Except that, as I said above, this is NOT true. The Inquisitors were created - force users, minor Sith - to not only hunt down the remaining Jedi, but to collect force sensitive children to be raised and trained. How and where, we do not know. But Star Wars Rebels, which is canon, showed this to be happening.
And they are, but others, such as Maul, his most stupidly named brother and many other ‘Not nearly Sith Lords’ are bouncing around there doing their own things.
As I postulated: We have never seen the Order that took charge of those force sensitive babies, raised and trained them. Obviously such an order had to be headed by a strong force user. We know that there aren’t merely “two” Sith, as Duuku had Asajj Ventress and then Darth Maul as his servants, and there are a bunch of Inquisitors running around collecting babies and hunting Jedi.
So what if Snoke was the head of this Order, oh, I dunno, let’s call it The First Order, and he gathered his forces and local Imperial forces after the deaths of Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader?
I agree with your post, for the most part. However, if you know some of the backstory in the Star Wars Universe, the Jedi Order has been around for some twenty thousand years, by the time of the events shown in Episodes I thru III.
Fail HARD? Nah. They had a good run, IMO. But something happened. I think the Jedi lost their way, somehow.
We never learned that. We did learn that Palpatine and Vader killed all of the Jedi they could reach, but there’s no support for them killing ‘everybody trained in the Force’, especially non-jedi in outer rim areas that they don’t even control.
I like that the new Star Wars movies are treating it like it takes place across an entire Galaxy, instead of in a small town where everyone has to bump into everyone before the movie ends. The idea that somewhere among the millions of worlds there’s a dude who wasn’t interested in fighting Palpatine during the events of the first six movies really doesn’t need much explanation. Maybe he didn’t care about the main portion of the Galaxy until it looked ripe for conquest, maybe he expected Palpatine to burn out the Dark side of the force and leave an opportunity for him, maybe he didn’t think he could stand up to Palpatine, maybe he was busy with another plot entirely, or whatever.
yeah, this is kind of where I am. It seemed like the Jedi were supposed to be the “keepers” of the Force, with them thinking they were anointed to determine when it is in “balance.” and carry themselves as emotionless automatons who are better than everyone else despite how some among them went bad.
except that “going bad” doesn’t mean one of them uses the Force to shoplift, or push someone into a puddle from afar. It means that every so often they create literally Hitler.
I thought it was fantastic. My only real criticism is the way Luke died. There was just no reason to kill him that way. He wasn’t old enough for “strain” to finish him off. Leia survives the vacuum of space but Luke dies from strain sitting on a rock?
I’m also interested in the central moral conflict they seem to have highlighted that runs throughout the Star Wars movies: do you prioritize preserving what you have, or do you take risks, make sacrifices, to win big victories? The overriding theme of Last Jedi seemed to be the former. And this theme has run through the entire series, as the remaining Jedi scattered and hid rather than joining the rebels, and rebel leaders were often extremely cautious and unwilling to chance the lives of their paltry few warriors. But in the past, Star Wars always came down on the side of needing to take the chance, needing to make the sacrifice, for there to be any chance of victory. I’m hoping the next movie builds on that dilemma.
As opposed to the new movies where we just start with a main villian who is a whiny snot
I know I’m in the minority but I found Kylo Ren to be a very weak antagonist in Force Awakens and my opinion didn’t change based on this film. He lacks any gravitas or menace and “Oh, but that’s what makes him so dangerous because he’s, like, tormented and desperate to prove himself” doesn’t make him any better. Even knowing that the Good Guys will win, I go through these movies with no sense of suspense because it feels like the bad guy is incompetent and pathetic.
I was pleased that the Porgs weren’t beaten into the ground with a rock but the tedious Space Monaco scene eliminated much of that goodwill. No fan of the Pokemon crystal foxes either.
I liked Luke and Ren was good but I thought the acting on Rose was weak. Agreed that her knocking Finn off course felt more selfish than inspirational; she had no reason to suspect anything else would save them.
I guess I didn’t hate it and was moderately entertained but it failed to really impress.
Kylo Ren’s “emo” nature is not what makes him dangerous, but it is what makes him an interesting and compelling character. You can sense the conflict and the motivation that turned him to the Dark Side. Anakin had none of that, he just seemed weak and sad, not conflicted and aggressive.
What makes Kylo dangerous is that he’s so powerful and he uses that power for evil purpose.
Only thing i want to comment on is the suicide jump to lightspeed.
