Spoiler i don't like that we're almost 5 hours into the new trilogy and basically know nothing about Snoke. and now that he's dead, i imagine there won't be anything more.
Spoiler After thinking about it over night, the highs were as good or better than anything before it. And the lows were pure prequel crap, didn't mind the Leia scene but the Poe/Hux banter was awful and nearly everything Finn did was a waste of time. Then the last 45 minutes or so were just about perfect. Some of y'all with your Porg slander...SMH. On par w/ R1 for me (which had similar pacing issues) as the best of the new stuff.
Spoiler we know about as much about him as we knew about the Emperor in the OT before the prequels were made. I agree that it'd be nice to have his story fleshed out more, but it's pretty obvious the point they're making is that Snoke isn't the story they're telling, Kylo is.
Spoiler except iirc the emperor doesn't even show up until the empire strikes back, and even then it's in a tiny role that's not really a good reason for doing it either
Spoiler Y’all really take a short term approach and want to know EVERYTHING NOW. The trilogy isn’t over yet. JJ and Kasdan created Snoke, and the ball just got put back in their court to flesh him out. I’ll bet top dollar he gets some exposition from Kylo in the last movie.
Spoiler There must be something wrong with me for wanting to know more about a fairly important character after nearly 5 hours of film
Spoiler i'd spoil that just to be safe. but to your point, i don't disagree at all. however, i believe it will be addressed in the last film. whether we're satisfied by it is a whole different story.
Spoiler This wouldn't really change my opinion either way because I know it's hard to add new stuff to an existing universe that already has a bunch of rules but... Who would have trained snoke? He seems to be fairly old and tfa is like 30 years after rotj so the overlap between he and the emperor/vader is what I'm curious about. There is apparently some book stuff that could explain the timeline but i haven't read any of it.
Spoiler he hasn't been explained in the books, but there's a lot of speculation he's from the "unknown" regions, essentially outside the far reaches of the galaxy. There are some lines in books or comics (can't remember which) from the emperor about feeling a strong force presence out there, but they haven't followed up on it since. It'll probably be in upcoming books before IX...which definitely isn't the best way to explain that to the movie watcher. That said, I don't think it's that big of a deal as Kylo has been the focus from the beginning. It's annoying, but I think everything still works without it.
Spoiler People on Reddit/the internet are fucking insane. Nitpicking a movie b/c it didn't turn out like the EU stuff they loved as kids or how they'd written the story in their heads is...creepy. The film has its issues but fanboys are just insatiable.
Spoiler yeah, I think a lot of people just aren't going to be able to get past the Luke they have imagined for 30 years not being the Luke we got.
Spoiler Literally just read someone bitching about how derivative it was and in the next sentence being upset that Rey didn't lift the X-wing out of the water.
hello yes I would like to become a Star Wars book snob like I am with GoT so I can be more of an uptight asshole with friends and co workers regarding all things Star Wars but there are just so many books so how should I go about reading them
Spoiler Why are you guys arguing about Snoke and porgs with a guy who started watching Game of Thrones in season 7. To be clear, he didn’t catch up, he started with 7 then said he would watch 1-6.
Just watched it again, this time with my son. It's SO MUCH BETTER the second time. All the pacing issues I had with the middle felt like nothing and knowing the story before hand really helped me to just let the story as-is play out, and not worry about all the ways it defied my expectations. Spoiler Call me crazy but I think Rey will turn out to be more than just a nobody. I think she's a creation of the force just like Anakin was,* created by the force in response to the rise of evil found in Snoke/Ben. I think it'll be revealed in the next movie that her mother just gave her up because she was a poor nobody living on Jakku and gave her up to make ends meet. Rey isn't nobody, she'll end up space Jesus 2.0 That's my theory; word doc it. *Anakin was created by the force in response to the stirring of Palpatine/the Sith after a millennia in hiding. The force is all about balance, and as darkness rose, the force created light in the form of Anakin. That's the prophesy of balance that Mace Windu spoke of in EP1. Anakin was it, but fell because blah blah blah Lucas is a terrible writer you know how he fell. In the end he was redeemed and did defeat Palpatine which is why the force created him. After that it was quiet. Luke was the last Jedi, he spent a decade or so hopping star systems, finding Jedi temples and just doing stuff. When Ben was born Luke sensed great force power in him and trained him, as well as others he discovered over the years. Then Snoke stirred, planning to seize power. As he did, the Force (which has always had a non-temporal nature to it) moved to create a balance and made Rey. Snoke seduced Kylo, Luke went into seclusion and the galaxy fell into darkness just like it did during the dark times. Finally the force awoke in Rey and now she's on the path to defeat the darkside. Snoke wasn't the big bad; it's Kylo. "balance" isn't about equal parts always being in existence; it's about the ebb and flow of good and evil. When one becomes too strong, the force balances things by swinging the pendulum in the other direction.
