ST Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker) in the ST

Nah.

I mean, I think RJ can be disingenuous but mostly because he likes to talk in half-truthes, sans context.

But I think he was telling the truth, there.

Again - I wouldn’t put too much stock in the surface read. RJ LOVES his meta. *LOVES* it.

 

It would have been pretty bad-ass to have seen that guy in the last two photos for more than 3 minutes. With the right color lightsaber, of course. Hey RJ; that saber looked white. That's why George Lucas (remember him?) gave Luke a green lightsaber in the first place. Maybe RJ should have researched that when he was figuring out if lightsaber was one word or two.

 

I corrected myself after that, saying that it's not vital, but still a pretty important part of the story. I myself haven't been able to read the novel yet, but they said that the Luke and Snoke back story is pretty big, and I think if it's big, it should be in the Last Jedi movie, considering they're both dead and Luke's story is finished.

 

Thinking back to the earlier debate about whether more about Luke's exile is being witheld from us. While I do think we'll find more about Ben's fall, on the commentary, RJ talks about his thinking for the flashback and whether or not he should include a montage of Luke and the students training, and Kylo's corruption, but ultimately decided to cut it right back to the key detail that mattered for Luke and his exile. So, while I accept that JJ can shift the context, I think anyone banking on a secret wife or child (or something else) being the mystery part of the puzzle that explains Luke's exile is in for disappointment. The reasons for Luke's exile are laid out by Han in TFA and Luke in TLJ and it all revolves around the night in the hut, the confrontation with Ben and the massacre at the temple. Anything else would be gilding the lilly.

@Prime Jedi - I think you should read the novel. There is nothing major in there about Luke and Snoke at all. And I highly doubt Luke's story is over any more than Ben Kenobi and Yoda were finished after their deaths. I seem to remember Old Ben showing up from beyond the grave to tell Luke some relevant backstory.

 

Wow, I didn't know about those details from the novel. They sound so interesting, I wish I could read them but I don't have the money to buy them!

While I have been saying negative things about Luke's portrayal in The Last Jedi, I must say that the movie really did flesh out his character more, while I may not enjoy how it was executed, he did have character development and I think it helped the story a lot. Snoke, on the other hand.......

 

@Prime Jedi



Yeah, that’s major pretty much by definition.

 

I think the filmmakers know when it's best to reveal that kind of thing. If it's the key to understanding the ST, it will be revealed when apt, in 9.

You don't need to know any of that to understand TLJ, any more than we needed to know how Anakin Skywalker fell to understand ESB.

 

What are you calling "genuinely memorable"? Do you mean like a "no, I am your father" kind of moment? There's nothing remotely memorable like that in TLJ, so I don't really understand how bringing up GL's writing in the PT helps portray TLJ as better writing. Emotionally memorable moments of the PT imo, and I'll focus on AotC (seems apt since it's the middle movie of the trilogy), include Anakin finding his mother/death of his mother/slaughter of the tusken raiders, and the Anakin/Padme wedding. I'm sure I'm missing something because that is, besides TLJ, the only SW movie I've only seen once or twice, but those moments stand out to me as emotional and moving and super significant to the greater narrative. As someone who didn't love AotC and found Anakin annoying, I was moved by both scenes. I got the contrast of the grief and the tragedy and anger with his mother compared to the beautiful but ominous secret wedding that we knew would lead to our twins and the fall of Anakin. The "visual storytelling" as people call it was beautiful in that.

For TLJ, missing on your list I would put at the top Luke in the Falcon with R2 and the Leia hologram, but I personally don't grant that as superb writing when it rests on the nostalgia factor to the OT. The other big, emotional, moving moment is definitely Luke's grand finale, which I for sure think is memorable, but it is also undeniably controversial. Also, neither of those moments involve Rey, importantly. When GL put effort into an emotional scene, it was about the protagonist and served the bigger narrative beyond the moment. I think that is unquestionably superior script writing to not doing that. Holdo's big moment is really just a special effects extravaganza. If we are discounting special effects from the PT, I'm not sure why that one would make the list. Luke & Leia's reunion was sweet but I mean, no way are those dice a fraction as memorable as LF wants them to be.

One thing I am just going to have to dispute, not with @Satipo specifically but the sentiment generally, is the idea that RJ is this fantastic screenwriter compared to GL. Part of that, people say, is his dialogue, but I'm just not seeing what's so spectacular about his dialogue at all. There are multiple moments of dialogue in TLJ as cringey as anything in the PT. On the whole, I'd characterize TLJ's dialogue as awkward. I just think this narrative that RJ is a master scriptwriter deserves some pushback, because that is not indisputable fact.

