Bolding mine…I thought that was an Indiana Jones line. 
The theater where I saw TLJ? Other stuff got oohs and aahs. Other stuff got laughs. Other stuff got cheers. But this scene, right here? This was the only part where the audience broke into full-on, no-foolin’, applause, in the middle of the movie.
And the prequels were roasted for it. People still complain about the waste of Darth Maul.
At least Dooku had a backstory (even though he explained it in the cheesy, villain exposition dump in front of the immobilized protagonist way)
Dark-side hole - I’m curious too. I hope there will be more about this in the next one. Interesting though,tht the Jedi would have chosen that spot for their base. It’s ike ground zero for Force balancing.
Leia’s powers were obviously always as strong as her twin’s. But they were in the realm of love/attraction/creation rather than hate/control/destruction. She convinced, gathered, built coalition and consensus. A different use of the Force, but without which there is no rebellion for Luke to defend/support.
Snokes - the point of him IMHO was the vision he gave to Rey about balance. And clearly this is also a glimpse into Kylo’s head and motivations. We can assume that Snokes convinced him the same way he tried to convince her. Kylo sees her importance in balancing him.
Without R2D2, Luke doesn’t join the battle. Yoda didn’t convince him to go, he helped him see his role. I loved Luke’s line to R2 (Something like, “That’s a low blow”?) And Yoda’s quiet joke " . . . nothing Rey doesn’t already have." I was sure C3PO would turn out to be the needed code breaker. Disappointed with that one.
She was starry eyed for him, then disgusted, then knew and really loved him. It’s her arc, not his. And him being Rey’s love interest sets up and interesting love . . .well . . . parallelogram, I guess.
I thought it was more of a remake of the first movie. An enjoyable bit of nostalgia. My initial review of this one was: It feels like a Star Wars movie, without feeling like the same Star Wars movie.
The simple fact of so many people saying they need time to digest it, tells you how really great this one is. I saw it a few days ago and I’m still settling into my thoughts about it.
Amen.
The other side is much too large and well-equipped for them to take out every piece of equipment. That was the whole “Poe” story. Yes, we got a dreadnought, whoo hoo! It was 1/86th of their fleet and required 1/10th of ours to defeat, but oh boy! We got a big fish!
It’s not a winning strategy.
See “parallelogram” above. 
They are Ninja turtles. Tell everyone! 
It was that ultra-precise piloting trick again. He was keeping the ship just below the beam until he could aim it down the gullet.
The next episode, I hope, is based upon the balance aspect of Rey’s vision with Snokes and her adventure with the Dark Force abyss. With her to balance Kylo, perhaps he can wield the power without being corrupted.
People keep saying this, but they showed us exactly what the dynamic was. Snokes offered Kylo exactly what he gave Rey, a deep and intense understanding of the Force. And Snokes thought he owned Kylo’s mind, but in fact he had no idea what Kylo was actually thinking, a part of his mind and strategy was still very much his own. He just needed to conquer his desire for “Fatherly” approval, now that he realized his attempt to switch Fathers still wasn’t going to gain it for him. Now it’s Rey’s approval he wants, and that will make all the difference.
Agreed on much of the rest. Just this part though, they sacrificed more than 1/10 of the fleet to take out that dreadnaught. They lost their entire bomber squadron.
And the whole casino world wasn’t just a waste of time, it ended up being a terrible idea. The order would not have known about the escaping transports, or the planet they were going to, if they had not been captured and their “codebreaker” turned. Poe’s decision there wiped out another 80% of the remnants of the rebels (from 31 transports to I counted 6 when the guns stopped), plus getting the base destroyed, along with another good chunk of the rebellion.
Poe may be a good pilot, good at flying around and blowing stuff up, but his strategic decisions have resulted in abject failure and a near complete destruction of the rebellion.
He should be put in the brig, and only brought out when piloting skills are what will win the day.
Ultra precise? From what we’ve been shown, it was the first time Finn had ever flown anything. At the beginning of The Force Awakens, he broke Poe out because he needed a pilot to escape.
I think that beam was just warming up. After he was knocked out of the way, a pulse travelled down the beam, punching the hole in the door.
