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There's every chance Yoda or Ben told Luke, much like how Ben told Luke to go to Degobah

And yes several thousand years of history spread over countless worlds; yes you can very easily lose a few planets in that. Especially if the world is otherwise non-productive and not really of interest outside of a secretive order who don't advertise the world and, its likely, weren't even making much use of it for a long time. An historical relic of little importance to those outside the Jedi Order.

Consider that the world we live on today has lost whole cities to myth and legend with only a handful of references surviving.

Have we lost the birth cities of any world religions? Worship of the Force was the official religion for the Republic, no?

Voss wrote:

 Paradigm wrote:
I don't think Luke left a map on purpose, I think it's more that Han/Leia figured out he was seeking out the temple on Ach-To and so went to find a map to where that was (ie. from old data R2 pulled on the Death Star and from ancient maps that would have featured the Temple. That could be what the map Lor San Tekka gave to Poe was, data recorded before The Empire started wiping information on the Jedi.

Nope. In TFA it was specifically a map that Luke left. It even had a path tracing his route to the planet.

Are you sure? I just had a quick scan through the TFA script and couldn't find anything to suggest Luke left it behind on purpose. It's referred to as "the map to Skywalker" but I think that could be taken as synonymous with "a map to Ach-To, where we all assume Skywalker is." R2 has it as he presumably helped Luke find the place, but Luke was pretty clear that he didn't want to be followed so there wiuld be no point to him purposefully leaving a map behind. The route was more likely just the optimal hyperspace lanes to reach the planet, rather than a Luke Was 'Ere trail.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Have we lost the birth cities of any world religions? Worship of the Force was the official religion for the Republic, no?

It's never really clear how other people, outside of Jedi, regard the Force. They have "may the Force be with you" but they don't really have any focus of worship or doctrine of service or holidays or such. It's sort of just "there" like gravity.

Jedi would be closer to the worshippers of the Force itself and that's a very very niche group (on a galactic scale). So not only would lay people have no knowledge of the birthplace specifically; but chances are they just aren't interested. As for Jedi its been thousands upon thousands of years so ample time for the original birthplace to simply be forgotten. A fact that was in history books, then steadily in the older and older ones no one read; then eventually forgotten. The name might survive but the where might be lost. And then, as said, the order was slaughtered and its archived destroyed. So all knowledge of the planets coordinates could easily be lost.

Also with the Republic being as vast as it is chances are data and information get lost a LOT even without having two massive wars. In fact even with machines there's probably whole hosts of archivers whose job it is to research information that gets lost in the sea of archives.

It's kind of funny how uninterested the Galaxy is with a religious order whose members can physically demonstrate the reality of their 'deity'. And that's not even getting into their undeniable claim of an afterlife (which the prequels wisely? retconned into a special new secret technique).

And the vastness of the republic indicates to me that there should be many more backups and libraries, universities and deep storage facilities. If only .001% of the Galaxy cares about the history of the most influential religious order ever, that's still tens or hundreds of billions of people.

Because at that stage they've lost, Yoda decides to go somewhere the Empire is unlikely to accidentally find him. The odd one is Obi Wan, it doesn't really make sense why he took Luke to Tatooine because surely there'd be a chance Vader would be drawn back there for whatever reason given that's where he grew up, and while it is an out of the way planet it's still a populated one.

Actually it's been stated (whether in the movies or not I can't remember at this point) that Vader absolutely despises Tatooine due to all his issues there. From his slavery as a child, to his mothers death at the hands of the Tuskans, he has no desire to ever go back to that place.

Everything Vader cared about on that planet has either been killed, died, or otherwise is related to his own slavery, which is why Kenobi knows it's a safe place from Vader... Also it's a populated one outside the Empire's reach on an Outer Rim Hutt owned planet, which the Empire doesn't like dealing with unless they have personal business.

Bob - thing is the Jedi don't strike me as an order that rose to its position loudly and with great fanfare. If anything they operate much like Merlin in King Arthur legends - that is the force that sort of acts in the shadows and background for the most part.

