ST Princess/General Leia Organa/Carrie Fisher Discussion Thread

Sorry, I wasn't thinking. It kind of just seems accurate to me though. He destroyed Leia's legacy in every conceivable way. But I won't do it again.

 

I think down the line, Han, Luke and Leia’s legacy won’t really be tarnished. I feel films today are so disposable and come in and out of the public consciousness very quickly. Roy Schnieder’s character in Jaws remains fine despite dying in Jaws 4, or a television sequel to Gone With The Wind made fifty years later. Probably in twenty, thirty years when SW, ESB, and RotJ are still viewed, they’ll be the equivalent of a Wikipedia footnote saying there were sequels made in 2015.

 

I didn't say they were similar. This doesn't refute my point.

A slave compared to a princess was actually part of the point.

But I'll let it go.

Kylo had a better upbringing than Anakin in terms of his and his parent's wellbeing (minus the Palpatine in his head part).
Anakin was always worried for his mother after leaving Tattooine.
It is a very different scenario. But Ben's feelings for his mother bring him back to the light, regardless.

 

Why? Can anyone give me an in universe reason why, considering Leia sent him “away” and Han objected and Kylo apparently didn’t want to go?

 

It seems like this discussion is mingling actual saga film canon with the broader Disney canon. Speaking for myself, the saga films ought to be interpreted only in light of themselves and each other, if they are going to be great popular art. They should be epic on their own and not be pinned down to interpretations based solely on comic books or novelizations or other media. That is my opinion. In this frame, a viewer can interpret Leia's effect on Kylo at the moment he's about to kill Rey in many different ways. I tend to assume that this was his first indication that she was alive, which he learns only in the process of knowing she's in the process of dying. Another person might assume she achieved nothing but a momentary distraction. I might change my interpretation if anyone can point to saga film evidence that Kylo knows his mother's alive.

 

You mean when Leia use new force power I call "Force-turn-someone-to-the-light"???

 

The dice on Crait are an indication that she survived the attack on the Raddus. The only other characters that have a connection to the dice are Chewie and Luke. Luke certainly didn't bring the dice to simply toss on the ground before entering the battle with Kylo. Chewie was aboard the Falcon. Surely it was his mother - and while they did not explicitly paint that picture for the audience, the majority of us are led to believe he knows she was there. Based on the connection we see between Ben & Leia before the Raddus is hit - he can likely sense her presence afterward, as she can sense his. I highly doubt Leia's intervention by way of the Force in ROS was his first indication she had survived the Battle of Crait.

 

That's good. The fact that Luke brought the dice might be a hint to him that his mother survived because he could infer that Luke brought them to show them to Leia. He would have to know they were part of Luke'd projection because they faded. This leads to interesting interpretations of the moment for me.

I wouldn't assume he sensed her presence from his shuttle, or when he entered the base. He sensed her on the flagship because she reached out to him telepathically. At least that is my assumption, it parallels Vader reaching out to Luke in episode five. Since Leia tells Luke "I know my son is gone," it's implicit there was no off-screen telepathy. I would assume any such outreach would be shown to us anyway.

I guess we might suspect that Ben can sense his mother at a greater distance than Vader sensed his namesake in Episode 4 (that required a close proximity to the Falcon) but do we know for sure? I mean there is a moment when Vader and Luke detect each other, which I consider telepathy again, in episode 6 at a distance of about half a mile away. Luke later says "he can feel when I'm near" and says he knows Vader is on the sanctuary moon. It's an interesting question.

Probably the best comparison is in Episode 7 when Kylo himself senses his father. That was at a distance of possibly a few miles.

 

I never saw anything resembling feelings for his mother. They didn't even put the two together in film. We're talking about the same character whose actor had to make his own head canon of blaming the parents as religious zealots for his decision to turn to the dark side. These supposed feelings didn't appear convincingly on screen for me to believe what TROS tried to claim was happening.

 

Why did he back down from killing her in The Last Jedi?

 

I'm pretty sure Kylo knew she was alive. He says something to Rey in the DS about how "she can't go back to her, just like I can't" which pretty much tells everyone that he knows she's alive.

 

I thought he said "Now you can't go to Exegol without me."

 

He said later "The only way you are getting to Exegol is with me."

One of the first things he says in the DS2 ruins is "You can never go back to (Leia) now. Just like I can't."

 

Yes, he says this right after Rey has her vision with her dark self. "Look at yourself, you wanted to prove to my mother that you were a Jedi.... You can't go back to her now, like I can't." The whole sentence pretty much says Kylo knows she's alive, IMO.

