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

Well, Leia's in a gown at the end of TFA, and that's presumably to celebrate the victory; perhaps even symbolizing a turning point from being the general of a military group no one believes to actually being a prominent figure on the galactic stage again. As for TLJ, the novelization reveals she'd just conducted a funeral for Han before evacuating, so presumably she's still in her mourning dress (and hasn't had time to change into one of several dozen outfits like Padmé used to).

Holdo? She's unorthodox, likely a holdo-ver from her days as an oddball.

EDIT: The Visual Dictionary says Leia's wearing sombre colours to reflect the gravity of the situation, and has her hair in an Alderaanian mourning braid. Holdo dresses in the style of her homeworld to show her devotion to her people.

 

Tell that to their aliases. You know, all the ones who answered their call

That feel a bit strange that they took the time for that since the beginning of TLJ show them in a real hurry to evacuate everything.

 

Well yes, "symbolizing", not actually. Leia can't know what's ahead, but she's obviously thinking of the future in regards to Poe's leadership and her becoming "luminous".

Sure, but they're in no rush in TFA either despite the FO already knowing where the base is. Presumably Leia's aware the FO will have to regroup after losing Starkiller before they can counter attack, giving the Resistance a bit of a grace period to celebrate and mourn. Plus Ackbar basically forces her to do it, and transports are taking off even while she's giving her speech.

 

Holdo had more important things between "oh **** the starkiller is attacking," "oh **** the starkiller is destroyed," and "oh **** we gotta run" then a wardrobe change.

 

Has there been any explanation of wardrobe changes or indeed choices in any version of Star Wars ever? I mean, if we're cool with the numerous incredibly elaborate getups that Amidala and/or her double switch between in the middle of a planetary crisis (sometimes just for a few shots) during TPM alone, we should be good here! And from the same film in the opposite direction: a Jedi going undercover by dressing precisely like a Jedi... in SW, costuming is about being cool or weird far, far more often than anything practical.

 

The laundry ship is always on the front lines for some reason so Holdo and Leia's outfits (and Poe's) were the first to get blown up which is why they changed. Not the best strategy.

Still as much as the Last Jedi takes place right after Force Awakens, there's clearly a time jump between the last time we see Leia in TFA and when we see them in TLJ, meanwhile Luke/Rey's meeting is immediately following the last scene. Rey spends a night outside Luke's hut before he agrees to three lessons so I just thought that over the course of that night is when the Evac of D'Qar started

 

There's a gap while Rey's travelling to Ahch-To; her plot and the Resistance one join up when Finn asks where she is, and we cut to her meeting Luke. That's all happening simultaneously. Poe destroying the Dreadnought is while Rey's en route, or climbing the steps.

 

We don’t even know if Ach-To and D’qar are in the same galactic time zone or if their days are synced. The former could even potentially act like Dagobah - a force induced time sink where time just goes slower. I think Pablo explained it like that a while back.

 

Man I really hate that explanation for ESB. It feels like overexplaining how Luke was trained so much while Han and Leia are fleeing the Empire when a perfectly fine explanation exists (space travel is expectedly slower when there's no hyperdrive).

 

I personally like it as an idea, that it exists somewhat out of time due to the strange nature of the Force. It obviously helps in explaining how Luke got so much training when it looks like he was there for a week max.

 

It could, but there's no need for that to be the case because the film's timeline works fine without it. And its inclusion in the Visual Dictionary was Pablo fudging how long Luke might have been in exile on Ahch-To, likely because that timeline's not been worked out yet.

 

Amidala is in the middle of a planetary crisis, but most of her queen costume stuff is organized around ceremonial dress and goinf before the Senate. I get that. It makes sense.

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We are in the middle of an evacuation! With all due respect, General Organa, I don't think this is the appropriate time for a funeral. Why don't you help us load up one of the transports. We're on a tight timetable here and we can use every pair of hands we have. I promise, we will have a full funeral with proper honors for Captain Solo once we're secure at a new base.

 

As I said:
Presumably Leia's aware the FO will have to regroup after losing Starkiller before they can counter attack, giving the Resistance a bit of a grace period to celebrate and mourn. Plus Ackbar basically forces her to do it, and transports are taking off even while she's giving her speech.

 

Clearly, as the film shows us, the so-called grace period wasn't very long. Maybe if the Resistance hadn't wasted time on frivolous funerals, they'd already have been gone by the time the Finalizer and it's escorts arrived at D'Qar.

 

There is also all the time they took to cermonically just stand around to wave away Rey as she and Chewbacca walks aboard the Falcon and fly away toward where they think Luke is in TFA.

 

Base personnel may take a few seconds to wave goodbye to the people that played an integral role in destroying the Starkiller.

Command staff and personnel do not have time for a lengthy funeral when there's an evacuation in progress.

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I've said it before, but I really prefer that latter explanation, which allows Luke's training to be sensibly long, Han and Leia to grow into their relationship, and Chewie and Threepio to spend one seriously awkward month in the Falcon trying to ignore the boot-knockin'. (To be honest this also explains Chewie's subsequent affection for Threepio on Cloud City... they had to spend a lot of time together rolling their eyes and now they're buds.)

 

Chewie: <Humans.>
Threepio: I guess we will never truly understand them

 

I mean, after the Death Star was destroyed, they had a medal ceremony instead of, you know, evacuating their not-so-hidden base.

 

But ANH's next movie did not start just some time later with an "only the important stuff" evacuation.

Oh, dear I just realised I probably sound like somebody that do nothing but complains.

 

Which doesn't change the fact that it's wasting time in-universe. But there's also a need to take a moment and mourn, and for Leia to give her rallying speech.

 

A minor thought I had: since the ending of TFA very nearly featured Rey finding Luke surrounded by flying rocks levitated by his immense Force power, I wonder if his comments about "lifting rocks" and Rey's Jedi finale of lifting the boulders on Crait was Rian Johnson's tribute to that idea from Abrams.

 

Along those lines, I wonder if Rey thinking the Force is good for nothing but lifting rocks (and being proven wrong by Luke) is Rian being cheeky over that idea. Abrams's version of Luke being the super-powerful Jedi Master was to show him lifting rocks... Rian gives him a genuinely awe-inspiring feat at the end of his film that makes rock-lifting pale in comparison, and instead gives that feat to the inexperienced student.

I see TLJ as using some of TFA's more questionable ideas in a much more intelligent and interesting way, so I wouldn't put it past Rian to have put a clever/subversive spin on what TFA thought a powerful Force ability was meant to be.

 

I actually wondered if the idea that Luke was going to be surrounded by flying boulders was intended by Abrams to suggest that Luke had grown so powerful in the Force that he couldn't control his Force powers any more and chose to exile himself to prevent others from being damaged by his Force outbursts, a la an out of control Professor X being the cause of the X-Men massacre in Logan. I could have seen Rian Johnson turning that into a critique of the Chosen One idea or the Naruto-esque focus by fans on rating Force power scales of characters. Though I doubt that would have been any better received by certain fans than the Luke reasoning we got.

Or possibly Johnson could have explained it by Ahch-To just being so suffused by the Force that its boulders just float around, like Tython in Dawn of the Jedi.