So you’d torch the sacred texts without hesitation?
No, I wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have had Luke’s actions be a series of moments of madness. Although that would help explain the green milk scene.
Luke is conflicted. He thinks the Jedi should end, but burning the books is destroying knowledge and something the bad guys would do without hesitation. It would be like torching the last known copy of a Bible or something.
Do or do not, there is no try.
All this Yoda calling lighting justification talk sounds to me like mental gymnastics 101. Yoda somehow via the force either creating, influencing, directing, etc. the lightning in TLJ just doesn’t sit right with me whatever the reasoning. Pre-ST force ghosts could not affect the physical world. Suddenly in the ST they can directly influence the force back in the real world.
Sorry but I don’t buy it anymore than I bought the ugly Yoda puppet. I also didn’t buy “crazy yoda” as he wasn’t crazy or unhinged in the OT, just a little eccentric and put on a crazy act to either test Luke in TESB or make himself seem harmless while checking out who this stranger was that just crash landed in his backyard.
Val
Yoda was joking around even when he was dying in ROTJ. He always had a jovial side. Something the PT completely got rid of with grumpy frowning Yoda. TLJ Yoda was the same Yoda we see in the OT.
And OT Force ghosts could interact physically with the real world, so why can’t they also use the force? Or is it just because it’s been introduced in the ST that’s the problem?
I don’t recall any physical interaction in the OT (apart from Obi Wan’s ludicrous ‘sitting on log’ scene which doesn’t really count IMO). The issue is the fact that ghost-Obi Wan made it plain he could not assist Luke in fighting Vader. This means either a) force-ghosts can’t interact or b) force-ghosts are jerks.
The problem with Yoda’s lightning powers is that it opens a can of worms where none needed to be. If RJ just went with what the OT had more or less established, we wouldn’t have to start inventing ways to make it all fit. Yoda could’ve just dispensed great advice - which is what FGs do - and Luke could’ve burned the tree down. It’s not a huge deal, but it does make one start to wonder why these ghostly guys didn’t intervene earlier. Why is it all hands on deck for a tree-burning but no help during the ‘Palpatine blasts Luke’ moment in ROTJ (for example)?
While I think we can rationalize Yoda as having some minor effect on a natural phenomenon (as I have on previous pages), I concede the physical interaction by ghosts is a little out there.
More so I agree with your suggestion that the scene (and the movie) would have been more solid without the fakeouts. It would have been a more powerful scene if Luke burned the tree as he intended.
Episode IX
EPILOGUEGeneral Leia Organa has lost the will to live. After melting into the Force, the Resistance is without any hope as the First Order pursues them to the ends of the galaxy.
Ben Solo, the feared leader of darkness, is obsessed with finding the girl who defied him, and will not rest until Rey, the first of a new Jedi Order, has been destroyed.
Now, each side is prepared to fight each other until one or the other is summarily destroyed, thus ending STAR WARS, unless the defeated party should happen to rise again from an obscure part of the galaxy in a few decades’ time…
Oooh, I could hear the music in my head as the crawl fades… 😄
It’s not redundant, it’s just a baby. They should have had a bunch of babies crawling around a nursery floor with lightsabers.
When I have a child, that will happen.
When Luke told Kylo, See you around, kid. he meant it.
What are we to make of the fact Rey and Kylo are still have the mental link even though Snoke was enabling it and is mostly dead now?
I hope that was a Princess Bride reference.
I don’t really think Yoda acted all that crazy aside from that shot where he kicks his legs around. He was treated much better here than in the prequels (does that even need to be said?)
Sadly, it does.
#pigmenneverforget
It’s a low bar so I don’t know that the saying accomplishes much. adywan said the PT totally rid Yoda of his jovial side. yotsuya points out that isn’t true. We can debate whether Yoda was “joking around” on his death bed, that would be fun.
Yoda was noticeably more loosely goosey in TLJ. Not atrociously so, but it’s pretty obvious. There is probably less reason to be so serious when you’re dead.
It looks to me that this puppet is more smiley and the head a bit squashed. The ghost effect wasn’t very well done. Other than that, I enjoyed the scene.
