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The Last Jedi: Official Review and Opinions Thread ** SPOILERS ** — Page 257

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Haarspalter said:

Saw it yesterday. Went in absolutely spoiler-free. I feel deeply confused about TLJ. The movie did some unexpected things. I have to see it a second time.

Yesterday - 4 months later - i saw TLJ a second time. All by myself. Without any piled up hype and high expectations as in december 2017…

… what can i say…

… this time i really enjoyed THE LAST JEDI.

Maybe because i was prepared for the unexpected stuff Rian Johnson put into his movie. Some things are still strange (space cow milking, Carrie Poppins) or dissapointing (the cave beneath Ahch-To revealing absolutely nothing) but overall a very enjoyable Star Wars movie. Not as fun and entertaining as THE FORCE AWAKENS, but still good.

Mark Hamills performance was superb. But i have to admit i had to get used to his demoralized mental state. Before TLJ came out, i wrote the movie in my head. I expected Luke Skywalker went to the first Jedi temple to examine why the Force always splits itself into light & dark side. And that he would attempt to “repair” or seal the rift once and for all. By the way i never wished to see Luke ripping Star Destroyers apart. I wished to see some Jedi temple exploration, maybe with some traps (here comes my Dark Forces II fan mind) and a great showdown in the final hall. Maybe The Knights of Ren VS Luke & Rey - no Prequel-esque coreography though, but some decent raw TFA-esque lightsaber fight. Luke being captured at end by Snoke resulting a nice cliffhanger for Episode IX … oh man, some many things come into my mind i expected or wanted to see in TLJ. No wonder i was dissapointed 😉

Rogue One is redundant. Just play the first mission of DARK FORCES.
The hallmark of a corrupt leader: Being surrounded by yes men.
‘The best visual effects in the world will not compensate for a story told badly.’ - V.E.S.
‘Star Wars is a buffet, enjoy the stuff you want, and leave the rest.’ - SilverWook

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ChainsawAsh said:
Ford has always been a “this is just a job” kind of actor anyway, with no particular attachment or love for any of his characters, except maybe Indy. But even so, there’s got to be some scripts or directors or working environments that bring more of a spark out of him than others.

I think he really cared about Han Solo in SW and TESB. It’s only in RotJ when he stopped caring.

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 (Edited)

‘In Defense of The Last Jedi - Movies with Mikey’ - from FilmJoy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVlicj-JwnI

a few intriguing insights and observations - delivered in Mikey’s somewhat unique humour and non-serious style (and nice ageing on some of the TLJ clips in that 70’s style).

He also did a TFA video here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVZGUV77aRg
 

and looking forward to seeing his ‘How We See Star Wars (Part 1) - Movies with Mikey’ - when time permits (maybe even part 2 as well 😉)

A little patience goes a long way on this old-school Rebel base. If you are having issues finding what you are looking for, these will be of some help…

Welcome to the OriginalTrilogy.com | Introduce yourself in here | Useful info within : About : Help : Site Rules : Fan Project Rules : Announcements
How do I do this?’ on the OriginalTrilogy.com; some info & answers + FAQs - includes info on how to search for projects and threads on the OT•com

A Project Index for Star Wars Preservations (Harmy’s Despecialized & 4K77/80/83 etc) : A Project Index for Star Wars Fan Edits (adywan & Hal 9000 etc)

… and take your time to look around this site before posting - to get a feel for this place. Don’t just lazily make yet another thread asking for projects.

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I watched this video from Wisecrack the other day by Jared Bauer regarding “what went wrong” with The Last Jedi. After Hal posted it on his TLJ Edit thread I decided to comment on it. I felt like I should post it here instead because I didn’t want to start a discussion not directly related to his edit on that thread. Hope you guys don’t mind.

Link to video: https://youtu.be/dLYUc5t6wag

I think Jared premise is really great, I think he is mostly right, but I think he missed an important dinstinction.

I think he’s right when he says that Kylo Ren has the right idea. Things have to change. Rey wants things to change too. But I think it is the way that Kylo Ren and Rey want to go about it is why Kylo Ren’s way is wrong, and why she doesn’t join him in the end.

