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 Manchu wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Yoda's always enjoyed winding Luke up, right from the beginning when he pretended he wasn't Yoda.

Nope. He wasn't "winding up" Luke initially. He was forming an impression of Luke. Luke doesn't come off well and is shocked when he finds out that Yoda is a Jedi master. Yoda does not go back to acting like a dumbass until TLJ.

Something he could have done in many other ways, but decided to do so by having some fun with him. Yoda has always had a mischievous streak.

I think TLJ's Yoda needed more seagulls.

 Easy E wrote:
I think TLJ's Yoda needed more seagulls.

Stop it now!

-

To his credit, Han basically offers to be Rey's mentor and she turns him down. Although maybe she would have taken him up on it, if Kylo Ren hadn't murdered him. Maybe he would have joined the Resistance and repaired his relationship with Leia. It made sense, however, that he would try to help his son Ben and that, because he is severely effed up, Ben would kill him.

All of that is fine. I would have liked to know why Ben/Kylo was so fethed up but that could be explained in TLJ - sort of like how ESB explains the relationship between Luke and Vader, TLJ needed to explain the relationship between Luke and Kylo Ren. But it only kinda did that. Which is not TFA's fault.

Voss wrote:
None of that is 'clear.' The term Resistance implies that they aren't operating with the financing or blessing of the Republic, there is nothing to establish why the Republic wouldn't be in open warfare against a hostile force dedicated to its destruction (it isn't like there are other galactic nation-states to disapprove), and so on and so on. The First Order is well known by everyone presented in the film, and given their only goal (destroy the Republic), there is no reason not to fight them openly.

The Republic is not a single, unified government. It is collection of independent planet states that passed some but not that many powers to the overarching collective government. If it helps think of the Republic as the UN, and each planet as the countries ceding some but not much autonomy.

And then remember that the Old Republic fell when in resisting a seperatist movement, they built a new army that was then turned against the Republic itself.

If anyone is still struggling to figure out why the Republic would then allow the First Order to secede and then fail to build up a standing army to defend against the First Order, I really don't know what to say.

 sebster wrote:

Voss wrote:
None of that is 'clear.' The term Resistance implies that they aren't operating with the financing or blessing of the Republic, there is nothing to establish why the Republic wouldn't be in open warfare against a hostile force dedicated to its destruction (it isn't like there are other galactic nation-states to disapprove), and so on and so on. The First Order is well known by everyone presented in the film, and given their only goal (destroy the Republic), there is no reason not to fight them openly.

The Republic is not a single, unified government. It is collection of independent planet states that passed some but not that many powers to the overarching collective government. If it helps think of the Republic as the UN, and each planet as the countries ceding some but not much autonomy.

Where is this info from?

 Xenomancers wrote:
For starters they could have said that the republic funds the resistance. Seems to me they are pretty poorly funded if the entire resistance fits on 3 ships and can't even do combat with a small division of FO ships.

But the Republic doesn't fund the Resistance. The Resistance was demilitarised, due to what happened last time the Republic raised an army of its own. The Resistance are funded by private interests who disagree with the de-militarisation. That's why the war played out as decisively as it did - it was an army funded by donations, against the might of a military industrial fascist state.

I agree that this should have been explained in some form in the films, even with just a throw away line like Leia saying 'until the Senate realises the threat of the First Order we're all that stands in their way'.


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 Pendix wrote:

 sebster wrote:
FWIW I think the error here could have been resolved with the starkiller attack in TFA - it shouldn't have hit some generic planets, it should have wiped the Republic fleet in dock. That would explain why the attack on the star killer base was done by a handful of fighters, and explain why the Republic was quickly overrun.

Just a little point here (possibly several pages late too), but I thought that TFA was pretty obvious that that is exactly what happened. Hux's speech calls out the fleet as a target, (as well as the Senate) and then during the (admittedly quite weird) Starkiller shooting sequence they show some (admittedly not too many) capital ships being caught up in the explosion.

At least if I remember correctly.

Cool. I looked up the speech. It does mention destroying the fleet. I didn't see the video to know if it shows capital ships getting blown up, but I'll take your word for it. So I'll reduce my complaint by half. Only half because this should have been made way clearer, and it should have been the point of the attack, not blowing up lots of nameless planets so it felt like a Death Star re-tread, but bigger.


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 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Yeah, the Republic war fleet is destroyed at its dock when Starkiller Base fired. That's explicitly stated, and isn't where my problem lies.

It isn't explicit. Hux says this new weapon will destroy their precious fleet. But its in the middle of Hux saying the attack will also destroy the Republic, the Resistance and a bunch of other stuff. It's clearly a list of aspirational goals, not a statement of what the weapon is doing right now. However, we can take the fleet bit as a description of what is happening now, just because the attack does show the destruction of some capital ships... but mostly because it helps explain why the Republic is neutered from then on.

My problem lies with the idea that because its major fleet got destroyed, the Republic just rolls over and dies in a few hours.

Surely they had a fleet at Coruscant, even if it's not the capitol, just because it's a major trade hub and dockyard? Presumably Corellia is guarded by some kind of warships, even if just to deter pirates. There could even be a battleship or two out on patrol, just like modern navies do, to keep an eye on those pesky First Order fellows. (Assuming the FO is another nation-state in the galaxy and not a terrorist/insurgent organization. That bit's not clear to me, but I feel safe assuming they're a whole other nation to the Republic to explain away some of the major issues I have.)

