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Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi


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#121 Mitsukara

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Posted 29 March 2018 - 01:57 PM

The Palpatine musical cue I'm referring to is this one:

https://youtu.be/8H26Hdv3i0U?t=2m22s

...but the usage of it doesn't necessarily mean anything directly relevant to Palpatine. I just think it was previously used only for him, in ROTJ and maybe in ROTS (I want to say they played it in one of those scenes in his office on Coruscant, but I'm not sure).

 

When I say "dark" I mean with the tone of all the gritty warfare, suffering, dying, struggling, hopelessness, etc. Five planets got destroyed in Episode VII, presumably all inhabited; that's even worse than the destruction of Alderaan. Tonally, they also emphasized it as a horrific thing, with people looking up on the planet before it gets hit. Kylo's murder of his father is much more brutal and unexpected than Obi Wan's smiling sacrifice in episode IV, and Han probably can't finish any unfinished business he'd like as a ghost quite the way Obi Wan got to. The victories of the past have been rendered moot because the villains survived in such great number, and under unexplained new leadership as bad as the old, that they've spent decades on brutal child-army training camps and returned as an unstoppable juggernaut that deposed the legitimate government within weeks and now has them on the run with almost their entire fleet gone and little left to work with. You don't find this all to be absurdly dark? Palpatine had to spend years corrupting the republic, and even then he didn't just annihilate their fleet and their government center, he twisted that stuff into his own. Gone or not, Snoke has already done more damage than Palpatine ever hoped to, or so the movies seem to say when you look at the scope. I would've liked the reverse, a struggling first order that had no real chance of deposing the new republic, instead of having all but won by the beginning of the second film.

 

But yes, I like the execution of the movies and they do maintain lots of fun moments. They are very well done and I am enjoying them. Following characters like Finn and Rey and Poe, that's all great fun. I even like the characterization of Kylo Ren, even if i don't like all the implications of his story. But when I look how bad the strategic stuff is said to be, when I look how awful these people's backstories are, and how sadly our heroes from the original trilogy ended up- like a broken family, anguished old folks dying in a struggle- I find that depressing. Hope alone doesn't hold a world together, you need some actual stability and you need your past victories to count for something instead of getting wiped away.

 

Now to be fair, they're saying that a lot of worlds got a period of relative piece in the interrim between the trilogies (the worlds that weren't on the outer rim getting subjugated by the first order with child soldier camps, I guess??). Technology has advanced a bit (almost unheard of in Star Wars!) and somehow, the center of the New Republic (the stuff that got blown up in Episode VII) seemed so peaceful that they thought minimizing their army was reasonable. But... the events of these movies seem to suggest that was a lot of wishful thinking and folly, a relative few (if a handful of entire inhabited planets can count as 'a few') enjoying peace in an irresponsible way that couldn't last because the empire was just that huge, just that capable of rebuilding, that they apparently never really undid Palpatine's infrastructure enough to amount to much in the first place. Again I say, this undermines Return of the Jedi.

 

So basically I'm conflicted. I don't like what they're doing, but I love how they're doing it.


Edited by Mitsukara, 29 March 2018 - 02:06 PM.

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#122 Cukeman

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Posted 29 March 2018 - 04:40 PM

Well sure RotJ did have a big happy conclusive ending and anything past that is undermining, but I'm just in the mindset of, if we're gonna do this, I'm glad it's this good.

 

I would've gone for a mob wars/factions trying to take over the lost empire approach myself.


Edited by Cukeman, 29 March 2018 - 07:07 PM.

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#123 ywkls

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Posted 29 March 2018 - 09:27 PM

I would've gone for a mob wars/factions trying to take over the lost empire approach myself.

 

EU Fan much? :bounce:

 

Also, welcome back from oblivion; Mitsukara. Long have we awaited your return.

 

The dark, gritty thing is a trope which I'm sorry to see Star Wars adopting, but there's nothing I can do about it.

I intended to see this a second time in the theaters, but I was out of work for a long period right about then and didn't get paid until early January. (I had to scrounge just for the first viewing.)

 

Spoiler

 

I'm still skeptical about Solo, but at least it doesn't look the total disaster that Rogue One was. 

(BTW, I'm saying that because I went into that movie with hope which was crushed.)


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#124 Cukeman

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Posted 29 March 2018 - 10:07 PM

Nah, I know almost zero about EU

 

I went into Rogue One expecting there wouldn't be enough point to it, I think it's fine, but could be better. Definitely liked the spectacle of the planets blowing up and the space battle.

 

Expectations for Solo are even lower.



#125 ywkls

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Posted 30 March 2018 - 01:19 AM

Nah, I know almost zero about EU

 

You probably didn't understand my reference then, since what you described is almost exactly what happens in the novels.



