Star Wars: The Last Jedi - seen it thread

Cafe Society
341

Funny thing about that Fair Rarity, I feel like Abrams did the “creating loose threads without a plan” in VII, but Johnson almost completely avoided doing that. In fact, arguably he closed all the threads in VIII, making things such that VII and VIII could be seen as a complete enough story in themselves. (While inviting us to wonder what futher stories will be told about the characters.)

And, as I said above, I kind of think Johnson did this on purpose, with a roll of the eyes in addition to the wave of the hand :wink:

So I think you’re right about the dangers of not planning out your mystery threads, but I think Johnson actually solved that problem for us. That Abrams is going to come along and create the problem over again is not the fault of where the movies stand right now!

342

So I just got back from a viewing of this film. Note that I have NOT seen the last Star Wars movie (The Force Awakens) or Rogue One and I have not kept up in any way with the extended universe beyond the original trilogy. So I had no context at all for The Last Jedi.

Before the movie, we smoked some sticky and remarkably lemon-scented chronic, and I was fairly stoned for about the first hour of the film. I had intended to take notes of my random thoughts while watching, and then write a proper review, but I don’t want to bother with the latter and so I am just going to copy and paste the notes verbatim. (I was at the back row the theatre, so nobody was bothered by my phone.) First, before I do that, here are some things that I remember but did not write down:

Near the beginning of the film, I was at the peak of being stoned. I noticed that one of the space fighters had what looked almost exactly like a World War II ball turret. “Those things were actually used in real life, did you know that?!” I remarked to my friend, then turned to my phone to try to find a good picture of a real ball turret, to show him. This venture occupied an indeterminate length of time and I eventually gave up because I felt I could find a good enough picture. I missed some of the action of the movie during this phase, I was totally absorbed in the concept of the ball turret. I was fairly high when I gave up on that and turned my attention to the movie. I remember thinking that Kylo Ren looked like Marilyn Manson, and I remember being bored by a scene where the jedi woman (Ray?) was talking to Luke Skywalker in a cave or something. “Wow, this scene has been going on for a long time,” I thought.

At that point I began jotting down notes; here they are below, verbatim, in chronological order with the timeline of the film.

NOTES

AnimAl cruelty cut was preachy and hokey [Editor’s note - I’m referring to the racing animals at the casino and Rose’s diatribe about their abuse.]

Casino cattle prod homage [Editor’s note - I’m talking about the scene in Martin Scorsese’s Casino where the cheater gets zapped with a cattle prod.]

Old luke looks like aqualung cover [Editor’s note - the Jethro Tull album]

Thought robot was actually going to kill that guard with machine gun bullets…would have been much funnier / subversive. [Editor’s note - this is in reference to the part where the robot spits out a bunch of coins at the guy.]

Little orphans hokey again

The sacred Jedi text line, delivery sounded absurd

Hope is like the sun…sounds like an earth centric proverb for a story with countless stars and suns

Silver storm trooper looks gaudy and goofy. Laura Dern looks ridiculous.

Emperors red guards looked more elegant than this guys red guards.

Storm trooper execution scene is goofy and James Bond like and we know that they’re going to live

Good guys left unscathed in a bombed area filled with charred storm trooper corpses, absurd

Wouldn’t be surprised if silver storm trooper survives that “death”

Little creature with chewbacca was just pointless and dumb, would have been cooler just to see chrwbacca make surprise enterabce.

Oh my god they are not going to kill rose , she is so awesome why would they do this please let it not be real

I wonder if c 3 po is still an actual guy in a costume at this point

If Luke survives that it will be truly asinine

Oh for fucks sake

Kyle tens ship is badass , looks like bat

Oh Man, these crystal foxes are a plot device now, please

Aqualung Luke and the lion king …

Fuckin a, snow troopers.

Oh my god, the orphan kids again. Please. With a broom, really? Very hokey.

END NOTES

Overall, I actually liked the movie, and my observation of various points that I found to be somewhat ridiculous or corny, did not diminish my enjoyment of it. I’m looking forward to the next one (and also looking forward to watching the other two recent Star Wars movies.)

