Star Wars The Last Jedi *SPOILERS*

[BeastieRunner]

The Imperial Period was also one of war and conquest, as Palpatine tightened his grip on the galaxy. The period after VI was one of peace and reconstruction. The new republic wasn't even militarized, I don't think.

Which is why the Resistance was formed! Nobody took the threat of the FO seriously except Leia and then Leia was outed as the daughter of DARTH VADER.

[ClanAskani]

- FO falls back, regroups, and then attacks. Pretty standard strategy.
- We see Kylo talk to Snoke and get rebuked (which is later a ploy to lure Rey that backfires on Snoke).
- 3PO has his gold arm at the end of TFA. Droids have had a pretty quick repair record in ALL the Star Wars films to date, BTW.
- Quick changes are a part of movies. When you see someone crossing their fingers behind their back in a movie, it means they're lying! I think people forget about movie magic sometimes.
- TIMELINE: I think part of the problem some people have different definitions of what Johnson meant when he said this movies takes place "right after" TFA. Some took it as immediately, others as relatively. At the end of TFA there's been at least enough time for Rey to get to Ach-to. So my brain processes that as hours, maybe a day? They might not even be happening at the same time! I agree it is not very clear. Star Wars as a series has always been unclear on time passages in the movies. Empire being the main one with the training of Luke. How long was that? Unclear ...

I don't have time to go point by point right now, but from what's been revealed about when the TLJ script was written, it before the release of TFA. JJ was doing reshoots/fill-ins as late as a few months before it was released and it locked incredibly late.

If you look at the force back scene with little Rey shouting for her parents to come back, that was filmed in September after Rian was writing TLJ. Does it match what Rian described in TLJ? Not really. A few dialog tweaks and it could - that Rey's parents weren't going to be coming back for her, but Kylo implies her parents died on Jakku. It's possible they flew off to another part of the planet.

IMO, JJ's mystery box was never suppose to be actual answers. While he's most known for Lost, so many others were involved with that show it's not necessarily the best example of pure-JJ. Alias he was more involved with and he typically set the tone with a premiere episode that set-up plot points which were never, ever addressed again.

Rian has said his script was pretty much set and little changed - which means that a few changes were made to TFA to make it fit TLJ (swapping BB-8 and Artoo). Likely Rian would complain JJ didn't make more changes to fit what he was doing, but IMO he didn't care. I've seen far too many egos involved in these types of movies and they don't care what the other filmmaker did.

- Transports were cloaked from active scanning. "We should be cloaked from their scopes and active scans."
- Hux said they can't support the fighters at that distance, so they had to pull back.
- Hyperspace burns massive fuel. They'd have even less fuel if they jumped. Finn made several reference to this as did Rose, Poe, Holdo ... "We jump to hyperspace and when we exit, they'd just show up 30 seconds later and we'd have burned up a massive amount of fuel."
- Holdo doesn't trust Poe because of the Bombadier stunt, he got demoted (he went down 2 rungs of leadership BTW, not 1), and in turn Poe doesn't trust Holdo because she won't tell him the plan, she's not Leia, and she's new. Petty reasons but not PIS. Would you want to tell Maverick the plan?

There's no reason they couldn't have jumped to different locations via hyperspace. The only reason they didn't is that they had no idea only one ship was tracking them. If they jumped to different locations, then they would have been followed by the lead ship. The lead ship would follow one of the ships, but not all of them. Had Poe shared information, they could have had formed a plan. For example, an ambush with other Resistance ships.

The fact that JJ will want his buddy Greg Grunberg back for Episode IX means he was conveniently written out of Episode IIX but they had the ability to call in others to help set-up a trap when the First Order followed.

The assuming transports won't be seen by scans is also ridiculously stupid. They are watching the ship. They can see transports launching. Ignoring a small ship or escape pods is possible. The only way the First Order doesn't see dozens of large transports ships leaving is pure stupidity. You have to assume the First Order is unable to see right in front of them.