Also don't forget most of their order keeps its information within itself. Even if your'e interested in the Jedi you can't know about being a Jedi unless you are a Jedi. Plus by the time of the first Prequel film we learn that Jedi of this age tend to start training people as children. Anakin is considered very old to begin training. So being indoctrinated in the ways of the Jedi began for people when they were very young; so even if they did fail or didn't achieve as high chances are they were retained within the order.

Tattooine was not a part of the Empire? Is that canon?

I guess it's similar to that time when Chicago was not part of the US but rather was ruled by Al Capone.

It's a good thing that Obiwan understood Anakin's psychology so well. No surprises there.

Tatooine was not part of the Republic, but it did have enough Imperial Troops to be likely part of the Empire. However being way out in the fringe chances are that instead of being under full Imperial control the Hutts sort of "ran things" for the Empire. Hence why Jabba can do what he wants with the captives in Return of the Jedi; but also why the Imperial Troops were able to operate easily on the planet during A New Hope - having informants, troops and carrying out inspections (even if they didn't find the droids they were looking for).

 Overread wrote:
Bob - thing is the Jedi don't strike me as an order that rose to its position loudly and with great fanfare. If anything they operate much like Merlin in King Arthur legends - that is the force that sort of acts in the shadows and background for the most part.

Also don't forget most of their order keeps its information within itself. Even if your'e interested in the Jedi you can't know about being a Jedi unless you are a Jedi. Plus by the time of the first Prequel film we learn that Jedi of this age tend to start training people as children. Anakin is considered very old to begin training. So being indoctrinated in the ways of the Jedi began for people when they were very young; so even if they did fail or didn't achieve as high chances are they were retained within the order.

They were at least known to use their powers in public. People knew what the Force was and the basics of what a Jedi was. They seemed like Wuxia heroes, wandering the Galaxy, putting things right with their mysticism and martial arts. But while people may not know the secrets of Wudang mountain, they do know it exists and where it supposedly is.

And for the record, I hate the prequels and everything they establish about the Jedi and the Force. Not that anyone's surprised.

An important point about the reception of this film is that the great majority of people going to see it don't know what "canon" even means, let's alone care about it in relation to SW or any other fandom "franchise".

Consequently, we don't care if Rey is supposed to have/not have Force powers due to being the descendant/not being the descendant of X Force Family (Skywalker.)

We only care that Rey is a fun, believable character on screen, who delivers a great performance with a bunch of good lines and scenes.

Kil conversely Anakins bloodline isn't the only one with force powers. It's not beyond all reason that another bloodline could easily have the same or even superior powers within it since those powers arose as if at random within the bloodline. So Rey could be totally unrelated.

Also whilst she is continuing the Jedi I don't think its ever really been said that her Force powers are unique in strength. I think so far her only unique thing is that she went so quickly and easily to the Dark Side but also walked away from it, apparently, just as quickly - although more with an air of "you don't have what I want" than a "this is evil and wrong"

To me that's her interesting point because it raises the question (along with the burning of the old Jedi texts) that the Jedi Order got something inherently wrong with its concept of balance and how it approached the Force. It might even be that the extremist view and approach of the Jedi created the imbalance in the Force which thus creates Sith. Note how even Luke talks of balance within the Force meaning that Good is victorious whilst the evil Sith are defeated and gone.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Because at that stage they've lost, Yoda decides to go somewhere the Empire is unlikely to accidentally find him. The odd one is Obi Wan, it doesn't really make sense why he took Luke to Tatooine because surely there'd be a chance Vader would be drawn back there for whatever reason given that's where he grew up, and while it is an out of the way planet it's still a populated one.

Actually it's been stated (whether in the movies or not I can't remember at this point) that Vader absolutely despises Tatooine due to all his issues there. From his slavery as a child, to his mothers death at the hands of the Tuskans, he has no desire to ever go back to that place.