It's not like the American navy collapsed after Pearl Harbor.

The US is a single government with absolute authority within its own boundaries. It funds and maintains its own army. The Republic does not follow that model, and the one time it moved towards that model the army it raised ended up being used against the Republic to form the Empire.

So think of the Republic more like the UN. They maintain a very small standing fleet, which are likely actually assets of the planet states on temporary loan for various co-op operations. When those ships get blown up the contributing states won't just auto crank up production to replace and expand the Republic fleet. Some might, but plenty won't. And even if enough agreed to add their forces in to a new combined army, actually getting that army operating as an effective collective while under immediate attack from the First Order is going to be near impossible.

Right so are they:

1) The Imperial Remnant, as in a whole other nation state that now owns only part (half? A third? An eighth?) of the galaxy due to some unexplained division of powers to end the Galactic Civil War?
2) An insurgency supporting the old, fallen regime (hence the name First Order) against a galaxy-spanning New Republic?
3) An extragalactic threat from somewhere beyond that galaxy that just happens to include a lot of ex-Imperials?
4) Something else??

They are remnants of the Empire who fled to the fringes of space, then agreed to join the Republic, and then seceded.

Which is actually kind of cool. I just wish it had been just even slightly touched on during the movies.


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 Unit1126PLL wrote:
Conversely, if they're an insurgent group within the New Republic, then my eyes roll even harder.

"Wow, stocks are up on the planet-killing superlaser market. And I hear Kuat Drive Yards produced another 200 Destroyers and a Dreadnought or two!"
"Yeah man, isn't this era of peace great?"

It's as ludicrous as the allies being slow to ramp up their military budgets while Nazi Germany broke their force limitations and built a new and very powerful army. Such a ludicrous thing would never happen.


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 Xenomancers wrote:
When i first saw the movie this is the stuff I was spouting for days. The setting is BS. The FO should not exist and if there was some great battle that raised them above the power of 1000 planets combined...WHY AREN'T WE SEEING THAT?

Because the Republic isn't an effective combination of planets. How are people missing this? I mean I get that no-one liked the prequels much, but it wasn't like this was hidden away in the background of those movies.


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 Manchu wrote:
On the terms of the films themselves, becoming "Jedi" is a milestone. In fact, Luke becoming a Jedi is the backbone of the Original Trilogy.

Luke's declaration of intent in ANH is that he wants to learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi like his father.

Sure, but its like saying "I want to be a professional baseball player". No-one on earth is silly enough to think that the goal ends the day they walk out on the park in their first professional game. What happens after that point, the career they have as a player, is still part of that story.

So the idea that Luke became a Jedi and from then on any internal struggle just ended and he never again had to fight against rage, or pride, or anything else is quite ridiculous. They may reach a new level of mastery, but their story doesn't end.


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Voss wrote:
Uh... it seriously is. The prequels spell this out on several occasions.
"Confer on you the level of Knight the Jedi Council does."
'Accept your seat on this council, we do. Grant you the status of Jedi Master, we do not'

You've missed the point completely, and not for the first time. Go back and read, see the context, try and actually learn something, instead of just interpreting every comment in a way you can complain about it. What you are doing is dishonest and gakky.

The 'redeeming' part is important, sacrificing himself for his friends (and sort of the mission) is important. The space wizard part is not, and that was the part you focused on.

You've lost the track of your own conversation. I said that Luke was walking a line, and this challenge didn't end because he became a Jedi. You then decided this meant that the whole thing was about the challenges of life as a space wizard.

You're complaining about your own argument. This has happened because you have no track of your own argument, because all you're doing with each post is thinking of a way of interpreting the other person's comment to make a rebuttal against it. Stop that, think about what I'm trying to say, and more importantly what you're trying to say, and you will find yourself making a lot more sense, and playing a much more interesting role in this thread.

Or don't, I guess. I can't tell you what to do.

But mostly Johnson for forcing the bizarre trust/reckoning subplot that was handled in the least military fashion possible at every conceivable level.

Complaining about a lack of proper military procedure in only one Star Wars movie is perhaps the most inane complaint yet. This is a series that in the first movie had the Rebellion giving a fighter to a guy who had literally never flown a ship in his life.

I think it's just you. You've been given a variety of well reasoned responses, and that you just shrug them off as 'unconvincing and incoherent' leads me to believe you don't want an understanding, nor do you really believe not liking it to be 'legitimate.'

Look, if you think it's a good film, then fine. Job done. But don't make a big deal about not dismissing criticism while dismissing criticism. That doesn't fly.

Nope, you've missed my point entirely. I'm looking for criticisms of the movie. I've recognised good ones when raised, and I've raised a few of my own. However most of the complaints given have been very weird. In some cases its complaining about things that were never an issue in previous Star Wars movies, while a lot of the complaints have been plainly false - things read in to the film in order to establish a complaint. And on the whole these complaints have been generally incoherent and scattershot, it's not been possible to establish any kind of overall theme to the complaints.

So exactly what is happening is a good question. It's one I'm still searching an answer for.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Just Tony wrote:

sirlynchmob wrote:

 sebster wrote:
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sirlynchmob wrote:
For the one going through the divorce, it is about the ironing, You don't get to be the judge on what is a worthy reason or not. You shouldn't be so dismissive of peoples reasons and feelings.