Kylo Ren talks about letting the past die, but he is still the leader of an army full of Stormtroopers and Star Destroyers, and by the end fight on Crait you can tell he hasn’t let go of the past because his resentment towards Luke blinds him and allows the Resistance to escape. He wants change through violence. I think a symbol of Rey realizing this is when Kylo reaches his hand out to her, but he is still wearing his glove. This is a contrast to the first time they touched hands, when he removed his glove as a sign of honesty and vulnerability. There is a symbolic dinstinction.

Kylo wants to bury the past while I think Rey will want to learn from it. I think Luke also realized this, it’s what his whole conversation with Yoda is about really. Luke felt the next generation would be better off without the baggage of the Jedi, but in reality they would be better off to learn from those mistakes in order to not repeat them, to grow beyond them. Basically, accepting and learning from your failures rather than forgetting or submitting to them.
The Jedi will live on, but they will be different, they will evolve.

I think this parallels the whole “fighting for the right reasons” thing that Finn and Rose’s story is about as well. The movie doesn’t flip flop on being a hero or not being a hero. It’s about defending first and attacking only when necessary. I’m not saying this movie is a perfect work of art, I still I’m not crazy about the execution of the Rose-saving-Finn moment in the film, but this movie is far from ruining Star Wars in my opinion.

And I think his references to Carl Jung are fantastic, I think looking at the issue of balance through the lens of Jung can help understand what I think Johnson was going for. But, I think Jared interpreted the finale from that perspective differently than I did.

If the dark side of the Force can be symbolic of Jung’s interpretation of the unconscious self, or the Shadow, then the Sith want to submerge themselves into the Shadow as means to gain primal power and dominance over others. The old Jedi feared the Shadow and did everything they could to keep the conscious self in control.
But balance is acknowledging the Shadow, one’s own dark side, and becoming a more well-rounded and self-aware person from accepting the darkness in all of us, but not submitting yourself to it.

Rey isn’t reverting back to the old Jedi ways. She’s growing from the old ways. She knows things have to be different. But she doesn’t want to kill innocent people to achieve change like Kylo Ren does. That’s a big difference.

Bonus: Interestingly, there’s this idea that the “acknowledgement of the shadow must be a continuous process throughout one’s life", which fits well with Luke’s big mistake. He didn’t permanently overcome his Shadow in ROTJ, the Shadow is something one must constantly face throughout one’s life. When he almost failed to hold his shadow back once again, it shattered his faith in himself and incorrectly decided the galaxy would be better off to start from scratch and learn to acknowledge one’s shadow from a blank slate. Not learning from his mistakes could just perpetuate this fight for another thousand generations to come as they slowly figure it all out again.

Both Rey and Kylo Ren are coming to terms with their shadow in this film. Kylo Ren is incorporating the monster within him rather than hiding behind his persona (his mask). He had split his ego like Vader had and identified as his shadow self, rather than accepting both sides are the same person. He couldn’t determine his identity, a big theme in TFA. But in TLJ, he smashes the helmet and even calls himself a monster in the film recognizing this fact. He believes he is merging with his shadow in a way to become balanced, but he is wrong.
Typically when one faces their shadow, they must face the thing that they resent the most about themself, their fears, their shortcomings, their anxieties. In Rey’s case, she resents the truth about who she is and her parents. The fact that they were bad people and that ultimately she’s a nobody. But in the end, she faces her own shadow and finally acknowledges it.

Acknowledging your shadow gives you strength, and it allows you to respect and better understand yourself, but when people fail this reflection is when they think that having strength justifies being cruel to others.

A person shouldn’t be cruel.
But being able to be cruel, and choosing not to be cruel is better than not facing your shadow and not being able to be cruel. That confidence in ones self prevents internal and external conflict. It’s similar to the idea of most martial arts. You don’t learn to fight so you can fight, you learn to fight so you can prevent fighting. But if you need to fight in order to protect, you can.

