yotsuya

DrDre said:

SilverWook said:

MikeWW said:

SilverWook said:

A puppet being operated by the real villain?

But why have a dime store Palpatine if the plan all along was to use the real thing?

Because that’s how Palpatine operates. Masks, deceptions and lies. Snoke was just a more sophisticated version of wearing a hood and keeping his face in a strategically placed shadow.

That’s a nice in-universe explanation, but in reality it’s almost certain, that JJ intended for Snoke to be the big bad, and when RJ dispatched him, they had to bring back Palpatine in some form to up the ante. Had it been their intention to bring back Palpatine, they would logically have introduced him as the puppet master in a cameo at the end of TLJ. Additionally RJ clearly made TLJ with the intention to break free from what came before, whilst TROS seems to do the opposite promising a whole host of connections to the past.

I have to disagree with your interpretation of TLJ. That is the message that hermit Luke and Kylo Ren share. Both are proved wrong by the rest of the movie’s plot. The end of the movie is about embracing exactly what Luke said they didn’t need before Rey and Yoda brought him back to himself. And Kylo is trying desperately to be bad and be consumed by the dark side and yet he can’t seem to manage it. He’s trying to convince himself that he needs to destroy the past so he can be bad enough. But that is not RJ’s message in TLJ. Luke executes the very single handed battle with his lasersword against incredible odds and creates a legend, reminding Kylo and us that he will not be the last Jedi - meaning he is embracing the past and letting it carry forward. Quite the opposite of breaking free from what came before. And there is no hint that JJ is going to undo anything.

Snoke was the bad guy, but when you think about it, we know as little about him as we knew about the Emperor in the OT. He was just a figure mentioned in conversation in ANH. He appeared briefly in a hologram in TESB, and only with his arrival on the Death Star in ROTJ do we really get a feeling of his personality. But we had no back story until the PT. Abrams has been going for that feeling with Snoke - the unfleshed out bad guy at the top. What we get in TROS is going to be something to end the saga (which they have been saying all along that IX was going to do) so who knows what secrets it might reveal. The spoilers have a lot of guesses on Palpatine’s role and there are ways to tie it all in AND tell us more about Snoke if there is a reason to. But he died as backstoryless as Palpatine did back in 1983 (when we had no idea how he came to power or any of his history).

Mike Zero is fun to watch, but I don’t take anything he has to say seriously. Not unless he grabbed it from a more reliable source. He makes some interesting guesses, but ultimately he has a history of missing. The leaks for VII were pretty accurate and the entire story was pretty much out, with some omissions. Enough of VIII was out to have an idea of the story. So I think some of the leaks for IX are probably right, but not all of them. If the attention to detail is on the level it has been, then we are going back to Yavin IV and the wreckage of the first Death Star. Palpatine is back in spirit but not body. No solid information about how he is defeated, only claims from Lucasfilm that Palpatine was always going to be a part of IX. It is also clear that the basic story they are following is the one written by Lucas himself. They have altered the story to fit the new creative team (Luke not showing up until VIII) but the basic story remains the same. I think had Lucas done the ST, that Luke would have died in VII, not VIII. Lucas does believe in repeating poetry and rhymes in the form of story beats repeating. The PT was very much a repeat of the OT with many points, though the outcome of the trilogy was decidedly different. I am excited by this film and I hope they have done something that is both creative and true to Lucas’ vision of how the saga should end.

‘Abrams revealed that in meetings with The Force Awakens and original trilogy writer Lawrence Kasdan as well as Rian Johnson and George Lucas, they settled on an ending that was specifically designed to bring the nine-film series to a satisfying conclusion. “If a kid is watching all nine movies,” Abrams said, “he or she sees this one path, this inevitability and that’s the challenge of this movie.”’

So it looks like its an ending everyone was in on.

https://www.slashfilm.com/j-j-abrams-star-wars-the-rise-of-skywalker-approach/?fbclid=IwAR0B35viJrDK_y22b9QuHuCLipTnrTV_IEPGb2Zus3qanyF9m3_F37ayUTQ

Hal 9000 said:

Just read about “new desert planet Pasaana.”

It’s a minor thing, but if you want a desert planet why not pick Jakku or Tatooine, and if you want a new planet then why another desert planet?

It would actually be very common. Any planet on the inside of the Goldilocks zone would tend to be hot and probably arid, or it could just have weird weather patterns that render much of it hot and arid.

It is like putting a PAL master on BR. For those in the UK there will be a little improvement over DVD, but for us in the States it is a vast improvement.

Same with these two movies. Upscaling them and releasing them in 4k, even without any other processing, will produce something that looks far better than the BR release. For one thing the compression artifacts get hidden with the increased pixel depth.

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

No I don’t think it’s just Rey at all. That’s one of the biggest points of the final scene of TLJ, showing that this is a potential that lives in many (random people) throughout the galaxy. I hope TROS delves into this aspect in some regard.

