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The Last Jedi: Official Review and Opinions Thread ** SPOILERS ** — Page 40

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I’ve seen it once, the pacing felt off to me and I felt the movie felt too long. I think they should have not had the ship stuff take so long and got down to the planet for a siege instead.

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We still honor them, do we not? Airplanes probably didn’t affect the outcome of the war much, but the pilots got romanticized almost immediately.

Forum Moderator

Where were you in '77?

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Collipso said:

My only problem with TLJ Luke is that I don’t like how they killed him off. I acknowledge your point darthrush, but I guess I just don’t really like the way this particular aspect was handled. It still felt like Luke accomplishing everything he could in TLJ, failed to accomplish the one task he had. He did fail, and he did overcome it and gave hope to the galaxy and to the Resistance, but something feels off. In a way he’s still a failure I think. It just feels like such a small victory to me compared to all the defeats etc.

But I must say that I loved his arc in the movie, and I loved the outcome except for his death.

I honestly think he had more of an arc than any of the protagonists.

I still don’t like it so much. The change in Luke’s character is massive and we only get one 30 sec flashback that set’s it up. He made a mistake, but he had seen the worst and gone through hell before. He admits, he had already lost Kylo. He made a mistake and didn’t try to fix it. He abandoned his friends, and allowed the galaxy to be plunged in a second darkness, while he had the power to do something about it together with his friends.

Then there’s the fact that this entire arc aims to push Rey to the foreground as the next last Jedi, Luke 2.0, new and improved. However, does she deserve this mantle? Luke goes through hell and back before becoming a Jedi, making mistakes, suffering loss of life and limbs. Rey get’s her powers handed to her, and seemingly is never tempted. She’s almost a perfect heroine. The secret of her parents are supposed to be a representation of her personal demons, but it’s ultimately inconsequential. She cries about it, and the next scene she’s back being the hero. When Luke discovered the secret about his father, there was anguish and reflection, setting up the redemption arc of the next film.

There’s also the interesting fact that the OT didn’t really need the PT to tell Anakin’s story. Luke’s story was Anakin’s story. Having the anger in him, taking the quick and easy path like Vader did in TESB by going after his friends, risking falling to the dark side. However, it also shows Luke making the right decisions, where his father made the wrong ones, which ultimately leads to the father following in his sons footsteps, and his redemption. There’s so much subtext in Luke’s journey. Ben Solo’s journey is a cynical one by comparison, and doesn’t feel nearly as well developed.

I really wonder, if Empire versus rebels 2.0, and particulary Luke’s deflation as a character, and Rey’s simultaneous rapid inflation is really worth the journey from a saga perspective. It’s an entertaining enough story, but I don’t really see what it adds to the saga as a whole. I think it actually takes away from it, to be honest, in a much more fundamental way than the PT.

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Agreed with Rey having no real struggle or hardship, she doesn’t even really take much from Luke in the end.

Does anyone else kinda feel there’s nowhere to really go with future Star Wars films? At least in the main saga? Whats the point? It seems it’ll always kinda be repeating similar beats and light vs dark.

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Even though the movie is boring and Rey and Luke are bad characters, it’s clear Rian Johnson and Disney know how Star Wars story should go. I can’t wait for the next movie, I’m excited already to see the First Order win.

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On the topic of Yoda (not, but let’s just assume he did for whatever reason) burning books, I really just don’t agree with the idea of burning one-of-a-kind fountains of knowledge for the sake of proving a point to a character. It just seems like a backwards thing to do in general and there’s really no point to it especially because they seemed little more than books full of harmful Jedi ideology and information.
Like I don’t know. If I believed a way of life to be old and outdated and didn’t think it was important to follow it anyone like the Jedi, I wouldn’t feel the need to burn ancient books because in the end that would kind of just make me a cock and if anything I believe in learning from the past. Not burning those books allows you to learn from the past, burning them just feels like trying to hide it.

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JediExile said:

On the topic of Yoda (not, but let’s just assume he did for whatever reason) burning books, I really just don’t agree with the idea of burning one-of-a-kind fountains of knowledge for the sake of proving a point to a character. It just seems like a backwards thing to do in general and there’s really no point to it especially because they seemed little more than books full of harmful Jedi ideology and information.
Like I don’t know. If I believed a way of life to be old and outdated and didn’t think it was important to follow it anyone like the Jedi, I wouldn’t feel the need to burn ancient books because in the end that would kind of just make me a cock and if anything I believe in learning from the past. Not burning those books allows you to learn from the past, burning them just feels like trying to hide it.

