Episode VIII : The Last Jedi - Discussion * SPOILER THREAD * — Page 181

yotsuya said:

What we do know that Kennedy and Abrams started from Lucas’s treatment and the put them through the normal story development process to take a rough idea and expand it to a workable movie trilogy.

They just had to invent a primary villain in the 3rd movie, as well as contriving a connection between the main character and said villain, and give the other antagonist an abrupt redemption arc after giving every indication that it would not happen.

I’d hate to see what would happen if they didn’t do any story development.

DominicCobb said:

Regardless of whether you felt that they gave “every indication that a redemption would not happen,” all evidence points to that being literally the only thing they had planned from the start and never strayed from.

So that’s why they fired Trevorrow. Huh.

Rian fundamentally misunderstands the force in TLJ.
Luke: “Balance - Powerful light, Powerful darkness.” is a reductionist corruption of George’s idea of balance. The darkside is the imbalance - an abomination of the force, the Light represents the force when it’s in its truest nature- balanced. The idea that light and dark represent The ying/yang in the force is something George opposed vehemently and to me highlights just how out of touch the ST is with the 6 film saga.

idir_hh said:

Rian fundamentally misunderstands the force in TLJ.
Luke: “Balance - Powerful light, Powerful darkness.” is a reductionist corruption of George’s idea of balance. The darkside is the imbalance - an abomination of the force, the Light represents the force when it’s in its truest nature- balanced. The idea that light and dark represent The ying/yang in the force is something George opposed vehemently and to me highlights just how out of touch the ST is with the 6 film saga.

But wasn’t that Hermit Luke, who was supposed to be in the wrong? It seems like that’s one of the major areas where people misinterpret the themes of TLJ. At the end, he renounces everything he said while on the island, and says that he “will not be the last Jedi.” You could say it’s another issue that the 3rd act spends most of its time undoing everything the first two acts did, but most of the stuff people say in the first two acts shouldn’t really be taken seriously when it comes to examining the themes of the movie.

I think justifying things with “because he was a hermit” can only take you so far. Luke’s beef was with the Jedi, not with the force, his intention in the first lesson was to teach Rey about the force, Jaded luke’s philosophy comes in the second lesson when he talks about the Jedi being a failure, Even Rian said that Lukes goal was to stop the constant cycle between Jedi and Sith rising to power - so by taking the jedi out of the equation the Force will choose someone worthier to take up the mantle of the force.
It’s all meaningless though because the idea behind it is fundamentally flawed.

it really hurts* to see people interpret the movie this way but i will refrain from repeating a previous held debate

*not really, obviously

I don’t think I’m misunderstanding what I think is a pretty obvious oversight regarding the nature of the force on the part of RJ but I’m open to hearing any possible explanations.

Here’s a pretty detailed rambling about the Force from George himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68dvgRT3Kx8

Lucas talks about the dark side as selfishness versus the light side as selflessness.

From video: “And you want to keep it in balance.” ^(following left/right arm movements reminiscent of a metronome)

Selfishness is dark side. The dark side itself is not the anger, greed, hatred, fear, jealousy, etc. - those are all just extensions of self-preservation and greed - manifestations of the extent you are passionate about what you desire. How angry or scared you are, defining how far you’re willing to go in your actions. What you want, how much you want, as correlative to what you’ll do to keep it. Serving only yourself and those desires - following a path paved by those intentions - is imbalance.

And it’s easy because at their basest level those feelings are natural, “biological pleasures” as Lucas puts it. You can want innocuous things, you can even want good things. That’s what makes it dangerous, that’s its power. Where the Light Side requires discipline to maintain, passion and desire is human.

Lucas talks about it as motivated from those tangible, quantifiable things - not occult magic. No side of the Force actually corrupts or controls you. Not any more than a child learning and pushing the limits of what they’re capable of, men earning money and status, or a politician with “power” in an authority sense. If anything, you corrupt it. The Force within yourself.

Lucas says that Force remains in balance when you follow its will. But he makes it a point in the video’s opening lines to say that you still have free will. A choice to reject it if you want to.

TLJ adheres to that point and tries to reiterate that almost to a fault (since a lot of ppl don’t like Luke’s arc in it. Or Poe’s. Or Finn’s. Even Rey’s for that matter). Luke talking about the “balance in nature between light and dark” is in a conversation all about the Force within oneself. The natural balanced energy that Rey could feel throughout the island as well as within herself. Luke specifically says this doesn’t belong to anybody, nor is it a power you wield. This entire point you brought up as a fundamental misunderstanding, is slavishly adherent to Lucas’s ideas.