That’s what the Jedi are meant to be. A Jedi uses the Force for defense, never for attack. The Jedi unfortunately lost their way, because they were trying to prevent the Jedi from fully facing their shadows. They feared that if they fully incorporated their shadow, that many would only give into it and become cruel. They feared that many would fail like Jedi of the past had, so they assumed that protecting them from their shadow was the safer option. That’s why Jedi had to avoid fear, anger and hate. The old Jedi were taught to repress or expunge their shadows. But really, a Jedi must accept that they are only human, and understand those emotions rather than cutting themselves off from them.

This is the dinstinction. Kylo Ren’s incorporation of the shadow has made him cruel, his resentment of the past makes him want to kill it. While Rey is capable of joining Kylo Ren, to be cruel, she chooses not to because she sees that dinstinction. She also resents her past, but chooses to grow from it rather than letting it make her cruel.

The message of the movie isn’t to kill the past like Jared thinks it is, it is to learn from it. Grow from it. That’s what wisdom is.

The film is also not trying to tear down the Campbell’s monomyth either. The stories associated with the monomyth have always been a way for storytellers to teach society about morals and how to act. To tear it down would be to contradict the entire point of Star Wars. It’s trying to recontextualize it. To remind us how the myth and the legend is important to ourselves and our own lives. It humanizes Luke in order to show us that not only legends go through the hero’s journey of self recognition and affirmation. Luke is human, like all of us, and we all have to go on our own hero’s journey to accept who we are.

And Luke’s act of facing his own resentment (his failure with Ben) and accepting it is what inspires others to go on their own hero’s journeys, like good ole broom boy.

A reddit user, DH80, also made a great post about how Luke’s journey in TLJ is actually a completition of his hero’s journey. I’ll share it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/8azql2/how_the_last_jedi_explored_the_last_stages_of_the/

Yes, the original trilogy was more black and white, but not completely. The point of the Last Jedi is to remind us that things aren’t just black and white. We can’t just destroy evil because the potential for evil is within all of us. But the movie doesn’t “backpedal” on those ideas. The last act of the film is showing how we must accept the darkness within us. Kylo’s solution is WRONG. He’s not coming to terms with his darkness, he’s still being controlled by his shadow like any dark side user. He’s getting closer to the truth than most dark side users, but he’s not there yet, which I think IX will possibly deal with.

Jared also talks about how facing one’s shadow is important for the political side of the movie. Things have ended up in a similar place despite winning the war at the end of ROTJ, true. But Jared makes a point how that would make a strong point if the movie stuck the idea it was trying to make. He says it didn’t, but I think it did. I think to have things change, the Resistance can’t win the same way as the Rebels did in Return of the Jedi, by destroying the shadow, the Empire. There must be some kind of peace, or reconciliation with the shadow (the First Order) in order for things to be different. I think this will be where Finn comes into play. I’m hoping his role in IX makes him crucial in helping members of the First Order come around on some kind of resolution to the war, whether it be integretation/unification or some kind of reconciliation/armistice.

If you think of the Old Republic as an individual, then the Empire and the Emperor were just a representations of that individual’s shadow and inner demon. The Galactic Civil War is just a representation of the struggle to come to terms with it, it’s a full-on ego split. But in the end of ROTJ, the self only repressed that shadow rather than reintergrating it, which is what I’m assuming Episode IX might be about.

Like I said, I don’t think The Last Jedi is a perfect movie, we can discuss clarity or execution, but I don’t think it is a fundamentally broken movie. This is not where The Last Jedi went wrong.

TL;DR: Kylo Ren and Rey both represent distinct approaches to face your inner shadow, but Kylo Ren is still facing it in a negative way while Rey is facing it in a more positive way. Violence versus non-violence. That’s the difference between killing the past and growing beyond it.

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 (Edited)

RogueLeader said:

I watched this video from Wisecrack the other day by Jared Bauer regarding “what went wrong” with The Last Jedi. After Hal posted it on his TLJ Edit thread I decided to comment on it. I felt like I should post it here instead because I didn’t want to start a discussion not directly related to his edit on that thread. Hope you guys don’t mind.

Link to video: https://youtu.be/dLYUc5t6wag

I think Jared premise is really great, I think he is mostly right, but I think he missed an important dinstinction.