Most people don't actually do a very good job of knowing their own minds that well. The whole field of psychiatry exists because human thought processes are very complex and often take years of analysis to get to real, underlying causes for why people do stuff. To return to the marriage example, marriage counselling exists in large part to help couples understand the real relationship dynamics, which aren't necessarily obvious to either partner. The complaint about ironing could actually be symbolic of pent up frustration that their partner doesn't appreciate the importance of routine to their ability to relax, while to the other partner it could be symbolic of their own frustration of feeling controlled, being told when they have to do certain chores.

Now, here we're talking about just a movie, and not a very complex one at that. So I'm not talking about going in to any kind of deep analysis. I'm just saying it is possible, and even quite easy to see someone's stated reason, and know that reason is unconvincing, and probably not what's really driving their opinion.

Why do you assume such things? You even stated yet another valid reason to not like the movie. It's not a very complex one.

If none of the reasons listed have convinced you that people just don't like the movie, what do you think their "real" reasons are?

and I'd still like to see the valid reasons you accept for people not liking the first star trek movie.

I actually like the first Trek movie...

1 and 3 are both very good if you ask me. 2 was just okay.

I also liked the game, which essentially gives you another "movie" between 1 and 2, also ties several things together.

sirlynchmob wrote:
Why do you assume such things? You even stated yet another valid reason to not like the movie. It's not a very complex one.

I haven't assumed anything. I've read people's answers, thought about them, and found them ultimately unconvincing. Just like if you asked someone 'why are you getting divorced' and they said 'because they sometimes did the ironing a day or two later than they should', it wouldn't be much of an assumption to conclude there's probably more to it than just that.

If none of the reasons listed have convinced you that people just don't like the movie, what do you think their "real" reasons are?

I don't have a particularly good answer. If I did I would have satisfied my curiousity and stopped posting here. The answer I do have is that I TLJ failed to capture the heroic nature of previous Star Wars films. Even the darker films, particularly ESB, were only dark in the circumstances it put the heroes in, their actions were heroic and successful. But with this film our heroes weren't just in dire circumstances, their actions actually failed and in a few instances actually made things worse in permanent ways. That's quite a deviation from normal Star Wars, and it gave this film a very different feel. I can see how for some people that would mean it didn't feel like Star Wars, even on a subconscious level.

I don't think that's a complete answer though, but it's as close to a satisfying answer as I've got so far.

and I'd still like to see the valid reasons you accept for people not liking the first star trek movie.

What has that got to do with anything, and which 'first' Trek are we talking about? The original, very first Trek, with V'ger, or the JJ reboot. There's lots of good reasons to dislike both.


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 Mr Morden wrote:
Ok I don't think that anything I say will fulfil what you seem to want.

I'll be honest, what you've said hasn't been helpful at all. But comments from other posters have been interesting, and helped me start to understand the negative reaction.

you need to accept that these are my reasons - I honestly do not have some hidden reason that say I hate the director's work (now if it had been Christopher Nolan you would have had a point but I only vaguely even know the name of this guy) or I love the original series sooo much or whatever.

I actually don't need to accept your reasons, and no, it isn't because I think you have some hidden reason. It certainly isn't because I think you have an opinion of the director, I haven't mentioned that, suggested that, or even thought it. I have genuinely no idea where you even got that from. Perhaps a conversation with someone else in this thread? Dunno, but I will ask you to read more carefully and ensure you follow my words.

Anyhow, as I've said a few times now, it is normal to hear someone's justification and decide whether you believe that justification is what is really happening. When a player on your favourite team says he is just saying for the love of the game and the love of the club, but he's just fought for a $50m contract, it is only natural to conclude it probably just for the game and the club that he's playing. That's all I've done here - I read people's stated reasons and assessed whether those reasons seem right. This doesn't mean anyone is lying, afterall that player might genuinely believe he is out there for the game and his club. It's just that what people actually believe is quite complex, and people don't always know their own minds that well.

Overview: I did not like this film because to me (and my friends) it was too long, often boring, filled with narrative inconsistencies and flaws that I could not ignore due to the poor pacing. How does this not make sense???????? These are my reasons.

I don't think either of us want to go through this again, but to explain one last time, those are conclusions, not reasons. For instance, the claim that the film was too long isn't in itself a flaw. For it to be flaw, it would mean that you would dislike every movie that ran for 2.5 hours. So instead we have to look at what it was that caused you to struggle through this film's 2.5 hours, that isn't true of all other 2.5 hour movies. And I'm not asking for an explanation for that. We've been doing this for a few days now, and you're still struggling with hte premise of my line of enquiry, and honestly not giving me useful responses. We can call it here, we should have called it many posts ago.


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 Kaiyanwang wrote:
This is a very bold statement from someone that wrote: "What Rey learns is that she has nothing to learn".

Yes, I wrote it briefly the first time, assuming you wouldn't need the whole thing explained to you. Then when you struggled with that, I gave you a more complete explanation. And then instead of recognising that more complete explanation, or even debating where it wasn't true, instead you posted a string of attacks and complaints.

Not a great effort on your part.


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 Kaiyanwang wrote:
I don't think you have the means to be so dismissing. Do you really feel smart throwing away false equivalences?

Think about the words you are using. I don't think you really want to argue that a 30 year period in a film, that you have a problem with, should not be compared to a 30 year old period of real world history where something similar happened.

You start from an assumption that you label as true and then build all sort of things from it.

Actually I'm going from wookiepedia.