Many people used to believe book burning is bad, but these are new times. China is showing the world now. People must do what they are told. Disney understands this, that’s why they censor the Jedi past and re-write these stories of rebellion and dissent. It’s not good to cause chaos. Everyone must fall in line and obey the state.

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KILLOFFPOE said:

In The Force Awakens we saw some Senators on balconies or something as they were getting nuked.

That is the one and only piece of evidence that a post-Empire world existed. And now it doesn’t exist, because they were nuked in TFA.

Otherwise it’s exactly as if the Empire never lost power. Perhaps an orderly off-screen transition of power from Palpatine to Snoke occurred in this universe.

It was a complete soft reboot. Somehow they’ve convinced fans to insist that the First Order is just a small little imperial remnant despite all evidence to the contrary.

My biggest issue with TFA is the whole First Order/Resistance thing.

Like… who are they resisting and why? Isn’t the Republic doing anything about these new imperials… why are the resistance hiding and doing stuff secretly when Leia should (probably) be in good stead with the new republic…

It just didn’t make sense and I had to switch off my brain and tell myself “ok, there’s the empire gain and the rebels again and just deal with it”.

War does not make one great.

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Yoda Is Your Father said:

KILLOFFPOE said:

In The Force Awakens we saw some Senators on balconies or something as they were getting nuked.

That is the one and only piece of evidence that a post-Empire world existed. And now it doesn’t exist, because they were nuked in TFA.

Otherwise it’s exactly as if the Empire never lost power. Perhaps an orderly off-screen transition of power from Palpatine to Snoke occurred in this universe.

It was a complete soft reboot. Somehow they’ve convinced fans to insist that the First Order is just a small little imperial remnant despite all evidence to the contrary.

My biggest issue with TFA is the whole First Order/Resistance thing.

Like… who are they resisting and why? Isn’t the Republic doing anything about these new imperials… why are the resistance hiding and doing stuff secretly when Leia should (probably) be in good stead with the new republic…

It just didn’t make sense and I had to switch off my brain and tell myself “ok, there’s the empire gain and the rebels again and just deal with it”.

I think it just wasn’t developed enough in TFA. The idea was, that the New Republic were appeasing the FO hoping to prevent a new all out open war, but were funding the Resistance in secret, who openly opposed the rising power of the FO. The New Republic sort of resembled Neville Chamberlain, who tried to appease Hitler by giving into his demands in hopes of preventing a second World War. This all failed of course, and as shown in TFA the FO uses the New Republic’s relationship to the Resistance as a pretense for war, destroying the Republic capital.

RJ ignores all this, and uses the opportunity to take the New Republic out of the equation, and rebrands the Resistance rebels. Leia is no longer General Leia, but the Princess again. So, we’re completely back to a small band of rebels who need to restore the Republic (again) by overthrowing the Empire 2.0 controlling the entire galaxy, only this time what took the Empire decades with a process, that ended in the Imperial Senate being disbanded, now happens in a matter of days. The ST thus plays like a highly compressed version of the OT with some twists and shocks thrown in the mix.

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One can argue Luke diverted the Emperor from supervising the battle more closely. And nobody but the Ewoks knew about the back door to the shield generator did they?

Yeah, I remember the ROTJ novel made that point. I think Han said something about “Luke keeping the Emperor distracted” which helped me see the whole thing a bit more favourably at the time.

Ultimately I wish the Vader/Luke/Palpatine scenario had been somewhere other than the Death Star (perhaps on a Star Destroyer bridge). That way we could claim outright that Luke defeated the Emperor while the Rebels took out the battle station (rather than assuming that Luke and co. were going to be blown up anyway). That would be a worthy legend, irrespective of the details regarding Vader.

I see what you’re saying though. Thanks for the replies!

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I really wonder, if Empire versus rebels 2.0, and particulary Luke’s deflation as a character, and Rey’s simultaneous rapid inflation is really worth the journey from a saga perspective. It’s an entertaining enough story, but I don’t really see what it adds to the saga as a whole. I think it actually takes away from it, to be honest, in a much more fundamental way than the PT.