In the larger sense, in terms of what I’m explaining, it’s my interpretation and I think it’s good that it’s left to interpretation. In my mind where Rey gets her powers from doesn’t matter so much as what she chooses to do with them.

Which brings us back to motivation. It’s not just what she does, but why? Luke wanted to leave Tatooine, and join his friends in the Academy. He wanted to know who his father was, and follow in his footsteps. Luke has personal motivations for joining the fight, for wanting to be a Jedi. What is Rey’s motivation going into TROS? Why does she want to be a Jedi? Thusfar it seems, that it is, because the plot has forced her into this position. Her main motivation for going to find Luke, is the powers she recieved from on high. Then Luke disappoints, and she’s convinced through Snoke’s deception, that Ben Solo is the answer for the Resistance. Then that plan awry, she ends up saving the remains of the Resistance, and is now apparently the heir to the Jedi religion. Her entire character development is heavily plot driven, forced into her position in the story by circumstances.

Gee, that sounds like a Greek myth.

NeverarGreat said:

yotsuya said:

I just found this and read the first post. I had to laugh at the idea that Rey flew the Falcon so well. She practically crashed the thing trying to take off. Once they were in the air she did pretty good, but when you compare that to Luke, he flew his X-wing like a pro from the beginning.

Luke is the best stunt pilot in the outer rim territories, and has clearly been flying for years. And it’s notable that even he never does anything terribly flashy in the OT. Rey’s handling of the Falcon is about how you’d expect in the first few moments, but after that she successfully executes maneuvers far in excess of anything we’ve seen before. If anything, the contrast between almost crashing and ace-level piloting makes her abilities all the more noticeable.

We don’t know what experience either of them have, but they both obviously have quite a bit. We only see either of them using speeders and are told that Luke has used a Skyhopper before. So Rey does a much worse job than Luke at the start and they both fair about the same not too long later (Luke successfully dogfights with highly trained Imperial pilots who in the end take out 27 of the 30 rebel craft).

Rey has to try things before she succeeds, pretty much the way Luke did. And she does have a teacher. She learns just about everything she does from Kylo Ren.

She has never seen Klyo use a Jedi mind trick or even successfully gain his desired information from interrogation, though she manages a successful and proper mind trick after a minute or two of trying.
She has never seen successful telekinesis or levitation, yet apparently learns this on the first attempt after only a moment of intention from Kylo. Interestingly, Kylo never indicates that he is aware of teaching Rey ‘You need a teacher! I can show you the ways of the Force!’ and Rey never acknowledges that she has gained knowledge from Kylo ‘The Force…’.

Rey read Kylo’s mind. Who know what she may have seen and now knows is possible. She also was given a vision from the Lightsaber. So pretty much anything she tries after that point is not out of thin air. Now if she did everything perfect the first time and didn’t have to try a few times, their might be a point, but she does struggle as much as Luke did learning any particular skill.

I’d still like to know who taught Luke to lift his lightsaber in TESB.

If only there was some sort of Jedi mentor which has been established to help Luke from beyond the grave, or a time jump of several years to help the audience suspend their disbelief. Or both.

Well, from his reaction to seeing Ben, it seems pretty clear Ben had not appeared to him before so Ben would not have been teaching him from beyond the grave. Otherwise there would be no need for Yoda.

I just found this and read the first post. I had to laugh at the idea that Rey flew the Falcon so well. She practically crashed the thing trying to take off. Once they were in the air she did pretty good, but when you compare that to Luke, he flew his X-wing like a pro from the beginning. Rey has to try things before she succeeds, pretty much the way Luke did. And she does have a teacher. She learns just about everything she does from Kylo Ren. I’d still like to know who taught Luke to lift his lightsaber in TESB.

And just a note, the Death Star remnants we seen in the trailer are the 1st death star. The inner ring in the dish gives it away. The first Death Star has a ring closer to the edge and the second Death Star has a ring much further in. The trailer has a ring closer to the edge. Not to say that the story won’t go the other way, but Abrams seems too big a nerd to use the wrong Death Star image.

I think the new books have the clue. They have spent time building a contingency plan that Palpatine put in place that led to the rise of the First Order. So the First Order is Palpatine’s doing, not Snoke. Snoke just took over. And not only did Kennedy and Abrams have Lucas’s treatment for the ST, but they even brought the man himself in to help them steer this movie to a proper saga conclusion.