At the end of the empire in RotJ there is no first order. We have no idea of the extension of the imperial remnants.
Nonetheless we know that a part not irrelevant of the Galaxy is now republic. FO < Old Empire. Probably way smaller. Which is not the case of the post WWI Germany - the territorial losses in that case were not substantial like after WWI. For sure, Germany did not lose Munich or Berlin. Really what you wrote does not hold water.

You've made some bad assumptions.

1) The Death Star could only be created by a organisation with the resources of the Empire. It is entirely possible that while still an incredible creation, such a thing could have been built by a much smaller organisation, if that organisation had the will and the technology (a tech you'll note was developed before the Empire's formation).
2) There is no concept of process improvement. While Star Wars tends to stick to a fairly static tech base, it is hardly unthinkable that having built a death star then lessons learned from that build might help you develop something much bigger 30 years later. Nimitz class carriers were displace five times as much as Yorktown class carriers, and they were 30 years apart in development.
3) That because only 30 years passed between RotJ and TLJ, it was not possible for the FO to build a large empire in that time. To take single example, Charlemagne expanded from control of Frankia, about 1.2m square kms, to the Holy Roman Empire, an area about 4.4m square kms. That took about 30 years. And that's through conquest and forcing other nations to cede land. Consider an organisation with loyalties to an old order, that might willingly join the new organisation, how much that might help expansion.

None of this is a defence of Starkiller as a concept to include in TFA. It was lame, because on the screen it felt like nothing more than a retread of the Death Star, but bigger. But that wasn't your complaint, your complaint was that that Starkiller should have been impossible for the First Order, because they aren't as big as the Empire was. That's a complaint that only works if we make all your incorrect assumptions.

And I not only have to take seriously what you write

You don't have to take anything I write seriously. You just have to come up with decent argument about why what I've written might be wrong. That's how discussion works.


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 Unit1126PLL wrote:
My line is instead at not being able to make any sense of what is going on in the story. Floatyleia didn't bother me that much, but I see where people are coming from. I just chalked it up to "magic".

In RotJ we see the Emperor use force lightning. At no point before this had we seen anything like that. No-one was bothered by this sudden new power that was very different to any other power we'd seen before. I think there's a couple of reasons for the different reaction to Leia's space floating. The first is that Emperor's power looked cool, while Leia's space floating looked pretty silly. The second reason is that when the Emperor came on screen we were primed for him to challenge Luke both mentally and physically, this old man having an incredible force power gave us that challenge. In contrast Leia's new power solved a problem, her getting back to the ship, that never had to be solved (she could have just not been blasted out in to space in the first place). Lastly, perhaps the biggest reason, is that in RotJ we didn't have any expectation that we'd seen the absolute list of possible Jedi powers. But since RotJ, there's been Jedi in loads of media which have codified the powers available. The computer games have in particular created this concept of a finite power list.

While I thought the space floating was pretty lame, outside of that I'm actually kind of interested in what the new films are doing with the force. In other SW media, and then through the prequels, the force became a fairly fixed set of powers, a person has a certain amount of power in the force that they are born with, which they learn to harness through formalised training. The new films seems to be attempting to bring some uncontrollable, elemental nature back to the force, as well as tying it more directly to the journeys of the characters. Different and possibly unique force powers play a part in that. But another large part is that they're returning to the force not as a concept of training, but as one that is primarily an individual journey. We could see this with Kylo's defeat by Rey, which in TLJ explicitly spelled out as being due to Kylo's emotional state, having just killed his father.

It's one thing I'm interested to see if they manage to fully flesh out in the final movie.


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 Eldarain wrote:
Where is this info from?

The Republic as a set of member states is mentioned in a lot of Star Wars supporting media, particularly stuff released in support of the prequels. Then in the prequels themselves its a core element of the setting. It is the core setting of the prequels. You remember how Naboo, a Republic planet, got blockaded, and the Senate sat around debating what to do? That makes no sense if the Republic is a single government, imagine a blockade being put around South Carolina, and the US government just debating if it should do anything. But then consider the blockade on Qatar, and the UN debating this.

The second element to this is the creation of the clone army. This was a big deal because prior to this the Republic did not maintain an army. It had relied on the Jedi as peacekeepers and law enforcement, but not had a single Republic military.

With the formation of the New Republic, the same structure was created. Given what happened last time the Republic created its own army, its understandable that they did this. This latter bit of info might be in supporting media, but I got it from wookiepedia myself.

Looks like the bots are still up to no good , it's dipped to 49% on RT. Critic's score used to be higher than 90% too didn't it?

Seriously, for all the positive instant reaction, this will end up in a decade remembered like one of the prequels.

I don't think you need bots to hit a number that low. Even if it were a better film I doubt it would be any different. Star Wars means so many different things to so many different people there is no film conceivable that would please everyone, especially not one directly involving the original characters.

Basically this is why Valve never made Half-Life 3

 Riquende wrote:
Looks like the bots are still up to no good, it's dipped to 49% on RT. Critic's score used to be higher than 90% too didn't it?

Seriously, for all the postive instant reaction, this will end up in a decade remembered like one of the prequels.

Bots? Why assume that negative reviews, commentary, or votes are the work of bots? People genuinely disliked the film.

 Just Tony wrote:

 Riquende wrote:
Looks like the bots are still up to no good, it's dipped to 49% on RT. Critic's score used to be higher than 90% too didn't it?