Spoiler He didn't die before we knew who the fuck he was. The one throwaway sentence at the beginning of ANH - that he dissolved the Senate - gives more insight into who he is than anything we got about Snoke.
Spoiler The thing that I wanted most from this new trilogy was to see Luke being a badass with a lightsaber and the force. Kind of pissed off that I'll never get to see that now. TFA spent the whole movie building towards Luke coming back (and I totally bought in), but now in TLJ he never comes back. Super frustrating. Even just a short clip similar to Vader at the end of Rouge One would have been great. The Finn/Rose sideplot was absolutely terrible (besides Del Toro). Poe was also pretty bad. But the worst was Leia floating through space. They did a great job with Rey and Kylo. The throne room scene was the best part of the movie. Wish we had learned more about Snoke and Rey, but that's not a huge deal. My bigger 'backstory' issue is that it makes no sense how the First Order was able to virtually destroy the entire Resistance over the course of what had to have only been a few weeks.
Spoiler Splitting some very fine hairs. In a similar vein of throwaway references to the past, we know Snoke trained another apprentice and Kylo, then influenced Kylo and led him to turn against the Jedi and slaughter the trainees. A similar amount of detail. He and Palpatine are almost carbon copies in terms of scope. One benefits from the prequels, while the other currently doesn’t. It’s currently six movies to two. Sometimes the antagonists are just that. You usually aren’t going to get a true introspection into a foil in Star Wars. I’d like it to do better at this too, but let’s not pretend like Snoke-as-generic-foil isn’t par for the course in this series. Pre-prequel Palpatine, Darth Maul, Jabba, Boba Fett, etc.
Mixed. There's a lot to like, no matter who you are. A lot of it is very well done. Some of us have some gripes, though.
Spoiler i agree with the Rey piece. Lies and deceptions. These are the ways of the Sith. He’s speaking from the Dark side to manipulate what he wants from her. IMHO.
It's great but not perfect, but that's okay because it took chances and dared to move the story forward instead of retread the same old stuff. That's sometimes messy business. Personally, my problem is technical not creative. It needed tighter editing in the middle. Trim it down by ten minutes and you've got a movie up there with Empire.
Some things I did not like and liked in The Last Jedi - Spoiler 1. Not enough R2D2 and C3PO. 2. I want(ed) a backstory on Supreme Leader Snoke. Maybe we get one in Episode IX? 3. We still do not know how the Anakin/Luke lightsaber ended up at Maz Kanata's joint in Episode VII. 4. I thought Luke dusting his shoulder off was corny. What I liked: 1. The scene where Admiral Holdo jumps to lightspeed through the First Order ships. Freaking amazing. 2. Sequence with Chewie and Rey aboard the Millennium Falcon through the caves of Crait was fantastic. 3. I was kinda hoping for Luke to actually fight with his lightsaber, but it made sense of how it ended up. Yes, I cried when Luke was looking off into the sunset(s). 4. BTW - I'm still shocked that Luke is dead. Not upset, just shocked. Feels like a part of my childhood died with him. 5. Loved Master Yoda returning. 6. I really liked Poe in this film. Rose and Finn's mission to Canto Bight was kinda meh. It's a really good film. Everyone were literally on the edge of their seat during the third act of the film.
something I caught the second time around Spoiler When Kylo and Rey first link up with the force, Kylo says something to the effect of: "are you doing this? No...the effort it would take would kill you" which explains why Luke died right after He did it in the finale. He exerted every ounce of energy he had left to do that.
Spoiler: Thoughts I think the snoke death could have been better. It was so heavily telegraphed that you would have to be a child to be nervous there. A little too goofbally in some parts I'm pretty sure Disney knows what they are doing though. Get ready for those little furby toys. God damn some scenes were visually pleasing. Kylo seems like he's going to fuck up as a leader pretty much all the time. 3 nasty lactating alien tits out of 4. Great movie.
Spoiler Luke’s bluster, corniness, showmanship etc in the final scene was intentionally designed to enrage Kylo and buy the evacuation time. That was pretty obvious I thought
Just saw it. Spoiler Liked it, didn't love it. Really, I was pretty underwhelmed with the first 2/3 of it. Very pretty but just didn't do much for me. Luke's character felt inconsistent with the original trilogy Luke at times. But the last hour. Wow. The light speed through the FO ship was nuts. And the throne room scene. The last battle was anticlimactic compared to that until Luke showed up. I was hoping Phasma would kill Finn so I don't have to sit through any more of his character. That casino planet storyline was god awful. Even Del Toro couldn't redeem that IMO. The Leia in space part was dumb and weird, I think just because it was poorly executed. someone who had never shown any force use outside of a weird link with her brother suddenly has the ability to fly through space like Superman? Cut that part out, you have something great on your hands.
