One thing that I really liked was how they handled Ben’s decent to being Dark Side Kylo Ren. I liked the two perspectives of what happened that night. Not that it makes up for patricide, but Kylo Ren is totally right in thinking that his Uncle tried to kill him. That’s kind of a big deal. As far as joining the Dark Side goes, I think that is good storytelling in that it makes sense.
And I like that Luke is flawed in this manner. He isn’t perfect, he makes mistakes, he has a moment of weakness and he regrets it for the rest of his life. Kind of explains his hermit-ness too.
Why couldn’t she be the daughter of drunk scavengers AND from the lineage of someone we already know? Perhaps Obi-Wan’s secret love child went down a dark and destructive path of scum and villany because his famous father was also an absentee father. This secret love child later marries and they produce Rey.
We’re assuming the offspring of important people in this universe always do amazing things. Perhaps they don’t.
Also: am I missing something, here, or do I have this about right?
They need a codebreaker who can outfox the Order’s security. So they reach out to Maz, who could totally handle it – but her priority right then is dealing with a labor union or something, and so she mentions another guy who could handle it: a guy who, for the plot to make any sense, would be willing to help the Resistance if they asked, but who isn’t bothering right now, because casino games instead. Anyhow, our heroes instead meet a third person, who can and does actually handle it for them: they didn’t actually ask him; he just happened to be in the room with them, and heard what they said; and he was in the middle of something else, instead of helping the Resistance; but he’ll shrug and do it, because, hey, why not?
So, wait: just how many guys are sitting around with the know-how to magic away that cutting-edge electronic security, plus the willingness to help out, but each of them was kind of in the middle of something else before you asked?
My theater had a light bulb problem about halfway through the showing, so the movie stopped for about 15 minutes while they fixed things. This meant that for 15 minutes, I got to listen to the people sitting next to me discussing what they thought of the movie so far.
Anyway, they were absolutely CONVINCED that the “master code breaker” was going to turn out to be Boba Fett. For no reason I could figure, other than Boba Fett is cool and everybody loves Boba Fett and dammit, Disney OWES us at least one Boba Fett cameo because Boba Fett is the coolest character ever invented in the entire history of storytelling.
These were the sort of fans who really needed to hear that “you must let go of the past” message that the movie was pushing! 
The Rebellion is at its lowest possible ebb now. It’s going to take more than one last film to reach a state of Happily Ever After. Screw Lucas’ original concept; this is going to go on as long as there’s money in it.
Yeah I didn’t understand that request at all. The alliance is within minutes of destruction, holed up in a mine with no way out. What are those contacted allies supposed to do, gather and deploy in mere minutes and hyperspace into a battle they know nothing about? Sounds like a trap or suicide to me.
BTW, packed away in that nook in the Falcon, next to Rose, were the ancient Jedi books. “Pageturners they are not.”
Gather 'round everyone, come and listen to the story of Intergalactic Gladiator’s failed odyssey to see The Last Jedi Thursday night. I got tickets through work and my wife and I had plans to go (happy anniversary, honey!). Thursday afternoon I started to feel a little sick but I was still going to get to that movie, upset tummy or not. Then on our drive there, it really hit me and my wife ended up turning around and heading back home. I really thought that I was going to make it but jumping out of the car and throwing up on Milwaukee Avenue was kind of a deal breaker. The wife took our son instead but I got to take my daughter to a showing Saturday afternoon. OK, I guess it wasn’t that much of an odyssey but it was an interesting story, wasn’t it? The answer is “not really.”
Anyway, after seeing the movie I got back home and read through this thread and then read a couple Easter egg posts to see some of the stuff I missed. My thoughts (and I know much of this has been discussed already)
– This was a great movie. Maybe not the best Star Wars but easily the best since ANH and Empire. My wife thought it was the best and she was impressed that it passed the Bechdel test and the cast was far more diversified than in the past.
– Rian Johnson did such a great job with the story and direction. JJ Abrams is a hack compared to him and it saddens me to see that Abrams is getting the next movie. I thought this movie did a good job of resetting some of the missteps of The Force Awakens like calling them The Resistance and not Rebels just 'cuz and making everything like previous Star Wars but bigger.
– This movie had better emotional beats than any other Star Wars movie. I think a lot of that goes to Carrie Fischer and several times that she was onscreen (her reunion with Luke and R2 showing the old hologram, for example) will have lasting emotional impact that will withstand multiple viewings.