Everything Vader cared about on that planet has either been killed, died, or otherwise is related to his own slavery, which is why Kenobi knows it's a safe place from Vader... Also it's a populated one outside the Empire's reach on an Outer Rim Hutt owned planet, which the Empire doesn't like dealing with unless they have personal business.

I have heard that argument and it still sounds a bit silly to me. Just because Vader doesn't want to go back there doesn't mean something won't draw him back there, it's pretty common for people to get dragged back to places they know even if they don't necessarily have a great desire to be there. Maybe the Empire gets a report of something going down in the Tatooine system and hearing the name Vader decides to go deal with it personally which would put Luke at a massive risk. I dunno, surely the safer bet is to go somewhere Vader has never even heard about rather than where he grew up.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
An important point about the reception of this film is that the great majority of people going to see it don't know what "canon" even means, let's alone care about it in relation to SW or any other fandom "franchise".

Consequently, we don't care if Rey is supposed to have/not have Force powers due to being the descendant/not being the descendant of X Force Family (Skywalker.)

We only care that Rey is a fun, believable character on screen, who delivers a great performance with a bunch of good lines and scenes.

I believe AI've seen this summed up elsewhere as "Shut up, nerd, and eat your popcorn." That approach makes for fun, popular movies, but I wonder how it will affect the deep, deep product lines. Aren't the non-casuals the ones who support the side of the industry where the real money is made?

If we're down to Bayformers levels of audience engagement, is that really a good thing?

People don't buy soundtracks for novels based on "who cares if it makes sense in the greater context?" Do they?

 Overread wrote:
Tatooine was not part of the Republic, but it did have enough Imperial Troops to be likely part of the Empire. However being way out in the fringe chances are that instead of being under full Imperial control the Hutts sort of "ran things" for the Empire. Hence why Jabba can do what he wants with the captives in Return of the Jedi; but also why the Imperial Troops were able to operate easily on the planet during A New Hope - having informants, troops and carrying out inspections (even if they didn't find the droids they were looking for).

It's actually not part of the Empire, but they were able to send down troops to find the people they needed. Tatooine is a lawless world owned by Jabba the hutt due to how far it is from the general imperial sphere of influence. But Jabba is smart enough to realize that if the Empire really desired and looked his way they could cause some major problems if they felt he and the lands he owned needed to be dealt with. If Darth Vader the right hand of the Emperor comes down to his personal palace and says "I want this". Jabba is not dumb enough to say no.

The Empire is massive, but it cannot be everywhere in the galaxy as it has other things to deal with in it's own territories, and the Outer Rim tends to be a more lawless, criminally owned aspect of the galaxy since most of them tend to be out of the major trade lanes. Tatooine really doesn't have much of note that the Empire wants as well.

I'm honestly glad TLJ threw out the bloodline stuff. Turning the Force into a hereditary Mistborn aristocracy really sapped it of spiritual mystique.

No more Skywalkers.

 Overread wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Have we lost the birth cities of any world religions? Worship of the Force was the official religion for the Republic, no?

It's never really clear how other people, outside of Jedi, regard the Force. They have "may the Force be with you" but they don't really have any focus of worship or doctrine of service or holidays or such. It's sort of just "there" like gravity.

Honestly, I'd equate it to being like wishing someone "Good Luck" when most people use it.



On another note, Spacedock has provided a bit of insight into Vice-Admiral Holdos behavior:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FivsGuUyEGk

In short, Holdo's behavior towards Poe stems from the fact that almost all of the pilots he led in the suicide attack were from the Ninka's Taskforce. So, Purple's upset that he got a bunch of her people killed. Doesn't really make her decisions any less incompetent, but it does add a bit of depth to her character. Unfortunately, like Snoke, this is something that one line of backstory could really have helped with. Say, "After that stunt you pulled with my fighter wing, you are lucky to have free range of the ship, Captain Dameron". Such phrasing would suggest that they were under her command, while still leaving it vague enough to allow the "Potential Villain" thing that they were going for.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
An important point about the reception of this film is that the great majority of people going to see it don't know what "canon" even means, let's alone care about it in relation to SW or any other fandom "franchise".