Rian doesn't care about comics or novels, so probably anything in them is garbage. How does Holdo no know who Poe is? How does Poe not know Holdo? This makes no sense that they don't already have knowledge of each other considering their history. The Resistance is a small group. If you're in a situation where you need creative ideas, why not tell someone like Poe who might have ideas?

What's set-up makes better sense if Holdo knows that many of the Resistance fighters are going to die and she's willing to sacrifice some of them so the rest can live - bait the First Order with a Resistance ship so the rest of them can escape. Poe wants to try to save everyone. That's the type of plan you don't tell people about because they'll be pissed off. If she's worried about what Poe will do, then tell him part of the plan and give him a fool's task to keep him busy.

- Obviously there are limits to Force Ghosts and Luke has been the only one to see any of the Ghosts so far (Leia looks past them in ROTJ) BUT ... it appears Yoda at least is learning more.
- He hasn't? How do you know that? He might have ... we don't know yet. I assume it takes a lot of energy to project since the effort kills Luke and Kylo reference projection will kill during their scenes. Maybe Yoda has to store up some energy.
- The Force has yet to have had clearly defined limits.

Sounds nitpicky, not plot holey.

So many times fundamental rules of of storytelling were badly broken. If someone can do something that's gimmicky, then show it's a skill they have in advance. There are so many examples of where this has been done in other movies or tv that helps demonstrate what the rules for something like the Force and how people can use it in the world created.

The lack of clear world building is one of the biggest core issues with the new trilogy. They're making them up as they go. The rules needed to be established in a prior scene to make the battle between Kylo & Luke and the scene with Yoda and Luke make sense. They needed to set-up what the rules are and what these abilities are (astral projection, for example).

It's one of the core issues with Rey. For example, all of a sudden she's an ace pilot. This was set-up in a children's book that Rey was a self-taught pilot, but a few throw away lines and it gets explained. If there's a big jump with the skills a character has, it needs to be set-up. The new rules of how force ghosts work needs to be set-up and it wasn't. It's just "it's the force". The same with Leia floating through space.

[BeastieRunner]

I don't have time to go point by point right now, but from what's been revealed about when the TLJ script was written, it before the release of TFA. JJ was doing reshoots/fill-ins as late as a few months before it was released and it locked incredibly late.

If you look at the force back scene with little Rey shouting for her parents to come back, that was filmed in September after Rian was writing TLJ. Does it match what Rian described in TLJ? Not really. A few dialog tweaks and it could - that Rey's parents weren't going to be coming back for her, but Kylo implies her parents died on Jakku. It's possible they flew off to another part of the planet.

IMO, JJ's mystery box was never suppose to be actual answers. While he's most known for Lost, so many others were involved with that show it's not necessarily the best example of pure-JJ. Alias he was more involved with and he typically set the tone with a premiere episode that set-up plot points which were never, ever addressed again.

Rian has said his script was pretty much set and little changed - which means that a few changes were made to TFA to make it fit TLJ (swapping BB-8 and Artoo). Likely Rian would complain JJ didn't make more changes to fit what he was doing, but IMO he didn't care. I've seen far too many egos involved in these types of movies and they don't care what the other filmmaker did.

We're gonna have to wait for IX on this.

There's no reason they couldn't have jumped to different locations via hyperspace. The only reason they didn't is that they had no idea only one ship was tracking them. If they jumped to different locations, then they would have been followed by the lead ship. The lead ship would follow one of the ships, but not all of them. Had Poe shared information, they could have had formed a plan. For example, an ambush with other Resistance ships.

The fact that JJ will want his buddy Greg Grunberg back for Episode IX means he was conveniently written out of Episode IIX but they had the ability to call in others to help set-up a trap when the First Order followed.

The assuming transports won't be seen by scans is also ridiculously stupid. They are watching the ship. They can see transports launching. Ignoring a small ship or escape pods is possible. The only way the First Order doesn't see dozens of large transports ships leaving is pure stupidity. You have to assume the First Order is unable to see right in front of them.

DUDE!

The movie said hyperspace burns up massive amounts of fuel. You can not like it all you want but the movie spoon fed it to you. MULTIPLE TIMES!

