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.
I’m just trying to understand the scene with Yoda. I need to understand what the scene is about and what I means to a hypothetical first time viewer who is really keyed in and picks up everything there is to pick up before advancing toward the end of the film. My suspicion is still that the shot at the end is supposed to be a retroactive fakeout that radically alters that part of the narrative in a way that I find very annoying.
It seems that the Yoda scene very clearly portrays Luke and Yoda as coming together to smile on the drestruction of the Jedi texts, with hope that Rey will be fine without them.