Consequently, we don't care if Rey is supposed to have/not have Force powers due to being the descendant/not being the descendant of X Force Family (Skywalker.)

We only care that Rey is a fun, believable character on screen, who delivers a great performance with a bunch of good lines and scenes.

I believe AI've seen this summed up elsewhere as "Shut up, nerd, and eat your popcorn." That approach makes for fun, popular movies, but I wonder how it will affect the deep, deep product lines. Aren't the non-casuals the ones who support the side of the industry where the real money is made?

If we're down to Bayformers levels of audience engagement, is that really a good thing?

People don't buy soundtracks for novels based on "who cares if it makes sense in the greater context?" Do they?

I don't mean to belittle the super fans' interest and importance.

That said, cinema (especially blockbusters) is a mass media industry. If "super fans" constitute 10% of the potential audience, it may not be enough to justify X cinemas screening the film for Y weeks, and so on.

Action figure sales can't make up for that.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
We only care that Rey is a fun, believable character on screen, who delivers a great performance with a bunch of good lines and scenes.

I still feel Rey is one of the weak points of the new movies rather than something good about them. I enjoyed TFA and TLJ, but it was in spite of her rather than anything to do with her.

Rey might be "fun" (she's got my 8 year old female cousin hooked on Star Wars so thats a good thing), but she is hardly believable.

I don't hate her at all, I just wish she was written better. She gained the same level of proficiency with a Lightsabre in the space of one movie that took Luke Skywalker three movies to attain, for instance, and he was trained!. And we're given absolutely Zero explanation as to why.

TLJ could have explained this by making her one of Luke's Jedi youngling students who was hidden away on Jakku and her memories suppressed to protect her after the fall of his New Jedi Temple, like he was hidden away on Tatooine. In which case, she's already been trained at least partially in the use of Light Sabers, which explains why she picks it up again so quickly like riding a bike. This doesn't even require a Special Bloodline parentage, Rey would still be the child of nobody junk scavengers from Jakku, she was simply trained as a Jedi for several years from a young age before being returned and abandoned on Jakku.

Maybe I'm just not remembering it right but it seems Rey and Kylo just haven't had any real character development. Rey just jumped in to a position of power and proficiency with little to no character flaws to humanise her. Kylo has been an evil but conflicted emo kid throughout (at least there's some back story to place him in that state though). Maybe Rey is breaking him down a bit, will have to wait for the next movie.

Any of the character development that's happened in the current trilogy seems to have been ancillary characters. Poe, Finn, even Luke are the ones who have actually been growing and learning.

Rey had plenty of experience with a staff weapon though. We see her carrying her staff even through this latest film (its clearly the shape of a weapon she's most comfortable with). So she already had many of the skills, experience and muscle memory/structure to support close combat fighting. It was a shift from duel to single handed weaponary for her.
So its no surprise that she took to it quicker than Luke who hadn't ever handled anything but a blaster. Though note how he advances to Xwing pilot very fast, using his T16 skills (that we never see on screen but do hear of)

 Overread wrote:
To me that's her interesting point because it raises the question (along with the burning of the old Jedi texts) that the Jedi Order got something inherently wrong with its concept of balance and how it approached the Force. It might even be that the extremist view and approach of the Jedi created the imbalance in the Force which thus creates Sith. Note how even Luke talks of balance within the Force meaning that Good is victorious whilst the evil Sith are defeated and gone.

Knights of the Old Republic is one Star Wars product that takes a shades of grey approach to the force that is really good. There have been fan things that have analysed how bad the Jedi actually are, but KOTOR does present it well.

