2 hours ago, Sunrider said:

Sorry folks, but that's all Yoda is in Ep. V.

Oh please. No he is not. Where's his mandatory long white beard and massive eyebrows?

27 minutes ago, robus said:

when I don’t have to pay money (and sit in a theater),

Naw, man - that's fair enough.

18 minutes ago, Desslok said:

Oh please. No he is not. Where's his mandatory long white beard and massive eyebrows?

He's got white hair and his ears as a stand-in. ;-)

1 hour ago, Nytwyng said:

Oh, I got it.

Why did Luke fail to raise a partially submerged X-wing in TESB? He didn’t believe in the strength of the Force. (In fact, that lack of belief led to him causing the ship to submerge completely.) Now, here he is 30 years later. He’s lost faith in the Force and cut himself off from it. And there’s his X-wing, completely submerged.

This leads the audience to make the leap, when he shows up on Craft, and conclude that his faith has been restored, and he raised the ship.

The movie really rhymes on so many levels.

1 hour ago, Nytwyng said:

Why did Luke fail to raise a partially submerged X-wing in TESB? He didn’t believe in the strength of the Force. (In fact, that lack of belief led to him causing the ship to submerge completely.) Now, here he is 30 years later. He’s lost faith in the Force and cut himself off from it. And there’s his X-wing, completely submerged.

Jesus, that. . . that's brilliant. A masterstroke of simple, visual story telling.

34 minutes ago, Desslok said:

Jesus, that. . . that's brilliant. A masterstroke of simple, visual story telling.

That, or he was just hiding the ship because he didn't want anyone to think he lived on the island, given his reclusive hermit phase

2 hours ago, Nytwyng said:

Oh, I got it.

Why did Luke fail to raise a partially submerged X-wing in TESB? He didn’t believe in the strength of the Force. (In fact, that lack of belief led to him causing the ship to submerge completely.) Now, here he is 30 years later. He’s lost faith in the Force and cut himself off from it. And there’s his X-wing, completely submerged.

This leads the audience to make the leap, when he shows up on Crait, and conclude that his faith has been restored, and he raised the ship.

I believe that’s a little too deep for this movie. If this movie didn’t slap you in the face with it, it is something us fans inferred.

Just now, TrainedMunkey said:

I believe that’s a little too deep for this movie. If this movie didn’t slap you in the face with it, it is something us fans inferred.

Playing into such deeper meaning could very well be a happy accident.

At the most basic level, though, we’re presented with Luke in self-exile, and shown that his means of departure has been made inconvenient to access (by nature or by himself). But, it’s also shown as still there.

10 minutes ago, TrainedMunkey said:

If this movie didn’t slap you in the face with it, it is something us fans inferred.

Or some people are better at picking up subtext than others.

1 minute ago, Desslok said:

Or some people are better at picking up subtext than others.

Conjecture not subtext. While I love to create such conjectures in Star Wars. We need to realize that’s what it is. Can’t wait until the novel comes out, hopefully that will actually give the movie some depth and not more playground humor.

11 minutes ago, TrainedMunkey said:

Conjecture not subtext. While I love to create such conjectures in Star Wars. We need to realize that’s what it is. Can’t wait until the novel comes out, hopefully that will actually give the movie some depth and not more playground humor.

The film had plenty of depth.

28 minutes ago, Nytwyng said:

Playing into such deeper meaning could very well be a happy accident.

At the most basic level, though, we’re presented with Luke in self-exile, and shown that his means of departure has been made inconvenient to access (by nature or by himself). But, it’s also shown as still there.

And the movie is full of those happy accidents
Like Luke when he first see Leia, she being just a projection and the last time he is seeing Leia he being just a projection.

The dark side vergence being a mirror. Rey when asking the mirror about her parents only seeing herself in the past and future, Luke's X-Wing, the general theme of leaving the past behind and moving forward, broom kid, etc, etc, …

Happy Accidents.
No wonder so many people start to love the movie at their second viewing, there is so much to discover in it, it's almost like it is a proper good movie by its own merit. ;-)

12 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

And the movie is full of those happy accidents
Like Luke when he first see Leia, she being just a projection and the last time he is seeing Leia he being just a projection.

The dark side vergence being a mirror. Rey when asking the mirror about her parents only seeing herself in the past and future, Luke's X-Wing, the general theme of leaving the past behind and moving forward, broom kid, etc, etc, …

Happy Accidents.
No wonder so many people start to love the movie at their second viewing, there is so much to discover in it, it's almost like it is a proper good movie by its own merit. ;-)

That’s an awful lot of conjecture, not happy accidents

I think I get what you are saying. R2 projected Leia In Star Wars and then he is a hologram projection on Crait.

I am pretty sure the dark side convergence plays on whatever weakness or dark side emotion it senses, like in Empire.

Luke’s x-wing is sunk. Him leaving the past behind so he doesn’t have to deal with the sh## storm he created in Kylo.

They do need to leave the original trilogy behind, its just too bad they didn’t do it better and without slaughtering the personality of Luke.