Seriously, for all the postive instant reaction, this will end up in a decade remembered like one of the prequels.

Bots? Why assume that negative reviews, commentary, or votes are the work of bots? People genuinely disliked the film.

Sorry, that was a tongue in cheek comment based on the last time this was discussed. I agree with you and I've tried to make the comment less ambiguous.

One thing that I loved about this film that a lot of people seem to dislike is the rejection of the idea that a story can be done. A lot of people seem to be complaining that after the character growth from the Original Trilogy, Luke should have remained some kind of static perfect character. He has already faced his challenges and now nothing can or should present him with any challenge and any personal weakness is impossible. Instead this story, and most of the prequels, make it clear that jedi are just regular people under all the space mysticism. They face temptation and challenge the same as any one else. That good and evil would continue to exist after the defeat of any one evil and that it is important to continuously choose good is a concept that is baked into a lot of mythology and fitting for the Luke character.

Another thing is that people seem to remember a very different Luke than I do. He is not some hero that dispenses wisdom from on high and is infallible, for all of the original trilogy he comes across as an idealistic man that is forced to fight for what he believes in, sometimes failing along the way. In IV, he tries to refuse the call to adventure before he is forced to come along by the death of his family. In V, he demonstrates that he is impulsive through his interactions with Yoda before he rushes off and is beaten into paste by Vader. In VI, he surrenders himself to Vader after Vader sensed him on Endor, beat Vader by giving into his anger, and then was pasted by the Emperor. He is never shown lifting giant objects with the force, fighting giant armies, or engaging in prequel flip-fest lightsaber battles. The fact that Luke's accomplishments have been blown way out of proportion to what they actually are is acknowledged in some of the now non-canon EU and I thought that they did a good job of using it here.

One thing that I am wondering is why people seem to completely miss the Finn plotline. It is not about how there is no hope and that all sides are bad, it calls attention to the fact that people that choose to remain neutral and work with both sides are also the villains. Finn goes through VII and starts VIII only caring about himself and his close friends, abandoning the First Order when the going gets tough and then encouraging Rey to run away with him and avoid joining the Resistance. His first act after figuring out what is happening in VIII is to try and save himself and run away. Rose's, admittedly very heavy handed, speeches serve to show him that not picking a side puts him in the same boat as the arms dealers that support the First Order as people that passively help evil to thrive while also demonstrating the principles that the resistance is fighting for. This culminates in Finn giving his best line from all the series when confronted by Phasma he corrects her to assert that he is "rebel scum", finally demonstrating his allegiance to the Resistance and their ideals over his own personal safety.

 Riquende wrote:
Looks like the bots are still up to no good , it's dipped to 49% on RT. Critic's score used to be higher than 90% too didn't it?

Seriously, for all the positive instant reaction, this will end up in a decade remembered like one of the prequels.

IMO Its as bad but not worse than the Prequals - no we don't have Jar Jar or the cringey "love story" but instead we have the tiresome and silly chase after the Ship of Fools, we have the Two go to Casino World Adventure, we have the hyperspace ramming, etc.

Plus maybe less of the paid off critics are adjusting the critical score.

Of course many of us have our "hidden reasons" for disliking the film and so should not be taken seriously......

 the Signless wrote:
One thing that I loved about this film that a lot of people seem to dislike is the rejection of the idea that a story can be done. A lot of people seem to be complaining that after the character growth from the Original Trilogy, Luke should have remained some kind of static perfect character. He has already faced his challenges and now nothing can or should present him with any challenge and any personal weakness is impossible. Instead this story, and most of the prequels, make it clear that jedi are just regular people under all the space mysticism. They face temptation and challenge the same as any one else. That good and evil would continue to exist after the defeat of any one evil and that it is important to continuously choose good is a concept that is baked into a lot of mythology and fitting for the Luke character.

Another thing is that people seem to remember a very different Luke than I do. He is not some hero that dispenses wisdom from on high and is infallible, for all of the original trilogy he comes across as an idealistic man that is forced to fight for what he believes in, sometimes failing along the way. In IV, he tries to refuse the call to adventure before he is forced to come along by the death of his family. In V, he demonstrates that he is impulsive through his interactions with Yoda before he rushes off and is beaten into paste by Vader. In VI, he surrenders himself to Vader after Vader sensed him on Endor, beat Vader by giving into his anger, and then was pasted by the Emperor. He is never shown lifting giant objects with the force, fighting giant armies, or engaging in prequel flip-fest lightsaber battles. The fact that Luke's accomplishments have been blown way out of proportion to what they actually are is acknowledged in some of the now non-canon EU and I thought that they did a good job of using it here.

One thing that I am wondering is why people seem to completely miss the Finn plotline. It is not about how there is no hope and that all sides are bad, it calls attention to the fact that people that choose to remain neutral and work with both sides are also the villains. Finn goes through VII and starts VIII only caring about himself and his close friends, abandoning the First Order when the going gets tough and then encouraging Rey to run away with him and avoid joining the Resistance. His first act after figuring out what is happening in VIII is to try and save himself and run away. Rose's, admittedly very heavy handed, speeches serve to show him that not picking a side puts him in the same boat as the arms dealers that support the First Order as people that passively help evil to thrive while also demonstrating the principles that the resistance is fighting for. This culminates in Finn giving his best line from all the series when confronted by Phasma he corrects her to assert that he is "rebel scum", finally demonstrating his allegiance to the Resistance and their ideals over his own personal safety.