EDIT: so after reading through the thread since my last post, I guess it comes down to your interpretation. One can interpret what Obi-Wan said in a way, and others naturally in others. I too, like Warb, thought Yoda had created the lighting out of thin air. It’s not something I really have a problem with anyway, just a huge 6 page discussion over a minor nitpick. Then again, this is the Star Wars fan base.
I don’t know how you can say he conjured it out of thin air when the movie makes it a point to show it coming from storm clouds. You can’t just ignore something that’s right there in the movie.
As for how this has blown into a huge discussion, well let’s not forget about Luke force choking, at least this debate is on topic!
I recommend that someone makes a new thread that is limited to the force choking or not force choking of the pigmen and the weather lightning or force lightning of the tree. No other topics will be allowed.
I think we could sneak in some discussion of whether Kylo or Rey won on Starkiller.
I have mixed feelings on the Canto Bight music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8ue_5T4fMk&feature=youtu.be&t=35s
It’s like Mos Eisley cantina meets 1930s Tropicana.
And this one had me thinking Jurassic Park: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vP0nEO6q8iI
The problem, warb (and others), is there’s some ambiguity and you’re taking that ambiguity and assuming automatically that it must be an inconsistency, whereas you could just as easily explore all the other possible explanations for it. Just because it’s not explained doesn’t mean it’s unexplainable. Movies, and Star Wars especially, are all about the possible, not the impossible. So to go right to the latter is essentially watching it wrong.
But sometimes things do need to be explained. Again if in the next movie Han(not a ghost) suddenly walked into a room, wouldn’t that require an explanation?
What if in a future movie it is found out that sith can appear as force ghosts and kill people, wouldn’t it need to be explained why we haven’t seen that before, why dead Emperor, Maul, and Dooku don’t come back force ghosts can get revenge?
Trying to explain spiritual happenings leads to dumbness. Like Dom says there is a difference between ambiguity and inconsistency. The truth is we know very little about the Star Wars afterlife.
When we are talking about a power that would have made sense to use in the OT and wasn’t it is an inconsistency.
Even accepting your view that Yoda made the lightning, that’s not an inconsistency, just a possible missed opportunity.
oh come on.
That response was positively Frinkesque or Frinky, if you prefer.
But it may be that Force ghosts are limited in where they can show up.
This is never said in the movie.
That is why I said “may.”
It was never said in the movie why the Death Star didn’t just shoot Yavin instead of waiting half an hour to get around it. It was never said why the Stormtroopers didn’t make sure the heroes were dead after they jumped into the trash compacter. In both cases, we can come up with reasonable inferences.
- the minor interaction with surroundings we see in ROTJ don’t matter near as much as finding out that force ghost Obiwan and Yoda maybe could have appeared before the Emperor and Vader and zapped them.
But Yoda didn’t just zap the tree out of thin air like the force lighting the Emperor uses. This has already been explained to you.
Whatever you want to call it, it sure would have been nice if had used it on the Emperor in ROTJ after Yoda died.
Please point me to the scene in the Emperors throne room where there were storm clouds over head so we could have had the same lightning and then i’d agree with you.
He needs storm clouds? That is never explained. What if in a future movie a force user does it without storm clouds, then can I ask why force ghost Yoda doesn’t zap the Emperor in ROTJ?
The point is that we can draw these inferences about what we did see. We don’t need to exactly pin it down. Does the idea that Yoda could influence the path of lightning bother you?
no. However if it would have been convenient to influence the path of lightning at some point in the OT and he didn’t, that would bother me.
Lets say in some future movie, force users can force transport themselves wherever they want. Now, wouldn’t you then question why Obiwan didn’t do this in TPM and get past the shield in the Maul fight?
Obviously.
As others have said, we can infer that Yoda simply affected the path of the lightning. If Yoda did show up in Snoke’s thrown room and start pulling lightning down…well then I’d agree with you. But what actually happened in this film was far more constrained than that.
I thought Yoda was just guiding the lightning not creating it.
sure looked like he created it to me.
Big difference between manipulating the weather to create lighting and firing it out of your fingertips. It’s been suggested in the past Yoda used the Force to make sure Luke crashed in just the right spot on Dagobah. That was some choppy weather he hit coming into the atmosphere.