I’ve gotta say Dre, I’m really on the fence here myself. As disappointed as I was/am with ROTJ as a film, I was satisfied with it as a definitive conclusion. I never got into the EU or the Marvel series beyond 1983 because I really felt the story had been told. As fun as it is to have more Star Wars, I’m finding myself increasingly drawn to the ‘head-canon’ notion of sticking with the (unaltered) OT as the real deal and seeing all other SW material as a kind of ‘what if’ fan-fic realm.

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I think it’s fair to ask the question, why the ST is following this trajectory? Is it really trying to tell it’s own story, or is it just trying to redo the OT in some form, but pretending that it isn’t by avoiding the same twists. A lot of the twists and turns, while different from the OT, seem to derive from taking an OT story thread, and doing the opposite. It follows the what if scenario:

What if Vader couldn’t be redeemed?

What if Vader overthrew the Emperor?

What if Yoda refused to train Luke?

Many of the beats of the story of TLJ are very similar to TESB with the ROTJ throne room sequence thrown into the mix. Bad guys attack good guy base. Bad guys chase good guys (albeit a lot slower). Young hero goes to backwater planet to be trained by Jedi Master. Young hero defies her teacher, by going after the bad guy. Rogue betrays good guys. Bad guy fails to turn the hero to the dark side. Heroes end up in a tight spot.

Of course by taking the what if scenario, the ST is abandoning several of the underlying themes of the OT that drive the OT’s twists. Which begs the question, is Star Wars more defined by it’s themes, or by it’s story beats? My view is, that it is the former, and a new Star Wars trilogy that is based on the same themes, but has different story beats is better than a Star Wars trilogy, that is based on different themes, but largely follows the same story beats.

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Shopping Maul said:

I really wonder, if Empire versus rebels 2.0, and particulary Luke’s deflation as a character, and Rey’s simultaneous rapid inflation is really worth the journey from a saga perspective. It’s an entertaining enough story, but I don’t really see what it adds to the saga as a whole. I think it actually takes away from it, to be honest, in a much more fundamental way than the PT.

I’ve gotta say Dre, I’m really on the fence here myself. As disappointed as I was/am with ROTJ as a film, I was satisfied with it as a definitive conclusion. I never got into the EU or the Marvel series beyond 1983 because I really felt the story had been told. As fun as it is to have more Star Wars, I’m finding myself increasingly drawn to the ‘head-canon’ notion of sticking with the (unaltered) OT as the real deal and seeing all other SW material as a kind of ‘what if’ fan-fic realm.

Yeah, I’m kind of leaning in the same direction. I’m finding myself wishing they had just abandoned the idea of a sequel trilogy, since that story was essentially finished, and had just immediately began developing their own story set in a different era.

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Hallo,

I do not like the fact that the old heroes do not meet again. My hope for the new trilogy was a sense of reunion. But now Han died before he could see Luke again and his brief meeting with Leia was not a happy moment for me. Now it happened that Luke did not really see his sister again. Just a short chat. Add to that the slow fading away of characters like Chewbacca, R2D2 and C3PO.

I could have really gotten over a lot of the new movies if my old heroes had met again. This Vanity Fair photo (https://media.vanityfair.com/photos/5924579852a3f44dc6f3a8a9/master/h_1440,c_limit/star-wars-portfolio-06-2017-ss10.jpg) briefly gave me hope again, but now the story of the group of farmer boy, smuggler, princess, wookie and androids has come to a rather inglorious end without honoring their old story.

This is why i love the “Dark Empire” comics.

“LUKE… I’M SEEING HIM.
HE’S COMMANDING THE IMPERIAL FORCES… LIKE OUR FATHER!
I FEAR WE LOST HIM, HAN… I FEAR WE LOST EVERYTHING.”

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Old heroes didnt meet because they would overshadow new bland and boring characters, thats why Luke sits (and dies) on a rock even after Han gets killed and even after Leia is in a coma.
edit: btw beautiful photo

Assimilate THIS!

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Nandi said:

Old heroes didnt meet because they would overshadow new bland and boring characters, thats why Luke sits (and dies) on a rock even after Han gets killed and even after Leia is in a coma.
edit: btw beautiful photo

Yeah that may be the reason!
But overall i did not like it.

“LUKE… I’M SEEING HIM.
HE’S COMMANDING THE IMPERIAL FORCES… LIKE OUR FATHER!
I FEAR WE LOST HIM, HAN… I FEAR WE LOST EVERYTHING.”