One thing that really irks me is blaming the parent company. I have seen not one shred of evidence that Disney had dictated anything to Lucasfilm regarding this trilogy. What I have seen is that a lot of the complaints blame Disney and are then found to have come from Lucas himself. I know some fanboys don’t like Rey, but she was basically Lucas’s invention. I think Palptine coming back will have more significance than just a big bad for the ending. I don’t think he will play a role beyond Rey and Kylo’s story. Kylo idolizes Vader and thinks that he is going to finish what Vader started, but everything that happened in the PT and OT was Palpatine’s plan, not Vader’s. What will happen when Kylo finds that out? Finds out that Vader was just a tool Palpatine used. They are saying (and if it is like Lucas’s sayings, you know how accurate that is) that Palpatine coming back was in the plan from the beginning (meaning they had a plan and TLJ’s middle chapter was not full of random Rian Johnson events) so I think we can blame this idea firmly on George. I think that Kylo needs to confront Palpatine and Anakin (as ghosts probably) to come to terms with who he is and what direction his life needs to take. What Kennedy, Abrams, Lucas, and Terrio actually do could differ greatly, but the last two films have a lot of hints that Kylo is trying to be dark but really isn’t.

There is a lot to digest in this trailer. Palpatine is one of those. How will he come back. He seems to be of such big importance that his presence in the movie is not a secret. Ian is listed on IMDB as Palpatine. The question is if he is back in spirit, back in body, or back in hologram. The thing that is not a question to me is why he is back. There has been nothing about Snoke that has been a threat. He was the supreme leader of the First Order, but how he came to be that and all sorts of things about his past were left hidden. I would not be surprised if Palpatine is back in body and we find that he was controlling Snoke from behind the scenes. Palpatine’s contingency plan that has evidently cropped up in so many of the new books is a strong hint that Palpatine was coming back. While they aren’t part of the movies, they completely explain the rise of the First Order. It also fulfills Abrams promise to make this a proper close to the Saga. Palpatine was the bad guy of the previous two trilogies and the entire saga coming back to him only makes sense.

I’m far more interested in the identity of the desert planet. I see 4 possiblities. It is Tatooine (too obvious, but possible). It is Jakku (appropriate for the trilogy as both other trilogies have revisited the first planet in a later movie). It is Jedha. This is my favorite - the one I’m hoping for as that world has ties to the Jedi and the Force and would tie in the importance of that film. It is my leading contender because of the natives and the vegetation (Tatooine had so little except at the Lars homestead and Jakku had nothing). But we fall into a trap that the environments we have seen on planets is the entire planet is the same. That may be true for Tatooine, Hoth, and Jakku, but there is no reason to believe that is true for any other planet as it isn’t the case for our own. The last possibility is that it is new planet.

The mountainous terrain at night seems to be a new planet. Someone thought they saw Cloud City in one clip. The red forest is probably a new planet. The planet with the pieces of the Death Star would be Yavin IV or the moon of Endor. Either one has possibilities though from the shape of the weapon dish, I believe it is the first Death Star. And it would be like Abrams to take us back to the beginning for the ending.

As for what the story is, there was no clue that I could detect. A few action scenes and a few scenes that show things happening, but nothing to string together.

I am very interested. I think I sense a big saga level ending in the works. If he can pull this off, I will take back a lot of the negative comments I’ve made about Abrams.

I think the 35mm theatrical version of AOTC is the only major wide release version that we don’t have in some form (I wouldn’t call the theatrical filming bootleg having it as so much is cropped and the frame rate isn’t right). I can’t wait to see this.

If you’ve read the drafts of the original screenplay, you know he not only reused some unused concepts in the PT, but unused names. Utapau, Mace, Windu, Cleeg, and a bunch of other names come straight off the pages of early drafts. Quite fun in some ways.

I really hate it that he thinks he has to spout so much BS about his original plans. I’d be far more interested in the twists and turns he went through. I’d love to hear what his real original plans were for Vader (the name is intriguing). Did the father aspect come to him when he picked the name or later. But we will never know because he thinks he has to cover his tracks and make us think he always intended it that way. I think there is some kernel of truth in his BS, but I want to know exactly what that is, not hear his BS. Because he may fool the casual fan but not us diehards.

The thing that has bothered me since the PT is that if becoming one with the force and becoming a force ghost is something that you have to learn, how did Anakin accomplish it? The PT sets it up that this is something Ben and Yoda have to learn and that Qui-gon didn’t manage to learn it completely. So how does Anakin do it? Did he start looking into it after Ben vanished? Or is it because he is the chosen one? If he is the chosen one his job isn’t finished and he should appear in this last film. To me, the ST doesn’t exist to close out the story from the OT, but to wrap up the extended story that the PT started. To me balance in the force mans light and dark sides together. The concept of the force being out of balance seems to originate with TPM and the PT doesn’t really give enough for it to feel balanced after ROTJ. At that point all the good and bad of old have been wiped away and there is just Luke. But to really finish off the story as it was expanded in the PT, we really needed to see how it gets balanced and the current story seems to be headed that way. TLJ was filled with it and so was TFA. So even if the title of the episode isn’t Balance of the Force, I expect that to be a one line summary of the story.