Broom Kid said:

I don’t think I’m misunderstanding what I think is a pretty obvious oversight regarding the nature of the force on the part of RJ but I’m open to hearing any possible explanations.

I think NFB’s post above is a great response, but if I could add my own counterargment on top of it: whether Rian broke the rules or not - those rules being broken led to a better movie, which is the most important thing.

Because as everyone here should be painfully familiar with by now: George Lucas doesn’t always have good ideas, and sticking to something he dreamed up simply because he dreamed it up is a pretty unnecessary set of handcuffs to put on yourself if you don’t have to.

And Rian didn’t have to.

And that’s all IF I agree with the notion he didn’t get The Force, which I DON’T agree with. We can’t even properly wrap our head around REAL religions, much less half-baked fictional ones that more or less only exist for the sake of giving a fantasy movie its magic analog. The Force being shaded and re-interpreted for each trilogy (or even each movie, really) is just as much a Star Wars tradition as the opening scroll and blue closing credits.

Everything here I agree with. Lucas isn’t perfect, and changing his conception of the force is completely fine. As long as you don’t use it as an excuse to turn the Jedi into gods, like TROS and certain EU stories did.

Once again, one of the bigger discussions i’ve seen in the past 20 years comes down to rules-lawyering a fictional religion in a fantasy movie - but the only reason that rules-lawyering has been allowed to go on so long is because Lucas had the brilliant idea to retcon Return of the Jedi with the Prequel Trilogy, retroactively making the OT and PT into Anakin’s story, and using a tired “CHOSEN ONE prophecy” arc for him, created a shaky, and almost ALWAYS misunderstood concept of what “balance” means in the force as the engine for that prophecy to run through the prequels.

I don’t understand this, or your obsession with the Chosen One prophecy. It seems like you think all the bad parts of Star Wars tie back to the prophecy, when I never interpreted it as a retcon of the OT. If anything, it actually enhances the OT characters’ accomplishments, by giving them a wider galactic context. But this is all subjective.

NFBisms said:

Here’s a pretty detailed rambling about the Force from George himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68dvgRT3Kx8

Lucas talks about the dark side as selfishness versus the light side as selflessness.

From video: “And you want to keep it in balance.” ^(following left/right arm movements reminiscent of a metronome)

Selfishness is dark side. The dark side itself is not the anger, greed, hatred, fear, jealousy, etc. - those are all just extensions of self-preservation and greed - manifestations of the extent you are passionate about what you desire. How angry or scared you are, defining how far you’re willing to go in your actions. What you want, how much you want, as correlative to what you’ll do to keep it. Serving only yourself and those desires - following a path paved by those intentions - is imbalance.

And it’s easy because at their basest level those feelings are natural, “biological pleasures” as Lucas puts it. You can want innocuous things, you can even want good things. That’s what makes it dangerous, that’s its power. Where the Light Side requires discipline to maintain, passion and desire is human.

Lucas talks about it as motivated from those tangible, quantifiable things - not occult magic. No side of the Force actually corrupts or controls you. Not any more than a child learning and pushing the limits of what they’re capable of, men earning money and status, or a politician with “power” in an authority sense. If anything, you corrupt it. The Force within yourself.

Lucas says that Force remains in balance when you follow its will. But he makes it a point in the video’s opening lines to say that you still have free will. A choice to reject it if you want to.

TLJ adheres to that point and tries to reiterate that almost to a fault (since a lot of ppl don’t like Luke’s arc in it. Or Poe’s. Or Finn’s. Even Rey’s for that matter). Luke talking about the “balance in nature between light and dark” is in a conversation all about the Force within oneself. The natural balanced energy that Rey could feel throughout the island as well as within herself. Luke specifically says this doesn’t belong to anybody, nor is it a power you wield. This entire point you brought up as a fundamental misunderstanding, is slavishly adherent to Lucas’s ideas.