I'd be fine with the current movies exploring the faults of the Jedi more, but if that's what they're trying to do then so far it's been done quite poorly IMO.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:
Rey had plenty of experience with a staff weapon though. We see her carrying her staff even through this latest film (its clearly the shape of a weapon she's most comfortable with). So she already had many of the skills, experience and muscle memory/structure to support close combat fighting. It was a shift from duel to single handed weaponary for her.
So its no surprise that she took to it quicker than Luke who hadn't ever handled anything but a blaster. Though note how he advances to Xwing pilot very fast, using his T16 skills (that we never see on screen but do hear of)

It's not just the fighting though, she just has had really very little character development; either on the ability side nor the emotional side.

You might be able to explain a couple of things she's good at naturally but at some point she ceases to be an interesting character (at least to me) because she lacks character development and depth.

I too prefer the more nuanced take on the Force of KOTOR than the black & white take of most of the Star Wars films.

I had hoped this was the path Disney was going down with the sequel trilogy (Luke's line "Its time for the Jedi to end") but nope, it appears that they're just rehashing the same old Star Wars stories we already got in the other trilogies.

 Overread wrote:
Characters don't just develop like levels in a computer game. People are fragile and can be broken as much as they can be built up. Han and Luke both suffered when Kylo turned to the dark. That fragile moment broke them all. Don't forget it wasn't just Kylo running away; he slaughtered the other (or at least multiple other as its hinted that he took several students with him) students. He did what Vader did, he became Vader. Even if for only a moment,.

Consider how crushing that is to have fought a huge war against a huge empire and a monster like Darth Vader only for your son/student to become that monster almost reborn.

It crushed Luke very fast, esp because he also fell to the Dark Side for that short moment and caused the fall of Kylo. Han it st rikes me took longer, but went into brooding and I guess one day just didn't fly back from whereever he went too.

To my mind those characters all developed along a very realistic and human pathway. Sure its not the classic "hero" pathway because that wasn't the story being told. Heck a huge part of Lukes attempted message is that he isn't a hero, he is just a man, he isn't some amazing hero from a story who can sweep in and save everyone

Exactly (in response to your underlined point). People never stop changing, and 35 years can change someone quite a bit. Genre fans can tend to want the next chapter in the story to be exactly the same but bigger and better, and for heroes to never fail, but that's a path that leads only to the most juvenile narratives.

And yet I contend that Luke hasn't completely changed. Luke is a dreamer and idealist, and in my life experience I've found that it's those people who are most likely to be hurt and become cynical when they fail or the world fails to become what they feel it should be. So we get that wonderful (IMO) scene with Yoda, who chastises 'young Skywalker' for still looking too much to the horizon. It's the more grounded Yoda who not only reminds Luke of the value of failure, but also shows him (and us) that their *living faith* doesn't reside in books and magic trees and temples and lightsaber fighting styles. Remember that Yoda was almost exactly in Luke's situation, and he never lost faith in Luke and Leia unlike how Luke refuses to put his faith in Rey. And we have Luke at the end, still having been chewed up and spit out by the universe, yet with faith restored as he gazes at the suns as he did as a young dreamer.

As I said, some may disagree with the execution, but I think there's some really good, mature stuff to chew on in this movie.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Maybe I'm just not remembering it right but it seems Rey and Kylo just haven't had any real character development. Rey just jumped in to a position of power and proficiency with little to no character flaws to humanise her. Kylo has been an evil but conflicted emo kid throughout (at least there's some back story to place him in that state though). Maybe Rey is breaking him down a bit, will have to wait for the next movie.

Any of the character development that's happened in the current trilogy seems to have been ancillary characters. Poe, Finn, even Luke are the ones who have actually been growing and learning.

I was talking about this with a friend. This will undoubtedly ruffle some feathers, but in some ways I think Kylo/Ben is probably a better villain than Darth Vader by the end of TLJ. He has agency that Vader never really had as Palpatine's lackey. He does what Vader "should have"(?) done and seized power from the cackling old fart. He's surpassed Vader in that respect and it's demonstrated symbolically by him getting rid of that ridiculous helmet.