As awesome as that was to see…it should be totally impossible. Otherwise…everyone would be doing it. Why didn’t those frigates do it before they ran out of power?
A few comments:
As i suspected i would see, Hamills complaints are actor vanity. “That’s not my Skywalker” Your character had one human moment of weakness. Get over it dude. You did a fantastic acting job and went out great.
We need a trope named after ‘trope-smashing’. There sure was a lot of time dedicated to trope smashing. or Plan Smashing. The whole film in fact. Rey gets Luke to come with her. Finn sneaks aboard and disables the tracker. The transports cloak to the planet.Finn gets Flower codebreaker dude to come with them. We’ll send out a distress signal and our allies will come. Nope nope nope nope.
And to be clear: We lost Phasma, Ackbar, Pancake Face, Vyvyan. Right? And?
I’m not sure about Vyvyan / Ade Edmondson / First Order Officer Peavey. Not everyone on Snoke’s ship perished, and I don’t know where he was when it all went kablooey.
Too long and disjointed. So long. All the beats suffer.
I love Kylo Ren and Driver but…where is this going?? What does Kylo Ren want? Revenge against all the father figures in his life? He’s got it. He accomplished his goal. And he goes to “Rule with me”?? Boring Kylo.
As i said above, every single plan failed. It just hurts the beats in such a long film.
It wanted to be a Star Wars film* AND a very important film at the same time and it didn’t work in places.
*By that i mean “Hey, its a silly rollicking adventure just like the first one was in 1977. Cut us some slack. It’s Star Wars!”
That’s about it. I liked a hell of a lot more than i disliked. But i can see how it’s divisive.
I understand that you see it that way, but I fail to find him interesting or compelling. He feels predictable and lame to me. Predictable could be okay if he was badass and awesome but lame isn’t a great combination. I can’t take him seriously as an antagonist.
Phasma felt pointless. After the last film where she looked like an idiot and this film where she accomplished absolutely nothing, what was the point?
They should have added something integral to the plot that almost always makes it impossible…but because of the tracking or some detail that everyone takes for granted made it possible in this one instance.
I’m pulling this out of my ass:
“Any hyperspace drive within 1000 miles will cause the ship to disentegrate upon impact. That includes our transports, our x-wings, THEIR drive. And even if we got past all that. The remaining fuel on our ship would implode…disintegrating us.”
Then throw in that Snokes ship has damaged their own Drive by pushing their standard engines to the limit and constantly using the ion cannons. And they’ve pulled too far away from the rest of their fleet.
So their you have it. A ridiculous set of circumstances that made it possible.
I could have, after he killed Snoke. But when he throws a hissy fit and allows the Resistance to escape to be fooled by Luke’s force ghost…then he just becomes a juvenile loser again.
You know what would have been a much more interesting ending? If Rey had joined him and he’d ordered the ships to cease fire and let the Resistance get away. Then the third movie would have been one I actually was looking forward to seeing. At this point, I don’t even think I’m going to bother watching it.
Everyone was all excited about the Strong Female Character thing though so it seemed especially dumb that she’d have so little payoff.
Snoke dying was what I meant by predictable. It was obvious a mile away that Kylo would wind up killing him after Ren & Rey have their “You’ll join me” “Nuh uh, you’ll totally join me” thing and then Kylo Ren gets the “kill her” command. I mean, Rey obviously wasn’t going to die. I’ll admit that I didn’t know exactly how Snoke would bite it – Kylo force choking him or shooting lightning or whatever – but it was clear that he would kill Snoke and save Rey. It was also obvious that he wouldn’t just go “I’m a good guy now!”
I did appreciate that Snoke mocked him for his stupid helmet though and made him rage-smash it
With the Death Stars, at least, it clearly wouldn’t have worked. The Rebel ship was slightly smaller than Snokes flagship, and wasn’t able to completely destroy it, just severely damage it. Versus something the size of a moon, the damage would be pretty negligible.
Actually, if the gravity well aspect of hyperspace travel is still in play, it would be impossible - a Death Star is massive enough to pull any light speed ships out of ore they’d reach the surface.
Hell, maybe that’s why we haven’t seen it before - all the big fleet battles we’ve seen have been in planetary gravity wells - Yavin, Scarif, Hoth, Endor, Coruscant. Encounters in deep space are probably pretty rare, as there’s seldom a reason to drop out of hyperspace when you’re not near a planet.
I think it may have also have something to with the First Order’s utter hubris and complacency. One could easily WAG that this kind of attack could have been prevented easily if they had been even slightly prepared for it.
