Washington Post really liked The Last Jedi And wants you to know it.

[Sacred Knight]

That doesn't really cover any of the points I was making outside of one intentional twisting of a sentence without the context. He used the dark side to maim Vader. He was doing it in anger and with dark intent over Vader's taunts about Leia. That's canon. And not what Yoda and Obi-Wan had in mind as the motivation to destroy Vader. They wanted him to destroy the threat but not turn to the dark side and just replace Vader in the process. And that was close to happening, but Luke overcame. And that is the entire crux of the argument. It is established within the character beforehand that he can consider dark intent even momentarily, and thus the prerequisite you yourself set is matched. This was established within the character over 35 years ago.

For the record I'm not arguing Luke was right or justified in what he did. It wasn't, it was a mistake, and it was within previous characterization (and indeed the characterization of any Jedi) to imagine making an unfortunate mistake. It wasn't wildly out of character. I respect anyone with the opinion that such a creative choice shouldn't have been made in the first place, so be it if that's the way one feels, I can understand that. But its just not unimaginably out of character when put to scrutiny to not only his character but most importantly above all the rules and the risks of the religion he practices.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

He used the dark side to maim Vader.

A single moment of anger is not the path to dark side. By that logic, Obi-Wan was giving into the dark side when he went after Darth Maul in revenge for him killing Qui-Gon before his eyes.

And not what Yoda and Obi-Wan had in mind as the motivation to destroy Vader.

Yoda and Obi-Wan wanted Luke to kill Vader. What they didn't anticipate was that Palpatine also wanted Luke to kill Vader. Neither Obi-Wan or Yoda could ever outsmart Palps.

And that is the entire crux of the argument.

No it is not. No version of ROTJ has the last scene ending with Luke attacking Vader in anger and then fade to black. For all of Lucas' re-edits, ROTJ's final moments are Luke attacks Vader, throws his saber away, gets fried by Palps, saved by Dad, has a last scene with Dad, burns Dad's pyre, hangs out with friends and Ewoks, sees Force ghosts and they all pose in a group tableau. In any linear narrative story, and Star Wars very much is a linear narrative story, you go from Point A to Point B to Point C. The OT ended with the characters, in this case Luke, at Point C. TLJ makes a drastic and radical turn on the character without anything established to justify this particular turn.. The justifications for this amount to cherry picking. Cherry picking is fine for online arguments, academic articles, or quote mining stuff. You can write an article on Luke's character and allude to stuff in the middle of it but you can't use that to tell an ongoing storyline with any sense of coherence.

I respect anyone with the opinion that such a creative choice shouldn't have been made in the first place, so be it if that's the way one feels, I can understand that.

That's fine. we can leave it at that.

[Agent Z]

That's still way too far. And it's absolutely not established at any point before that Luke would go this far.

Sacred Knight already pointed this out but this was not the first time Luke nearly made a mistake and killed someone.

I agree that Snape's scum, but at the end of the day people don't think James Potter was right to bully him simply because of who Snape turned out to be later on, right?

People, rational people at least, don't blame James for Snape's sins either.

Kylo is not the one on trial in this sub-discussion. Luke is. The issue of Kylo's redemption and so on, and for that matter Vader's redemption is a separate topic entirely.

The discussion is whether or not Luke is responsible for Kylo Ren's downfall which he is not. This is the fault of Kylo Ren and as TROS would have us believe, Palpatine.

A single moment of anger is not the path to dark side.

And a single moment of considering killing your nephew because you can sense him becoming the new Darth Vader, which he did, does not make Luke a nephew-killing religious nut.

Luke maims his father in anger and almost becomes a Sith, people forgive him. Luke senses darkness in his nephew and remembering what happened the last time a Skywalker started dabbling with the dark side, briefly considers ending him only to stop before he can harm a single hair on his head and all of a sudden he's on par with Palpatine himself? How does that work?

[WebLurker]

Sacred Knight already pointed this out but this was not the first time Luke nearly made a mistake and killed someone.

People, rational people at least, don't blame James for Snape's sins either.

The discussion is whether or not Luke is responsible for Kylo Ren's downfall which he is not. This is the fault of Kylo Ren and as TROS would have us believe, Palpatine.

And a single moment of considering killing your nephew because you can sense him becoming the new Darth Vader, which he did, does not make Luke a nephew-killing religious nut.

