My understanding was that the slicer (sorry, codebreaker…old SW habits die hard) had to modify their sensors to see through the cloaking of the transports and that was why they also gave him payment. It wasn’t JUST information that the Resistance was escaping.
The hacker’s name was DJ. Which… well, it’s better than Dooku.
As for the deal, I like that the First Order recognizes the benefit of buying off someone as skilled and morally flexible as DJ, versus just breaking him to their will. The FO controls something like a quarter of a galaxy. No matter how much money they piled up on that pallet, it’s never going to be more than chump change to them. And now DJ knows that, if he’s got information about someone trying to subvert the First Order, he’s got a reliable buyer for that information.
I liked it. It wasn’t perfect, but generally good.
Particularly liked R2 playing the old tape of Leia.
Could someone explain to me why the New Order star destroyers couldn’t just hyperspace around the rebel flagship, instead of chasing it for 16 hours at sub-light speed?
Sure, because they introduced an entirely new main character (Rose). And my understanding is that they did it because sending Finn and Poe to a casino planet would have felt too much like “two bros in Space Vegas”.
If I have one complaint about the new Star Wars episodic films (iow excluding Rogue One) is that the stories don’t feel as tight. Too many characters story lines intersecting at random times. Case in point, it took 2 entire films for Rey and Poe to meet and make googley eyes at each other.
Oh, when the cave revealed that Rey was her own parents, I thought we were headed toward midi-chlorians. 'Bout to walk outta this theatre.
Well, I’d like a little backstory. Not three movies worth, or even one movie, but maybe just a line from Luke about how Snoke was this bad MF’er who was trained by such and such and he got in a tussle with ol’ so and so, messed up his face and now here he is.
I didn’t really get that scene. But I suppose metaphorically, Rey is her “own parents” as she did raise herself.
I’d also like a throwaway line how ignorant people were 50 years ago, thinking “midi-chlorians” had anything to do with the Force. Although, in all fairness, I always assumed midi-chlorians were just some sort of harmless Force-attuned bacteria found in elevated levels in Force sensitive people. They didn’t cause The Force.
I think they should just make the next movie two hours of the Falcon flying through tunnels and other narrow spaces, blasting TIE fighters to that theme music. Which I guess is what Empire Strikes Back was.
I don’t get why anyone thinks he was lying, other than WANTING him to have been lying because they spent the last 2 years making up their own pet theories. And besides, he doesn’t TELL her that her parents were nobodies - she says it first, and he confirms it.
Direct quote –
And people who say this was some middle finger to JJ Abrams, that her parentage turned out to be meaningless, are dead wrong. Not being some Secret Skywalker is hugely important - it’s the whole point! - to how this story is going to end. Because the Skywalkers and their best buds don’t own the force. The Jedi don’t own it, the Sith don’t own it - and Luke’s been trying very hard to tell people that it’s high time for a new way of doing things.
With all due respect I disagree with that last statement.
It seems to me that the very concept of the Force flies in the face of any one person saying that it’s time to do things in a new way.
If it is everywhere at once and all encompassing, you don’t get to decide to do things in a new way.
The fabric of everything in the universe is the fabric of everything in the universe; no one character decides that it’s time to change things around.
That’s not the way the Force works.
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I think they could’ve fit it with TFA’s storyline, if they’d wanted; Luke explains that, having failed so horribly with Ben, he shuttered himself away from everyone: opting to do the ‘reclusive hermit’ bit instead of making things worse – not knowing what he could do to make the potential Vader-type less troubled, but (a) knowing that being in the presence of Luke Skywalker was a profound irritant to that kid, and so (b) just hoping that Ben would come to see the light if left to make his own way.
Figure he tells Rey that in seconds. Figure she replies, yeah, while you’ve been out of contact, he’s started cosplaying as Darth Vader; just killed Han Solo.
Figure that Luke says well, then, Plan A was teaching him, and Plan B was turning my back on the world; and you’re telling me neither worked? So, cue Plan C.
Think perhaps as an analogy to the history of religion from the perspective of someone who believes in God. Just substitute “the Divine” for “the Force”
The Jedi and the Sith are those who say that access to the Divine comes through them and the structures of the religion, through their intercession. You yourself cannot look into the face of the Divine. You need the high priests to do it for you. Luke is arguing for a more transcendental view that the Divine is accessible to us all without intercession of the chosen few of organized religions.
(Assuming the existence of the Divine…) No one individual gets to decide what the Divine actually is or is not or how it works. But they can have influence on how or if believers experience it.
This does bring up the concept that the Dark side is not actually intrinsically evil. It has just been more often had its High priests abuse it for evil purposes. What it reveals is deep often ugly truths without sugarcoating and truth without balance and without adequate preparation for it overwhelms those who turn to it.
Even Yoda can’t help but play with the truth even in this episode, misleading Luke to think that the books of Jedi lore are now destroyed with action and a statement that is not a lie but is still intended to deceive.
This kinda goes with my idea that luke is a Martin Luther-type. Going forward, the Jedi won’t have a monopoly on force users in the galaxy. Sure, you may get some who come around and claim Jedi is the one true “religion,” (or way of connecting with the Force) but it’s just as likely now that you start seeing new “denominations” pop up across the galaxy as people either form new orders or use the force in their own way. Without the Jedi claiming ownership of the Force, there’s gonna be room for new ideas, ideologies, etc. This was the beginning of the Protestant Reformation.
Will be interesting to see Rey’s role in the reformation, will she become John Calvin or pledge loyalty to the pope?