#126 Mitsukara

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Posted 30 March 2018 - 08:39 AM

I've only read portions of the EU (or as they call it these days, "Legends"). My strategy is to read about it on Wookiepedia since that's shorter and free, and then only try to read the books that interest me.

 

In the EU, the first 21 years of what happens after Return of the Jedi can generally be summarized as broken factions of the empire failing to coordinate in their losing struggle against the New Republic (some like Thrawn making decent, near-successful ploys, while others like Admiral Daala essentially making fools of themselves and simply making an ugly mess), while other groups like the Hutts or the Corellian government or whatever fight over their stuff (or otherwise attempt to fill the power vacuum) before the New Republic can gain control of the situation. So it's a gradual series of adventures of the New Republic stabilizing against a crumbling Imperial Remnant, which I feel doesn't conceptually undermine ROTJ.

 

There's also a goofy-sounding comic series about Palpatine having tons of clones of himself and Luke temporarily becoming his servant under duress as part of a plan to defeat him or something, but other than Han and Leia having a third kid during this story, these events are rarely mentioned elsewhere because it's awkward as heck.

 

...unfortunately, varying quality in authors, little in the way of consistent story group oversight, little to no attention from Lucasfilm proper, and off-limits subjects such as Yoda or Palpatine's backstories, meant those books ran into some problems over time, often being considered samey and predictable and stifled, and gradually got less popular, and a lot of them weren't very well written (Kevin J Andersons stuff is super stiff in my opinion, and some of the others I've looked at but haven't read sound pretty dodgy too).

 

I've generally found Timothy Zahn's work (such as the Thrawn trilogy) to be a big exception, being full of intrigue and cleverness, taking Star Wars in an espionage-and-clever-ruses sort of direction more than pure action like the films, which seems fitting if the scale of the conflict is focused more on stabilizing a government than on struggling to overcome an overlord.

 

...buuuut starting at 25ABY ("After the Battle of Yavin", the metric used for a convenient timeline) with the book "Vector Prime" and the New Jedi Order book series, they decided to mix it up by having numerous alien invaders from beyond the galaxy show up and start decimating everything in a gritty and brutal war, killing loads of major characters starting with Chewbacca; no one was safe but Luke, Leia, Han, R2, and 3PO. In time, they killed...

Spoiler

Which is at least as depressing as this sequel trilogy, really. It's also worth noting that Timothy Zahn, author of the Thrawn trilogy which launched the EU, distanced himself from writing anything set during or after the NJO period because, if I remember this correctly, he felt that direction was too dark. So yeah.

 

But yeah, for the sequels, I have to say that if we're gonna do this type of dark (yet funny/occasionally upbeat) sequel, they're doing it very well. It's kind of like the opposite of the prequels (or some of the dodgier, duller books)- stories I agreed with conceptually but that had awful executions, here I dislike the concept but they're doing it so well that I like it anyway. Or to quote a certain Grand Admiral:

It was so artistically done.

(Don't look up that quote if you don't want spoilers for the Thrawn trilogy.)


Edited by Mitsukara, 30 March 2018 - 08:46 AM.

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#127 Cukeman

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Posted 30 March 2018 - 11:34 AM

Oh I see, you mean dark in terms of the results after RotJ


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#128 Cukeman

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Posted 01 July 2018 - 04:36 PM

You know, I was thinking about people being disappointed in TLJ that Luke was a hermit who didn't want to get involved. We should have honestly expected that after watching all that build up in Force Awakens where we learn, Luke's on a secret planet that no one knows about and we have to find a secret map to get to him.

 

If Luke was going to just grab the saber  from Rey and say "Yeah let's go" what would he be doing hidden away in the first place? If he was interested in fighting the First Order he wouldn't be waiting for Rey to come find him, he would have been following after Kylo to confront him instead of going off to a water planet and sinking his ship.

 

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense that Force Awakens was NOT building up to anything but a hermit Luke who didn't want to get involved.



#129 The Satellite

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Posted 02 July 2018 - 04:50 PM

To be fair, there was also the potential angle that he was seeking out ancient Jedi establishments and such looking for old knowledge, in order to get back to the roots of the Jedi Order, something in which the Old Republic Jedi lost their way. That's what I had been expecting. I don't mind the change and I agree it makes sense, but it wasn't the only option to me.


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#130 Cukeman

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Posted 02 July 2018 - 07:26 PM

I assume you mean change from the EU. I don't think we can know that's a change from TFA



#131 The Satellite

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Posted 02 July 2018 - 08:21 PM

Well I mean change from his character in the OT. But yeah, the EU too. :P



#132 Cukeman

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Posted 06 July 2018 - 07:05 AM

You know how Palpatine says Darth Plagueis could use the force to influence the midi-chlorians to create life?