They cloaked the ships! Did you miss that? They said it like 5 times! DJ cloaked his ship, too. They purposely setup the transport shot to show the broadside of the Home One, too. As a screen. Dislike it all you want but they gave you the reasons IN THE FILM.

Star Wars has always used WWII physics/fighting in space since the beginning. You must have really disliked Rogue One given the screen (and cloaking tech) was bad to you.

So many times fundamental rules of of storytelling were badly broken. If someone can do something that's gimmicky, then show it's a skill they have in advance. There are so many examples of where this has been done in other movies or tv that helps demonstrate what the rules for something like the Force and how people can use it in the world created.

The lack of clear world building is one of the biggest core issues with the new trilogy. They're making them up as they go. The rules needed to be established in a prior scene to make the battle between Kylo & Luke and the scene with Yoda and Luke make sense. They needed to set-up what the rules are and what these abilities are (astral projection, for example).

It's one of the core issues with Rey. For example, all of a sudden she's an ace pilot. This was set-up in a children's book that Rey was a self-taught pilot, but a few throw away lines and it gets explained. If there's a big jump with the skills a character has, it needs to be set-up. The new rules of how force ghosts work needs to be set-up and it wasn't. It's just "it's the force". The same with Leia floating through space.

Obi-Wan Kenobi snaps twigs and branches while talking on Dagobah, and sits on a log, as well as putting his arm on Force ghost Yoda's back at the end of Return of the Jedi. Nothing new really, just emphasised more heavily and obviously. When Kenobi said "strike me once and I will be more powerful than you can ever imagine" doesn't that give you the answer? Being a force ghost give you more advantages. Shouldn't be a question. We'll get an explanation most likely in the next movie. Or a book.

Also, did child Anakin being an ace pilot bother you? Teen-Farmer Luke? Arthur in the Once and Future King getting competent out of nowhere? They all had no training! It's a fantasy trope.

Hasn't Star Wars *ALWAYS* made it up as they go? Hence all the OT plot problems? Incest anybody?

[ClanAskani]

Also, did child Anakin being an ace pilot bother you? Teen-Farmer Luke? Arthur in the Once and Future King getting competent out of nowhere? They all had no training! It's a fantasy trope.

Anakin is established as an amazing podracer. That's a major plot point that explain why he's such a great pilot. Obi-Wan telling Luke that Anakin was already an amazing pilot when he met him - and that was piloting podracers maybe it doesn't exactly match but I think that is an example of explaining how something is possible without a throwaway line of dialogue.

Luke is established as a good pilot and he has Artoo in his X-Wing. Considering most commercial airlines can almost fly themselves now, droids can likely fly X-wings by themselves. Pilots are there to make emergency decisions.

Rey, on the other hand, is a scavenger. I think the kids literature helps build on the fact that she's very knowledgeable about spacecraft and is a self-taught pilot, but never is she shown flying anything before she flies the Falcon. Then she schools Han on how to fix the Falcon. She does spend all day digging through wreckage of spacecraft, but it's not explained why she would know about what was done to the Falcon.

[Scott Taylor]

I figure he never read them. He'd closed himself off from the Force. He wasno longer interested in that kind of thing. and he probably considered himself unworthy.

Yoda is so old he probably wrote those books!

[ClanAskani]

Here's my issue with Holdo. My first viewing, I was ok with Laura Dern's performance and liked the character more than I thought. The 2nd viewing, I saw more of the problems.

Nothing was done to help establish the character other than what people said about the character. The audience has to be told who she is. We don't see that Leia trusts her. We've never seen this person before. Poe doesn't even know her - despite growing up in the Rebellion and there being a small group of Resistance fighters.

How does Holdo's costume help establish her character? She looks like the combination of a character from the Hunger Games capital and a senator from the Prequels. She seems to be someone who's a politician. She doesn't look qualified to be a military leader. Why isn't she in a military uniform? The purple hair is fine, but why the dress? She seems out of place in this location.

What was missed was the opportunity to set-up who Holdo is with TFA, to show she has a relationship with Leia and to at least introduce her. Then there's more weight to Leia losing another person she is close to.