Spoiler Is Leia flying though space like Superman or simply using the force to grab hold of the ship and pull herself to it? I say it's the latter
Spoiler: Something I caught on second viewing "What did you think, that I was gonna walk out with my laser sword and take on the whole First Order by myself?" Cut to the end of the movie...
One thought I just had. Spoiler the Leia spacewalk could easily be explained in 30 seconds more of film. Either have Luke channel into her to fly her back and save her and show he's still got it, or (my favorite) have Kylo channel into her to save her to illustrate the dark/light struggle within himself. Instead, she is Sandra Bullock in Gravity and I want to throw things at the screen.
Actually, some of us knew he cost five proof of purchases + shipping & handling. Brb going to tell some nerfherders to get off my lawn.
it's been 24 hours Spoiler the good outweighs the bad, i think. specifically the rey/ben solo stuff. all of that was excellent. the light speed kamikazee scene was beautiful. luke's goodbye scene with the two sunsets. finn's would-be kamikazee (and a lot of the scenes on the salt planet. the training (and luke, generally, on the island). the bad is still so fucking bad, though. a lot of the jokes are pg disney-fied jokes that miss the mark imo. finn and rose's entire thing is bad; both their romance and their mission. (finn better sacrifice himself to pull rey back to the light side in ep. 9 or something to redeem his storyline). and, of course, leah's spacewalk. i don't really care about not getting the snoke storyline, though. maybe it gets explained in ep. 9 or maybe it never gets explained. it's not a central storyline and he's not a central character. just like rey's lineage; it's a red herring that rian johnson cut. i also think we're getting a story told and we're 2/3 the way through so i'm not one to complain about the story yet. i think a lot of people were unhappy with kylo ren and his character in ep. 7 and now they look dumb imo because he's awesome in ep. 8.
Spoiler kylo in 7 gets a bad rap IMO. His character is supposed to be a petulant child. Like his idol, Anakin. I also see some Luke parallels in terms of his force skills. Talented but emotional and scared in the first film. Second one, powerful but still a bit naive and tries to beat his nemesis and is soundly humiliated.
Spoiler 1. I loved the casino scenes. Felt awesome being immersed in another world again within the universe. From the aesthetics to the species it was great. Probably why that part didn’t feel slow to me. Mos Eisley cantina feel. Benicio is fucking awesome. 2. Space scenes incredible. The bomber part was great. Loved the new craft, some sort of Bwing tribute. Obviously the hyperspace kamikaze and the resounding silence had me geeking. 3. The throne room scenes. Hollllly Fuuuuuck. The lightsabers and the whole look of the room with the new order-imperial guards was just fantastic. 4. I also initially thought Leia’s space walk felt ridiculous but in that moment I can remember saying to myself they finally showed her force power and not just calling out “Luke” all the time. 5. Can’t believe my childhood hero is gone. But it makes the series finally stand alone and gives itself any number of different ways to continue it. 6. Adam Driver and Daisey Ridley. Well fucking done.
Can we scrap posting with spoiler censor on? I think the majority of us have seen the film. Let’s all open up and talk about it.
Second watch, liked it a lot. Caught some things I wanted to comment on Spoiler 1. bigpig is 100 % right on Rey. She’s the light that rises to meet the dark, etc. Not sure if that means a force child like Anakin, but she’s definitely the one to bring balance, perhaps by destroying the institutions of the Sith and Jedi, who have grown too diametrically opposed and insular. 2. Fucking love the force conversations between Ben and Rey. For all the quirks and iffy fluff in the movie, this really redeems it for me. The scenes are flat out great. It’s smart because both Driver and Ridley are classically trained theatre actors and it gives an opportunity to really focus the lens on their faces and let them do the work. Driver is especially incredible at subtle emotion. Top stuff. The dynamic of Rey being vulnerable because she longs for belonging and family, with Ben and the dark side offering the answers, was very well written. The dark side is more interesting when it’s not about “taking over the universe muahaha” but fear, guilt, jealousy, etc. It’s impulsive and comfortable, it feels good. Rey literally shutting the door on him at the end was perfect. Great way to expand the force in the films, and fit the theme of their dualism very well. 3. Speaking of which, the floating Leia was a classic example of great idea but poor execution. CGI and entire design of the scene was garbage. It could’ve been so much cooler and less hokey. I liked the idea of it, though. Could’ve done a sweet tracking shot of just her hand pulling towards the ship until it finally touches and you realize what she just did. Instead it felt very tacked-on and excessive. 4. Rose is trash and deserves all the criticism to come. JJ and Kasdan would be wise to write her out of IX as completely as possible. 