Star Wars: Episode VIII (The Last Jedi) - SPOILERS POSSIBLE*

Okay, we can play this game, although your snarky tone might yield less friendly responses than mine

Yes, but does just anyone get "called" directly to Skywalker's lightsaber hidden in a basement?

Fair enough, but pretty good fighting skills doesn't equal becoming so strong in the Force a week later that she can fight like the Jedi Masters of old who required years of training to become that effective of a fighter, in my opinion.

I agree with this and this is definitely a point a lot of the TLJ/TFA critics fixate on, but they made her look more effective as a fighter than they probably should have, again in my opinion. They could have made it a little more realistic in that regard.

That's one way of looking at it for sure, but I think you're forcing your narrative by assuming that's what they meant with that line. It could also mean that going back to Jakku would be a waste of time in trying to wait for or find her family, that she could discover those things by moving forward on her journey that had just begun. See? A matter of perspective, but you're condescendingly acting like it's cut and dry.

Again, who taught her how to do this? What kind of training? Are we just to assume that Rey is the most naturally gifted Force-user in the history of the universe? To some people, that's a (marketing) cop out that I won't elaborate on more than saying "Disney princesses."

As I think I have effectively argued above, I don't think all of it makes perfect sense requiring no expectation. It's fine that some people want to just let the storytellers tell their story and just want to take it at face-value. There's something to be said about that, because after all, this is in the fantasy genre, so of course not everything will make sense in our world. That doesn't mean we need some extensive backstory on her, but you can't fault people for expecting there to be some sort of universal continuity within the franchise.

The other thing you're leaving out is that this sequel trilogy has been marketed as the continuation/conclusion of the Skywalker saga, so for the main Force user to seemingly have NO connections to the Skywalkers (despite being CALLED to the Skywalker lightsaber...not the Windu lightsaber, not the Kenobi lightsaber, not the Yoda lightsaber, etc you get the point) might be disappointing to some fans. I don't think there would be nearly the amount of backlash if this trilogy wasn't marketed as such and instead had little to no connection to the original Skywalker saga.

And just in case you decide to write me off as a "hater" like the last guy did, I liked a lot of TLJ and don't think it was as terrible as some others have claimed. If I rated TFA as 4/5, I'd rate TLJ as 3/5 (compared to TPM being 2/5, ROTJ being 3.5/5, etc). I just think there are legitimate gripes with TLJ and I feel some people like yourself are simply writing off people who disagree with your praise.

 

Rey in another movie could be a kid growing up in Arizona but can win a surfing contest in Hawaii 6 months later; or someone with no martial arts training but can defeat the best dojo with no training aside from auto detailing. Don’t underestimate the force. One American learned to speak Japanese and defeated a samurai within months and then went on to dance with wolves. The force was strong in him.

It’s just Hollywood. The audience like to cheer for the underdog. No need to be so serious.

 

Actually I don't think that this is so important, but I'll play, hope you don't mind a bit of fun:

1) Anyone can be born strong in the force. Any random person anywhere of any alien race. It is not solely an inherited 'power'.

That’s clear already from the previous episodes. What’s not clear is why this girl of all people and alien races in the galaxy is the only creature, capable of learning and developing so fast certain force skills, that normally takes years in the pre-Rey SW universe as we knew it.


2) Rey survived on her own in a tough environment and we can see from the start she had pretty good fighting skills with her staff, it's not like she's some sheltered child having to learn from scratch.

I suppose she’s not the only creature in the galaxy that had to deal with tough environment survival. Hard living alone isn’t enough for having excellent fighting technique, good pilot skills, and easy command of the force.


3) when she fought Kylo he was half dead from Chewies blaster hit, he was in no shape to fight her so it's not a surprise she did well against him

I don’t have in hand the medical report about Kylo’s state during this battle, but having in mind that Yoda could barely walk, and was still capable to fight and move heavy objects makes me think that using the force by someone experienced and well trained doesn’t depend that much of his physical shape.


4) Maz says in TFA "The belonging you seek is not behind you, it is ahead" meaning her parents, whoever they were, are not coming back and not important. She has to move on.

I can’t say anything about this. Never paid attention on those supposedly important and revealing words of Maz.


5) In TFA when Rey is escaping Kylo senses she is powerful and learning fast so it's no surprise she attempts to use the force powers Kylo uses on her to use on others.