I think he’s right when he says that Kylo Ren has the right idea. Things have to change. Rey wants things to change too. But I think it is the way that Kylo Ren and Rey want to go about it is why Kylo Ren’s way is wrong, and why she doesn’t join him in the end.

Kylo Ren talks about letting the past die, but he is still the leader of an army full of Stormtroopers and Star Destroyers, and by the end fight on Crait you can tell he hasn’t let go of the past because his resentment towards Luke blinds him and allows the Resistance to escape. He wants change through violence. I think a symbol of Rey realizing this is when Kylo reaches his hand out to her, but he is still wearing his glove. This is a contrast to the first time they touched hands, when he removed his glove as a sign of honesty and vulnerability. There is a symbolic dinstinction.

Kylo wants to bury the past while I think Rey will want to learn from it. I think Luke also realized this, it’s what his whole conversation with Yoda is about really. Luke felt the next generation would be better off without the baggage of the Jedi, but in reality they would be better off to learn from those mistakes in order to not repeat them, to grow beyond them. Basically, accepting and learning from your failures rather than forgetting or submitting to them.
The Jedi will live on, but they will be different, they will evolve.

I think this parallels the whole “fighting for the right reasons” thing that Finn and Rose’s story is about as well. The movie doesn’t flip flop on being a hero or not being a hero. It’s about defending first and attacking only when necessary. I’m not saying this movie is a perfect work of art, I still I’m not crazy about the execution of the Rose-saving-Finn moment in the film, but this movie is far from ruining Star Wars in my opinion.

And I think his references to Carl Jung are fantastic, I think looking at the issue of balance through the lens of Jung can help understand what I think Johnson was going for. But, I think Jared interpreted the finale from that perspective differently than I did.

If the dark side of the Force can be symbolic of Jung’s interpretation of the unconscious self, or the Shadow, then the Sith want to submerge themselves into the Shadow as means to gain primal power and dominance over others. The old Jedi feared the Shadow and did everything they could to keep the conscious self in control.
But balance is acknowledging the Shadow, one’s own dark side, and becoming a more well-rounded and self-aware person from accepting the darkness in all of us, but not submitting yourself to it.

Rey isn’t reverting back to the old Jedi ways. She’s growing from the old ways. She knows things have to be different. But she doesn’t want to kill innocent people to achieve change like Kylo Ren does. That’s a big difference.

Bonus: Interestingly, there’s this idea that the “acknowledgement of the shadow must be a continuous process throughout one’s life", which fits well with Luke’s big mistake. He didn’t permanently overcome his Shadow in ROTJ, the Shadow is something one must constantly face throughout one’s life. When he almost failed to hold his shadow back once again, it shattered his faith in himself and incorrectly decided the galaxy would be better off to start from scratch and learn to acknowledge one’s shadow from a blank slate. Not learning from his mistakes could just perpetuate this fight for another thousand generations to come as they slowly figure it all out again.

Both Rey and Kylo Ren are coming to terms with their shadow in this film. Kylo Ren is incorporating the monster within him rather than hiding behind his persona (his mask). He had split his ego like Vader had and identified as his shadow self, rather than accepting both sides are the same person. He couldn’t determine his identity, a big theme in TFA. But in TLJ, he smashes the helmet and even calls himself a monster in the film recognizing this fact. He believes he is merging with his shadow in a way to become balanced, but he is wrong.
Typically when one faces their shadow, they must face the thing that they resent the most about themself, their fears, their shortcomings, their anxieties. In Rey’s case, she resents the truth about who she is and her parents. The fact that they were bad people and that ultimately she’s a nobody. But in the end, she faces her own shadow and finally acknowledges it.

Acknowledging your shadow gives you strength, and it allows you to respect and better understand yourself, but when people fail this reflection is when they think that having strength justifies being cruel to others.

A person shouldn’t be cruel.
But being able to be cruel, and choosing not to be cruel is better than not facing your shadow and not being able to be cruel. That confidence in ones self prevents internal and external conflict. It’s similar to the idea of most martial arts. You don’t learn to fight so you can fight, you learn to fight so you can prevent fighting. But if you need to fight in order to protect, you can.