TLJ focused very heavily on Luke, but it wasn't supposed to be Luke's story. The big moments shouldn't be about him, but they are. Or if they were about him, they should have been about Luke and Rey.

 

What JoJoPenelli posted seems pretty major to me. And I apologize for improper wording, I meant that Luke's story arc is most likely over, as in if (and most likely when) he's in IX, he's most likely not going to receive any more character development, Rey and Kylo will be a bigger focus.

That sounds so interesting! I wish there was a way I could read it for free.

 

While I agree the key arc is over done for Luke, there's still more they can do with him beyond force ghost exposition (which I would imagine is a bare minimum).

I think when we learn about Ben's fall - which we haven't yet - then we'll learn anything like that we need to - and while Snoke is dead, the fact that he was responsible for Kylo's fall gives us further potential to learn about any relevant issues - and I think it's possible Kylo will follow up on some of Snoke's knowledge - and that's where we'll learn about Snoke's designs if they remain important. For now, what we need to know is that Snoke corrupted Ben and the fallout from that destroyed the Skywalker and Solo family and drove Luke into exile. We know the thing Snoke feared most was Luke's return and the rise of the new Jedi. I think that's enough to understand the story so far. Would I like to know more about Snoke's origins, or how Ben feel? Absolutely. But those stories will come along at some point. I'd also say this - that info is great background for a novel, but I don't know where you'd put it into the script. Who would reveal it in a plausible way. If it was that fundamental to TLJ, RJ would have put it in.

 

You don’t need to know that to think that you understand Luke in TLJ, right.

Which isn’t the same as actually understanding Luke in TLJ.

Just to be clear - I think elements of TLJ make little sense, but by design. I believe there are things we’re not supposed to know or understand yet.

I don’t understand your apparent resistance to the idea that aspects of TLJ may be genuinely mysrerious. I mean, Daisy herself said she expected people would have enough questions to keep the fandom busy “for another two years.” Lies? Deception??

 

I'd agree that there is some clunky dialogue in TLJ (true of all SW films to some extent), and some dialogue which needed a bit more work. But there are also some great lines. Generally the dialogue is not as polished as in TFA, but I can't agree with the above. Without wishing to get too off topic and I'm not using this to bash the prequels as I'm sure even people who love them would admit that the dialogue was their weakest point, but are there really multiple lines in TLJ that are as bad as these? All personal opinion of course, but I think that's pushing it...

You are so beautiful…It's only because I'm so in love…No it's because I'm so in love with you…So love has blinded you?

Love won’t save you, Padme. Only my new powers can do that.

Hold me, Ani…hold me, like you did by the lake on Naboo, when there was nothing but our love…

Yousa in big doodoo dis time

Pretty much everything that Jar Jar says

I wish that I could just wish away my feelings

They must be dead by now. Destroy what’s left of them

I’m haunted by the kiss that you should never have given me

I don’t like sand. It’s coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere.

I’m not afraid to die. I’ve been dying a little bit each day since you came back into my life.

Nooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!

Not if anything to say about it, I have…

 

totally wrong thread, but you're on to something. Snoke was effective. He wanted to take out Skywalker from the Force mix by eliminating him. And in away, he managed to make that happen for four years. By corrupting Ben Solo, Snoke managed to separate and destroy the Skywalker-Solo family. The OT3 was strongest when they banded and worked together. But he knocked the whole thing out but stealing the only heir from underneath their noses. Talk about a long game that payed off if he started his work when Ben was a child.

There's a great passage from Fry's novel about how Snoke managed to do just that (from Leia's perspective):

Snoke was effective. He destroyed Luke's spirit, and for a while, made Leia resent her brother and be glad that he had vanished. He destroyed them by attacking their sentiment and their attachments to family. Snoke didn't need to assassinate Luke. He had effectively done that by setting things in motion that drove Luke into exile and to become an Force apostate.

Snoke's biggest fault was thinking he needed Kylo to finish the deed and kill Luke. Had they not set the Butterfly effect of TFA in motion, Luke would have died a broken hermit on Ahch-To, and Snoke would have won at his end game. Kylo would have never doubted him and would have remained his faithful war dog.

Hubris took down Snoke in more than just the Throne room with Kylo and Rey.

 

That’s really all there is in the novel. I’m sure we’ll learn more in 9 But basically - the bedside incident does not fully explain Luke’s state in TLJ. So if you’re puzzled as to why Luke is so broken, that’s because his life wasn’t hunky-dory as of that flashback.