I think Lucas confuses himself. I think he had something in mind with the Force back before 1977. But just because he had a father/son relationship, just because he had twins and siblings, and just because he was thinking of something biological behind the force does not mean that the solutions that appear in the films have any relation to his original ideas. They may have been born out of his original ideas, but it is obvious he pulled them out of his ass when he actually needed them. I believe that Vader was going to be someone’s father just from his name (a Germanic version of father), but we have no concrete idea who that was going to be. There are no clues in the drafts of the original screenplay. We have no idea who the other was that Yoda spoke of. And there is no way the idea of a symbiotic micro-organism had entered Lucas’s mind back then. And Lucas saying these things does not make them true. But I think there is a germ of truth in that when he went to write later installments, he was guided by his original thoughts and they led to the final storyline. I have lots of ideas as to what other possibilities might have resulted from the chain of events, but Lucas is remember ‘a father’ as ‘Luke’s father’, ‘the other’ as ‘Leia is Luke’s sister’ and ‘biological tie to the force’ as ‘midi-chlorians’. He had an early idea that he developed and the result really has no relation to the original idea.

In ANH and TESB, Luke had 1 failure using the force - lifting the X-wing. He did all the others the first time we see him try it (though not always on the first attempt, but that is the same with Rey). Luke stood his ground with Vader and several times drove him back. We didn’t really get to see the finish of Rey and Kylo’s first first fight because the breaking up of the planet separates them. The second time, they don’t actually fight, except while trying to grab the lightsaber, which breaks in two. So Rey hasn’t exactly had a string of unqualified successes. If you really watch both films, you can see her many failures. But if you are concentrating on her force use in saying she never failed, then you have to look at Luke and how he rarely ever failed either. At the end of TESB, Luke quickly goes from the horror of the revelation that Vader is his father to acceptance and then he gets a new hand and is smiling with Leia, who seems more upset than he is. At the end of TLJ, Rey, who was briefly elated by the success she and Chewy had in the air over Crait, is feeling dejected and wondering what the next step is. Luke is already executing a plan to rescue Han, but Rey has no plan. So yes, please delineate how Rey just has it so easy. I don’t see it that way and I fail to see how you can if you take into account all that we see on screen.

Shopping Maul said:
Look, the whole Force thing is as elastic as anyone wants it to be. I just think the reason so many fans are up in arms about Rey’s instant and consequence-free power levels is that the previous films greatly imply a deep and difficult learning curve with regards to the Force. Also, the OT has the Force (and Jedi) as something forgotten and elusive and even snickered at. If Force-powers really did pop up everywhere like the ST implies, surely someone like Vader wouldn’t have wielded the terrifying influence he did in TESB. Wouldn’t there be a reasonable number of Imperial officers who just happened to be pretty good at levitation or Force-choking (perhaps they saw Vader do it and learned it instantly like Rey did) that could defy Lord Vader’s many homicidal tantrums? No, Vader was the last personification of a forgotten art. It’s not like Admiral Ozzel could turn to his fellow officers and say “look, don’t worry about Vader. My kid Force-choked his teacher the other day. Anyone can do this s##t”.

Making the Force - which is/was the spiritual backbone of the series - something easily dealt with and more or less unlimited diminishes it and, by extension, Luke Skywalker’s journey.

Except that in ANH and TESB, we don’t see Luke having any real difficulty learning the force. No more than Rey does in TFA. Luke easily lifts his saber (without any lessons) and only has issues when he perceives the X-wing as too big to lift (and he did move it, just didn’t finish lifting it out). Rey does not just pick things up. She doesn’t show any force skills until Kylo tries to pull the location of BB-8 from her. Assuming that her ability with the force was there all along and just under used as with Luke and Anakin, she would be able to sense what he was doing and then she turned it back on him (not very successful at first). Then she used the mind trick on a stormtrooper and had to struggle to do it right. Not once did Rey just suddenly start doing something without Kylo teaching it to her, and rarely perfect the first time. In their lightsaber duel we see her using her extant fighting skills (as seen in the beginning of the film) and the Kylo says he can teach her that she needs to use the force. Well, thanks to him she had kind of figured that out and puts the pieces together and ends up whipping his injured ass. In TLJ when they both fight the room full of Praetorian guards, Kylo is pitted against more of them than she is. They both come out in the end, but Kylo had the tougher job. So no where does Rey just pull a force power out of her ass as Luke did in the Wampa cave and she does have a learning curve that pretty much matches Lukes the few times we see him learn something new.

So this idea that Luke had this huge learning curve to be able to actually do anything is a joke. It misrepresents the OT horribly. What is true is that Luke had doubts to overcome about just have far the force could take him (lifting an X-wing). And nowhere in the OT is it stated that the force is unique to a select few. The force is in everybody, but it only manifests itself strong enough for a few to become a Jedi. But those few can come from anywhere. The OT never gives us the lineage of any of the three people strong with the force (excluding Luke). In the PT it is implied that the Jedi find those who are strong with the force, train them, and as part of the code, they are celibate. So there is no lineage for them to continue. It is implied that Padme’s pregnancy is as bad or worse than their marriage in terms of violating the code. And when you think about what was revealed logically, the Jedi are weakening the light side by forbidding the strongest in the force from reproducing. They are so scared of the temptation of the dark side that they have walled themselves off and after a thousand generations, they are fooled and beaten by a Sith lord. Their ability to use the force had weakened. The PT is full of things the Jedi did wrong and in TLJ we have that put into words by a bitter Luke. Part of what Yoda admonished him would be to pass on what he learned of how the Jedi failed. Not to let the Jedi die, but for the new order to fix the flaws of the old.