 

Oh! Good catch. I have only seen the movie twice, so my memory of it is still imperfect. Hopfully I'll catch it again tomorrow.

 

'Your parents threw you away like garbage'. This was Ben/Kylo talking about Han and Leia. Besides, we know that Rey's parents didnt throw her away like garbage.

That TROS bit sounds, again, like Kylo talking about himself. 'I wanted to prove to my mother that I was a jedi but I proved something else'.

'The dark side is in our nature. Surrender to it'. This is after Rey's force lightning. 'You have his [Palpatine's] power'. In other words, that was Rey's 'too much Vader in him' moment. Chewie was 'killed' as a result. Did Ben kill ( or 'kill') someone known to Leia in the past? Did that someone survive, as Chewie did?

There's some ambiguity in Ben's 'she's gone' and in Han's answer 'your mother's gone'. Is there another 'she'?

'Come home', says Han. What home would that be? Han died and Leia died and even Luke was gone. Is Rey 'home' and therefore Han is saying something like 'the belonging you seek is not behind you, it is ahead'? Was Rey 'home' once, before 'too much Vader in him'?

 

Coming home means returning to the Falcon and to the community around the resistance, which preserves his family's values and principles. "What they stood for" in memory-Han's own words. It means renouncing his First Order values and his rank and political power, and assuming the risk that Final Order (and First Order) military will all be against him, just like them. It is not a safe choice, although his departure will weaken and confuse the First Order. I think it is right after that the returned Emperor calls General Pryde to Exogol, which I take to be the absorbtion of the First order into the Final one.

I think it's a fair comparison to why The Emperor says Rey is "home" when she gets to Exogol, even though she's presumably never been there before. It's home because he is there, and it is the place they have left. Traveling to Naboo wouldn't have the same meaning. In both cases this is a "pitch." Not something the listener will necessarily accept.

 

Don't know, don't care. What was shown on screen wasn't enough to convince me that he gave a crap.

 

So I'm confused what exactly killed Leia in TROS? Because we've seen people reach out through to eachother using the force many times without any ill effects (Vader to Luke, Palpatine to Anakin, Palpatine being a voice in Kylo's head). So why did it kill Leia this time?

And I've seen the ''Old age'' excuse get thrown out but I don't buy that a 54 year old would just die randomly from old age.

 

I think it wasn't just the reaching out - it was the Han thing.

Also - while Leia survived exposure to vacuum in the previous movie, it may have done a lot of damage - leaving her more fragile than normal.

 

It was clear to me on the third viewing that after Kylo tells Rey that neither of them can go back, and she follows him down into the wreckage, Leia senses something about the peril in their fight--or perhaps of his regret and seeming wish that he could return. Her "reaching out" is a response to whatever she senses here. On my first two viewings this wasn't entirely obvious.

 

And she seemed to still be with Ben Solo until he passed away too. They both disappear at the same time.

My pet theory is; with the grip of the dark side being so strong going by the films, Kylo/Ben needed both Rey healing more than just his wound (his facial scar disappears when she heals him)... and Leia adding her light strength to his to give him some positive force energy to more easily make the transition.

So it would make sense that this, in her weakened state, would take a lot of effort.

 

Well when he says he can't go back, and he seems to regret it, maybe Leia senses this moment of shifting in the Force, that there is an opportunity to reach out to him. Maybe he assumes that Leia would never forgive him, and this reaching out involves her telling him that she can.

 

Yeah I hadn't seen your post before I posted mine.

I'm going to look out for that on my next viewing.


Eta -
Maybe this is cynical of me to point out, but Leia's arc is one of the more obvious signs of different writers/directors for each film.

In TFA she is sure Ben can be turned back, but seems to lose this faith when she senses he killed Han.
In TLJ Leia states to Luke "I know my son is gone" which is weird because you would think she sensed him spare her on the Resistance cruiser bridge. Luke imparts the reflection "No one is ever really gone."
Then in TROS she likes her chances of reaching him successfully enough to use her last strength to do it. Leia, Rey, and a memory of Han brings Ben back into existence.

It just seems a little inconsistent. But what do I know.

 

I didn't assume she sensed him sparing her. She must have sensed *him* but I don't think she knew she'd deterred him. When the bridge was hit, she might have assumed (at least at first) that Kylo himself fired the shot. We don't really know. My take is that she might have known she reached him but wasn't clear of any result, and that he did believe she was dead despite his having refrained from the shot. I think it's an interesting moment in The Last Jedi and it can raise the theme of how moral qualities of an action do or do not depend on the consequences.