Fun stuff, I’m sure

 

I think that passage is about how Snoke deliberately broke up the Skywalkers. Luke was doing fine, learning about the Force, until problem boy Ben Solo (with Snoke's manipulations) became too volatile and difficult for Han and Leia to handle. Fearing that he might go the way of his grandfather, they sent him to Luke. It was after this event that Luke decided to restart the Jedi order (though according to PH long ago it was never what he wanted--maybe someone has that tweet as I'm probably butchering it a bit). It doesn't hint to me that Luke suffered a great tragedy before Leia and Han sent Ben to him, at all. It makes perfect sense with the story we already have.

In short, the passage is referring to how Snoke masterminded using Ben Solo as a tool to destroy his family.

 

@JoJoPenelli I may have to haul out my ‘Alison Pill finger-shoots herself’ gif again, soon. You’ve been warned.

 

I agree, and I honestly wouldn't mind if they dedicate a decent amount of time into backstory in episode IX.

 

That's cool, but I don't think that changes our disagreement here. In the PT, I don't think Lucas effectively "redeemed himself" in any way, while you think he did. I think the good in the PT can't be seen with the naked eye when we're atop Misstep Mountain. You think I make a mountain out of a molehill. Hey, maybe I'm just really, really small. YOU EVER THINK ABOUT THAT, PAL?

I'm with you, and I struggle with both the Yoda scene and the Force projection scene because as someone who really, really enjoys TLJ I feel like I'm supposed to be enthusiastic about these scenes but they don't really work for me. I find them pretty awkward overall. Some of the dialogue in the Yoda scene is kind of weird to my ears, and Luke's "Amazing..." lines sound like something out of a dumb comic book movie to me. The grandiloquent tone just strikes me as lame. I think both scenes are fine for what they are, but...I guess I just don't see them as "iconic" or particularly memorable. I think the idea of these scenes are more impressive and interesting than what RJ did with them.

I don't think there are any in ROTJ, either, except perhaps the sarlaac sequence.

I agree with a lot of this, maybe most or all of it. I think TLJ is a totally badass, impressive, bombastic, vital...mess of a movie. Cinematic coleslaw. Many of the creative decisions made (both on the page and on the screen) puzzle the hell out of me. A lot of times it feels to me like the original writer/director was fired a couple weeks before production began, and new-hire Rian Johnson thought the script was perfect and disn't want to change a thing. Part of me wishes he could take a mulligan on it and spend a couple years rewriting a new Episode VIII because, I mean, I really, really like this movie. Moreso than TFA, which I also really liked.

 

I definitely expect flashbacks/forcebacks. Can get in a lot of broad-stroke exposition that way without taking up too much narrative space

More lil Rey! Lil Ben (FINALLY)! Lookin forward to it.

 

Yeah I don’t get the vibe if some 11th hour reveal such as a hidden parentage/mystery-lost child.

This is hinting at what I referenced above. Snoke didn’t just target Ben Solo to be his dark apprentice because he was the best little student out there. He deliberately targeted Ben because corrupting him and facilitating the scion’s fall because he was plotting for the gift with purchase—the destruction of his greatest greats: the Solo-Skywalker family.

Cripple them with grief, facilitate a very effective way of dividing and conquering: get them to turn on each other.

Ben becoming enough of a concern that he was sent to Luke was the catalyst that caused Han to leave Leia. Who knows if Han resented Luke for this. Per what Leia said in TFA (When I sent him away) it was a bilateral choice from her. Did Han feel like Luke and Leia took his son from him?

As I cited above, Ben’s fall sent Luke into exile. And equally important made Leia so angry/grieved that she didn’t stop Luke from leaving and on some level, fine with his departure.

Snoke doubled down on this separation of the OT3 when Han became a factor again in TFA by convincing Kylo to kill his father. That resource and lifeline came close to taking Kylo Home. I suspect that loving influence on Kylo would only increase if Han stayed in play. So he made Kylo do the heavy lifting and eliminated Han.

As a gift with purchase, this would wound Leia even further.

Snoke definitely knew what he was doing when he targeted Ben Solo. He found that impressive apprentice with off-the-chart abilities, but by picking him, he dropped an even bigger bomb that disrupted the one family that stood in his way to roll through the galaxy.

That’s enough of a tragedy that some mystery lost Reywalker conspiracy theory really isn’t needed to add to the family trauma.

 

So do I. I expect Luke to come back as a force ghost and will probably have at least a decent role in episode IX.

 

I expect a small but key role. His presence (recovered) dominates. Luke’s my favorite character but he can’t upstage Rey again

 

That is true. This movie is Rey's time to shine, just as it was Luke's time in ROTJ.

 

Although I loved TLJ - I'm still annoyed they killed off Luke & Colin Trev was right to be against it ,

Why couldn't Luke have been actually there at the end & not projected & simply jumped on the Falcon after his altercation with Kylo ?........