– I thought the running naval battle was an interesting choice. I’m OK with the goofy space physics of it as Star Wars has always been tied to WWII combat, so having a “Run Silent, Run Deep” kind of scenario is fine. I’m not sure why the captain of the first escort ship to run out of gas couldn’t have sacrificed his ship with the lightspeed kamikaze run, but storywise, I get why it had to be Admiral Holdo. I believe that the now-discarded EU had lightspeed attacks but there is probably a fan-wankable reason it hasn’t been used before in the movies (too expensive? Gentleman’s agreement?).
– I liked grumpy Luke. I also liked how old, wizened Luke still wasn’t as old and wise as Yoda and still had some learnin’ to do. I thought perhaps they spent a little too much time having him be reluctant to teach Rey – she’s going to get taught anyways, his motivations for not training her are understood. Get to the training.
– Phasma should show up in the next movie. She should show up in every movie to fight Finn, supposedly fall to her death, then show up again. That evokes the old serials where the bad guy mysteriously escapes death so it’s rooted in what Lucas was doing with Star Wars.
– The one thing I “called” was Snoke dying in the throne room scene. You can’t have a showdown with Rey, Kylo, and Snoke and allow her to get away somehow without something going down here. Kylo is not going to die and he’s not going to turn to good in the middle of the second movie; he is possibly irredeemable. Rey and Kylo “teaming up” was cool but leaving him the Supreme Leader was a neat result as well. I am totally OK with Snoke going out like a bitch. I wish there was a little more backstory added to give us a feel for the character but other than that, he really wasn’t working for me anyway. Another Abrams-generated retool-but-BIGGER of the Emperor. His CGI looked way off in the throne room, like he wasn’t really there and the sparkly bathrobe is a terrible fashion choice.
– I did not catch that Force Projection Luke was not leaving tracks in the salt. Clever. Plus I thought that this was a well-done showing of what the Force can do. Maybe he could have done more like had some of the AT-ATs crash into each other but using the Force for one more showdown was a fine coda to Skywalker’s arc in Star Wars (Skywalker will be back).
– If a bunch of New Order ships got blowed up, how did they have so many AT-ATs for the salt planet battle? And a towed Death Star gun? Uhhh… OK.
– I agree that this movie was so long that it became emotionally exhausting by the end. By the time we get to Rose’s sacrifice, I’m like “Oh come on.” Her last words are nice and would be impactful but crashing into Finn was a silly move.
– I noticed in the cast credits that Mark Hamill played another character but I had no idea who it was. I read later that he played the CGI character who kept putting coins in BB8. Evidently he had never played a CGI character before and went up to Johnson and said “Hey, I can voice him” and Johnson OK’d it.
– Which are cuter, the bunny horses or the crystal doggies?
I assume the allies were mentioned so prominently as to give the movie-goer an answer to the question of “where are they going?”
You know, Waldo, I was so relieved that the room was NOT in a half-mile vertical shaft with nothing but a thin-walkway for access that I will give that a pass. If the new team can get rid of the dumbest design aesthetic in the history of film, that would be awesome.
Of course, George Lucas’s original concept was to make “Star Wars.” He did not start out with a plan to make a trilogy of trilogies.
If they want to go to Episode X and beyond, sure, why not? We’ve already had approximately 3,000 Marvel movies. In any event, Kathleen Kennedy has already said it’s pretty likely that will happen: “… future stories beyond Episode IX with these new characters—Rey, Poe, Finn, BB-8—but we’re also looking at working with people who are interested in coming into the Star Wars world and taking us places we haven’t been yet. That’s exciting, too, because it’s a vast galaxy far, far away.”
Agreed, except, that’s not where his descent started, only where it came to a head. Luke said that he sensed Ben was totally gone to the dark side at that point. How? That’s what I want to know. What was it that led him down that path? For Anakin, it was the promise of the power to save Padme’s life. For Luke, (when he almost gave in and killed Vader) it was the anger that Vader would try to turn or kill her.
What did Snoke do to Ben to get him to that point in the first place? For a boy who was raised by Leia and Han, with Luke watching over him, who would have been told from birth about Vader’s evil, and his eventual last-minute redemption, why on earth would he be driven to become the “heir apparent” to Vader? I really wish that had been addressed.
I was confused by this. I thought the prisoner was the real codebreaker and the guy in the casino was just a red herring who happened to be wearing the lapel pin by accident. I thought the whole codebreaker/cloaked ship ruse plot was confusing in the moment and doesn’t make much sense afterwards either.