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The Dark Empire said:

Nandi said:

Old heroes didnt meet because they would overshadow new bland and boring characters, thats why Luke sits (and dies) on a rock even after Han gets killed and even after Leia is in a coma.
edit: btw beautiful photo

Yeah that may be the reason!
But overall i did not like it.

Of course not!

Assimilate THIS!

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Hal 9000 said:

If there were no shot of the books at the end of the film, is Yoda a book burner?

But there is a shot of the books at the end! “If that scene wasn’t there,” “if you stop watching before that scene,” “if you don’t catch the books,” . . . at a certain point you need to stop bringing up hypotheticals. It’s in the movie. “What if it wasn’t” isn’t a terribly useful question. You could say that about anything else in any movie and completely change whatever you want.

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Nandi said:

https://medium.com/jackndelaney/star-wars-the-last-jedi-forces-old-fans-to-abandon-ship-1809d5e9d031

^ Saying near-on anything in an opinion-piece to drive traffic to it is still a thing then. A 23 year old lad with a title of ‘The Last Jedi Forces Old Fans to Abandon Ship’… saying that he ‘got it’ then demonstrates that he seemingly didn’t.

There is very little balance in that article - if the author took a step back from his anger (be careful where that leads 😉) and his bold type and capitalisation when trying and make a point, then maybe he’d have likely answered many of those questions/issues himself.

I feel that article actually somehow invalidated some of the genuine criticisms of the film. It read like a bad reddit review. Eurgh.
 

There has do be better articles out there that genuinely address and note the concerns for many of those that didn’t like TLJ as a whole - or certain aspects of it?

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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Shopping Maul said:

I really wonder, if Empire versus rebels 2.0, and particulary Luke’s deflation as a character, and Rey’s simultaneous rapid inflation is really worth the journey from a saga perspective. It’s an entertaining enough story, but I don’t really see what it adds to the saga as a whole. I think it actually takes away from it, to be honest, in a much more fundamental way than the PT.

I’ve gotta say Dre, I’m really on the fence here myself. As disappointed as I was/am with ROTJ as a film, I was satisfied with it as a definitive conclusion. I never got into the EU or the Marvel series beyond 1983 because I really felt the story had been told. As fun as it is to have more Star Wars, I’m finding myself increasingly drawn to the ‘head-canon’ notion of sticking with the (unaltered) OT as the real deal and seeing all other SW material as a kind of ‘what if’ fan-fic realm.

The thing that really saved ROTJ is the Emperor scenes. Those scenes are my favorite in all of the Star Wars movies.

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There can be no reasoning with people who waited and two years for Luke Skywalker to show up only (and didnt mind him) to be a comic relief throwing away his fathers lightsaber - people laughing at that joke will buy anything and defend anyting star wars.

Assimilate THIS!

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oojason said:

Nandi said:

https://medium.com/jackndelaney/star-wars-the-last-jedi-forces-old-fans-to-abandon-ship-1809d5e9d031

^ Saying near-on anything in an opinion-piece to drive traffic to it is still a thing then. A 23 year old lad with a title of ‘The Last Jedi Forces Old Fans to Abandon Ship’… saying that he ‘got it’ then demonstrates that he seemingly didn’t.

I don’t get this sort of response. I don’t get the praise for this film, but I would never claim that someone who loves this film and gushes over it doesn’t get it. So, he’s angry, and he vents his frustration. He’s also extremely polite, and respectful in his responses to those that disagree with him as is seen in the responses to his article.

There is very little balance in that article - if the author took a step back from his anger (be careful where that leads 😉) and his bold type and capitalisation when trying and make a point, then maybe he’d have likely answered many of those questions/issues himself.

Is there balance in article that praises this film to high heaven? He’s very critical of the film, and is very straightforward about it, but this doesn’t make any of his personal feelings any more or less valid than anyone else’s opinion.

I feel that article actually somehow invalidated some of the genuine criticisms of the film. It read like a bad reddit review. Eurgh.
 

There has do be better articles out there that genuinely address and note the concerns for many of those what didn’t like TLJ?

Well, that’s the way it works apparently. An emotional article stirs up similar emotions in someone who disagrees, who subsequently more or less dismisses the article off hand, who stirs up emotions in this critical user, who then replies emotionally, which then might lead to another emotional response, which then leads to a moderator…o damn!