So your main idea is that all Rey’s skills are due to the fact that she learns extremely fast. That’s possible, but as long as there’s no such precedent in SW before, it would be nice if they enlighten us how that’s possible. And maybe to establish a new SW dynasty, originating from Rey’s character -the Fastlearners. But why implementing her in this saga, the Fastlearners deserves their own separate 9 part movie.

 

Did they really make her look that effective, though? If memory serves, Rey spends most of that fight on the defensive, being driven backwards. Her Palpatine-like forward-saber thrusts were unable to stop Kylo from pressing ahead, until she was finally cornered. Kylo had an opportunity to end it there, but he didn't. Instead, she used the moment to "quiet her mind" and tap into the Force (a la Qui-Gon Jinn's explanation to young Anakin), and only then was she able to repel Kylo. My impression was that she was far removed from having any finesse or fighting technique that comes from actual training. It kind of reminds me of the moment in Excalibur when King Arthur, bested in combat, called upon the power of the sword to defeat the superior Lancelot as he loomed over him in certain victory.

 

Yep. LOL. I post on my phone most these days. I don't always spell check myself when I post and my auto-correct is useless. The edit window is short here. I usually reread my posts hours later and cringe at all the spelling and punctuation mistakes, and then it's too late.

Still though I think most people get what I'm trying to say. So no harm done.

 

How did she look fighting in TLJ which took place maybe a week or so later? Okay, so in your eyes she didn't look like a good fighter in TFA but still managed to defeat him by tapping into the Force. You prove my point, even though I think we're just arguing semantics really.

And the Excalibur reference doesn't really make sense here. Excalibur is a magic sword with magical abilities. Are we now to assume the Skywalker lightsaber is a magic laser sword?

 

Did I say she called upon a magic sword? No. I said she called upon the Force. It recalled for me that moment in Excalibur; I didn't say it was a carbon copy of that scene.

As for her fighting in TLJ, well, it is very soon after TFA. I'll grant you that. We do see her skills with the staff as she practices with it, serving as a reminder to the audience of the experience she already had before she ever acquired Luke's lightsaber. She then switches to the saber, and we can now appreciate how far she's come with it since her fight with Kylo at Starkiller Base. YMMV, I suppose, regarding whether or not you buy into the progress made in that short amount of time.

 

Okay, and your comparison made little sense in this situation. Is the Force just magic then that can be summoned whenever convenient? Or is there more to it in the established laws of the SW universe? That's the point many of us are making--Rey's mastery of the Force in such a short period of time goes against what many of us believe are established rules of their respective universe.

I hope they explain it in IX better than something akin to "Well she's a Disney princess so the rules don't matter. Every little girl can be a princess!" Heck, they'll probably retcon her into being the actual balance to the Force that Anakin/Luke were supposed to be.

 

This speaks to the "Rey as a vessel for the Force" theory that I happen to believe in. If we go back to what Qui-Gon tells Anakin, and also what Obi-Wan tells Luke:

...we can see that if one quiets your mind, you can hear the midi-chlorians conveying the will of the Force, allowing it to take control of your actions. In The Force Awakens, Rey is able to quiet her mind, tap into the Force and find a way to repel Kylo. It's completely consistent with the "established laws of the SW universe," just in a manner we've never seen before. The Force is a two-way relationship, per Obi-Wan Kenobi, but we've only ever seen it from one direction-- the end-user manipulating the Force. It's possible that in this case that the Force is willing itself through Rey. (The Last Jedi novelization makes a strong case in support of this theory.) It's no coincidence that the movie is called The Force Awakens as it is the Force that is awakening within Rey. She even says in The Last Jedi that "Something inside me has always been there, but now it's.. awake. And I'm afraid. I don't know what it is and what to do with it. And I need help." She didn't seek this out; it sought her, and she can't run and hide from it. Hardly sounds like a Disney Princess to me!

 

See I don't think that line is open to any type of interpretation at all, it seems very clear to me. That's she waiting for someone who isn't ever going to come back and she needs to move on and build a new family. I can't see how it could mean anything else and then by definition that means she wasn't 'hidden' there by a Skywalker at some point.

Indeed Daisy Ridley said during TLJ press that she thought it was pretty clear in TFA what had happened to her parents or who she was/wasn't related to and she referred to a line of dialogue but didn't say what line, but I think it must have been what Maz says.

Being drawn to the lightsaber - nothing too big a deal for me. She was very strong in the force and it's a Jedi weapon, it could just be like a Jedi detector, it would attract any 'lightside' person exceptionally strong in the force to it. And again, her 'vision' - we know so little about how the force works that it's difficult to make a rational explaination but it seems like a huge leap to just say 'that must mean she's a Skywalker'.