5. The sound design is incredible and will probably win an Oscar going away. The crunching sound and acceleration Poe’s X-Wing makes when he blows up the last surface canon and spins that fucker around on a dime was sooooo satisfying. Similarly, both crowds have reacted with utter shock at the kamikaze. People were laughing and smiling and clapping like they’ve never seen anything like it before in a theater. In 2017, that’s pretty hard to pull off. Didn’t catch the first time: after the goblin gambler dude deposits his coins into BB-8, for the next couple scenes he’s in you can hear this sound like coins jingling in your pocket. Very nice touch and attention to detail. 6. Rian’s direction and pacing is a little obnoxious and frenetic. It’s a long movie as it is, and the pacing starts to get a little off. I get the sense he’s like an uber Star Wars superfan and was having a little too much fun in the sandbox. Cut the canto bight stuff in half, cut a bunch of the Poe-Holdo conflict down, then use that time for the main characters’ scenes to simmer a bit. Little more Rey and Luke, Rey and Ben would’ve been nice. Build a little more tension and mystery. It was cut for someone on an Avengers-level attention span, and that’s honestly really disappointing when compared to my expectations for the movie. 7. That being said, the big set pieces and moments were excellent. The blade cutting through a shocked Snoke, tracking towards the screen only for Rey’s hand to snag it, queue the music, slow mo sabers ignite...wonderful. Yoda scene was simple, powerful. Shot of him with the inferno behind him, giving Luke one last lesson was brilliant. Dialogue seemed cut straight from the original trilogy. Three different versions of the temple incident also great and well shot. 8. Speaking of dialogue, there was some really odd vernacular at times. Rose’s lines at the end after saving (p.s. “saving” by t-boning a speeder at an extremely high speed into his speeder...I guess?) Finn were fucking miserable and I don’t understand how it gets past screen tests. Poe said they wouldn’t last “the night” at the rate they were burning fuel. Uh...night? You’re in the middle of hyperspace, there’s no night or day. Poe: “let’s give em hell!” I didn’t know hell existed in the galaxy far far away. I personally don’t mind the quippy dialogue and one-liners, and really enjoyed old man Luke because I thankfully don’t have some built-up mental image of what he’s supposed to be like in old age. However, it did feel very excessive during the final showdown. Kylo pushing Hux against the wall on the ship, “I think you’ve got him,” “I would hope so,” all was just excessive. I like the accessibility and lightening humor throughout, but it felt really out of place and caused too many laughs at what should be a critical scene in the story of Luke. Really let the tension evaporate. 9. Lot of good use of shadow and scene design. How the simple cuts from Rey to Ben worked in their conversations. The shadow of the Falcon passing over Crait before you see it. The glow of green on Ben’s face before you realize “oh fuck Luke is about to kill him!” Throne room was impeccably designed and choreographed. Whole movie was beautiful except for some surprisingly rough CGI at parts. 10. Back to her acting ability, Ridley’s face when she feels the force for the first time and describes it is goddamned orgasmic. 11. Most of all I’m appreciating it because what they did with Luke was ballsy. All the Jedi masters are failures in some way. It’s a good little flick about growing older. Would’ve been really easy to just make Luke a superhero instead of admit that he’s just a plucky kid who somehow bested the empire by loving his father. That being said, the astral projection was a great way to demonstrate his power rather than just show him sword fighting. Contrast that with Yoda fighting in the prequels, something that should have never fucking happened. 12. While I think the issue of Rey’s parents is more or less resolved or irrelevant, there’s still some connection going on between her and Ben. There’s also the matter of Obi Wan communicating with her. She still references dreams and being at Ach-To previously. Another two years of pondering this shit, I guess. 13. The score used when Luke kisses Leia’s forehead and winks at C-3PO was gorgeous. Inserted some strings in there. Score selection at critical scenes were, as usual, in point. Drumbeat when Luke gives his “everything you just said was wrong” speech was epic. 14. Rey has the Jedi texts in a drawer in the Falcon, confirmed. 15. Glad Maz was minimized and relegated to a Skype session 16. Like everyone else, I would like to learn more about Snoke in IX. I think we will. I will miss Andy Serkis, though. His voice work was top notch. They gave him some reeeeallly cheesy villain lines in the throne room and he laid it on thick to make it work That is all, carry on
Spoiler But neither of those things are what happened. What we got was a poorly executed showing of Leia actually using her strong Force bloodline. If we had gotten a scene where Luke saves goddamn Leia from across the galaxy, it would have been WAY worse than what we ended up with. The whole character of Leia is that she's strong and capable and can do it on her own. That's what the character was built on.