I think that it is pretty clear that the endgame of IX is going to be the reestablishing of balance. How they do that is a mystery at the moment. But the ideas go back to ANH and Abrams and Johnson have been true to the original in every way I can see. This idea that Luke had such problems and had a steep learning curve just isn’t true to the OT. One thing I have found is that Lucas did not just use Samurai cinema as an inspiration, but actual samurai lore as inspiration. From that we can see that a young hotshot can rise up and defeat supposed great masters, but even that young hotshot will face increasing challenges and must always strive to improve. So learning to be a samurai is a never ending lesson meaning that becoming a Jedi is similarly a never ending lesson. So to get to where Yoda was literally takes a lifetime, but a young person can learn what they need to start that journey in a short time. But they need to continually seek to improve. So the long training Lucas always has talked about is true for all and never ends, but does not preclude those who start out high in skills.

Taking the fighting skills to another area, we are introduced to Rey as a fighter. She is already very far ahead of Luke in that area. As a skilled fighter, she would have already learned Ben’s first lesson - to let go your conscious self and act on instinct. That can be learned from a lot of physical activities. And when you really look at the stories of Luke, Anakin, and Rey; Rey is taking the same journey and has the same level of success as Luke. But instead of freeing the galaxy from the tyranny of Palpatine and the Sith, she is up against Kylo and the task of balancing the force. She isn’t fast tracked any more than Luke was. Both are on the Hero’s journey. I think the biggest problems OT fans are having is coming to terms with Luke, Han, and Leia being the Ben and Yoda side of this trilogy. This is the Rey, Finn, Poe trilogy like the PT was the Anakin, Padme, Obi-wan trilogy.

DominicCobb said:

OutboundFlight said:

DominicCobb said:

OutboundFlight said:

DominicCobb said:

OutboundFlight said:

In the Sequels, however, we are told the force likes to balance itself out. So to balance Snoke and Kylo we have Rey. But Rey wasn’t a Jedi before. The force just randomly called to her?

This sets up an interesting message: don’t work hard. Just hope you will be lucky and suddenly become the one gifted person in the galaxy. All because someone else worked really hard on the other side and we need balance.

That’s a very strange interpretation of those films. Do you remember how TLJ ended?

All the ending shows is one boy suddenly getting force powers. We have little context how he got these powers, so while I suppose its possible he has been spending his life training to be able to use the force, it’s more likely he just randomly got powers with ease. The death of Luke called upon the broom boy (the only one we see) to take his place in the light side.

You can look at it that way, but that’s not what the film is saying though.

Interesting POV. Where exactly does the film say otherwise?

The film is saying that Luke’s actions are inspiring the whole galaxy to follow his example. The kid on Canto Bight is just a random kid, just like Rey. It’s saying anyone can use the force, whether they’re poor and oppressed or their parents were nothing or whatever. For them, their force powers are because of their own belief in themselves and their ability to be part of something greater than their circumstance would typically allow for.

Anything else about Luke dying and the force choosing someone like you said is just fan theory.

I think the point is that a powerful force user can arise from anywhere.

And there is some misconception about the Force as it is presented in the previous two trilogies. We never are shown that it is hard to learn force powers. Someone must teach. What is hard is avoiding the temptation of the dark side. What requires years of training is the perfection of the skills and learning the fine control. Luke learned to deflect blaster bolts during one short lesson on the Falcon. He figured out how to pick up his light saber with no additional training. He doubted he could lift his X-wing and Yoda showed him that it could be done (by then he had been levitating many things). The only thing we see Rey do in TFA is pick up on all the skills that Kylo Ren demonstrates or tries to use on her. This idea that she didn’t have to work for these things and Luke did is bogus. And in all three trilogies our force powerful hero can fly and fix anything, even if they have never touched one before. Anakin flies the Naboo starfighter, Luke the X-wing, Rey the Falcon (and only Rey had issues and nearly crashes). Of the three, Rey is the only one skilled in combat before we meet them. She is never shown mastering anything any faster than Luke did.

The original Falcon design is so much better than the Eagle.

Lovely!