That’s what the Jedi are meant to be. A Jedi uses the Force for defense, never for attack. The Jedi unfortunately lost their way, because they were trying to prevent the Jedi from fully facing their shadows. They feared that if they fully incorporated their shadow, that many would only give into it and become cruel. They feared that many would fail like Jedi of the past had, so they assumed that protecting them from their shadow was the safer option. That’s why Jedi had to avoid fear, anger and hate. The old Jedi were taught to repress or expunge their shadows. But really, a Jedi must accept that they are only human, and understand those emotions rather than cutting themselves off from them.

This is the dinstinction. Kylo Ren’s incorporation of the shadow has made him cruel, his resentment of the past makes him want to kill it. While Rey is capable of joining Kylo Ren, to be cruel, she chooses not to because she sees that dinstinction. She also resents her past, but chooses to grow from it rather than letting it make her cruel.

The message of the movie isn’t to kill the past like Jared thinks it is, it is to learn from it. Grow from it. That’s what wisdom is.

The film is also not trying to tear down the Campbell’s monomyth either. The stories associated with the monomyth have always been a way for storytellers to teach society about morals and how to act. To tear it down would be to contradict the entire point of Star Wars. It’s trying to recontextualize it. To remind us how the myth and the legend is important to ourselves and our own lives. It humanizes Luke in order to show us that not only legends go through the hero’s journey of self recognition and affirmation. Luke is human, like all of us, and we all have to go on our own hero’s journey to accept who we are.

And Luke’s act of facing his own resentment (his failure with Ben) and accepting it is what inspires others to go on their own hero’s journeys, like good ole broom boy.

A reddit user, DH80, also made a great post about how Luke’s journey in TLJ is actually a completition of his hero’s journey. I’ll share it here: https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWars/comments/8azql2/how_the_last_jedi_explored_the_last_stages_of_the/

Yes, the original trilogy was more black and white, but not completely. The point of the Last Jedi is to remind us that things aren’t just black and white. We can’t just destroy evil because the potential for evil is within all of us. But the movie doesn’t “backpedal” on those ideas. The last act of the film is showing how we must accept the darkness within us. Kylo’s solution is WRONG. He’s not coming to terms with his darkness, he’s still being controlled by his shadow like any dark side user. He’s getting closer to the truth than most dark side users, but he’s not there yet, which I think IX will possibly deal with.

Jared also talks about how facing one’s shadow is important for the political side of the movie. Things have ended up in a similar place despite winning the war at the end of ROTJ, true. But Jared makes a point how that would make a strong point if the movie stuck the idea it was trying to make. He says it didn’t, but I think it did. I think to have things change, the Resistance can’t win the same way as the Rebels did in Return of the Jedi, by destroying the shadow, the Empire. There must be some kind of peace, or reconciliation with the shadow (the First Order) in order for things to be different. I think this will be where Finn comes into play. I’m hoping his role in IX makes him crucial in helping members of the First Order come around on some kind of resolution to the war, whether it be integretation/unification or some kind of reconciliation/armistice.

If you think of the Old Republic as an individual, then the Empire and the Emperor were just a representations of that individual’s shadow and inner demon. The Galactic Civil War is just a representation of the struggle to come to terms with it, it’s a full-on ego split. But in the end of ROTJ, the self only repressed that shadow rather than reintergrating it, which is what I’m assuming Episode IX might be about.

Like I said, I don’t think The Last Jedi is a perfect movie, we can discuss clarity or execution, but I don’t think it is a fundamentally broken movie. This is not where The Last Jedi went wrong.

TL;DR: Kylo Ren and Rey both represent distinct approaches to face your inner shadow, but Kylo Ren is still facing it in a negative way while Rey is facing it in a more positive way. Violence versus non-violence. That’s the difference between killing the past and growing beyond it.