 

A deep-dive TLJ theory I cooked up: Luke knew his time was up the moment he met Rey

Spoiler

Early on the film, Snoke tells Ben Solo, "When I found you, I saw raw, untamed power." Later, Luke tells Rey, "I've seen this raw strength only once before, in Ben Solo. It didn't scare me enough then. It does now."

Why does it scare Luke more now?

I wonder if it has something to do with the idea of "Darkness rising, and Light to meet it." Like Snoke, Luke surely thought that he was the Light to Ben's Darkness. But now that Rey is before him, seeking training, Luke realizes that is no longer true. But what does that mean for Luke's future? If the emphasis is on that yin/yang concept of balance, does he even have a future? By training Rey, is he signing his own death warrant, in a sense? Is it any surprise that Snoke and Luke are removed from the equation in the same movie, leaving the Force once again in balance?

 

I believe this movie's biggest problem is that Rian or someone made the decision to set it so close to the events of TFA. If the Last Jedi was set even, say, three or Four months later, the whole Rey being too powerful thing wouldn't matter as much, because just as Luke went from hothead who could barely levitate rocks and got his ass handed to him by Vader to wise and powerful Jedi Knight in like the 6 months to a year time gap between Empire and Jedi,the audience could have handwaved her advancement between VII and VIII more comvincingly. I know, the malcontents who hated Rey from the start would still grouce, but the rest of us would just go with it mostly.

With a few minor adjustments ,the film as presented could have remained mostly the same. Just maybe some reordering of the scenes and maybe a few minor reshoots or dialogue additions. In fact all they had to do was instead of the Resistance just leaving their base from the Force Awakens, just change it so that when the movie opens they had already fled to another base in another system and the First Order just found this one. Right there allows the time frame to be months rather than days between movies. Would have fixed a few narrative problems.

As for the Luke and Rey stuff, after the opening sequence and Finn waking up, just establish with dialogue from Poe telling Finn he's been in a coma for three months and Rey has gone. Finn could say " where?"

Title card : Three months ago...

Then we see Ach-To and we pick up with Rey and Luke exactly as we see in the movie and throughout the movie Rey and Luke's story arc just eventually catches up with the rest. Maybe a few extra bits denoting the passage of time, maybe a training montage or two, and bingo, that's solved.

 

God is in the detail...

 

True, but one can also obsess too much over minute details that really doesn't warrent it, but I do feel the short time frame between movies does cause unavoidable questions and narrative problems, problems that could have been easily fixed with some tweaks.

It's a natural inclination to nitpick problems and narrative issues when you actively dislike a film or TV show and thus overlook things if you like something. Bias plays a role of course. if one is objective, ALL the star wars movies have varrying degrees of problems and it's disingenuous when people say the OT was flawless and it's the Prequel trilogy and now the sequel trilogy that is problematic and are ruining the flawless legacy of the OT and therefore Star Wars is " forever ruined" by their mere existence and it's all a conspiracy by SJW's to kill all white men. Its also disengenuous to say that TLJ is flawless and perfect and to point out or aknowledge any problems automatically makes you a woman hating sexist or hater. Of course none of that is true.

I personally liked the movie, but I'm not blind to the problems with it. It doesn't ruin the movie for me. I realize everyone is different.

 

We don't know she's dead.

"The bridge separated from the rest of the ship on impact and I dropped out of hyperspace a couple of light years away. Took me a week to flag down a passing freighter full of Nerfs...I may never wash the smell off."

 

The strongest remaining Force-sensitive besides Luke might receive that call. In fact, she might be the strongest period.

Uh, we don't know that all Jedi masters required "years" of training.

And where did the Sith train?

 

From the novelization of TLJ talking about the scene in TFA where Kylo tries to mind probe Rey.....

"Kylo had retreated at finding Rey in his head—had practically fled from her. But that had not been the end of that strange, sudden connection. She had seen more—far more. Somehow, almost instinctually, she knew how he accessed some of the powers at his command—even though she didn’t understand them. It was as if his training had become hers, unlocking and flinging open door after door in her mind."

 

In ancient times, the Sith were a near-human species with their own planet, where everyone had some talent in the Dark Side. They founded an empire, intermingled with humans, and eventually began to bump up against the growing Republic. There was a long war between the Republic and the Jedi (based on the Core worlds like Coruscant, Alderaan, etc.) and the Sith empire, (based on Moraband in the Outer Rim.)