I don’t think he just manipulated the weather.
And yet he did. There is a wide shot where you see the storm clouds above the island and you can see the lightning coming out of the clouds around the island and not just the bolt that strikes the tree. Have you seen the film just the once? Because it seems like you just missed that bit, but you’re refusing to listen to people that have seen the film multiple times or noticed what was happening.
I’ll be glad when the blu-ray comes out so we can post screenshots.
If we’re going to catch this cloud and pin it down, we should just recognize what really happened: Yoda communed with the living Midichlorians and that made the lightning happen.
The problem, warb (and others), is there’s some ambiguity and you’re taking that ambiguity and assuming automatically that it must be an inconsistency, whereas you could just as easily explore all the other possible explanations for it. Just because it’s not explained doesn’t mean it’s unexplainable. Movies, and Star Wars especially, are all about the possible, not the impossible. So to go right to the latter is essentially watching it wrong.
But sometimes things do need to be explained. Again if in the next movie Han(not a ghost) suddenly walked into a room, wouldn’t that require an explanation?
What if in a future movie it is found out that sith can appear as force ghosts and kill people, wouldn’t it need to be explained why we haven’t seen that before, why dead Emperor, Maul, and Dooku don’t come back force ghosts can get revenge?
Trying to explain spiritual happenings leads to dumbness. Like Dom says there is a difference between ambiguity and inconsistency. The truth is we know very little about the Star Wars afterlife.
When we are talking about a power that would have made sense to use in the OT and wasn’t it is an inconsistency.
Even accepting your view that Yoda made the lightning, that’s not an inconsistency, just a possible missed opportunity. But it may be that Force ghosts are limited in where they can show up. So many things we don’t know about the Jedi Afterlife.
Whatever role Yoda has in the hierarchy, if any, he can personally train Obi Wan. Obi Wan could have been such a promising student that Yoda took it upon himself to train him.
As for showing the Council, you can make it a centerpiece like in the PT, or something you see once in awhile and maybe see the Jedi council leader more often, who can embody the disgrace of the Council.
If the Jedi are less organized, what is the relation of the Council to the Jedi? Who decided there should be a council and how does it exert influence?
- the minor interaction with surroundings we see in ROTJ don’t matter near as much as finding out that force ghost Obiwan and Yoda maybe could have appeared before the Emperor and Vader and zapped them.
But Yoda didn’t just zap the tree out of thin air like the force lighting the Emperor uses. This has already been explained to you.
Whatever you want to call it, it sure would have been nice if had used it on the Emperor in ROTJ after Yoda died.
Please point me to the scene in the Emperors throne room where there were storm clouds over head so we could have had the same lightning and then i’d agree with you.
He needs storm clouds? That is never explained. What if in a future movie a force user does it without storm clouds, then can I ask why force ghost Yoda doesn’t zap the Emperor in ROTJ?
The point is that we can draw these inferences about what we did see. We don’t need to exactly pin it down. Does the idea that Yoda could influence the path of lightning bother you?
The problem, warb (and others), is there’s some ambiguity and you’re taking that ambiguity and assuming automatically that it must be an inconsistency, whereas you could just as easily explore all the other possible explanations for it. Just because it’s not explained doesn’t mean it’s unexplainable. Movies, and Star Wars especially, are all about the possible, not the impossible. So to go right to the latter is essentially watching it wrong.
But sometimes things do need to be explained. Again if in the next movie Han(not a ghost) suddenly walked into a room, wouldn’t that require an explanation?
What if in a future movie it is found out that sith can appear as force ghosts and kill people, wouldn’t it need to be explained why we haven’t seen that before, why dead Emperor, Maul, and Dooku don’t come back force ghosts can get revenge?
Trying to explain spiritual happenings leads to dumbness. Like Dom says there is a difference between ambiguity and inconsistency. The truth is we know very little about the Star Wars afterlife.
In ESB, Obiwan says that if Luke goes to face Vader he will face him alone, “I can not help you”. But look what Yoda did in TLJ. Sure seems like Obiwan could have lent a hand now.