Nice post! I think the ST greatest weakness is, that it provides very little context, and motivation. On the surface the FO and the Resistance are fascimiles of the Empire and the Rebel Alliance, and while the EU provides information where the differences are, these differences are hardly emphasized in the films with TLJ doubling down on TFA’s premise, that the FO wants to be the Empire 2.0, and actually literally turning the Resistance into the rebels again. That’s undeniably story regression in terms of the saga as a whole. While the ST provides some vague hints why history is repeating itself, we learn nothing about why the New Republic failed, apart from refusing to act against the FO for reasons of plot convenience. We learn nothing about Kylo’s motivations for being drawn to the infamous legacy of Darth Vader. Luke himself is provided with very little motivation for losing his cool when he enters Kylo’s bedroom other than having a moment of weakness, that goes against everything he was taught.

I also think the implications of Rey gaining Force powers to counterbalance Kylo’s is an odd one, and another concept that is very underdeveloped. Many have argued TLJ returns the franchise to the idea, that anyone can be a Jedi, but I think that’s very far from the truth. It seems the Force just randomly bestowed Force powers on her, like some big galactic lottery. So, anyone can be a Jedi, if you are one of the lottery winners. I don’t see how that’s better than the genetic lottery, where at least everyone has some affinity for it, while some may have a much larger affinity than others. Either way, neither the PT or the ST concept adheres to to Lucas’ initial idea, that anyone can be a Jedi, if he or she takes the time to study it. I find the idea of having to work hard to gain something far more appealing than gaining it through your genetic makeup, or just magically having the powers bestowed on you from on high to balance the growing darkness.

I still enjoy TLJ much more today than when I first saw it, but I’m still critical of some of the story choices, and I’m curious where JJ will take the story given TLJ’s setup. I personally feel episode IX needs to introduce some sort of familial connection between Kylo and Rey to increase the emotional tension, provide motivations for Kylo’s turn to the dark side (jealousy of a more talented family member perhaps?), create a connection with the rest of the saga, and raise the stakes as both Kylo and Rey fight for the future of the galaxy, and for Han, Leia, and Luke’s legacy (in the form of their children) not to be one of pain and suffering. However, I can understand why others will feel different.

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To be honest, abandoning the idea of “everyone can be a Jedi, you just need to believe in the Force”, with “believing in the Force” being a metaphor for “believing in yourself”, is something that happened in The Empire Strikes Back (and one of the reasons why I can’t consider it as good as Star Wars). So you may say that even the OT doesn’t follow Lucas’ earliest ideas (and the OT, while being better than the PT, is also more patchy IMO).

I also thought that The Last Jedi would return to that idea (what with dismantling the Jedi Order, Kylo talking about leaving the past behind, Luke talking about Darth Sidious (I never want to hear that name in any movie), and Rey choosing her own path, and, of course, the title of the movie), but the ending goes back to the state of the Star Wars galaxy at the beginning of Star Wars, which I still don’t get why (other than being the easy, lazy path for Lucasfilm, because everyone loves lightsabers). TLJ left me confused in a way no other Star Wars movie have done before.

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I watched this video from Wisecrack the other day by Jared Bauer regarding “what went wrong” with The Last Jedi. After Hal posted it on his TLJ Edit thread I decided to comment on it. I felt like I should post it here instead because I didn’t want to start a discussion not directly related to his edit on that thread. Hope you guys don’t mind.

I saw that video a few days ago. It makes a few good points that go beyond the clickbait title, but I think they ignore a few things. The third act doesn’t “undo” the message of the first two. It just re-evaluates it. Good and evil are necessary in the end, since grey areas lead to DJ being a scumbag. Killing the past is bad despite Luke’s best intentions, since learning is always needed. Kylo is wrong, because he can’t understand this. Yes the eternal conflict will go on forever, but making everyone a grey morally baseless character doesn’t work in a story where wars are inevitable. The Jedi Order failed not because it was “too good” but because it was dumb and blind.

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The problem with many of these explanations of the Force in the ST, is that they have to ignore the understanding that Yoda gave us in ESB. If we chalk up ESB Yoda to being wrong along with everything else in the PT as explained by TLJ, then it could make sense… but that’s something I don’t want to do. 😃
Because even if we do, who’s to say that in 3 movies from now we won’t get another “Well, actually… Luke and Yoda were wrong in TLJ about the Force and the Jedi and THIS is really how it is…”

We’ll never have a firm foundation if we don’t use the OT - and the ST went too far away from that foundation to be logically consistent, therefore it feels like expensive fanfic to me. 😕

My $.02

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If we chalk up ESB Yoda to being wrong along with everything else in the PT

Where exactly does ESB match the prequels at all?