Overall the film was OK. There were enough cool moments and beautifully shot scenes but I give them some credit at least trying something new unlike no.7 but ultimately I don’t think the story made much sense even by the standards of Star Wars films. I liked Rogue One a lot more.
Killing off Snoke was an interesting move and the scene was well done but it doesn’t help the larger story. Logically it makes sense to kill the most powerful villain at the climax like the emperor in ROTJ. Kylo is already a wimp who was beaten by Rey in the previous film and apparently again in this one. Of course he will be beaten again, if necessary. In general Rey is way overpowered and seems equivalent to a full-fledged Jedi without any real training whatsoever which undercuts the Jedi storylines of previous films.
I am also irritated at the way new Jedi powers keep popping up as per the needs of the plot: survival in space, inter-planetary holographic projection.
There is that. If Kylo is the big bad who has to get turned (or help bring about the gray side of the Force), he has already been beaten by Rey and has shown he’s too emotionally unstable to realize that Luke astral projection helped what was left of the rebels to get away (what, no other scouting parties around the planet or in orbit?).
It does make Ep 9 seem a bit… underwhelming.
I was also (as some upthread) rooting for Rey to take Kylo’s hand and them to begin a course to great a Gray side of the Force and something better than Empire or Republic. In response to those saying well that makes Ep 9 boring, it could be the case that you could have made Hux a bit more competent and had Poe become the leader of the rebels (having Leia have a death scene) and both leaders completely opposed to the compromise that Kylo Ren and Rey would be offering.
So, I like it a lot more on a 2nd watch. I still have many of the same issues, but knowing that certain things wouldn’t get addressed, I was able to “let the past die” a bit more, and get into it. Still a bit slow in the middle. Still a few nonsensical things, but overall, I enjoyed the good bits and let the bad bits go with a shrug.
A few things I watched carefully to confirm:
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The Jedi books are totally there in the Falcon. They are visible as Finn pulls out the blanket for Rose. There may have been a very quick shot of them earlier too. (and Yoda totally knows it, with his cryptic line about there being “nothing in there Rey doesn’t already possess”)
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The lightsaber Luke’s projection uses does appear to be his same old blue one that had recently been destroyed. My initial thought that the hilt was red was due to a reflection from the red salt. I guess Kylo was angry enough to miss that detail, or assumed he’d made another one. Still wish Luke had projected his green one. Jedi Luke with Green Lightsaber is the Luke I see in my head when I imagine him. But whatevs…
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Yes, the kid uses the force to grab the broom at the end.
FWIW, my family liked it a lot. It was my son’s first SW in the theater (having seen everything but Rogue One at home), and despite missing the salt-skimmer v. battering cannon scene for a potty break, and getting a little antsy at the end, he loved it. My younger daughter said it was " a good movie because not many of the main characters died." (seems I made the right choice in not showing her Rogue One yet. yikes!) (Then again, she also thought Snoke was the Emperor, and that Poe died in the TIE crash on Jakku in TFA, so she may have missed one or two things. 
) And my wife is a usually a bigger -Trek than -Wars fan, but really enjoyed this one.
This would make an interesting animated series (possibly introduced as being limited run, like a season or two.) It would also give us more info on who Snoke is and how he became as powerful as he is. It would also allow them to reveal my theory-- Snoke is Ezra-- without slamming too much stuff from the cartoons into the movies.
Missed the edit window. By “her” I obviously meant Leia, here.
The kitten owls.
I took the situation as Luke seeing darkness in Ben and being afraid of what could happen. Sort of a there is darkness in everyone but Luke over-reacted. Also I think there is too much stock put into something significant has to happen for someone to turn out bad. Can’t someone just be bad or megalomaniacal? I suppose in Star Wars the answer is no, but in real life there are bad people and there isn’t necessarily a reason. Yes, even loving parents wind up with a kid that shoots up a school or some shit like that.
Is it generally accepted that the explanation of Anakin->Vader is a good one? I’ve always felt that the untold story of Vader was superior to the prequel version. Sometimes the rough idea is better than a solid story because the story is a bit flimsy all together.
I read something the other day that said Adam Driver and Daisy Ridley would have been pretty good Anakin and Padme actors. Adam Driver is way more believable in his descent into the dark-side than anything Hayden Christensen was given to work with.
Let’s be honest, he just looks the part. He’s a very large, strong, and menacing-looking man. He looks like he’d make a scary-ass Marine, and of course he was a Marine.
I am rather unconvinced Daisy Ridley is a better actress than Natalie Portman and they basically look the same, but Ridley has better scripts and directors.