great observations here ,also , I think Irvin Kershner should get more recognition for bringing these concepts into Star Wars as well . He is quoted in many interviews as wanting to bring concepts of Zen Buddhism into the saga and it neatly parallels those themes. From The A to Z of Buddhism by Charles S.Prebish The Scarecrow Press Inc . 2001 on Karma -" Sanskrit technical term, literally translated as “action” and referring yo the Buddhist notion that any volitional activity accrues retribution appropriate to the nature of the deed . In the simplestsense,Buddhists believe that any act that is volitional in it’s basis creates a karmic “seed” that will eventually ripen and bear fruit . Volitional acts may be judged to be “good” or “bad” while non volitional acts are generally designated as neutral. For an act to be negatively motivated,it must be motivated by one of the so-called three poisons on Buddhism 1.lust 2.hatred 3.delusion .The opposite of each of these three motivating factors are then necessarily considered as the basis of positive karmic acts .Invariably ,eack individual is presumed to manifest free will in each experiential moment of his or her life ,thus suggesting that one’s station in life is intimately linked to the motivations behind one’s actions.- that sounds a lot like the Force to me ! see also…https://www.kimt.com/content/national/471355904.html Now I should read some Carlos Castenada…

Thanks for the thoughtful responses, to give you credit it does seem like George doesn’t really agree with himself sometimes when it comes to the nature of the force, nevertheless I want to focus on how the concept of “balance in the force” is depicted in the overarching story of the original 6 films in relation to the Disney films.

In the prequels The Jedi were at the height of their power yet the force was in a state of imbalance, this was due to the Sith rule of two who used the darkside and worked in the shadows, weakening the jedi and clouding their judgement. Enter the Chosen One and long story short he destroys the Sith and brings balance to the force, the Jedi live on. Now if we are to talk about about “balance” (a prequel innovation) than we cannot escape the prophecy of the the chosen one - the concept of balance exists primarily to compliment the prophecy.

When you look at the overarching story of the 6 film saga the relationship between the light and dark is clearly depicted as anti-symbiotic, contrary to the ying yang, dark and light as two halves of one coin spiel in TLJ, we see that when the force is in balance the darkside (while always there) has an alluring presence on the periphery of the Light(what the force mostly consists of), the imbalance happens when the darkside is used excessively like when the sith are on a power trip hence poisoning the well, when the sith were destroyed the power of the darkside diminished back to the periphery of the spectrum- bringing the force back into balance.

Mocata said:

The balance idea never made a lot of sense considering that anyone at any time might choose to become a dark Jedi. The hubris of the old council overlooking the rise of Palpatine had to happen somehow of course, but the PT just feels contrived and makes them look like a bunch of old stoners (even before all those parodies). Beyond all that Chosen One plots are just the worst. TLJ at least did a reasonable job of look at the golden age with a sceptical eye, but even mentioning that period or any PT stuff was probably a mistake.

Why was mentioning the prequels a bad idea? Like it or not, they’re a part of Star Wars. You can’t just ignore them without making the saga feel incomplete. You may think the prequels are irredeemably bad and get angry whenever someone mentions them, but a lot of people think there were some parts that were good. TROS shows that trying to please a minor contingent of hardcore haters is almost never a good idea.

Personal headcanon may be used in fanediting and what not but when discussing elements of George’s overall story its only fair that it be done in a holistic way.

Mocata said:

StarkillerAG said:
You may think the prequels are irredeemably bad and get angry whenever someone mentions them

They are, but I don’t.

Okay, it’s fine if that’s what you think. But other people think differently. I don’t think movies should be made to cater to any specific group.

My point is to tell a compelling new story you need to start with what works (the OT) and be as vague about everything else as possible (which they were to some extent). Everything else is entirely debatable since PT fans will hate anything that doesn’t continue the Anakin as Space Jesus plot which was supposedly a central idea. If I got angry about any of this I might have the energy to go way off topic, but again I don’t

I understand that, and I agree that the prequel fans clamoring for ghost Hayden to magically save the day were being unreasonable. But I don’t see how any of this means that the prequels shouldn’t be mentioned at all. I actually feel like the way TLJ went about it was probably the best way to do it. Mention the prequels when you can expand on them in interesting ways, but don’t reveal that Snoke is Jar-Jar Binks or some dumb shit like that.

Shopping Maul said:

I kind of like Rian’s ‘Jedi hubris’ idea. Honestly, the way these guys turn irreversibly evil if they lose their temper is reason enough to never train a Jedi again. At least normal people can go “oops, I got a bit carried away there - sorry”.

I think Kotor did it best.

It’s definitely worth checking out, Kotor 2 is a very deep and thoughtful deconstruction of the force, the jedi an the sith.