Personally I was not that bothered about the Luke story - as you say his story is done and its Rey's story now - same as Ben died in SW and its was Luke's Han and Leia's story.

I do disagree with the Finn arc - the whole Casino world plot smacked of pandering to the marketing department (Space horses and the entire casino that could be recreated at resorts) and also finding something for a character to do - not sure about some suggestions online that the filmmakers did not want a romance between the white female lead and her black co star but I guess it could be?

I thought the whole point of the first film was that he had chosen a side - did we really need a half hour and pointless "adventure" crowbarred so badly into the middle of the film, considering how slow the pace already was, to tell us this again.

I took a very different conclusion away from the arms dealing segment - again crowbarred into a Space Opera - it was specifically stating that the Frist Order and the Republic/Rebeliion buy weapons and make the rich richer - always have done and always will do and trying to find some kind of equivalency which is bizarre when the sledgehammer Nazi motifs of the FO are repeatedly shown.

It would be like showing a SOE agent in occupied France and then having a bit where she finds that the government buys weapons as well and that makes people rich - OOHH how subversive are we!

 the Signless wrote:
Another thing is that people seem to remember a very different Luke than I do. He is not some hero that dispenses wisdom from on high and is infallible, for all of the original trilogy he comes across as an idealistic man that is forced to fight for what he believes in, sometimes failing along the way. In IV, he tries to refuse the call to adventure before he is forced to come along by the death of his family. In V, he demonstrates that he is impulsive through his interactions with Yoda before he rushes off and is beaten into paste by Vader. In VI, he surrenders himself to Vader after Vader sensed him on Endor, beat Vader by giving into his anger, and then was pasted by the Emperor. He is never shown lifting giant objects with the force, fighting giant armies, or engaging in prequel flip-fest lightsaber battles. The fact that Luke's accomplishments have been blown way out of proportion to what they actually are is acknowledged in some of the now non-canon EU and I thought that they did a good job of using it here.

My complaints about Luke have never been that he should be infallible, or stronger, or more badass, or super wise. I actually kind of like the idea of Luke as a bad teacher and not having all the wisdom in the universe, I just don't think it was played out well.

As you say, in V he's impulsive and goes after Vader to save his friends.... where was that aspect of Luke's character in TLJ? In VI he faced off against Vader and rose above the dark side to save his father.... where in TLJ was the aspect of Luke that's willing to throw away his lightsaber to save one of his family? Yeah I understand he's disenchanted with the Jedi and whatnot, but unleashing a dark side Kylo on the universe and then running away to let his friends deal with it is not a satisfying conclusion in keeping with Luke's character IMO.

The only good thing I can say about Luke is that at least he isn't a major character. I'm happy he's not and I don't think he should be a major character, but IMO he should still act like Luke.

But Luke is but one of many minor gripes (amongst a couple of major ones), Luke alone was hardly enough to break the film for me.

I would have preferred it if Luke had of simply made a cameo appearance in a flashback where Kylo or Snoke kills him.

So I have just had the First Order vs Republic dichotomy explained to me. I understood it and was fairly entertained.

Now if only the movie wasn't wallowing in its own gak so much so it could tell me itself.

Instead of myself or other users on here having to google/wookiepedia it.

 Riquende wrote:
Looks like the bots are still up to no good , it's dipped to 49% on RT. Critic's score used to be higher than 90% too didn't it?

Seriously, for all the positive instant reaction, this will end up in a decade remembered like one of the prequels.

I'd place it ahead of (better than) Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, but behind Revenge of the Sith.

To some extent everything is pandering to the marketing department. Look at the Lego shelf of your local toy shop.

To go back a page, though, I liked the Leia in Spaaace scene because:

We all know that Carrie Fisher died before finishing the film, and this created some expectation that her character would be killed off during the film.

This expectation was borne out when Kylo Ren attacked Leia's ship and targetted the bridge.

This set the scene for Kylo to destroy his mother, completing his journey to the Dark Side, and this was emphasised by the shots of the two of them "looking" at one another.

But our expectations were confounded when Kylo withheld his attack, only to be confounded again as some other FO fighter launched a missile at the bridge.

So Leia seemingly died, but again our expectation of the narrative was reversed, when she saved herself by Force powers.

To me this was a very exciting sequence of events. I don't mind that Scientific American says you can't survive in space for more than 15 seconds, because Star Wars demands a large amount of suspension of disbelief in lots of areas.

 sebster wrote:

Actually I'm going from wookiepedia.

We should not need to go for Wookiepedia. The movie must make sense on their own. I really don't care about Wookepedia, books or whatever.

You've made some bad assumptions.

1) The Death Star could only be created by a organisation with the resources of the Empire. It is entirely possible that while still an incredible creation, such a thing could have been built by a much smaller organisation, if that organisation had the will and the technology (a tech you'll note was developed before the Empire's formation).
2) There is no concept of process improvement. While Star Wars tends to stick to a fairly static tech base, it is hardly unthinkable that having built a death star then lessons learned from that build might help you develop something much bigger 30 years later. Nimitz class carriers were displace five times as much as Yorktown class carriers, and they were 30 years apart in development.
3) That because only 30 years passed between RotJ and TLJ, it was not possible for the FO to build a large empire in that time. To take single example, Charlemagne expanded from control of Frankia, about 1.2m square kms, to the Holy Roman Empire, an area about 4.4m square kms. That took about 30 years. And that's through conquest and forcing other nations to cede land. Consider an organisation with loyalties to an old order, that might willingly join the new organisation, how much that might help expansion.