Luke maims his father in anger and almost becomes a Sith, people forgive him. Luke senses darkness in his nephew and remembering what happened the last time a Skywalker started dabbling with the dark side, briefly considers ending him only to stop before he can harm a single hair on his head and all of a sudden he's on par with Palpatine himself? How does that work?

Long story short, I think some people wanted Luke the legend, not Luke the man, forgetting that the latter was what we had always been given and the former never existed in the first place.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Long story short, I think some people wanted Luke the legend, not Luke the man, forgetting that the latter was what we had always been given and the former never existed in the first place.

That might be how some people see it. But others simply see it as wanting a coherent and satisfying linear development of character that rewards engagement.

[Powerboy]

I think its funny that if you didn't like TLJ you are a "right-wing troll". I know many people that are far from right wing and did not like that movie.

Unfortunately, the accusation of sexism/ racism/ right-wing troll has become an easy way to take control of the narrative and not have to respond to the actual criticisms. In these situations, there will be genuine right-wing trolls so it makes it easy to focus only on them and ignore that there is plenty of criticism not based on that.

[Powerboy]

I think the reason Rose didn't work was....

1. She is linked to Canto Bight, and no one likes Canto Bight.

2. She got in the way of Finn's sacrifice.

3. Rian couldn't find the right balance between movie star Kelly Marie Tran and mechanic Rose Tico and went too far towards the latter. Now before everyone flips out keep in mind that Rey was a scavenger but was still very much Daisy Ridley playing a scavenger

In defense of the bigot argument, I saw multiple youtube videos referring to the "Fat Asian b***h" which makes it really hard to pretend there isn't racism, sexism and even fat shaming involved in these criticisms for some people. It's very much like when I saw a Facebook post about "Captain Marvel" and the first fifty posts were about Larson's butt and how she apparently shouldn't be the star of an MCU movie because her butt isn't shapely enough.

Granted that Rose was a symbol for a lot of stuff that set people off like the Animal Rights diversion (and I agree with what she was saying but it seemed forced into the movie like a whole lot of other stuff) and the interference with Finn's sacrifice.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Unfortunately, the accusation of sexism/ racism/ right-wing troll has become an easy way to take control of the narrative and not have to respond to the actual criticisms. In these situations, there will be genuine right-wing trolls so it makes it easy to focus only on them and ignore that there is plenty of criticism not based on that.

Which is weird because this isn't some new thing. When Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises came out, right-wing pundits made a big deal about the villain Bane having a similar name to Bain Capital, the firm that Mitt Romney worked for (The third Nolan movie came out the same year as the 2012 Election). Then the actual movie came out and people realized that politically it was more of a right-of-center movie with Anti-Occupy fears and so on. Fact is that a political controversy doesn't necessarily cohere or fit with the actual content of the movie, or serve as a validation of it. And Star Wars especially has always been weird about its political iconography. Like you know the medal scene in ANH quotes from Reifenstahl's Triumph of the Will but that scene is about the good guys when usually the attitude is to use Nazi imagery for the bad guys (as done elsewhere in the series).

As it is, I think TLJ is quite dodgy about representation and not as woke as people think it is.
-- The movie has two Latino male actors playing characters, one is Oscar Isaac's Poe Dameron, and the other is Benicio del Toro's DJ. The former is a kind of "loose-canon", independent, and scheming guy who plots a mutiny and gets dressed down by white women. The other character, DJ, is shown as a duplicitous, sleazy, and nihilistic creep.
-- John Boyega's Finn who was a co-lead in TFA ends up being demoted to a side-character in the story of an OC and forced into an inorganic romance arc. TFA is imperfect in that the major black character is introduced as a Storm Trooper and former child soldier (which has a lot of unfortunate coding), and then after being hyped and set up as the Force-sensitive "Luke" the finale has it being Rey. This movie reduces Finn even more than before.
-- From a perspective of masculinity, the movie does seem to play Kylo Ren far more straight than the previous film. Ben Solo and Kylo Ren is played very seriously and very straight in TLJ. So whatever flaws and issues he has, him ending the movie more or less on the up and up does validate his particular toxic masculinity far more than Darth Vader was in the OT (since after all the dude totally fails his plans in ESB). So the movie emasculates so-to-speak the POC actors in the resistance, while giving Ben Solo and Kylo Ren his biggest moments in the entire ST. And again the guy playing Kylo is white.
-- This is also the case with Luke. In the OT, Luke was a softer guy, emotional, and fairly vulnerable and sensitive. Him becoming a grizzled, sad, old cranky man ends up making a more unconventional original take on masculinity into a more conventional one.
-- As for the whole exploitation theme at Canto Bight, which many say was introducing politics into the story. It mostly centers on a bunch of white orphans and child workers which is essentially classically Victorian (i.e. Oliver Twist) and has basically been normalized in fantasy to the extent of removing any bite that such a strand once had.
-- As for the female characters, Rey is undermined in favor of Kylo in terms of being the actual protagonist of the series. At the end of TLJ, you have a sense that this is Kylo's story more than hers. Kylo tells her, "You have no place in the story" and the film's final shot (which historically in the OT always had Luke and main cast at the center in a tableau) features some random broom boy on Canto Bight rather than Rey, the general idea is that he's as important as she is, which rather than any case of equality, always means that a female protagonist can't actually be the true center of her story. For all its flaws, TROS actually does make Rey the protagonist of the ST and does make her central to the story.
-- Admiral Holdo's entire plan and ideas doesn't pass muster in terms of believable military structure so the execution of her story rather than letting the female character command her own via her demonstrated intelligence ends up basically twisting in and out for a series of fake outs and so on.

