I liked this film a lot, they subverted a lot of Star Wars tropes while still making a great Star Wars film. I like that they didn’t hesitate to kill off Snoke after spending the previous movie building him up as a great enemy, I wasn’t really looking forward to yet another dark figure ruling from the shadows and pulling the strings of the most visible villain (Vader/Kylo). And I especially wasn’t looking forward to finding out an EU style reveal of how he’s been around for a long time and mastered yet another ancient force secret to let him take over the Galaxy. I also liked that the none of the force-user fights were ‘bouncy Yoda’ scenes - yes, Jedi can use the force for movement, but I feel there’s a definite difference between ‘enhanced speed and mobility’ and ‘flitting around like a hummingbird’ - the first feels epic, the second just silly.
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[li]I liked how in Luke’s astral projection he was thinner, with tidier hair that was less grey.[/li][/quote]
It actually annoyed me a little at first, because I felt like it was kind of silly that Luke had time to not only rescue his underwater X-wing but also get a haircut, dye job, and new clothes before setting off to the new rebellion’s last stand. Sort of like the complaint below. When he survived the bombardment I was pretty sure he was a projection (but still thought he was on-planet somewhere at first), so it that was a good fake-out. I liked the touch that he made his projection just a bit better-looking for his last stand - who wouldn’t spruce themselves up a little in that situation?
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[li]The Canto Bight scene was a bit crap really. I suppose it was the Cloud City-esque scene that they thought it needed, but it really didn’t add much and felt a bit clumsy.[/li][/quote]
I agree, it didn’t really seem to hold together to me. Plus being able to hop in a shuttle, leave the fleet, go visit somewhere distant, get arrested, hire a hacker, steal a ship, and come back to the fleet without the bad guys noticing hurts the tension of the last stand. Why not just have a few of the leaders hop into shuttles that jet away to rally another day instead of relying on the transport plan? I basically just tuned this part out since it is a star wars movie and I don’t need to be super-thinky to enjoy it, but it does glare out as being clumsily crafted.
Light sabers aren’t so unique that there’s only possibly one blue one in the galaxy, I assumed Luke had salvaged or put together another one for himself and had it stashed on the island somewhere, even if he didn’t use it.
This is one part I wish they had shot just a little differently and not shown the lightsaber pivot on the stand next to Snoke before Ren lit it. It would have caught me a bit more off guard.
Now I understand the red salt/sand - was hard to figure out what purpose it served until you realized it was the giveaway that Luke was not physically there.
There were a ton of hints that showed that Luke wasn’t there at all. Kylo wouldn’t have noticed any of them, the guy is barely restrained emotion not a cold logical thinker.
Not sure why you’d think that. The imperial guards have been around since the original trilogy, the knights of Ren were the other armored dudes that looked like Kylo, presumably the other Luke padawans who went off with him.
I think the idea is that they’re both. Ren and a bunch of padawans revolt and burn down Luke’s temple. They run off to the First Order, where Ren is made Snoke’s direct apprentice, and the Knights are given snazzy red uniforms and made the Supreme Leader’s personal bodyguard. It’s not a bad idea; the problems I have with it are that I don’t recall any of the guards using force powers, which argues against them being force users, and that it seems likely that their first loyalty would be to Kylo. But both could be easily explained, if that’s the path they choose to go with it.
I think Rey’s parentage will be revealed to have been Skywalker or allies.Kylo would have been lying or mistaken. Its “Anakin died on a spice freighter” all over again. Or if the transaction did take place its a “cover”.
My fear is JJ will swing back towards the safe and boring. Having Kylo lie about her parents would be a terrible idea and I hope it doesn’t go down that way.
The idea that The Force is for the select few is one of the things I always disliked about the OT. I loved how TLJ handled the Force.
To be fair, Leia did shoot him and there was no chuckling aimed at him. He’s a resource. Like adjusting to rusty equipment, you work with what you’ve got and concentrate on the potential.
I’m expecting that, unlike Luke, Rey is going to earnestly study those books. She’s going to agonize over them. What she ends up deciding to do in the end may not look anything like the Jedi of the late Republic. At least I’m hoping.
I honestly thought that the hyperspace beacons that Leia and Rey had were what the 1O were tracking and was expecting that reveal for most of the film.
The whole fleet chase scene annoyed me a little. When the resistance ships ran out of fuel they were portrayed as slowing down and going out of control/adrift. This is space - there is no air resistance. It would have taken at least as long for the First Order fleet to reach them as it took for them to get that far ahead (First Order ships continuing to accelerate while the resistance ship remained at a constant velocity.
And then the resistance cruiser does a 180 on a dime…
Noticed the bad space physics also. In the opening when the bombers were making their bombing run everytime one got hit in went into a slow nosedive as if affected by gravity.
This is Star Wars. Virtually every aspect of their space physics can be directly translated to WW2-era naval and air combat. It’s actually remarkably consistent. It’s a greater shock when some aspect is consistent with real physics, like the silence after the hyperspace ramming (which is part of why it was such a cool effect) or Poe’s X-wing flip maneuver.
Doing a low-level bombing run over the Death Star, enemy fighters hot on their tails, was not a significant plot point in previous movies? In “reality”, they would have positioned a ship several million kilometers over the exhaust port and shot a laser right down the hole. Or how about waiting for the DS to emerge from behind Yavin, which was almost exactly the same kind of artificial constraint where “we’re on the verge of zapping the good guys with our giant gun but have to wait until we’re in position for some reason mumble mumble”.