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Mocata said:

If we chalk up ESB Yoda to being wrong along with everything else in the PT

Where exactly does ESB match the prequels at all?

I’m not saying that ESB and the PT match. I’m saying that TLJ claims that the prequel Jedi were wrong - but in order to make sense of the ST version of the Force, we have to also hold that the OT was wrong. (3 different versions of the Force) And that’s something I don’t want to do.

(here’s my understanding of the Force from the OT - http://numasprings.com/force-star-wars-explained/ )

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I don’t really see how TLJ contradicts esb.

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I’ve been catching up on this thread. People keep asking why Luke died.

According to the novelization, Luke gave himself over to the Force. Luke, before disappearing, even thought he heard the voice of Obi-Wan saying “Let go, Luke…”.

If you think about it, Obi-Wan and Yoda also gave themselves over to the Force in a similar fashion, especially since Obi-Wan disappeared an the moment before Vader’s saber hit him.

TV’s Frink said:

chyron just put a big Ric pic in your sig and be done with it.

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obikal said:

The problem with many of these explanations of the Force in the ST, is that they have to ignore the understanding that Yoda gave us in ESB. If we chalk up ESB Yoda to being wrong along with everything else in the PT as explained by TLJ, then it could make sense… but that’s something I don’t want to do. 😃
Because even if we do, who’s to say that in 3 movies from now we won’t get another “Well, actually… Luke and Yoda were wrong in TLJ about the Force and the Jedi and THIS is really how it is…”

We’ll never have a firm foundation if we don’t use the OT - and the ST went too far away from that foundation to be logically consistent, therefore it feels like expensive fanfic to me. 😕

My $.02

I don’t think TLJ says OT Obi-Wan and OT Yoda were wrong. What TLJ says is that TLJ Luke believes the Jedi were all wrong, including RotJ Luke. But Yoda clearly points out Luke didn’t get Yoda’s lessons about failure. These lessons are not explicitely mentioned in any OT movie, but I do think Yoda is refering to Luke’s failure at the climax of TESB: Luke was mistaken, and learned from its errors, avoided the Dark Side at a very vulnerable moment of his training, and became a Jedi. The third act of TLJ is saying both Kylo and Luke were wrong: you can’t really let the past die, and there isn’t even a need for that.

Also, trying to find a coherent explanation of the nature of the Force across the whole Star Wars franchise or the trilogies is pointless, since in Star Wars the Force is treated as a psychological activity (believing in yourself) while in Empire the Force is more comic-like. You may argue SW Vader did not really Force-choke Admiral Motti, he merely suggested to Motti the idea of being telephatically choked, and that SW Obi-Wan didn’t really use mind-control, but there’s no way you can say TESB Luke convinced a few stones to ignore physics. The prequels weren’t the first Star Wars movies to make massive retcons and changes.

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GZK8000 said:

Also, trying to find a coherent explanation of the nature of the Force across the whole Star Wars franchise or the trilogies is pointless, since in Star Wars the Force is treated as a psychological activity (believing in yourself) while in Empire the Force is more comic-like. You may argue SW Vader did not really Force-choke Admiral Motti, he merely suggested to Motti the idea of being telephatically choked, and that SW Obi-Wan didn’t really use mind-control, but there’s no way you can say TESB Luke convinced a few stones to ignore physics. The prequels weren’t the first Star Wars movies to make massive retcons and changes.

From the beginning, the Force has been a religion: a belief system, a spiritual understanding of how the universe works - not a psychological activity. It was expounded upon in ESB, but did not contradict itself.

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obikal said:

GZK8000 said:

Also, trying to find a coherent explanation of the nature of the Force across the whole Star Wars franchise or the trilogies is pointless, since in Star Wars the Force is treated as a psychological activity (believing in yourself) while in Empire the Force is more comic-like. You may argue SW Vader did not really Force-choke Admiral Motti, he merely suggested to Motti the idea of being telephatically choked, and that SW Obi-Wan didn’t really use mind-control, but there’s no way you can say TESB Luke convinced a few stones to ignore physics. The prequels weren’t the first Star Wars movies to make massive retcons and changes.

