re: Star Wars Episode 8: The Last Jedi Discussion Thread ***SPOILERS***

If the execution of the Leia floating scene was better, it would have been cool because it would have really showed her power of the force. It just looked ridiculous

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Finn needed to die

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Finn won’t die because black

Ok here we go. I saw the movie last night. The Windows Fall Creators update kept me from being able to post anything right after I saw that movie, but that was probably for the best.

I thought the opening was great. Right off the bat we get into some action and get to see more of the First Order than one star destroyer and Starkiller base. Snoke's ship is absolutely massive.

Was it ever established exactly how the First Order was able to track them through lightspeed? I feel like that's something that should have been addressed.

I really didn't mind the Canto Bight scenes as much as most people, but it did feel really out of place in the film, and despite spending a lot of time there, Canto Bight felt rushed. I would've liked to have seen more of it.


Vice Admiral Holdo was a weird character, but I liked her interaction with Leia. I don't understand why she didn't just lightspeed dash into the Supremacy at the start though. She was going to die anyway. That and maybe tell Poe what the plan is so he doesn't attempt a mutiny.

Someone said Leia looked like Mary Poppins floating in space back to the ship and they're exactly right. That just looked dumb and unrealistic.

Rey's time spent with Luke felt like a waste. We really didn't see Luke dedicate much time at all to training her and Luke refuses to even leave the island.

The ancient Jedi texts, the "balanced" force, and the "time for the Jedi to end" line were all red herrings and didn't amount to much in the film.

I thought Yoda looked like cartoon Rebels Yoda. He didn't look like RotJ Yoda or even prequel Yoda. Just very odd looking. I would have rather seen Anakin, but I appreciate his inclusion.

Where this movie really loses it with me is the last act. I was enjoying this Snoke much more than TFA Snoke and in no way should he have been killed off so soon without the audience learning anything more about his backstory. He also seemed like an immensely powerful being, so the way he went out was disappointing as well.

This is where the movie just gets goofy. Vice Admiral Holdo crashes her ship into the main First Order ship, slicing it in half and destroying almost the entire First Order fleet, yet none of the main characters are killed. Somehow this leads to a disappointingly short duel between Phasma and Finn where she falls to her death after a cheap shot from Finn.

Kylo becomes the Supreme leader by force choking Hux who by this point is reduced to a comic relief character. The remaining First Order forces land on Crait to take out the remaining 15-20 members of the Resistance, and all that battle really amounts to are a bunch of rickety speeders trying to get to a big laser gun before it fires.

They're getting picked off by tie fighters, but oh wait, there's Rey, Chewie, and the Millenium Falcon. How did Rey get off the Supremacy? Who knows?

They fail. Rose crashes her ship into Finn (preventing him from blowing up the laser gun and nearly killing both of them in the process), kisses him, then passes out.

Kylo orders the entire assault force to Halt like a petulant child the moment he sees "Luke." Kylo goes down and has a very anti-climatic "duel" with hologram Luke who is only there to allow the Resistance time to escape.

Poe leads the remaining 20 members of the Resistance through a tunnel in the back of the base where Rey lifts a bunch of rocks (who taught her how to do that?) and they all escape aboard the Millennium Falcon.

The entire Resistance is left with only about as many men/women as can fit on a single freighter and Leia talks about the Rebellion being reborn. Why? What are they rebelling against? Are they not the established government (or closest thing to)? The First Order are the insurgents

Regardless at the end of the day you have 20-30 people on the Millennium Falcon with no ships/weapons versus a First Order that has no real leader and honestly isn't all that much better off. Rey is the last Jedi who has had even less training than Luke.

The biggest, most glaring issue with this film is how it completely invalidates Luke's journey in the original trilogy. Luke is trained in the ways of the force by Obi Wan and Yoda, turns Darth Vader back to the light side, and helps bring down the Empire. He goes to train a new generation of Jedi, fails and goes into hiding, becoming an old hermit.

He refuses to ever leave Ahch To to help Rey and the Resistance and seems completely bitter. He has no hope for a future Jedi order. He has somewhat of a redemptive arc at the end, but I feel like this film will forever taint the original trilogy knowing that Luke ultimately failed in his mission to re-establish the Jedi Order and that torch has now been seemingly passed to Rey.

Killing Snoke, killing Luke, Kylo becoming the Supreme leader, both forces wiping each other out -- it seems like there's very little left to accomplish in Episode 9. I have no idea where they will take the final film in this trilogy. That's not entirely a bad thing, but I wish they would have kept Snoke alive at least until the final film. He seems like too important of a character for such a throwaway death in TLJ. We need to learn more about him. He is the leader of the First Order but because of the sequel trilogy's convoluted setup, it begs the question of how did he come to look like that, how did he come to control the first order, how is it that he is so strong in the force? These are things I suppose we will never know now.

Surely JJ had some input into this movie right? I mean I feel like he set it up so good for Johnson and he just took it and missed the easy layup

I made this note in the other thread, but the movie should have been something like this:

Thread A: Luke training Rey
Thread B: Snoke training Kylo
Thread C: Poe, Finn, Leia, 3PO, and Billie Lourd fleeing from Hux.

Threads A and B interconnect throughout the film and merge at the 2/3rds mark. Also this should be 80% of the movie. For Thread C, just rip off Empire for all I care and leave Rose out of it. Thread C merges on the final planet with the other 2 threads in the middle of the third act.

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Can we all agree Jar Jar > Rose?

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You lost me here.

Jar-Jar is the worst character in cinematic history.

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I mean, the Emperor was kind of written as an outsider character in the original. There's no reason to think that he's an evil Dark Lord, just that he may be surrounded by a-holes like Tarkin and Vader that have possibly propped him up to form a fascist state. It's not until Empire where we're led to believe that the Emperor is just on another level.

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Yes, everyone compares Snoke to the Emperor.

"Well, we didn't know that much about the Emperor before the prequels!"

Well, we didn't need to. We know what an Emperor is. He rules over the Empire. The Empire is the established government in the galaxy. It was established in Empire that he was Vader's "master" and he constantly references the force so it only makes sense that he was a force user too.

Snoke requires a good bit of explanation. What is the First Order? How did Snoke come to lead the first order? How is it that he can use the force? I thought Luke was the only established force user left at the end of RotJ. How is he so old and scarred?

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They're getting picked off by tie fighters, but oh wait, there's Rey, Chewie, and the Millenium Falcon. How did Rey get off the Supremacy? Who knows?

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Kylo stated she used Snokes personal escape ship. This was in the film. I assume it was in his chambers.

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Consider this - the film spent considerably more time developing Rose's character than it did Snoke. And she got just as much, if not more screentime than Luke Skywalker.

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Because Asian woman and Chinese market

Off to fight white privilege