I also think that Rey is a much stronger and more confident individual by the end of TLJ than she was during TFA. Just during the film she goes from someone 'looking for someone to show her place' to someone saying feth it, I'm going to make my own place.

And I don't sweat the lack of training thing. Forget about the prequel trilogy ("bury it?"). The OT showed us that those strong in the Force can deflect laser bolts, guide one's actions (*cough* lightsaber *cough*), levitate objects, and communicate at distance with little to no training. I figure it's like someone who's a truly gifted natural athlete...if you've ever been around those people, it's amazing how well they can perform even in sports they've never played before. The boy with the broom underlined that point.

EDIT: Stepping away from the analysis of the movie...was the kyber crystal in Luke's saber cut in half? If so, we're almost certainly getting saberstaff Rey in the next movie, don't you think?

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Because at that stage they've lost, Yoda decides to go somewhere the Empire is unlikely to accidentally find him. The odd one is Obi Wan, it doesn't really make sense why he took Luke to Tatooine because surely there'd be a chance Vader would be drawn back there for whatever reason given that's where he grew up, and while it is an out of the way planet it's still a populated one.

Actually it's been stated (whether in the movies or not I can't remember at this point) that Vader absolutely despises Tatooine due to all his issues there. From his slavery as a child, to his mothers death at the hands of the Tuskans, he has no desire to ever go back to that place.

Everything Vader cared about on that planet has either been killed, died, or otherwise is related to his own slavery, which is why Kenobi knows it's a safe place from Vader... Also it's a populated one outside the Empire's reach on an Outer Rim Hutt owned planet, which the Empire doesn't like dealing with unless they have personal business.

I have heard that argument and it still sounds a bit silly to me. Just because Vader doesn't want to go back there doesn't mean something won't draw him back there, it's pretty common for people to get dragged back to places they know even if they don't necessarily have a great desire to be there. Maybe the Empire gets a report of something going down in the Tatooine system and hearing the name Vader decides to go deal with it personally which would put Luke at a massive risk. I dunno, surely the safer bet is to go somewhere Vader has never even heard about rather than where he grew up.

I just read the comic (Vader #6) where he goes back to Tatooine after Luke destroys the first Death Star. Vader had commissioned Boba Fett to track down the person who made the shot and Fett tracks Luke there. Vader follows the trail later and makes the comment that it was smart of Obi Wan to hide Luke on the one planet he didn't want to return to.

Lots of "Snoke isn't really dead" theories flying around the net. Anyone here think this may have legs?

 Breotan wrote:
Lots of "Snoke isn't really dead" theories flying around the net. Anyone here think this may have legs?

More than he does.

 Breotan wrote:
Lots of "Snoke isn't really dead" theories flying around the net. Anyone here think this may have legs?

It's like the Indoctrination Theory in Mass Effect: it's evidence that your storytelling is so terrible that there are people who think "the guy we saw sliced in half before his ship was smashed to pieces is actually alive" is less awful than "the powerful psychic who was listening to Kylo's thoughts right then got caught by surprise and died like a chump."

 Breotan wrote:
Lots of "Snoke isn't really dead" theories flying around the net. Anyone here think this may have legs?

Not really. I mean, sure, Abrams and company is going to have to pick up the pieces and come up with something from scratch for Episode 9 beyond 'Supreme Evil Leader and the (not)Empire vs. the scrappy band of Rebels, yet again. Again.'
I mean, barring a complete retcon in the opening crawl, Episode 9 will pick up exactly where this one (and 4 and 5) did: powerful Empire chasing a small band of rebels, except they have to actually get on with it and fit in a narratively satisfying conclusion for the whole trilogy, not just a failed escape attempt. TLJ really feels like it just covers the escape attempt from Hoth, but instead of escaping, they crash back on Hoth to do it over again.

But I'd hope they'd be informed enough not to pull what the Clone Wars cartoon did, and NOT pick up a variation of the 'bisected villain secretly survives on an unrelated garbage planet with robot spider legs' crap.