The reed is maybe the best/most important joke in the movie from a character/story perspective.
Close second is the lightsaber toss.
Interesting. I feel like the reed joke goes on a bit too far at the expense of Rey, making her look stupid and making Luke look mean as he says “wow, you must be really strong with the force”. I would want to shorten it a bit. What are your thoughts on it?
I don’t think it makes her look stupid at all. She legitimately doesn’t know what the force is or how it works (and I don’t blame her, considering). Luke doesn’t seem mean there (to me at least), he’s just teasing a bit.
The reed is maybe the best/most important joke in the movie from a character/story perspective.
Close second is the lightsaber toss.
I agree it’s funny, but important from a character/story perspective? You mean showing Reys naivety? I’m not sure what else you could mean, but I’d be interested to hear what you think.
Well that but also the scene is important for Luke to prove that the force is not just a simple power you have and can harness by merely reaching out your hand. It’s much deeper than that.
With the light saber toss, this one fits the character at that time and the story, but I just didn’t like the choice. If he had simply dropped it, or even not taken it at all and just walked by her I would have preferred that. Throwing over his shoulder just didn’t work for me. So much so that I don’t even know if it’s supposed to be funny? People laughed in my theatre so I presume so but I just found it really jarring.
Not that that matters, but basically everyone in my theater laughed. I thought it was funny. It definitely has comedic timing. But the joke isn’t “haha it’s so wacky that he throws it over his shoulder.” The joke is the subversion of what you expect, how Luke takes this object that was treated with such reverence by everyone else and just chucks it away. It’s more like “ha, wow, he just did that didn’t he.” It tells us a lot about where Luke is right off the bat.