On the whole, I think TLJ is pretty dodgy on almost anything you can credit for. And to be honest the overall point of TLJ doesn't really make sense out of insular inter-fandom thing.

At its heart, the Lucas SW movies are about real stuff more than fan stuff. The OT was about resistance, about the fact that there's always more to people than you would know (Han Solo being more than a scoundrel, Yoda saying "size matters not", Vader being Anakin and also redeemable). The PT was about the downfall of democracy, the fear of death, and paranoia. Whereas the ST doesn't really speak to anything real and tangible, and certainly not TLJ.

[abulafia]

i dislike almost all of TLJ, but i don´t get the milk hate.
he has been a farm boy! how is milking an alien being out of character?
glad we were not shown him milking the evaporators(*sarcasm*).

are modern persons just disgusted by the most basic mechanisms of life?

[WebLurker]

Granted that Rose was a symbol for a lot of stuff that set people off like the Animal Rights diversion (and I agree with what she was saying but it seemed forced into the movie like a whole lot of other stuff) and the interference with Finn's sacrifice.

The latter complaint never made any sense; the movie clearly shows that Finn's suicide run isn't going to take out the cannon, much less save the Resistance.

i dislike almost all of TLJ, but i don´t get the milk hate.
he has been a farm boy! how is milking an alien being out of character?
glad we were not shown him milking the evaporators(*sarcasm*).

are modern persons just disgusted by the most basic mechanisms of life?

I think that's just people trying to find more excuses to hate the movie and harping on that "proves" that they're right to its supporters.

[Agent Z]

And Star Wars especially has always been weird about its political iconography. Like you know the medal scene in ANH quotes from Reifenstahl's Triumph of the Will but that scene is about the good guys when usually the attitude is to use Nazi imagery for the bad guys (as done elsewhere in the series).

This is from the same trilogy where the bad guys are Nazi stand-ins yet Leia and Lando are the only characters who aren’t white men. It isnÂ’t surprising that this franchise ended up with a right-wing contingent among its fanbase. When you add in the racial stereotypes Lucas introduced into series with the prequels it makes the defense of those films all the more laughable and makes it look like its defenders only want to spite the sequels.

-- The movie has two Latino male actors playing characters, one is Oscar Isaac's Poe Dameron, and the other is Benicio del Toro's DJ. The former is a kind of "loose-canon", independent, and scheming guy who plots a mutiny and gets dressed down by white women. The other character, DJ, is shown as a duplicitous, sleazy, and nihilistic creep.

Poe is a deconstruction of the cocky ace pilot archetype that Star Wars and other stories have pushed so strongly. And DJ is a foil to Lando by showing that not all smugglers have hidden hearts of gold. These characters have a lot more complexity to them

-- John Boyega's Finn who was a co-lead in TFA ends up being demoted to a side-character in the story of an OC and forced into an inorganic romance arc.

I honestly wonder if people who say this actually know what the word “side character” actually means.

-- From a perspective of masculinity, the movie does seem to play Kylo Ren far more straight than the previous film. Ben Solo and Kylo Ren is played very seriously and very straight in TLJ. So whatever flaws and issues he has, him ending the movie more or less on the up and up does validate his particular toxic masculinity far more than Darth Vader was in the OT (since after all the dude totally fails his plans in ESB). So the movie emasculates so-to-speak the POC actors in the resistance, while giving Ben Solo and Kylo Ren his biggest moments in the entire ST. And again the guy playing Kylo is white.