If he’d been hit by the pulse, I think that would have been Fin for Finn.
The second, I’d guess; Kylo does tell Rey that it’s not her making their mutual projection stuff happen, that would destroy her.
Doesn’t explain how Snoke can do it mind, but there is a bit of an explanation.
Well, does Snoke do that? He doesn’t project himself across interstellar distances; he links two other people. You could fig-leaf that as being less tiring.
And they could only see each other (maybe luke saw them together, I don’t remember for sure, but that’s different anyway).
Luke appeared to hundreds of people all at once.
It might’ve been cool had there been one henchman among the bad guys who was force-resistant (i.e. he was a member of Watto’s species) who said “I don’t see anybody. What the hell is everyone shooting at?”
That’s a nonsensical comparison.
In the first example, the dreadnought posed no immediate threat, Poe decided that they should destroy it purely to weaken the first order going forward.
In the second case, as far as anyone knows, that single gun is the difference between immediate defeat for everyone and being able to hold out more-or-less-indefinitely. Finn wasn’t trying to sacrifice himself just to weaken the First Order in some hypothetical future. He was trying to sacrifice himself to save the life of everyone in the resistance and improve their odds of survival/success from 0% to some%.
How’s this for crazy. At the end of Episode IX, Rey and Kylo stop their swordfighting and say “Maybe we can join together and end this destructive conflict”
There’s stormtroopers and First Order tech for the military/security, experienced Imperial Officers can be administration (figuring they’re educated leaders). Likely doing a better job that the 15 remaining rebels. There’s now no Snoke pulling evil Dark Side strings. No Luke say Light is always the better side.
I thought of this remembering a novel called “Death Star”, where it focused on average joes working the Death Star. There were contractors, restaurant owners, professional military gunners, architects, etc. Then about 3/4 of the way through, Lucas must’ve read a draft and reminded the author “Remember, the Empire is EVIL”. Then suddenly, the main characters decided to join the Rebellion.
It would be like the Christian character in Erik the Viking.
Thing is, I kind of think that’s exactly what Rian Johnson was doing, quite intentionally. To be honest I feel like I get a hint of actual, intentional disrespect towards JJ Abrams in a lot of the things Johnson did (and… don’t get me wrong… I’m cheering Johnson along here. I was okay with TFA but no more than okay).
And my opinion of Abrams is low enough* that I would not be at all surprised if he just doesn’t do takesie backsies in one form or another.
*It’s funny, I enjoy a lot of his films, I just have no respect for them.
This is what I was listing somewhere. Ways Rian Johnson seems to indicate he did not enjoy the Force Awakens much.
I viewed more as Episode VIII was saddled with a lot of baggage that had to be dealt with from Episode VII. I don’t follow all of Abram’s stuff, but the thing I keep thinking about is Lost (That’s him right?). Season 1 of Lost was fantastic, lots of neat mysteries and stuff. But Season 2 clearly showed that it was all bullshit. He had no idea what he was doing or where he was going. That’s what I think about with The Last Jedi. It had to deal with many half open boxes from The Force Awakens, and I think The Last Jedi does a good job of it. To a degree a cold efficiency was needed.
That is to say, I don’t think it was necessarily intentional disrespect and more of a I need to clean up all these threads!
I agree this is mainly it and I like that he decided to take all of Episode IX’s climaxes and bascially move them into Episode VIII.
Snoke? Defeated.
Phasma? Defeated?
Luke? Dead.
That’s the old explanation for the Jedi-in-hiding: they hid near strong natural dark-side sources so they’d be harder to sense.
Except if he hadn’t done that, they’d all have died as soon as the hyperspace tracking happened - the mega-guns would have been powerful enough to kill the cap ships even at range.
And almost all the surviving combat pilots died and fighters destroyed when the hanger got blown up before they could launch.
Best example was ditching the stupid “red arm” sidetrack.
re: Snoke being killed by Kylo
To me I kind of saw it coming, when they were discussing enemies. I am not sure at what point it occurred in the movie, but I was thinking, that he saw that no, his real enemy was not Rey, but Snoke himself and later, when the time came, he killed him. To me that was a great resolution to the relationship between the two that I felt was set up correctly.
//i\