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

Which lines are you thinking of, specifically? Aside from "the Force is strong in my family"?

There's no evidence to suggest what you're saying about the Jedi picking and choosing. And if there were known Force bloodlines, they'd be part of the Jedi Order, not on some distant planet a Jedi would have to travel to in order to pick up the latest Force Baby.

And as for Rebels, Caleb chose the name Kanan Jarrus when he went into hiding during the Purge. It's nothing to do with the Jedi giving anyone new names.

 

Nothing requires any strong bloodlines to all be Jedi members.

ANH: Obi-wan assumes Luke will be strong because Anakin was strong
ESB: Yoda says Luke is powerful like his father
ROTJ: Luke says the Force runs strong in his family
TPM: Qui-gon implies Anakin must have gotten Force-sensitivity from his father when asking Shmi who he was
TFA/TLJ: Rey assumes her Force strength must come from having an important parent

As I said: "Anyways, it doesn't really matter, we just know it's a Saga theme that bloodlines are important for Force sensitivity, even if not a necessity." I'm not really interested in continuing to hash out this argument.

I just wanted to rebut that they were never implied to be important at all, that:
"Luke could learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi like his father because he was good-hearted and believed in the power of nature."

The OT never implied that anyone good-hearted who believed in nature could become a Jedi. Or else most of the Rebel Alliance would have been Jedi, Obi-wan would have trained several armies by ANH, and Luke could have taught every other Rebel what he knew by TESB and especially ROTJ. This wasn't a Prequel invention, like you say.

 

Even the new movies promote bloodlines.

But I think the confusion is that people are under the impression that bloodlines are the ONLY thing important to Force sensibility, which I don't understand because then that would mean that Mace Windu and Ki Adi Mundi were related to Anakin Skywalker.

 

When specifically does Obi-Wan assume that? What line? Yoda saying Luke is powerful like his father doesn't mean it's because of his bloodline, otherwise it'd be a super obvious point Yoda likely wouldn't make; of course he'd be powerful like his father if that were the case. Qui-Gon just asks who the father was; I don't see anything beyond him just trying to figure out where Anakin came from. And as for Rey, where exactly does she assume this? And she also wouldn't know anything about where her Force strength came from anyway.

That's fine, but you seem to be making a lot of assumptions based on a vague sense of dialogue. The argument hasn't really been hashed in the first place.

That's exactly what the OT is; it's a moral fable showing you what a good person is meant to be, and what a bad person is meant to be. Lucas has spoken specifically about this, most recently during his Celebration appearance. Obi-Wan wasn't watching over him as part of a grand plan when ANH was made, so none of that wider stuff factors in. Luke was an archetypal hero who travelled into the supernatural world and gained special powers because he was on the side of nature. Connecting him to destiny came later.

 

Being good-hearted and nature-loving doesn't make you strong in the Force. I don't know how you're arguing that. See everything else I just typed. I'm not interested in arguing anymore.
(also, a lot more have been built out of just a line or two of dialogue in Star Wars... and at the same time you're saying the dialogue I cite is vague, you're also saying it wouldn't even need to be said if it were true... and Rey assuming her parents weren't nobodies is central to the plot and characterization of TLJ... and of course when Qui-gon says "The Force is unusually strong in him. Who was his father?" he's asking because he's thinking the father must have been strong in the Force, it's ridiculous to think Qui-gon was just vaguely curious about his paternal family tree.)

 

I'm not arguing that; I'm not saying it makes Luke strong in the Force. Nothing but the individual's own nature makes them strong in the Force. People like Rey and Snoke can get hung up on bloodlines, but it doesn't mean they aren't under a misapprehension -- Snoke especially.

And my comment about it not needing to be said was specifically in reference to Yoda pointing out Luke was powerful like his father, not the rest of the dialogue.

 

Hope it's not too off-topic, but I never really understood this idea that nature was inherently good. I have a genetic defect I will suffer from the rest of my life due to nature. Other people out there have even more horrific genetic defects. Brain eating amoebas and flesh eating bacteria come from nature. All venoms come from nature. Cancer, AIDS etc. come from nature. I noticed that when people talk about how nature is good, they pick the nice stuff and leave out the really horrific, permanent, 'fate worse than death' (you can look up some horrible genetic conditions out there that will make you want to cry) stuff.

Star Wars has this dualism about trusting your feelings, but using control. Luke totally slipped up on the 'control' aspect that night with Kylo. One would have thought that this would have been emphasized more, but instead it came down to Luke blaming 'Jedi hubris' over his own slip-up of the Jedi rules on control. I have a lot of issues with the Jedi and think there's a case for ending it (training kids who can't make up their mind on this difficult lifestyle, no-marriage, no-attachment rules that are against human nature), but not one of these points was used in 8.

Nature has good elements and bad elements, but we have to work with our own nature. Unnatural stuff can be good (yay to droids!) and working with human nature (understanding hormones, attachment, etc.) works better than blatantly defying it. That doesn't mean everything natural is good, but by working with nature we can minimize the bad impacts of it. The Jedi rules, however, are really just about suppressing and working against human nature, in my opinion.

 

That's a fair point, and I'm sorry to hear about your genetic defect. A lot of mythology chooses to ignore the reality of nature though, as does pretty much all religion. Nature is life-giving and the machine is destructive and dehumanizing, so it's the typical dichotomy of these sorts of stories. It isn't meant to exactly equate to real-life experiences, but rather a spiritual ideal -- hence Luke being Lucas's idea of what a good person should strive to be.

 

What started this discussion was me responding to you saying
"Luke could learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi like his father because he was good-hearted and believed in the power of nature."
And arguing that was undone in 1999.

Since you now say you weren't as clear as you thought you were in that post, let's move on.