So Finn and Poe are emasculated because the former was criticized by women and the latter is a “side character” in a female character’s arc (he isn’t) but the movie is the one propping up toxic masculinity by having the villain do villainous things and still failing?

-- This is also the case with Luke. In the OT, Luke was a softer guy, emotional, and fairly vulnerable and sensitive. Him becoming a grizzled, sad, old cranky man ends up making a more unconventional original take on masculinity into a more conventional one.

So you missed the part where Luke being like this was a bad thing?

-- As for the whole exploitation theme at Canto Bight, which many say was introducing politics into the story. It mostly centers on a bunch of white orphans and child workers which is essentially classically Victorian (i.e. Oliver Twist) and has basically been normalized in fantasy to the extent of removing any bite that such a strand once had.

So now we're accusing the movie of not being political enough?

As for the female characters, Rey is undermined in favor of Kylo in terms of being the actual protagonist of the series.

You can keep saying this, it’s never going to be true.

At the end of TLJ, you have a sense that this is Kylo's story more than hers. Kylo tells her, "You have no place in the story" and the film's final shot (which historically in the OT always had Luke and main cast at the center in a tableau) features some random broom boy on Canto Bight rather than Rey, the general idea is that he's as important as she is, which rather than any case of equality, always means that a female protagonist can't actually be the true center of her story.

You are giving Ren way too much credit.

For all its flaws, TROS actually does make Rey the protagonist of the ST and does make her central to the story.

TROS turns Rey into a pawn of Palpatine and a prize to be won by Kylo Ren. TLJ ended with Rey restoring Luke’s faith, planning to continue the Jedi and rejecting Kylo Ren’s temptation.

Admiral Holdo's entire plan and ideas doesn't pass muster in terms of believable military structure so the execution of her story rather than letting the female character command her own via her demonstrated intelligence ends up basically twisting in and out for a series of fake outs and so on.

She’s smart enough to understand that a hothead who got several of her people killed should not be blindly trusted.

In defense of the bigot argument, I saw multiple youtube videos referring to the "Fat Asian b***h" which makes it really hard to pretend there isn't racism, sexism and even fat shaming involved in these criticisms for some people. It's very much like when I saw a Facebook post about "Captain Marvel" and the first fifty posts were about Larson's butt and how she apparently shouldn't be the star of an MCU movie because her butt isn't shapely enough.

Granted that Rose was a symbol for a lot of stuff that set people off like the Animal Rights diversion (and I agree with what she was saying but it seemed forced into the movie like a whole lot of other stuff) and the interference with Finn's sacrifice.

I don't believe everyone who hates TLJ or the sequels as a whole are racist. I do think that people are all too quick to dismiss the very real issue of bigotry within the SW fan base.

[MASTER-OF-SUPRISE]

In defense of the bigot argument, I saw multiple youtube videos referring to the "Fat Asian b***h" which makes it really hard to pretend there isn't racism, sexism and even fat shaming involved in these criticisms for some people. It's very much like when I saw a Facebook post about "Captain Marvel" and the first fifty posts were about Larson's butt and how she apparently shouldn't be the star of an MCU movie because her butt isn't shapely enough.

Granted that Rose was a symbol for a lot of stuff that set people off like the Animal Rights diversion (and I agree with what she was saying but it seemed forced into the movie like a whole lot of other stuff) and the interference with Finn's sacrifice.

While these bigots do exist sites like syfy wire and Forbes went and tried to group everyone who dislikes TLJ a bigot of some kind. Even going so far as to take a sentence of J.J Abrams out of context for a headline. Knowing that the headline is what people would remember.

[WebLurker]

While these bigots do exist sites like syfy wire and Forbes went and tried to group everyone who dislikes TLJ a bigot of some kind. Even going so far as to take a sentence of J.J Abrams out of context for a headline. Knowing that the headline is what people would remember.

Which one?

[MASTER-OF-SUPRISE]

Which one?

The one where he's quoted as saying people who dislike The Last Jedi fear women. A lot of sites used that as a headline to draw attention. Sure they'll clarify in the articles that they meant certain people. However they knew quite well the headline is what would stick. Typical clickbait stuff. Clickbait is the digital version of sensationalism.

[ChrisIII]

Not sure about Kelly Marie Tran being a movie star; she was mainly an unknown doing comedy short films before Rose.