From the beginning, the Force has been a religion: a belief system, a spiritual understanding of how the universe works - not a psychological activity. It was expounded upon in ESB, but did not contradict itself.

The Force is not a religion, it is a power, a mystical energy binding the universe, whatever. The Jedi Order, on the other hand, is a religion built on the Force. In Star Wars, Lucas was rather vague about the Force: did Obi-Wan really speak to Luke from the afterlife, or did Luke imagine it? Did Luke really use the Force to block a few blasts with his dead father’s lightsaber, or he merely believed in himself? Star Wars was not really a sci-fi movie in the way Empire was (of course, the OT is not hard sci-fi, but you know what I mean). It is in Empire when you first see telekinesis, Force conversations between two living characters and Force Jumps.

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chyron8472 said:

If you think about it, Obi-Wan and Yoda also gave themselves over to the Force in a similar fashion, especially since Obi-Wan disappeared an the moment before Vader’s saber hit him.

Did he? I always thought Vader killed him.

Not enough people read the EU.

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LuckyGungan2001 said:

chyron8472 said:

If you think about it, Obi-Wan and Yoda also gave themselves over to the Force in a similar fashion, especially since Obi-Wan disappeared an the moment before Vader’s saber hit him.

Did he? I always thought Vader killed him.

yeah he did. vader’s blade never even touches him.

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LuckyGungan2001 said:

chyron8472 said:

If you think about it, Obi-Wan and Yoda also gave themselves over to the Force in a similar fashion, especially since Obi-Wan disappeared an the moment before Vader’s saber hit him.

Did he? I always thought Vader killed him.

His robe is empty before Vader’s blade hits, but it could just as easily have been the limited special effects of 1977.

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flametitan said:

LuckyGungan2001 said:

chyron8472 said:

If you think about it, Obi-Wan and Yoda also gave themselves over to the Force in a similar fashion, especially since Obi-Wan disappeared an the moment before Vader’s saber hit him.

Did he? I always thought Vader killed him.

His robe is empty before Vader’s blade hits, but it could just as easily have been the limited special effects of 1977.

if that wasn’t the intention lucas would’ve changed it for one of the SEs.

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You’re assumming Lucas changed things in the SE that bothered him when he made the movie, instead of things that bothered him when he made the SE.

Ceci n’est pas une signature.

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Collipso said:

LuckyGungan2001 said:

chyron8472 said:

If you think about it, Obi-Wan and Yoda also gave themselves over to the Force in a similar fashion, especially since Obi-Wan disappeared an the moment before Vader’s saber hit him.

Did he? I always thought Vader killed him.

yeah he did. vader’s blade never even touches him.

Well I guess that clears up the whole “why didn’t the prequel Jedi disappear when they died?” thing. I guess Yoda and Obi-Wan (and now Luke) gave in to the force.

Not enough people read the EU.

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Possessed said:

I don’t really see how TLJ contradicts esb.

Well I would say Rey’s almost instant mastery of the Force contradicts TESB. The entire premise of TESB’s plot involving Luke is about Luke training to become a Jedi, and everything that goes with it. Luke ignores his teachers advice, and he pays a hefty price. Luke’s struggles in controlling this mystical energy field is in stark contrast with the ease with which Rey is able to just do anything she puts her mind to, whether it is beating a host of Snoke’s elite guard after she’s only first laid her hands on a lightsaber a few days earlier, or lifting a ton of rocks to save her friends. Then there’s this concept of the Force balancing the rising darkness with creating some light side warrior, or perhaps even warriors considering the broom boy at the end of the film. That seems more consistent with PT canon, and the whole prophesy of the chosen one, but even Anakin had to go to Jedi school for about a decade to learn how to control the Force. I have less of a problem with these things now than I did before, but some of these concepts could have been better developed, such that they less contradicted much of the information we recieved about the ways of the Force in previous films.