DrDre said:

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

yotsuya said:

DominicCobb said:

Shopping Maul said:

I love what you’re saying Rogue (not that I necessarily grasp all of it of course, but I like the vibe of it!) but I would add that attaining the ‘effortlessness’ implied in the Taoist way would (ironically) require effort. Think of it in terms of being a musician. It would take hours of blisters and finger-cramps and listening and learning for a guitarist to be in that zone. No-one’s going to pick up a guitar and nail it first time just because they had their baser thoughts in check. That’s the beautiful thing about the Karate Kid - he had to wash cars and stand like an Ostrich and go through all kinds of stuff to get to that place. Kershner famously said he wanted “something powerful going on in Luke’s soul” and within the (arguably) limited framework of a SW film he achieved that. The SE feels more like bullet points - ‘we need lightsaber fights, we need a Dark Lord, we need a cantina’ etc etc. Any depth to Rey’s experience seems (to me) to being created by the fans themselves rather than by anything JJ and/or Rian are doing.

Well, to use your Karate Kid example I think the idea in the ST is that Rey has essentially spent her whole life waxing cars (whereas Luke is mostly just any old kid, wasting time with his friends between chores at home).

I believe I have said much the same thing before.

As have I. We’re arguing in circles. The way the force works in the films is not narrowly defined so the interpretation that the ST takes is not a canon-betraying one, regardless of whatever Lucas may or may not have said outside of the movies (I was reading the Rinzler ESB book and at one point he suggested stating outright that Luke is a level 2 and he needs training to face the Emperor who’s a level 9 or something - that’s dumb as fuck and should be ignored as it’s not in the movie). The new films should be able to forge their own path.

Whether you like it or not is a different matter. But the approach is justified.

I disagree. I think Lucas’ words are clearly reflected in the six films he created both in the way he displayed the process of becoming a Jedi, and in the way things are shown to spin out of control once you stray from that path. So, in my view the ST is inconsistent, and offers only a flimsy explanation as to why that is.

Going back to the PT, the force is out of balance. The Jedi are diminished. Palpatine has started his plan. Anakin comes into the picture. Because they refuse to properly train him and because Palpatine becomes his non-Jedi mentor, Anakin’s fate is sealed. Yoda saw his future as clouded where Qui-gon was certain. Politics and tradition stopped them from training him properly. But I fear that the properly he needed did not exist due to how traditional the Jedi had become and how scared of the dark side they were. They weren’t seeking balance, only the light. So Palpatine spends years whispering in Anakin’s ear and when the time comes, Anakin follows Palpatine, not the Jedi. In the process, we get the twins - Luke and Leia. Luke grows up with his step-Uncle and Aunt and spends more time playing than working. Things catch up, he meets Obi-wan, Han, Leia, eventually Yoda. And again Luke is too old (older than Anakin), but Yoda breaks with tradition out of necessity and trains him. Luke goes on to face Vader twice and is not turned and passes the test. In the process he is the catalyst to get Anakin to turn back and destroy Palpatine at last. So the path of the PT was already broken by the path the OT took in the training of Luke vs. Anakin. Yoda broke with tradition, didn’t have much time, imparted the most important lessons, and it worked.

Coming back to Rey, if the old ways are broken (which is what I glean from the PT and OT), then it is time to find a new way. Luke uses that in how he teaches lessons to Rey (I think he was trying to discourage her but at the same time give her the tools to cope).

So I don’t see things spinning out of control if you stray off the path. I see that the old Jedi path was the issue (how many PT Jedi turned to the dark side?) and straying from the path and re-finding the pat they are supposed to be on is where this trilogy is headed.

Then why call Rey a Jedi, if Jedi-hood is the issue? TLJ works very hard to backtrack on any new direction it hinted at in its final act. This line of thought also ignores the fact that the Jedi guarded the peace for over a 1,000 generations. That’s just too good of a track record to ignore, or to state that their way is flawed. The PT era Jedi may have strayed too far from the right path, but that’s not what TLJ is saying through the words of cynical Luke, who then later reverses his position by saying he will not be the last Jedi.

I have seen you quite often focus on what Luke said when first meet him. The real message in TLJ is what Yoda says to Luke that leads Luke to project himself to Crait. But Luke is correct, the PT Jedi had it wrong. If the sacred texts are from the start of that 1000 generations, they they may have wisdom that cynical Luke missed that Rey can use (plus I am quite certain Luke will be finishing his training of Rey in IX). The goal from TPM seems to be a story of bringing balance to the force. The PT Jedi practice a flawed version of what the original Jedi practiced so the goal is to go back to the original - before the Sith - and restore the natural order to the Force.

You really need to ignore characters like cynical Luke and Kylo Ren when trying to pin a message on TLJ. Those characters are in dark places are do not reveal the message the move gets across which is that in the darkest hour you can find hope. At least Yoda finally knocked some sense into Luke… again.

This idea of balance has eaten up a lot of time in Clone Wars and Rebels. Since Filoni was working closely with Lucas, I believe what we have been seeing represent development to the ST and a final balance to the force… back to where it all started.

So Rey is who she needs to be, has had plenty of setbacks and definitely not an easy time, regardless of how quick she has picked up the force skills, so she is not a Mary Sue. She is the main character of the ST. She drew a lightsaber from a box after helping Finn and BB-8 and her life has changed.