It's a rather new phenomenon since the 1800's and the Industrial Revolution, creating the Romanticism movement. Before that, with few exceptions, there was a big emphasis on nature needing to be tamed like a garden, and the evils of the wilderness coming up a lot in mythology. Nature was the home of many pagan gods and goddesses and spirits, but most of them were a mix of bad and good.

 

I think Shatterpoint does a great job of breaking down how the Jedi do not really fight for nature, the fight for civilization and justice. Constructs of people, because the jungle is a representation of the dark side. Dog eat dog, pure survival and base instincts, ego and nothing more. Always felt that embodied the Jedi better since they don't just sit b and let nature take it's course, not really.

 

Again, not what I said, but fine, let's move on.

That would be the dark side, then. TLJ frames the Force specifically as part of the duality of nature, with the balance existing between the nurturing and destructive aspects of the life cycle.

 

Argh, don't remind me that this was literally the first work to be "purged" by the new canon with Star Wars: A New Dawn prequel novel. I mean yes we all got the announcement that everything was Legends, but I thought they wouldn't bulldoze things unless there was a strong, film/tv based reason for it and they would let us long time fans pretend the Legends stuff was canon unless they had no choice but to contradict it for a blockbuster movie/show.

And here I am all these years later after Rebels is over wondering why Kanan's master had to be Depa Billaba, of all Jedi, and not say Eeth Koth because I saw every episode of Rebels and can say 100% that Depa being Kanan's master instead of Koth (or whoever) would have made no difference to the Rebels story.

Anyway, I'm wondering now if Rey's books will be more "nature" based or "justice" based.

 

Agreed 100%. Losing Shatterpoint still hurts

 

I was just responding to the exact quote in this post:
http://boards.theforce.net/threads/...mors-spoilers.50038540/page-355#post-55224417

And I agree that's the dark side. I was saying not all religions or philosophies view nature as good. That movement only started in the 1800's/1900's.

 

Yes, and you interpreted that quote as "Being good-hearted and nature-loving doesn't make you strong in the Force". I wasn't saying anything about what makes someone strong in the Force, nor anything about "strength" at all.

Sure, though my point about religion was more that the natural world is idyllic, being the product of a creator, and all of the terrible aspects that would infer a sloppy, potentially malicious design, are broadly overlooked.[/QUOTE]

 

This is your exact quote that I disagreed with "Luke could learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi like his father because he was good-hearted and believed in the power of nature."

And Abrahamic religions believe the world is fallen, and Dharmic say it's "maya" and deceiving us of the nature of true reality.

 

Okay, we're clearly both miscommunicating, so let's leave it.

 

That is one possibility, yes. A more likely one than having that many of his students simply turn right then and there, IMO.

Why assume the opposite, in light of plenty of lore that shows that Jedi primarily trained children - indeed, we learn in TPM that kids as old as 9 were generally considered too old to begin training? In any event no assumptions are being made, I'm just offering a logical alternative to "Luke was a crappy teacher and that's why his students turned." Someday I'm sure we'll find out what actually happened.

He's dead. That's all we need to know. A story that details all the gory ways he was tortured to death is unnecessary.

Where in the visual guide are you reading that Luke had enemies, or thought himself or his students targets, when he founded his temple? If you're talking about the mention of Luke keeping the location a strict secret, why assume he's hiding from enemies? Think about the timeframe. The Sith are destroyed, the galaxy is at peace. Who's really going to threaten him or his temple? I read Luke keeping the location of his temple secret as a means of avoiding interference from a Republic he had already distanced himself from more than anything else.

 

To answer your last question, death watch or black sun may want to wipe out the jedi.

Also I don't think training kids would have been Luke's thing since the last time the jedi were wiped out, kids got involved per rots and I assume Luke didn't want a repeat of that. But maybe I'm wrong.

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I think it's still plausible that they fight for civilisation, whilst also serving nature's balance.

 

I don't think that the Jedi fight for Nature with a capital n. Rather, they fight for the natural order of things. For things to live and die and exist as they are (for the most part). This is not to say that the Jedi are some holistic order. I don't think they mind things such as limb replacement or things that make quality of life easier for people, but they seem to want to preserve the universe in a state of...well, balance.

 

Sorry, I was not clear at the part I was focusing on - Luke say that people in his family are all strong in the Force, that means that there are people who are not as strong as they. I was not thinking about bloodlines when I wrote that example. Also, if they are supposed to be strong, what do that make Rey or Broomboy? Super strong?

But Luke is supposed to be, like his father, extremely talented. Also I would say that reading/feeling the Force (which is the only thing Luke do in ANH) is a bit different from manipulating the Force (like "summon broom" or mind trick).

I agree with the PT but that's not my impression of the ST: my reading of the ST is that it say that balance is something between light and darkness.

 

semi-related, my sister had grabbed my Hux toy figure while I was out and wrote this:



hahaha Hux's Snoke Death Freak Out and Kylo Force Choking him bit is absolutely gold.

Also speaking of Last Jedi yuks, this was on the MTV movie and TV awards. It's very stupid. I laughed. "It's for my bacckkkkkk!!!"

I would say if they had Qui-Gon's Handy Dandy Midchorlian Count scanner thingie, she'd probably be pretty high up there. But she was awakened in the Force. But it was always there, she said it specifically herself "Something inside me it's always been there but now it's awake and I'm afraid and I need help." And also Kylo saying "at night desperate to sleep you see an island." So, yeah, it's always there for her, personally I think the moves Rey is performing in the crashed Star Destroyer in her very first scene is the Luke bullseye-ing womp rats, Anakin being the only human who can race pods unconscious bit of Force usage for her.

 

Good thread about Luke I thought i'd share

 

Well, if I needed further evidence that Twitter is massively messed up, that covers it.