Well, pulling this out of my ass…
How about if we see an 80 year old Ezra Bridger in the next movie and he basically says;
“Yeah, I trained as a Jedi. But I also learned from a Sith. The Jedi had good ideals, but they were morons. They separated themselves from the galaxy in temples and didn’t allow each other to have real relationships. They became Monks. Then the war came and they became warrior monks…and fell to the Dark Side. Luke was right, it is time to lay that rotted corpse to rest. Go ahead, form a new organization, a new light. Just make sure you don’t become Jedi.”
The Dark Side is all about passion. Which is bad…why? Better to be a detatched monk, shut off from love?
I’ve always regarded the Jedi and Sith as religious fanatics. One is a lot less distasteful than the other since it doesn’t venerate dog-eat-dogism. But at the end of the day neither order is a particulary good model for how normal people should live their lives.
That’s why the game KOTOR 2 has always been my favorite plot-line of all the expanded universe stuff and why the idea of “grey” Jedi has always appealed to me. There has got to be a better compromise somewhere between perfectly emotionless defenders of the established order and rage-consumed social Darwinists.
ETA: Oh and I liked the film overall, even acknowledging many of the flaws pointed out in this thread. Driver and Ridley really carried it IMHO.
My take on the movie, counting all six movies; New Hope, Empire, Return of the Jed, Force Awakens, Rogue 1, Last Jedi (distro order) Something like Ten Billion people have died in the name of the rebellion, more if you include indig life forms like Ewoks, when their moon suddenly encountered an extinction level event.
Kylo Renn is the only sane person in that universe.
I don’t buy that for a moment. He’s someone who knows how to penetrate their most secure defenses, and someone who they know will change sides for money.
Maybe instead of killing him they lock him in a gilded cell and treat him well while getting every bit of information they can out of him? But releasing him back out into the wild? There’s no organization on earth that would do that, particularly not an evil and ruthless one.
I just rewatched The Force Awakens to wash the bad thoughts of The Last Jedi out of my brain. I liked it a lot the first time I saw it, and I now love it compared to The Last Jedi. It’s a real Star Wars movie. The plot makes sense, the humor is understated, and it doesn’t shit on classic Star Wars.
Okay, just saw it and oh my God, what a huge disappointment.
First of all, the decision by Laura Dern’s character to not share their plan with the rest of her officers was STUPID. MORONIC. INSIPIDLY IDIOTIC. It goes against every principle of military planning. You WANT your subordinates to know the plan so that if you get killed, they can still carry it out. You certainly don’t taunt your subordinates to the point where they mutiny against you. The only reason for withholding the information from them was to withhold it from the audience, which is lazy, bad writing. And the only reason it worked after that was plot armor.
Second, if she could jump the fucking ship to hyperspace and take out the Imperial ships, why the HELL didn’t she do it BEFORE hundreds of her friends and allies were killed in the transports??? Fucking dramatic effect? More abject stupidity.
Third, why the FUCK did Rose prevent Finn from taking out the ram cannon? She didn’t know Luke Skywalker would appear and save everyone, so basically she was sacrificing Princess Leia and a shitload of her friends to save one man’s life because she liked him. What a huge dipshit!
Then there was the ending. It’s a brave decision to kill off 9/10 of the alliance and pretty much force the poor fucker who comes after you to make a huge time jump to continue the series, but the attitude of the main characters in the end was “oh, it’s ok, we’ve left the legends behind and that’s all we need to save the rebellion.” No you fucking morons, what you did was just condemn trillions of people to slavery under the First Order because you lack any sort of leadership or military planning skills.
Honestly, by the end, I wanted everyone but Rey, Poe and Finn to die. What a bunch of fucking morons.
Which means, in the end, that the writers and the director were the biggest fucking morons.
But tell us how you REALLY feel? :eek:
The Dark Side is about passion, emotion, ambition and individualism. Those are easy concepts for anyone to understand. Take that to even the slightest extreme you have people stepping on each other to get to the top and imposing their will.
The Light Side is about peace of mind, serenity, collectivism. Harder to understand. Taken to a far extreme (unlike the Dark side which doesn’t have far to go before it gets ugly) you have detachment and ineptitude (the Jedi in the prequels), taken really really far you have something like The Borg. But for the most part the Light side is “Safe” and hard to take too far.
The dark side is technically not evil but it’s a really easy and quick path to being evil.
How about the principle of maintaining operational security?
We don’t know she didn’t share the plans with her staff. We just know she didn’t share them with Poe (who was demoted).
They were obviously worried about people trying to desert. They may also have been worried about some of those people getting captured and revealing the plan.
Also, the plan wasn’t great.
Leia knew about it. Presumably Admiral Akbar and everyone else on the bridge knew about it. Everyone prepping the transports knew about it. I’m starting to believe only Poe didn’t know about it because they felt he was unreliable.
AKA “The Force”!
Why didn’t they jump one of the smaller ships into the star destroyer before they ran out of fuel.
Why has no one done this before (other than the obvious reason that starships are expensive).
It probably wouldn’t have worked anyway. Not sure why they thought ramming the part that’s meant to contain all the explosion was the “weak part”.
Their entire plan was predicated on someone coming to rescue them.
Closer to 100 quadrillion people scattered among 50 million worlds. Which sort of begs the question as to how ANYONE can control the galaxy, given that these fleets seem pretty small.
The real problem IMHO is that we’ve had 2 films that mostly feel like a prelude.
Also, given Carrie Fishers death IRL, I kind of feel like they should have re-shot the film so they Leia died when the bridge exploded, instead of Force, moving her way back.