hammil).

Regardless, your "not cutting it any slack" has turned into ignoring actual dialogue from the movie, as well as the context of the (admittedly meager) EU.

 

My view on the subject is that Luke came to the Jedi Temple to die and let the Jedi die with him despite the galaxy's desperate need for them.

It's not an uplifting message.

 

That's why the story only begins there, instead of ending there.

Anyway, Luke tells us it was a moment of instinct, and that he didn't intend to kill Ben. That makes more sense to me than Kylo's story of attempted murder - which is why, I think, the writers allow it to be the final word on the incident.

 

It's also a common storytelling trope. Party A tells their side of the story, Party B tells their side of the story, and then the third time the story is told, it's the true version. It's used often with flashbacks, as it was here. It's one of the few tropes Rian Johnson plays straight in this movie, rather than subverting it.

 

Even the tropes Rian subverts in his film, he mostly sets upright again by the end.

But yes, the implication is that
Scene A) Luke is lying by omission - it's incomplete
Scene B) Kylo's version has more information, but is still incomplete
Scene C) Luke's final version, after he's confronted with his omission, completes the information

 

I think people are upset with Luke because they view him from the lens of the real world. Yes he didn't kill anyone, but he slipped up and held a deadly weapon at his student.

People in the real world are fired for less (saying inappropriate things etc.). If a principal pulled a gun on a real naughty kid who was napping at lunch break out of fear said kid might do something in the future without any proof, then immediately lowered the weapon, any video footage of that principal would get him fired immediately. I'm not sure what the legal charges would be. Even if said student later does commit crimes, it doesn't magically erase the principal's misconduct.

Now what would we expect the principal to do? We'd expect him to immediately own up to his mistake, apologize, and say it won't happen again. But by all accounts Luke didn't do that. Yes, Kylo went on a rampage, but it's clear Han and Leia didn't know about Luke's slip-up at all (Han definitely would have said something in TFA about it).

Luke doesn't come clean when discussing Kylo's fall either about it. Rey has to attack him first to get the truth. People would expect a full disclosure of the gun incident if fired principal ever miraculously got a new teaching position, and that it would not be a secret--it would be on his public record. Luke goes into a new teaching position without coming clean about his past.

People say the criticizers are being too hard on Luke, but if anything it seems like we're being far easier on him than we would be on a real life person who did something similar (my principal example).

 

Depends. Is the principal part of an order of monks attuned to the mystical power behind all of creation, trained to view their weapons as an extension of themselves and to reach for them in duress, and does the principal know that this student is being actively seduced by an agent of pure elemental cosmic evil, and then when he goes to see the student reach into that students mind and have terrible visions that seem to confirm that this student is also an agent of elemental cosmic evil, visions that terrify him and that cause him to instinctually reach for his gun like he's trained to, but not fire it because he's got self control and context and precisely because of how well trained he is? And maybe this principal wouldn't do this in every context but he's a little emotionally compromised here because this isn't just any student it's his nephew who he loves?

Because then I think it might at least be understandable.

 

Carol Danvers is that you? (Marvel Civil War 2 joke ) Future visions don't mean anything, they are just high probabilities but not set in stone. I'm with Tony Stark on this one, we can't harm Miles Morales just because we all had a vision of him killing Captain America. We shouldn't even go near him with twitchy fingers.

 

You're right. But, of course, Luke doesn't move to kill or harm Ben. So. I don't know what exactly your complaint is.