343

THIS! Very well put.

I think I’m coming to the conclusion that TLJ is an excellent modern deconstruction of Star Wars. And I enjoy modern deconstructions. But it’s not what I look for in Star Wars. I look for whimsy and excitement and yes, enchantment. A simple, perhaps childish, adventure, with sweeping mythic tropes, iconic characters, tragic losses, and satisfying moments of heroism. And if that makes me a fanboy looking to relive his childhood, so be it. I’ll always have the OT.

344

Top each their own. I personally, found all of these things in the new film, except for the simple, childish part.

As an aside, I just finished reading Brandon Sanderson’s new book, Oathbringer, on the same day I saw the movie. I found the two works to have a lot in common. TLJ is very much a contemporary work of fantasy.

345

Lucas made 6 Star Wars movies. One was flawed but groundbreaking and perfect in my 12 year old eyes. You really had 2 good movies out of six. The way people compare the newest versions to the old you would think they were the perfect ideal of filmmaking. Even the best ones had giant flaws. Some of which are the same complaints I’m seeing about the new movies.

That wasn’t Abrams. It was Cuse and Lindelof. And it had nothing to do with discipline. They asked the network for an end date years before they were allowed to end it.

But he’s not Vader. But if he was Vader then it would be derivative.

346

Looking at this comic, which includes the force ghost of Annikin/Darth Vader, it made me wonder–Yoda shows up on Hup-Two to visit Luke, so did Dear Old Dad ever hang around, tell Luke stories about his adventures, commiserate with him on how much they hate sand? Did Ben get to meet his grandfather?

347

[Moderating]:

We get enough of real-world politics elsewhere. Let’s leave it out here, shall we?

348

I think you might be right, and they’re certainly in that position after TLJ, because it doesn’t really have any obvious hook or setup for a future story… if anything, it just closes everything else off.

I’m fine if they want to start doing a long-running series like what they’ve done with the MCU, but if they do so, I just wish they’d give us a nice bow-tied ending with Episode IX and then drop the episode numbering. I know that’s arguably a stupid nerd detail but that’s part of what I liked about Star Wars, the plot arcs, self-contained trilogies, etc. It just loses something if we end up with “Episode XVI” in a decade.

349

A couple of thoughts:
The Force: I think the force is not a “set of powers that are limited to what has already been seen” but rather it’s up the user to determine what they can do with the Force. Like giving someone a lump of clay and saying “see what you can make with this.”
The more talented and creative your are, the more uses you will come up with.

Rey’s parents: I think the last scene with the slave boy using the force bolsters the belief that her parents were nobodies. The scene is showing that “yes, mere nobodies can have the force.”

Snoke’s death: In Return of the Jedi, the emperor tells Luke he’s defenseless and to use his hatred to “strike me down and your journey to the dark side will be complete.” Perhaps Snoke wanted to die in this manner to complete Kylo’s journey to the dark side.

Kylo Ren is such a great character because he’s a whiny, little Vader fan boy. He is so emotionally immature. The lightsaber design is like putting flames on his car because it makes it look more badass. It’s like he said, "hey, follow me and we’ll have this bitchin’ name for our gang. We’ll call ourselves the “Knights of Ren! What why is it named after me! Because I said so, Toby! You’re out the gang!”

350

I agree. And it made me think about how George Lucas’s excuses for many of his choices in the prequels was that he sees the movies as being for kids. That’s what he was thinking when he made the original trilogy, and he continued that in the prequels. But that was after he had his own kids, who were very young at that time.

But IMHO he was being patronising to them. Kids deserve and appreciate being talked to as fellow people, not talked down to as simple or unsophisticated. The Last Jedi will be enjoyed by kids as well as adults in equal measure because it does not patronise or simplify for their sake.

351

But the point was that the emperor was lying, right? Because, otherwise, I can’t explain why he looks so happy when Luke swings on him and Vader parries.