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:

yotsuya said:

DominicCobb said:

Shopping Maul said:

I love what you’re saying Rogue (not that I necessarily grasp all of it of course, but I like the vibe of it!) but I would add that attaining the ‘effortlessness’ implied in the Taoist way would (ironically) require effort. Think of it in terms of being a musician. It would take hours of blisters and finger-cramps and listening and learning for a guitarist to be in that zone. No-one’s going to pick up a guitar and nail it first time just because they had their baser thoughts in check. That’s the beautiful thing about the Karate Kid - he had to wash cars and stand like an Ostrich and go through all kinds of stuff to get to that place. Kershner famously said he wanted “something powerful going on in Luke’s soul” and within the (arguably) limited framework of a SW film he achieved that. The SE feels more like bullet points - ‘we need lightsaber fights, we need a Dark Lord, we need a cantina’ etc etc. Any depth to Rey’s experience seems (to me) to being created by the fans themselves rather than by anything JJ and/or Rian are doing.

Well, to use your Karate Kid example I think the idea in the ST is that Rey has essentially spent her whole life waxing cars (whereas Luke is mostly just any old kid, wasting time with his friends between chores at home).

I believe I have said much the same thing before.

As have I. We’re arguing in circles. The way the force works in the films is not narrowly defined so the interpretation that the ST takes is not a canon-betraying one, regardless of whatever Lucas may or may not have said outside of the movies (I was reading the Rinzler ESB book and at one point he suggested stating outright that Luke is a level 2 and he needs training to face the Emperor who’s a level 9 or something - that’s dumb as fuck and should be ignored as it’s not in the movie). The new films should be able to forge their own path.

Whether you like it or not is a different matter. But the approach is justified.

I disagree. I think Lucas’ words are clearly reflected in the six films he created both in the way he displayed the process of becoming a Jedi, and in the way things are shown to spin out of control once you stray from that path. So, in my view the ST is inconsistent, and offers only a flimsy explanation as to why that is.

Going back to the PT, the force is out of balance. The Jedi are diminished. Palpatine has started his plan. Anakin comes into the picture. Because they refuse to properly train him and because Palpatine becomes his non-Jedi mentor, Anakin’s fate is sealed. Yoda saw his future as clouded where Qui-gon was certain. Politics and tradition stopped them from training him properly. But I fear that the properly he needed did not exist due to how traditional the Jedi had become and how scared of the dark side they were. They weren’t seeking balance, only the light. So Palpatine spends years whispering in Anakin’s ear and when the time comes, Anakin follows Palpatine, not the Jedi. In the process, we get the twins - Luke and Leia. Luke grows up with his step-Uncle and Aunt and spends more time playing than working. Things catch up, he meets Obi-wan, Han, Leia, eventually Yoda. And again Luke is too old (older than Anakin), but Yoda breaks with tradition out of necessity and trains him. Luke goes on to face Vader twice and is not turned and passes the test. In the process he is the catalyst to get Anakin to turn back and destroy Palpatine at last. So the path of the PT was already broken by the path the OT took in the training of Luke vs. Anakin. Yoda broke with tradition, didn’t have much time, imparted the most important lessons, and it worked.

Coming back to Rey, if the old ways are broken (which is what I glean from the PT and OT), then it is time to find a new way. Luke uses that in how he teaches lessons to Rey (I think he was trying to discourage her but at the same time give her the tools to cope).

So I don’t see things spinning out of control if you stray off the path. I see that the old Jedi path was the issue (how many PT Jedi turned to the dark side?) and straying from the path and re-finding the pat they are supposed to be on is where this trilogy is headed.

DrDre said:

yotsuya said:

DrDre said:

Why you are insisting that learning the force must be difficult is beyond me. That isn’t what we see with Luke. Why should we with Rey? For both characters, there are plenty of obstacles and successes and focusing on Luke’s obstacles while focusing on Rey’s successes is most definitely apples and oranges. Compare their successes (their goals and what they actually achieve) and their failures and both follow the same pattern - some wins, some losses, but generally more wins.

Because Lucas has made this very clear in his statements about how the Force works, which I’m not going to repeat. You have to study, to master it. It’s as simple as that. The entire premise of TESB is, that the Force doesn’t come easy for Luke, and he fails on numerous occasions, and where he succeeds, he rarely succeeds on a first try. Luke leaves Yoda with the clear message, that while he knows the Force, he cannot control it, and facing Vader in this condition is a danger to him physically, and spiritually. He subsequently gets his *** handed to him in his confrontation with Vader, and he ends up hanging on for his life battered hoping that his friends will save him. You don’t have to look hard to see, that Rey’s character gets a very different treatment in the ST. The OT and PT make it very clear, that learning the Force, and becoming a Jedi is very difficult, and just using it half cocked has terrible consequences.