 

What if he used his force powers from a distance to create Anakin inside Shmi? That could be an interesting twist.

 

Palpatine says Plagueis had that power, and Shmi says there was no father...



#133 The Satellite

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Posted 06 July 2018 - 11:45 AM

That's generally been the fandom's accepted explanation for a long time. I think it was outright confirmed in the Plagueis novel... but that's now no longer canon, so...

 

EDIT: Actually apparently not, they failed and their attempts caused the Force itself to create Anakin in response. Or something. There's apparently a new canon comic that seems to imply that Palpatine did in fact create Anakin but the context is vague enough to imply it's just one of Vader's own fears and not actually the truth.



#134 The Satellite

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Posted 22 January 2021 - 04:17 AM

Randomly flying back to this thread to vent that this is the only film in the trilogy that seems to possess a single ounce of creativity and newness in its creation and development, and that IX should have treated it with far more respect by actually following off its plotlines instead of turning into whatever fucking jumbled mess it ended up being.

 

The only sin of this film is a sin the entire trilogy shared: There was no roadmap and this was absolutely a flaw. That said, I am still at least happy we got this movie out of it.

 

Rian Johnson understands Star Wars better than people want to think and that includes the prequels. When speaking of why he believed the Jedi Order had to end, Luke said: "At the height of their powers, they allowed Darth Sidious to rise, create the Empire, and wipe them out." That's it. That's the whole point of those movies, faulty presentation aside. The Jedi were flawed, which only came to a head when they once again failed as Luke created Kylo Ren and saw his own attempt at rebuilding the Order just fall apart just like before. He failed. The pressure and his "legendary" reputation weighed so much on him that this failure was what broke him.

 

Nobody asks why Obi-Wan and Yoda didn't rejoin the fight sooner. Obi-Wan had to look after Luke, sure, but what's Yoda's excuse? "Into exile I must go. Failed, I have." That's what he says in Revenge of the Sith. Luke's excuse is more or less the same, though he attempts to take it one step further.

 

However, that whole "let the past die" thing? That's not the message of the film despite what people seem to think, because if one actually paid attention, they would see it wasn't in the slightest. The villain extends this offering. Rey utterly rejects it. Luke is leaning this way, but the true message of the film comes from Yoda: "The greatest teacher, failure is." And, "We are what they grow beyond." The past isn't to be destroyed, it's to be learned from. All of this in the scene haters will claim as "the only good scene in the movie" but they sure as hell don't seem to have actually understood the scene and how essential its message is to the core themes of the film.

 

Luke finally understands this and gives the ultimate sacrifice, buying time for the Resistance to escape certain death by playing on Kylo's twisted obsession with killing Luke. He restores hope to the galaxy by once again becoming a legend. This is his last ultimate act. His greatest moment and the true culmination of his story arc.

 

And yet IX wants us to think levitating his X-wing out of the waters is his big moment. Sorry, no, that's kind of a huge step down from projecting himself across the galaxy. Also that X-wing was clearly broken in The Last Jedi; Luke was using part of a wing for a door for Force's sakes!

 

Rian Johnson was more or less given the script to The Force Awakens and a blank slate to make his film. His script was finished before The Force Awakens even premiered. JJ gave his approval—and not even directly, one of his friends told the media this. JJ was also the one who put Luke on that rock in the first place, Rian simply followed up on it the way he felt best, as he was given the reigns to. Would Rian have put him there if he were in charge of this entire trilogy? You never know. Love or hate The Last Jedi, we can all agree it was a fatal flaw to not map out the trilogy ahead of time. I would have preferred that. But since this is the universe we live in, I'll at least be glad we got The Last Jedi.

 

By the way, Dave Filoni? Showrunner of Clone Wars and Rebels, along with The Mandalorian alongside Jon Favreau? One of the men credited with "saving" Star Wars? Seemingly agrees with this take on Luke. Oh, and Rian Johnson was the one responsible for helping him get started in learning how to work with live-action in preparation for The Mandalorian eventually. So, thanks again, Rian Johnson!


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#135 NoeL

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Posted 22 January 2021 - 09:06 PM

I agree completely. It was the only movie in the sequel trilogy I thought was any good. 7 was just a safe and boring rehash of 4, and 9 was all corporate fan service - or as one youtuber (whose name escapes me) better put it, it was like Mickey Mouse pulling you close and whispering "This is for you, you little shit, so you damn well better like it!" Jesus Christ, episode 9 was fucking awful - hands down the worst in the franchise.
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