352

Remember General Veers, the Imperial walker commander, from the Empire Strikes Back? The guy who played him is still around and still acting. (Most recently, he played Pycelle on Game of Thrones. How awesome would it be if the next movie brought Veers back - ideally as a defector to the Rebel side! With inside knowledge of the Imperial tactics, he would be a great addition to their ranks. I thought of this as I was pondering which actors from the original trilogy are still around and could be brought back.

353

Who needs an insider? Just bring back an aging actress who could still play spymaster. Granted, to get the information, some Bothans are going to die…

354

They could bring back John Ratzenberger–have them be the opponents from both sides of a battle that ended up as pals.

355

Saw it again:

Yeah, this is actually a really good movie.

Weird? Yes.

Do I disagree with some choices? Yes.

Was the Canto Bight sequence kind of dumb? yes.

Do I love this movie? Yes, I think so. In fact…it grew on me a lot during my second viewing. While I think this will remain a controversial Star Wars movie for decades to come, it will be gradually accepted as a good entry in the series.

I loved the Phasma fight. I loved the end of Snoke and the fight against the guards. I loved the moment Kylo Ren begs(please?) for Rey to join him. I think the opening “bomber” sequence is underrated already. I love the final fight on the salt planet.

I think the movie is just one of those you have to see multiple times to fully appreciate. Or not. I just know I liked it a lot more this time.

356

We saw it today, and while flawed, it had a lot of things I liked and will and in the top third of the movies for me.

You’ve touched on most of the things I liked, but to reiterate some:

  • I disliked whiny Luke quite a bit in past episodes, but I really like weary, angry, (more) weary Luke a lot more. Hamill really does that role well.
  • Most of the lead characters are terrific, and I’ll echo how great Ren and Rey are, and how well they connect. Rian Johnson gives them a lot of close-up camera time, and they use it so well.
  • As someone else said, no idea where the plot was headed, and that was good.
  • Teared up…yes, teared up, at a couple of Carrie Fisher’s scenes.

I will say, when Rey went into the black hole to figure out her parents and got the hall of mirrors plus frosty-mirror Rey, my first thought was that they were trying to say in some heavy-handed way that Rey is a clone. But I have no idea where that would fit into a canon I have very little knowledge of.

Things I disliked:

  • I wanted desperately for a good guy to die. When Finn was headed toward the MegaCannon I was sad but also happy…but then we get the Game of Thrones side-slam rescue. Ugh. C’mon and fucking kill one of the young characters will you?
  • How did Finn and Rose get back to the escaping crew?
  • When Rose’s sister is trying to free the bombs…why are things falling? How do they fall to the dreadnought? Why do ships start falling when they blow up? Which way is down in space? Thoughts I had.
  • I like almost all the characters, but Poe is just annoying.
357

Yeah, gravity is not something they ever really get into explaining in Star Wars. It’s there or not based completely on plot convenience. I suppose the bombs could be magnetic or have some otherworldly propulsion or some other fanwank bullshit, but the answer really is “because we didn’t really think about it that deeply beforehand, so neither should you.”

358

It’s the same reason why bombs fall in Earth gravity but ships and airplanes don’t. Ships have buoyancy to keep them up and airplanes have wings.

Star Wars ships have antigravity or some other bullshit, but the principle is the same. The bombs don’t, so they fall.

You’ll also notice that Star Wars ships don’t orbit planets; they hover in place above some location. Which is a further demonstration that they must have antigravity or the like.

You may be surprised to note that the gravitational force on the (real) space station is >80% that of Earth’s surface. But everything’s weightless because it’s in orbit, and therefore in freefall. If it somehow hovered in place, astronauts would hardly notice the weight difference.

359

The point is that the bombs shouldn’t fall at all because they are in space. Not that it matters since WWII style space battles are a feature of the series, not a bug.

360

Space doesn’t mean no gravity. We are used to the two being correlated because the only way physically plausible ships can stay in space is by being in freefall/orbit, but it’s not strictly necessary. If the (real) ISS had giant engines that could make it hover in place, they would experience ~80% of Earth gravity. A ship above it could drop a bomb and it would fall just as it does closer to the surface.