Holdo comes off as a politician who has no idea what she's doing, given a title she doesn't deserve and gets a lot of people killed. The audience wasn't given a reason to believe her plan would work or even like her. And her dialogue about liking Poe to Leia - comes out of nowhere in the context of what happened.

JJ and Rian could have collaborated to introduce Holdo at the end of TFA where reinforcements arrive. Instead there's two very separate movies, and next episode we get JJ back and he'll bring back his friends to play Rebel commanders.

[Carabas]

Anakin is established as an amazing podracer.

More like a craptacular Podracer who never made it to the finish line before. Who suddenly can do just about anything and win.

[Sacred Knight]

I'm not seeing the Rey as a pilot issue. Why do we need to be told beforehand for it to be valid? You can establish something via exposition, you can show it, or both. All are valid forms of espousing information. I'm not correlating the connection in the idea that because she's really good at something, as opposed to just being capable, that it needs to be established in exposition BEFORE being shown. What difference does it make the level of skill in regards to how that trait need first be gotten across to the audience? The rules are established, as you say, when we see her pilot the Falcon for the first time. How is that a wrong way to deliver that piece of info?

[BeastieRunner]

What was missed was the opportunity to set-up who Holdo is with TFA, to show she has a relationship with Leia and to at least introduce her. Then there's more weight to Leia losing another person she is close to.

Totally agree! That should've been Ackbar or Wedge. Hell, Poe was to die in VII. I would've taken Poe. Save Holdo to be the new Leia in IX.

Anakin is established as an amazing podracer. That's a major plot point that explain why he's such a great pilot. Obi-Wan telling Luke that Anakin was already an amazing pilot when he met him - and that was piloting podracers maybe it doesn't exactly match but I think that is an example of explaining how something is possible without a throwaway line of dialogue.

Luke is established as a good pilot and he has Artoo in his X-Wing. Considering most commercial airlines can almost fly themselves now, droids can likely fly X-wings by themselves. Pilots are there to make emergency decisions.

Rey, on the other hand, is a scavenger. I think the kids literature helps build on the fact that she's very knowledgeable about spacecraft and is a self-taught pilot, but never is she shown flying anything before she flies the Falcon. Then she schools Han on how to fix the Falcon. She does spend all day digging through wreckage of spacecraft, but it's not explained why she would know about what was done to the Falcon.

More like a craptacular Podracer who never made it to the finish line before. Who suddenly can do just about anything and win.

This. Ani was a shite podracer according to his friends. BUT! He was the only human that could do it.

Luke never piloted an X-Wing and BLEW UP the Danger Egg. R2 was knocked out and he turned the computer off. But Rey piloting when she's literally introduced knowing her way around tech and using it? That's worse than an 8-year old slave podracing AND blowing up the Death Star for Droids? IMHO, Luke and Rey make sense ... Anakin's stuff did not.

This is also not sci-fi but fantasy space opera because the Force is SPACE MAGIC and these 3 strong Force users are the protagonists of their SPACE MAGIC FANTASY films. If this happened in Star Trek or Firefly or something, sure I'd be on your side with that debate. But even then, they have characters like Wesley and so on that are savants.

[Grind]

Anakin was the only human to pod race and had amazing reflexes. It wasn’t so much that he won, but that he could do it at all. Also, in SW piloting a ship is like driving a car to us. Now having said that, no way am I doing the Indy 500.

[BeastieRunner]

Anakin was the only human to pod race and had amazing reflexes. It wasn’t so much that he won, but that he could do it at all. Also, in SW piloting a ship is like driving a car to us. Now having said that, no way am I doing the Indy 500.

[ClanAskani]

This. Ani was a shite podracer according to his friends. BUT! He was the only human that could do it.

Luke never piloted an X-Wing and BLEW UP the Danger Egg. R2 was knocked out and he turned the computer off. But Rey piloting when she's literally introduced knowing her way around tech and using it? That's worse than an 8-year old slave podracing AND blowing up the Death Star for Droids? IMHO, Luke and Rey make sense ... Anakin's stuff did not.