The Jedi were always able to keep the Sith at bay because by their nature the Sith were just as likely to attack one another in power struggles etc. So the leaders of the Sith decided that they would abandon the Imperial structure and rule as a council of equals, fed by a series of Sith Academies. But one Sith apprentice realized that this was not compatible with the Dark Side of the Force, and took it upon himself to destroy the New Sith.

This meant the Sith lost the war, and seemed to have been wiped out, but this one Sith Lord, Darth Bane, saw this as necessary to re-establish the Sith Order and run the long game that would enable them to defeat the Jedi and reclaim the Galaxy.

So he set up the Rule of Two, which Yoda references in his 'always two there are' speech in the Phantom Menace - of the Sith proper there would only be two, Master and Apprentice. Though they made use of lesser Dark Side users in their plots (and always had a line out for a replacement apprentice or two,) the real secrets and powers were only taught by the Master to the Apprentice, as they secretly gained enough power to overthrow the Jedi and take over the Galaxy.

To become Master of the Sith, the apprentice must kill his own master and take his place. This way only the strongest and most powerful Dark Side user would be Master of the Sith Order. If the apprentice was killed in the attempt, that meant he was unworthy and a new apprentice would have to be trained.

Although some of the details of this history are not necessarily canon anymore, the Rule of Two is, and you can see it in practice when Vader says to Luke, 'join me, defeat the Emperor, and rule the Galaxy as father and son.' He wants to replace Palpatine himself with Luke as his new apprentice, just how Bane drew it up. And in case the first apprentice was not up to it, you get lines like Palpatine's 'Strike him down and take his place by my side' to Luke.

So, short answer, each Sith apprentice was someone naturally talented in the Force who was trained by his or her Sith Master in the Dark Side.

Most of the time those chosen as Sith apprentices were naturally strong in the Dark Side (as in Darth Maul, or Palpatine himself,) as the Jedi couldn't always sense this latent ability and so would not choose them as initiates for the Jedi temple. There were also Jedi that turned, such as Dooku and Anakin.

 

I think the whole point of the movie was to prep the next generation of leaders (Poe, Finn, Rey) because the current one (Leia, Luke, Ackbar, even Holdo) couldn't last forever. In that regard, TLJ is very much a transitional episode, picking up the younger characters up as they were last seen in TFA, then molding them into the leaders we will see them become in Episode IX.

 

How's that related to the Laura Dern's character and to the fact that she was introduced just in order to die after about 15 minutes of screen time?

 

Amilyn Holdo may be new to us, but she and Leia go way back to their teenage years, when they were both in a kind of explorers club together. This was all chronicled in the novel, Leia: Princess of Alderaan. Plus, she was introduced in TLJ as already having experience, being an Admiral and having served at the Battle of Chyron Belt. She's part of the old guard, even if she's unfamiliar to us.

 

May be there's some misunderstanding, I was referring to this discussion:

The Zodiac said: ↑
Still miffed they brought in a whole new character instead of letting beloved Admiral Ackbar be the one to make the sacrifice by crashing into the star destroyer. It would be a much more moving scene if it were an established character we cared about. And I love Laura Dern, so don't give me none of that chauvinist talk.

bferr1 said: ↑
I think the whole point of the movie was to prep the next generation of leaders (Poe, Finn, Rey) because the current one (Leia, Luke, Ackbar, even Holdo) couldn't last forever. In that regard, TLJ is very much a transitional episode, picking up the younger characters up as they were last seen in TFA, then molding them into the leaders we will see them become in Episode IX.

delmonaco said: ↑
How's that related to the Laura Dern's character and to the fact that she was introduced just in order to die after about 15 minutes of screen time?

 

Ah, okay. Holdo, as an unexpected choice, is essentially a foil for Poe. He thought he was in line for the promotion once Leia was hospitalized, but he didn't get it because of his unauthorized military action against the Dreadnought. I think he would have been fine being passed over for Ackbar; but being passed over for someone unknown to him was too much for his ego to bear. With Ackbar, there's no conflict; with Holdo, you get mutiny.

 

I don't see the problem here, this is very basic storytelling. She is a plot device to move the story on. Simple as that. In almost all great films and books there are characters like that that function to aid the plot. It's not a big issue.

 

It might be basic storytelling and a "plot device," but IMO it was poorly executed. If we have to read all of the Disney-sanctioned books and comics to grasp the weight of Holdo's character and therefore death then IMO it's poorly developed. YMMV though.