I don’t think it is that different compared to the Force. Luke has always dreamed of the future. His mind was never on where he was or what he was doing. In Rey we have the opposite. Her mind was nearly always on where she was and what she was doing. She had to in order to survive. Everything about the two characters is opposite in terms of training for the Force. Rey has very much had the Miagi type training in life that prepared her to be a Jedi. She has the focus. She also heard the stories so when she sees Kylo do these things, she believes and knows they can be done. So Rey has none of Luke’s doubt - the thing that made him learning the force more difficult. Yet even so, he had no problem learning to deflect a blaster bolt (a full Jedi learns how to aim that as we saw in the PT), he is able to aim the proton torpedoes to destroy the Death Star. Out of desperation he picks up his lightsaber the first time he tries (it takes him a moment to focus and get it right). His training with Yoda was good enough that he can hold his own against Vader. Nothing about how he learned his force skills is hard except his belief and focus. What we do see is that practice, control, and great skill in using these powers takes practice. But learning them and using them comes easy.

What RogueLeader was talking about with being ‘in the zone’ takes years of practice, but once you learn how to do that with one thing you can apply it to something else. We do that with typing, driving, and a lot of things that we just don’t think about. It is learning to apply that to something new that is challenging and difficult. Lucas is right that becoming a Jedi takes a long time, but he has never said the skills needed are hard to learn. We see Rey pick them up from Kylo and then she seeks out Luke to help her channel these new powers. When that fails, she takes the books, hoping they have the answer. She knows she is not ready and needs training. We see her seek that out. The force awakened in her and she wants help understanding what happened and learning how to use it. There is a lot to being a Jedi besides just lifting rocks.

There’s a lot more to becoming a Jedi, and her development doesn’t reflect that either. Remember Obi-Wan’s line:

“This is a dangerous time for you, when you will be tempted by the Dark Side of the Force.”

This was after Luke recieved training. The entire saga up till the ST revolved around the idea of temptation, and control. Here again it comes easy for Rey, who is never tempted. So, as I stated, she gets her powers for free instantly without the temptation, that every Jedi had to face before her.

What is it that lead one to fall to the dark side? It is anger, selfishness, hatred. Rey has not been tempted by those yet. She has control and discipline. We see her old life is nothing but discipline. Watto gave Anakin pretty free rein. Luke was always goofing off and dreaming. If the goal of this trilogy is the restoration of the natural order to the force, then the story needs someone who is harder to tempt and who comes to the table with the skills needed to be a Jedi. If balance means accepting the light and dark side of the force, then we need someone not biased by the old Jedi ways. Someone who can bring the force into balance. How we are going to see that done in IX eludes me, but the hints have been laid out for the arc to this trilogy. The saga will take an imbalanced force, make it worse, then heal it back to the natural state. We are near that healing so Rey can’t be some of the things you think she needs to be if we are to get to that point. I see Rey being closer to some of the characters from thousands of years ago than to any in the PT or OT. It is time to start things over again and reset and Rey needs to be the vehicle to do that.

This image is key.

It seems to show a Jedi that is master of both the light and the dark. Rey is being set up to be just that. Where Kylo fits in I don’t know.

One aspect of this ST that I think fits very well is that anyone can use the force. That is to say, few have the ability, but those few can come from anywhere. This returns us to the world we entered in TPM. The Jedi travel around the galaxy, keeping peace and justice and finding new talent. They take that talent to the Jedi Temple for training where, if the young person succeeds, they become basically a monk. The eschew attachment. The Jedi we met in the PT are really kind of twisted. The order is ancient and it seems that rather than deal with the dangers of the Dark Side, they just avoid anything that can lead to that danger. Sex leads to love which leads to jealousy etc. So these great and powerful Jedi have no line. No offspring. The potential dies. As we saw in the OT. The force can run strong in a family. But when there is no family there can be no line. This is where the ST gets the idea that anyone can use the force because this was the setup in TPM.

I see the PT Jedi as flawed (and Lucas seems to have as well with several references in the PT to issues and the total failure of the Jedi to detect Palatine or see that they were pushing Anakin down the dark path). The PT Jedi need to not return. The message of balance in the ST is important. The only hints at what the Jedi should look like lie in the old EU (the only place we see a different type of Jedi in the New Republic era and the Knights of the Old Republic era). Jedi can marry, have children, etc. The relationships are more organic and the Dark Side is less feared (just as dangerous, but with training avoidable). We are treated to a violation of Yoda’s teachings in ROTJ when Luke faces Vader. Vader makes Luke angry. Does it lead him to the Dark Side? Almost, but not quite. Luke rejects the dark side.

Rey comes from nobody just as all the PT Jedi did. There were no great lines of Jedi because the Jedi didn’t have children to make lines. The PT Jedi were all one off. So this idea that anyone can be a Jedi comes from Lucas. That is the setup for the Old Republic. This idea that Rey must belong to a family is in direct contradiction to the world as Lucas created it.