This makes me assume some slightly demoralized First Order functionary leaked the unedited battle footage to the galactic web…
That’s my guess, too. What I do know is that if a bunch of Canto Bight stable kids know about it, *everyone *knows about it. The entire galaxy saw Luke Skywalker humiliate the blustering, sputtering leader of the Order while the Resistance leaders escaped in the Millennium Falcon. The First Order’s reign of terror just got a lot less scary, and its enemies, bolder.
Of course the entire plan hinges on a common trope where a particular character can always be found at a particular bar/club/restaurant/casino. Like what are the odds that they get there and the code breaker is off breaking a code for someone else, or taking a vacation from Canto Bight or just home watching tv?
Another thing that bugs be are all these “ex machinas” where some character knows some previously unknown secret on how to bypass a shield or whatever. That’s lazy writing IMHO. In Empire, they bypassed the shield on Endor because they had a stolen shuttle with an older code (plus the Emperor and Vader let them). Same thing with Rogue One. Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, all of a sudden, you can hyperspace through deflector shields or some random space janitor knows how to modulate the frequencies.
Andy why is Finn a Stormtrooper who also does maintenance? Don’t they have droids or those guys in the black Spaceballs helmets to do that shit? Like Finn was stolen from birth to be trained in ground assaults like a God-damn airborne gung ho space marine. Oh but also clean toilets. Does he wear his shiny white armor while changing space lightbulbs and mopping the hanger deck?
Isn’t there some trope about every [del]marine[/del] stormtrooper having a rifle?
Anyway, the assault at the beginning of the Force Awakens is his first. Did he just complete his training? Maybe service details are what recruits do until they’re ready to do assaults.
TLJ is definitely not perfect, with some flab in its midsection and a few plot holes. But then, plot holes have always been part of the SW films, even the best of them. How long did Luke train under Yoda? How long did it take for the Falcon to get from Hoth to Bespin? How is it possible that the above two questions have basically the same answer?
12 parsecs?
I figured that Ren, or someone under him, ordered the attack to be broadcast live, pre-empting whatever passes for TV there, so everyone could see the Resistance crushed beneath his iron heel once and for all. Which turned out to be a bit embarrassing, in retrospect.
On some level that would’ve worked. I think there’d be a backlash, though, to having a character called “Admiral Ackbar” perform such an act.
I thought TLJ was just OK. Better than the prequels, the weakest of the 4 Disney Star Wars movies.
Call me crazy, but I suspect that 4-time Golden Globe winner Laura Dern was capable of delivering a better cinematic performance than an animatronic shrimp.
Yes but is 4-time Golden Globe winner Laura Dern famous for the line “It’s a trap!”?
Well sure, if we assume a ton of resources offstage that haven’t been onstage yet. But that’s essentially a deus ex machina.
Well sure, if the Resistance is just some tiny outpost of some huge confederation that’s outside the control of the First Order. But if that’s so, the story we’ve been watching in Eps 7 and 8 is bullshit.
And given that one of the plot holes in the entire third trilogy is the rise of the First Order from zero to what certainly appears to be near-total dominance in the 30 years between Eps 6 and 7, yeah, anything can happen in the Star Wars universe in 5 years.
erm, what? The Empire didn’t just up and vanish once Vader and the Emperor were knocked off. They obviously had tons of ships, people, and infrastructure that weren’t on the Death Star or the super Star Destroyer, out of which someone would obviously rush in to fill the power vacuum (e.g. Snoke and Hux.)
How so? It’s a big galaxy - the vast majority of resources have always been offstage.
At no point does the series imply that the First Order controls the entire galaxy, or even the majority of the galaxy. You seem to assume that they’re the new Empire, but there’s nothing to support that. They’re powerful, sure, but we keep seeing worlds that they don’t control - Jaaku, Canto Bight, Maz’s world - and while they may be the most powerful force in the galaxy, there’s nothing we’ve seen that contradicts the idea that a new alliance of independent worlds can be forged that would match them in strength. I’m not saying that the Resistance is part of a huge confederation - I’m saying that the Resistance can *create *a huge confederation.
Well, that’s certainly the impression you come away with at the end of ROTJ: that total victory has been won.
If you want to tell a different story, that’s fine, but I would argue that that’s not the story Lucas told.
And sure, there’s a ton of Star Wars stuff besides Episodes 1 through 8 and counting, but it still needs to hang together for those who are only watching that sequence.
If they’re not alluded to, but you bring them in midstream, then someone’s telling a bullshit story. What you see has to be representative of what’s really happening. If you portray some cosmic life-and-death struggle and then you say later, this was just Sector ZZ9 way out of the Fourth Spiral Arm, and really the First Order was insignificant on the scale of Galactic resources, then what the hell were we watching?!?
This is the sort of mental acrobatics I’m used to seeing from Christianist fundamentalists to rationalize the Bible’s inconsistencies. And this is even less interesting to me than their bullshit is.
No the impression you come away with after ROTJ is that Palpatine is dead, as is Vader, and the new death star has been destroyed. That’s it. The entire Empire was not destroyed, just its leader and main enforcer. Decapitated for sure, but not totally gone.
I mean destroying the original death star in A New Hope seemed like total victory and all, until it wasn’t. I mean they had that medal ceremony and everything.
It’s a large universe, there really can’t be a total victory meaning zero evil left anywhere.
IMO, the only prequel TLJ beats is TPM. I try to pretend TPM doesn’t exist and am perfectly satisfied with an older Anakin and Obi-Wan having known eachother a while and being friends (sort of). This is the relationship I pictured when Obi-Wan talked to Luke for the first time. Not some little kid Obi-Wan had nothing to do with until Qui-Gon forced him on him.
The reason people had expectations is because JJ set it up that way. JJ did a half-dozen layups in TFA and Rian, who is supposedly on the same team, slapped down every single one of them. That was highly annoying.
And what he did to Luke? Unforgivable, and why I rank it 2nd worst. Showing “little Annie” tainted Darth Vader just a little bit more than Luke.
TLJ is the only main saga movie I only saw once in the theater, and the only one I haven’t bought.
I still don’t understand this criticism. JJ set it up so that Luke voluntarily kept himself out of the game while billions of innocents were murdered. What possible explanation could there be that Luke would voluntarily exile himself while atrocities were occurring, unless his morale had been utterly shattered? IMO, a totally demoralized Luke is the only possible explanation, and I thought the movie handled that as well as possible.
Hey, no need to be insulting. We’re just having a conversation, OK? You didn’t like the movie, I did, no big deal either way.
c’mon. it’s a sci-fi fantasy film. not exactly SRS BSNS here.