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

Well if you look at what they're doing in Rebels, that scenario is definitively a possibility.

 

And by that you can see that this would at least get a reaction out of people! What was the last great, 'disturbing' "I am your father" twist in popcorn movies?

 

I'd laugh.

 

If Kylo is going to be redeemed, Leia needs to do it. She's the only one who believes in him, and she didn't get the chance to go with Luke to the second Death Star and confront Vader.

 

You know, I'm starting to think that if ANH was done now people would be going on about how terrible it was that Luke killed Tarkin and all those "noble" Imperial officers.

Seems that if you're a bad guy redshirt, you get slaughtered; if you're Named Bad Guy - Kylo - you can't be offed.

 

Yeah, there is indeed that.

Ultimately I'm not so attached to villains that they can't get killed off*. Plus, there's the Hydra element - kill one and two will take their place.

* Blame British comics, or perhaps more accurately Joe Dredd.

 

Then those people should both love the Prequels but hate ROTS. Why? Because, by the end of ROTS, all the ambiguity that Sidious took advantage of to propel himserlf to power is stripped away. By the end of the films you have a crystallised structure where the division is pro and anti Empire so setting the stage for the OT. It's easily one of smartest aspects of the film. By the end, the Jedi are dead, Sidious and Vader rule, the building of the Death Star begins and we know 18 years time it goes boom.

I do have to wonder at those who throw the charge at the OT that it is too simple in its good / evil structure because Jedi really explores that with a good amount of nuance and complexity. ESB drops the bomb on the Luke-Vader relationship but it's Jedi that has to make it actually work and it does. And that's before we even factor in that the OT is a galactic civil war with all that that entails..... All within an overall framework of good and evil.

 

I strongly disagree with that.

Is that in response to Rey going to the dark side in Episode 9?
I don't see it happening... but... it would be like watching the PT (or what people imagined the PT to be like) without knowing about the OT. As long as they end up then doing episodes 10-12 (which is rather inevitable), why not?

 

Since he's the only Skywalker heir, his redemption is pretty much inevitable if you ask me.

 

You really consider the Emperor to be in any way redeemable Ghost?

 

Everyone is redeemable.

It's a personal, fundamental belief to me.

 

No, no, no. Not the question, how is the Emperor redeemable? How do you consider him to be so?

With Vader we can look at him and see something, a tiny sliver perhaps at times, but something from which redemption could spring. What is that for Sidious?

 

He likes opera.

 

And racing.

 

You don't think about it the same way I do.

He's alive. He's a person. That means he's redeemable, that means there's good in him somewhere.

Palpatine never had a connection that could find that in him, and draw him back... like how Vader had Luke. We never even got to know as much about Palpatine as we did about Vader. But that doesn't mean it isn't there somewhere. The potential is always there.

I believe everyone in the real world is redeemable too, even tyrants and killers like Hitler. I don't believe in hell, at least not an eternal or punishing hell. Retribution is never justice. I believe everyone will eventually be saved/redeemed and go to heaven because everyone has some good in them. If they can't be reached in this life, I believe there's time after death where God will be able to find a way and reach them.

So yeah, of course that fundamental faith/hope/love carries over.

 

Jedi really does seem to take pains to emphasise the difference between Vader and Sidious, we're supposed to be happy at the latter's demise and sadder at the former, post his act of redemption.

I really like this Carl Sagan quote:

The hard question becomes is: How many unique lives is one person to be permitted to wipe out in the name of their possibility of being redeemed? There is no quick or easy answer to it.

(Everything that's been posted about Invincible says Denning was going for Jacen-as-Emperor, the fans remained wedded to Jacen-as-Vader, thus we end up with an eternal clash over how that book plays out.)

 

Yes, Vader and Palpatine were different, one was redeemed before he died and one wasn't (at least to our knowledge).

And who said anything about permitting someone to wipe lives out because they might be redeemed? Whoever said that? Please don't fight with a strawman.



And going back to Star Wars and the point I originally responded to... if Vader had succeeded in killing Palpatine and becoming the new Emperor (say Luke didn't turn himself over at Endor, Vader killed Palpatine and fled before the Death Star II exploded and declared himself Emperor) would that have suddenly made Vader irredeemable?

No.

Kylo Ren killing Snoke and becoming the new Supreme Leader wouldn't make him irredeemable either.

 

That. Rey going temporarily dark would actually be an intriguing twist, although (barring the icky romance angle) I'm inclined to think it would make it harder to redeem him as well.

 

Sigh, you've been doing too much net debate with idiots-who-want-to-"win"-at-all-costs Ghost. That was simply my summary of the problem here, that's all. This is all intended as exploratory, not adversarial.

What has more value? A unique life or the redemption of a person living a bad one? If the two clash, what takes priority over the other? When is it permissible to kill a bad person? Doing so means depriving that person of their chance of redemption, but if it means others escape harm from that person, what then?

This is why Vader's redemption is problematic for me, what redress do his victims have?

It's why one of the elements in NJO I liked greatly was the idea of Anakin Skywalker aiding Jacen at the critical moments. That Anakin was indeed redeemed but that he looked on at the galaxy he had wrought and sought a form of atonement offering in helping with the Vong, that only then did he see a need that he could aid with that might be a sufficient start.

 

He enjoys laughter.

 

The emperor isn't redeemable in my eye in the context of the story being told because he's not character or rather I should say "person"... if that makes sense. Rather he is a stand in or embodiment for something like 'temptation', 'evil', "the dark side', etc. Kind of like how Sauron from Lord of the Rings embodies war, despair, or some other vice. Jabba is in the same vein, except he is embodies 'greed'. Less a person and only existing as a hurdle for the hero to overcome. If Luke was not a character in the trilogy would there be any reason for the emperor to show up? The emperor has no backstory, no characters or hints from his past. See, we can't even come up with the question of "Can the emperor go through redemption?" without it being a hypothetical question in relation to other characters. In the Original Trilogy he's a name spoken with reverence or whisper and then bam! he shows up to turn Luke to the dark side.

 

What do you mean, if it was made now? The Clerks scene made "well actually, Luke is really a mass murderer!" a very common contrarian argument in the 90s. I'm pretty sure David Brin used it in Star Wars on Trial, too. Hell, Karen Traviss probably had Luke Skywalker himself confess to deliberately trying to kill everyone on the Death Star as a reason why he was terrible in LOTF.