None of this is a defence of Starkiller as a concept to include in TFA. It was lame, because on the screen it felt like nothing more than a retread of the Death Star, but bigger. But that wasn't your complaint, your complaint was that that Starkiller should have been impossible for the First Order, because they aren't as big as the Empire was. That's a complaint that only works if we make all your incorrect assumptions.

1) The DS is aknowledges ad incredibly big in ANH. "That's no moon". For sure is not anything anyone could build on a whim
2) The "process improvement" could involve the type of beam (that has, it seems, FTL flight because the SK has none), not digging up a whole planet with a volume orders of magnitude bigger
2b) let's ignore the stupidity of the weapon, that can only shoot once
3) You insist with completely preposterous historical comparison. Franks and swords is not like galactic republic and space nazi with FTL travel and lazors. There is nothing that can be used as an example here. Just stop. Is embarrassing.

Also, calling the fleet as target does not make the scene less stupid. The republic just put all the eggs in one basket for plot convenience. In case, it makes everything even more incredible, puts one out of the movie, and makes me do not care for the supposed "good guys" because are just too stupid.
Is just an example of the bad writing leitmotif of these movies. Characters and organisations do things not in base of logic or of their characteristics, but for plot convenience. Everything is bent over a contrived plot.

You don't have to take anything I write seriously. You just have to come up with decent argument about why what I've written might be wrong. That's how discussion works.

I think I have to do not add anything to this statement, just acknowledge the irony.

Also, I strongly suggest to state clearly the "hidden motivations", or just let them go. This is, too, incredibly ironic from someone that asks for an honest debate.

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

 sebster wrote:

Actually I'm going from wookiepedia.

We should not need to go for Wookiepedia. The movie must make sense on their own. I really don't care about Wookepedia, books or whatever.

Right. I'm not here to get involved in the E.U. Disney Edition; it'd be nice if the films actually explained anything.

There's "making the world feel bigger" (which makes me want to read the EU stuff) and then there's "what the feth is going on?" (which makes me have to read a book to go along with my movie ticket).

 Kilkrazy wrote:
To some extent everything is pandering to the marketing department. Look at the Lego shelf of your local toy shop.

To go back a page, though, I liked the Leia in Spaaace scene because:

We all know that Carrie Fisher died before finishing the film, and this created some expectation that her character would be killed off during the film.

This expectation was borne out when Kylo Ren attacked Leia's ship and targetted the bridge.

This set the scene for Kylo to destroy his mother, completing his journey to the Dark Side, and this was emphasised by the shots of the two of them "looking" at one another.

But our expectations were confounded when Kylo withheld his attack, only to be confounded again as some other FO fighter launched a missile at the bridge.

So Leia seemingly died, but again our expectation of the narrative was reversed, when she saved herself by Force powers.

To me this was a very exciting sequence of events. I don't mind that Scientific American says you can't survive in space for more than 15 seconds, because Star Wars demands a large amount of suspension of disbelief in lots of areas.

To me it had the opposite effect. Sure, the subverted expectations which was their intention, but subverting just for the sake of subverting with no other narrative or subtextual motive is bad.

However, (to be extra confusing) I think they did do it for a subtextual reason. However, it is a subtext that I completely oppose, and that was to say that "Nothing Matters" in this franchise/universe and by extrapolation anywhere.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
To some extent everything is pandering to the marketing department. Look at the Lego shelf of your local toy shop.

To go back a page, though, I liked the Leia in Spaaace scene because:

We all know that Carrie Fisher died before finishing the film, and this created some expectation that her character would be killed off during the film.

This expectation was borne out when Kylo Ren attacked Leia's ship and targetted the bridge.

This set the scene for Kylo to destroy his mother, completing his journey to the Dark Side, and this was emphasised by the shots of the two of them "looking" at one another.

But our expectations were confounded when Kylo withheld his attack, only to be confounded again as some other FO fighter launched a missile at the bridge.

So Leia seemingly died, but again our expectation of the narrative was reversed, when she saved herself by Force powers.

To me this was a very exciting sequence of events. I don't mind that Scientific American says you can't survive in space for more than 15 seconds, because Star Wars demands a large amount of suspension of disbelief in lots of areas.

That whole sequence could have been so much better if we see kylo try to fire the missile but leia was using the force to keep him from pushing it. we could see him struggling to fire and leai stopping him. then cut to his wing man and see his missile fire by using force powers. did kylo do that? nope, cut to leia smilling as she saves a bit of kylo's soul and dies in the vacuum of space. That would have been a epic send of for her, not just keeping her alive for name recognition in the next film.

As it was presented It was horrible and highly insulting to our intelligences.

sirlynchmob wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
To some extent everything is pandering to the marketing department. Look at the Lego shelf of your local toy shop.

To go back a page, though, I liked the Leia in Spaaace scene because:

We all know that Carrie Fisher died before finishing the film, and this created some expectation that her character would be killed off during the film.

This expectation was borne out when Kylo Ren attacked Leia's ship and targetted the bridge.

This set the scene for Kylo to destroy his mother, completing his journey to the Dark Side, and this was emphasised by the shots of the two of them "looking" at one another.

But our expectations were confounded when Kylo withheld his attack, only to be confounded again as some other FO fighter launched a missile at the bridge.