This is also not sci-fi but fantasy space opera because the Force is SPACE MAGIC and these 3 strong Force users are the protagonists of their SPACE MAGIC FANTASY films. If this happened in Star Trek or Firefly or something, sure I'd be on your side with that debate. But even then, they have characters like Wesley and so on that are savants.

It's one of those rules of good storytelling - if you have to have a gimmick later on that the character has a skill that defies audience belief that someone can do that, then you have to set it up. Preferably show the skill, not just put in dialogue. While you may not accept podracing or Luke's T-16 as evidence that Anakin and Luke can pilot later on, that's why Lucas included those references. He's trying to say these aren't cheats, they're skills the characters have.

JJ has a history of ignoring this completely. In Alias, JJ had Sydney do whatever the plot required and the explanation was Syd is amazing at everything and can speak every language or do anything imaginable and that's just because she's the star of the show. She needs to fly a plane for the episode, then that happened without any explanation because the writer wrote it that way. I see a lot of the same in Rey which makes her character seem Mary Sue-ish. I do like Alias, but it got old really fast.

Rian is slightly better in terms of characters, but he doesn't re-establish what the new rules of using the Force are. There are so many times throughout the movie that no one has ever used the Force in that way, but there's no even attempt to provide an explanation. And I don't think he cared or wanted to do any world-building. He wants to tell his story and someone else can figure out why things happened and what the new rules are.

In science fiction, you need to build the rules to the universe. It's fine to have some mysteries, but the Yoda scene should have been used to try to explain what would happen later with Luke's astral projection but it didn't. The way the OT are structured and especially ANH, the audience learns a something about the Force then sees it demonstrated. Ben explains the Force to Luke, then there's a cut to Vader talking about the power of the Force and choking a subordinate.

The prequels aren't quite so clear, but there's never any attempt in Last Jedi to try to do something similar to Lucas did in the OT to explain these new Force powers. We just all of a sudden see something happen and are suppose to understand that it's the Force and it's just a magic box of whatever the plot requires powers.

[Carabas]

It's one of those rules of good storytelling - if you have to have a gimmick later on that the character has a skill that defies audience belief that someone can do that, then you have to set it up.

Only if this skill is somehow rare or exceptional.

In the Star Wars universe, piloting a spaceship is no more special than driving a car.
Also, it was shown before that Rey is very tech-savvy.

In science fiction...

Star Wars isn't science fiction and the Force isn't science.

The prequels aren't quite so clear, but there's never any attempt in Last Jedi to try to do something similar to Lucas did in the OT to explain these new Force powers.

Lucas never bothered to explain these things. What the hell? Since when is the Force TK? Holy F! Out of nowhere the Emperor starts casting lighting bolts. What a massive giant plot hole.

[Buried Alien]

This. Ani was a shite podracer according to his friends. BUT! He was the only human that could do it.

I always thought Anakin failed to finish his races because his gear was crap.

Luke never piloted an X-Wing and BLEW UP the Danger Egg. R2 was knocked out and he turned the computer off. But Rey piloting when she's literally introduced knowing her way around tech and using it? That's worse than an 8-year old slave podracing AND blowing up the Death Star for Droids? IMHO, Luke and Rey make sense ... Anakin's stuff did not.

I get this feeling that Rey probably hijacked ships from the Jakku junkyards and took them out for joyrides pre-FORCE AWAKENS, though she never strayed far from Jakku. I also figured that she knew the present state of the Falcon better than Han did because its later owners made modifications/upgrades with which Han was unfamiliar, as he hadn't seen the ship for years. Han already had a long set pattern for how he used the Falcon, whereas Rey didn't, which probably helped her to understand its present configuration better than Han did.

I'm also not entirely sure that THE FORCE AWAKENS was the first time Rey was inside the Falcon, though it was probably the first time she flew it.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[Charmed]

Rey knowing how to fly didn't shock me one bit considering everyone and their mamma in the GFFA knows how to fly a ship. Granted, I was silently judging her skills in comparison to Hera Syndulla, but I do that every time I see a SW character get into a cockpit.