He says “If you chose to face Vader, you will do it alone. I cannot interfere” . This wasn’t that he couldn’t do anything, but the fact that Luke had to face this challenge on his own. He was being warned that he needed to complete his training, but he refused to listen and needed to face the consequences and not feel that Obi-Wan could just come along and save his ass.
Well that makes Obiwan to be a real jerk. An incomplete Luke is going to face Darth f-ing Vader. He knows Luke is not ready. For he knew, Luke would have gotten killed and then things would really be up the shaft. He was the second to last hope for the galaxy and Obiwan is going to risk the whole galaxy just to teach Luke a lesson???
And don’t forget Obi-Wan’s line in ANH: “If you strike me down, i shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” . Up until TLJ, the most we see a force ghost being able to do is interact with their surroundings by moving some twigs and sitting in a log. A force ghost being able to use that power has been there since day one.
I never understood the line as a kid, but when I grew up, understood it mean that he’d be more powerful as a martyr for the cause.
adywan gives one possible reading of why Obi Wan couldn’t interfere. I assumed there was some spiritual reason, like ghosts can’t get revenge, can’t use violence, or something.
As for Obi Wan’s line about becoming more powerful, I thought a spiritual reason there too - that a spirit is a more powerful being than a man. But the martyr idea is good too.
Again the movie never explains adywan’s idea.
Would Obiwan’s reason for helping Luke fight Vader in ESB be revenge?
Yoda’s use of lightening sure seemed violent to me.
I don’t agree with adywan, the movie does leave the reason unspecified. Dominic gives a plausible reason that I tend to agree with.
Dominic’s reason is not explained in the movie.
Lightening is violent but Yoda does didnt commit an act of violence with it.
He didn’t? He set a building on fire.
On the revenge point, killing the guy who killed you may be antithetical to existence as a Force ghost.
again this is not explained in the movie.
How are we supposed to explain it in the film? A brief interlude with a soliloquy by Pablo Hidalgo ecplaining the continuity?
Was that a horse or the guy in Rogue One? Either way I’m not sure if it would work.
why does everything need to be explained? Shouldn’t there be some mystery?
That’s what I say when someone questions why I’m doing something. Doesn’t go over too well at work or at home.
In ESB, Obiwan says that if Luke goes to face Vader he will face him alone, “I can not help you”. But look what Yoda did in TLJ. Sure seems like Obiwan could have lent a hand now.
He says “If you chose to face Vader, you will do it alone. I cannot interfere” . This wasn’t that he couldn’t do anything, but the fact that Luke had to face this challenge on his own. He was being warned that he needed to complete his training, but he refused to listen and needed to face the consequences and not feel that Obi-Wan could just come along and save his ass.
Well that makes Obiwan to be a real jerk. An incomplete Luke is going to face Darth f-ing Vader. He knows Luke is not ready. For he knew, Luke would have gotten killed and then things would really be up the shaft. He was the second to last hope for the galaxy and Obiwan is going to risk the whole galaxy just to teach Luke a lesson???
And don’t forget Obi-Wan’s line in ANH: “If you strike me down, i shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” . Up until TLJ, the most we see a force ghost being able to do is interact with their surroundings by moving some twigs and sitting in a log. A force ghost being able to use that power has been there since day one.
I never understood the line as a kid, but when I grew up, understood it mean that he’d be more powerful as a martyr for the cause.
adywan gives one possible reading of why Obi Wan couldn’t interfere. I assumed there was some spiritual reason, like ghosts can’t get revenge, can’t use violence, or something.
As for Obi Wan’s line about becoming more powerful, I thought a spiritual reason there too - that a spirit is a more powerful being than a man. But the martyr idea is good too.
Again the movie never explains adywan’s idea.
Would Obiwan’s reason for helping Luke fight Vader in ESB be revenge?
Yoda’s use of lightening sure seemed violent to me.
I don’t agree with adywan, the movie does leave the reason unspecified. Dominic gives a plausible reason that I tend to agree with. Lightening is violent but Yoda does didnt commit an act of violence with it. On the revenge point, killing the guy who killed you may be antithetical to existence as a Force ghost.