So Leia seemingly died, but again our expectation of the narrative was reversed, when she saved herself by Force powers.

To me this was a very exciting sequence of events. I don't mind that Scientific American says you can't survive in space for more than 15 seconds, because Star Wars demands a large amount of suspension of disbelief in lots of areas.

That whole sequence could have been so much better if we see kylo try to fire the missile but leia was using the force to keep him from pushing it. we could see him struggling to fire and leai stopping him. then cut to his wing man and see his missile fire by using force powers. did kylo do that? nope, cut to leia smilling as she saves a bit of kylo's soul and dies in the vacuum of space. That would have been a epic send of for her, not just keeping her alive for name recognition in the next film.

As it was presented It was horrible and highly insulting to our intelligences.

But that would completely negate that moment of character for Kylo.

 sebster wrote:


What has that got to do with anything, and which 'first' Trek are we talking about? The original, very first Trek, with V'ger, or the JJ reboot. There's lots of good reasons to dislike both.

and there have been a lot of reasons listed to dislike TLJ, I was going with the original with v'ger which is usually considered one of the worst movies ever made.

That's the point, there is no one unifying theory to dislike either, you either liked it or you didn't. dismissing peoples reasons because you don't approve or believe them, makes you look like you're pushing a reason onto them.. especially when you post stuff like this:

This doesn't mean anyone is lying, afterall that player might genuinely believe he is out there for the game and his club. It's just that what people actually believe is quite complex, and people don't always know their own minds that well.

but you do eh? you know their minds better than they do?



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

sirlynchmob wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
To some extent everything is pandering to the marketing department. Look at the Lego shelf of your local toy shop.

To go back a page, though, I liked the Leia in Spaaace scene because:

We all know that Carrie Fisher died before finishing the film, and this created some expectation that her character would be killed off during the film.

This expectation was borne out when Kylo Ren attacked Leia's ship and targetted the bridge.

This set the scene for Kylo to destroy his mother, completing his journey to the Dark Side, and this was emphasised by the shots of the two of them "looking" at one another.

But our expectations were confounded when Kylo withheld his attack, only to be confounded again as some other FO fighter launched a missile at the bridge.

So Leia seemingly died, but again our expectation of the narrative was reversed, when she saved herself by Force powers.

To me this was a very exciting sequence of events. I don't mind that Scientific American says you can't survive in space for more than 15 seconds, because Star Wars demands a large amount of suspension of disbelief in lots of areas.

That whole sequence could have been so much better if we see kylo try to fire the missile but leia was using the force to keep him from pushing it. we could see him struggling to fire and leai stopping him. then cut to his wing man and see his missile fire by using force powers. did kylo do that? nope, cut to leia smilling as she saves a bit of kylo's soul and dies in the vacuum of space. That would have been a epic send of for her, not just keeping her alive for name recognition in the next film.

As it was presented It was horrible and highly insulting to our intelligences.

But that would completely negate that moment of character for Kylo.

maybe, but it's better than keeping her character alive and using her death to try and bring in more money to the next film by using her name.

I agree.

The scene as shown doesn't mean nothing matters.

On the contrary, it sets up further character development for Kylo, and increases the tension and significance of the interactions between him and Rey by showing him still to have some bits of conscience.

Rey's interactions with Kylo make the audience worry she may be tempted to go to the Dark Side, a definite point of dramatic tension.

Here is another take I found that is interesting....

https://www.avclub.com/this-is-not-going-to-go-the-way-you-think-the-last-jed-1821472840

sirlynchmob wrote:


maybe, but it's better than keeping her character alive and using her death to try and bring in more money to the next film by using her name.

You do know she died after filming for this film was completed? What would you rather they did, alter her final film, throwing away parts of her final work because she happened to die after it?

Should The Dark Knight have been recut so the Joker died during it because Heath Ledger died prior to it being released?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
To some extent everything is pandering to the marketing department. Look at the Lego shelf of your local toy shop.

To go back a page, though, I liked the Leia in Spaaace scene because:

We all know that Carrie Fisher died before finishing the film, and this created some expectation that her character would be killed off during the film.

This expectation was borne out when Kylo Ren attacked Leia's ship and targetted the bridge.

This set the scene for Kylo to destroy his mother, completing his journey to the Dark Side, and this was emphasised by the shots of the two of them "looking" at one another.

But our expectations were confounded when Kylo withheld his attack, only to be confounded again as some other FO fighter launched a missile at the bridge.

So Leia seemingly died, but again our expectation of the narrative was reversed, when she saved herself by Force powers.

To me this was a very exciting sequence of events. I don't mind that Scientific American says you can't survive in space for more than 15 seconds, because Star Wars demands a large amount of suspension of disbelief in lots of areas.

So your Expectations. Were. Subverted. .?

I did enjoy a lot of the toying RJ did with the setup JJ left to him, but I got tired of the forced nature of all the subversions shortly after this scene. I love the idea behind space Leia, but the execution was pretty embarrassing in my view.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

sirlynchmob wrote:


maybe, but it's better than keeping her character alive and using her death to try and bring in more money to the next film by using her name.

You do know she died after filming for this film was completed? What would you rather they did, alter her final film, throwing away parts of her final work because she happened to die after it?

Ya, they could have done away with her cameo at the end. all she does is stun flyboy, then say what a nice piece of meat he is. easily lost to give a proper tribute to carrie.