In ESB, Obiwan says that if Luke goes to face Vader he will face him alone, “I can not help you”. But look what Yoda did in TLJ. Sure seems like Obiwan could have lent a hand now.
He says “If you chose to face Vader, you will do it alone. I cannot interfere” . This wasn’t that he couldn’t do anything, but the fact that Luke had to face this challenge on his own. He was being warned that he needed to complete his training, but he refused to listen and needed to face the consequences and not feel that Obi-Wan could just come along and save his ass.
Well that makes Obiwan to be a real jerk. An incomplete Luke is going to face Darth f-ing Vader. He knows Luke is not ready. For he knew, Luke would have gotten killed and then things would really be up the shaft. He was the second to last hope for the galaxy and Obiwan is going to risk the whole galaxy just to teach Luke a lesson???
And don’t forget Obi-Wan’s line in ANH: “If you strike me down, i shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine.” . Up until TLJ, the most we see a force ghost being able to do is interact with their surroundings by moving some twigs and sitting in a log. A force ghost being able to use that power has been there since day one.
I never understood the line as a kid, but when I grew up, understood it mean that he’d be more powerful as a martyr for the cause.
adywan gives one possible reading of why Obi Wan couldn’t interfere. I assumed there was some spiritual reason, like ghosts can’t get revenge, can’t use violence, or something.
As for Obi Wan’s line about becoming more powerful, I thought a spiritual reason there too - that a spirit is a more powerful being than a man. But the martyr idea is good too.
Collipso, as you saw above I have some of the same questions. If there are supposed to be deeper themes and meaningful character arcs, they should become richer upon inspection, or at least not fall apart. Unless this was the intention, to show that stuff happens and nobody can see the future, nobody is necessarily right or wrong. This plays into the idea that TJL is a nihilist work - something I haven’t been convinced on.
However, RJ may be focused on the ethics of decisions, whatever the morality or practical result. This would at least accord with his treatment of the light vs dark side, I think.
Yeah but I don’t think that simply the ethics of the decisions is a good enough reason to sacrifice basically all the lore and understanding that we previously had and was previously established of the force, how it works and the training to become a powerful force user, etc.
I agree…but if I’m right about what RJ was doing, he came at the project with a wholly different orientatation from which he doesn’t see a conflict, or at least not a meaningful conflict. From that kind of view, telling a story of good vs evil is flat and facile. By making the story a question of ethics, it is automatically more complex. It is like adding a third dimension, rather than creating a conflict - so long as you view it from that third dimension.
To illustrate, consider Yoda’s line that “we are what they grow beyond.” It’s not blatantly at odds with any particular line in the OT. But it is a different point of view from looking beyond this crude matter and to the Force. In that line, I see the same kind of focus on ethical behavior that others can carry on rather than moral choices which allow becoming one with the Force.
Collipso, as you saw above I have some of the same questions. If there are supposed to be deeper themes and meaningful character arcs, they should become richer upon inspection, or at least not fall apart. Unless this was the intention, to show that stuff happens and nobody can see the future, nobody is necessarily right or wrong. This plays into the idea that TJL is a nihilist work - something I haven’t been convinced on.
However, RJ may be focused on the ethics of decisions, whatever the morality or practical result. This would at least accord with his treatment of the light vs dark side, I think.
Third watch today. Wife insisted. I had a ridiculous lunch of Chicken strips, fries, and a grasshopper milkshake. Felt like a kid again for a few hours.
Still really, really good. 3rd best or 4th best SW movie. Yeah there’s little issues here and there but it’s a movie, to paraphrase Joel, and we all should really just relax.
8.72ish/10
Wtf I agree with Frink
It’s okay, it happens to the best of us from time to time.
If, as has been suggested, Poe believed that the attempted attack on the gun was going to fail and he called off the attack for that reason, that looks less like a character arc for Poe than a practical decision, just as he made in successfully attacking the Dreadnought.
If Poe had not destroyed the dreadnought, would its guns have been successfully used to destroy the rebel ships during the later pursuit, or alternatively the Crait base?
Save who you love don’t fight what you hate.
So stop fighting?