Ahh, so broom kid is the hero of Johnson’s new trilogy. I get it now. Apparently Disney is moving on without me.

17 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Why no one is answering to the call for example is left open, but its not something many even wonder about.

I think that was done fairly clearly, though? They tell Luke he needs to come back to rekindle hope, and after he refuses the call for allies fails. Leia says 'The flame of hope has gone out' or something like that. Then, in the scene with Broom Boy, we see that even child slaves have heard the story of Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, and how he stood up to the entire First Order army. Hope is back.

(Plus for a more concrete reason: the call for help probably went out before everyone realised the First Order had just lost a *very* large chunk of their military)

Careful with that assumption. While I share that view, we don't know what JJ will do and having potential false preconceptions is the way to not enjoy the next movie.

The X-Wing being sunk is a visual metaphor and a callback to Dagobah - Luke did do a bit of what Yoda did after his failure to defeat the Emperor, just Luke didn't really learn like Yoda did, because he was never given the same proper training and just expected to do everything "because he was Luke Skywalker". When Yoda shows up when he's about to burn the tree, we see this play out, with Yoda understanding and then Luke finally coming to that realization as well. That was such an awesome moment.

The broom kid was meant to convey part of the film's ultimate message - that the Force doesn't just belong to the Jedi or to one bloodline, but to everyone and that someone who comes from nothing can become someone important. When Luke says "I will not be the last Jedi" and we then cut immediately to Rey and the last shot of the film is that kid on Canto Bight (which represents a whole lot of us audience members, too, I think), it really shows the lesson Luke learned from Yoda and that Rey also ultimately learned through her experiences on Anch-To and the confrontation with Kylo and Snoke. (I thought it was interesting that Kylo also learned the lesson in a way, but he learned the wrong way, which is super compelling as a villain.)

Also, the fact that Luke said "I will not be the last Jedi" and not "I am not the last Jedi" I thought was super cool, too, because those lines can mean very different things and... augh, I love everything about the third act and how it shows that for all of the gloom Luke was in early on in the film, there is still very much hope in the galaxy and that the Jedi will always be there to fight the darkness, but they don't have to be the same Jedi that came before.

"We are what they grow beyond."

I didn’t see any slaughter of Luke’s personality. We met him as a brash, rebellious youth, who joined a literal rebellion, and found himself (let’s face it) manipulated into confronting Vader.

We reconnect with him after his attempt to create a new Jedi Order has literally been burned to the ground.

If we’re talking about his momentary lapse regarding Ben, remember that this is the same character who also rushed away from his training to take the Empire’s bait, and later had his buttons pushed by Vader and started hammering away at him with a lightsaber before collecting himself. Momentary lapses of impulse control are established behavior for him.

5 hours ago, TrainedMunkey said:

Did we really need to know how he got to the planet. Was it that important to the plot that we needed a cut where every cut counted?

What we needed was to believe that Luke was actually on Crait.

At the time you see the shot, you think it's about how Luke got there. Later on you think it's about how Luke got to Crait. And even later you realize the shot is there to make you believe in the possibility that Luke actually had been on Crait.

That one shot serves so many apparent purposes over the course of the movie that citing it as an example of wasted time is just laughable. It provides characterization, narrative setup, world-building, and also misdirection without being unfair in any way with the audience.

7 hours ago, TrainedMunkey said:

Real life and realistic example of cultures and personal relationships. Johnson doesn't believe in such things.

Force ghost Luke should be very active in the future. There is still so much tiity milk to drink and sea cows to give pleasure to.

He still needs to raise his x-wing out of the sea. I mean why else would they show his x-wing. Surely they had a reason, some plot point. It couldn't have been a totally worthless shot in a movie where every shot needs to count.

A better scene is why would a Resistance soldier stick his finger in the dirt and taste it? I met a lot of dumb pirates over the decades but none stupid enough to stick their finger in the dirt and taste it....

Soldier 1 "Salt"

Soldier 2 "Nope, crystal fox poop...."

Soldier 1 ****barfffff*****

Fun fact: Salt Guy was Gareth Edwards

8 hours ago, Ireul said:

Didn't need a second viewing of A New Hope to know I liked it. But my cousins took me to see it a second time and, while I still dislike it, I grew to tolerate most of the things I disliked. First viewing had it ranked as my second least favorite film (TPM being below it). Now it's tied with RotS for 5th.

Apples and oranges though. TLJ exists to subvert expectations about what Star Wars is. That is, simply put, its message. The old, bearded guy's grip on the franchise has been freed from the pisspoor prequel trilogy, which was utterly awful, and we can finally say the truth - that ANH succeeded in spite of Lucas. Part of that process is passing a torch. Hence why the Skywalker bloodline will die out in Episode IX with Kylo Ren. The dynastic melodrama spins off the axis of "Skywalker" and becomes about a new generation, played by people who can act.

Yes, Hayden Christensen, that was a slight at you.

So when the film opens, and Luke bins the lightsabre so reverentially set up in Episode 7's final shot, it's sending a message which you heard in the trailers (so, to be fair, they warned us) and in the film - this is not going to go the way you think.

Every problem I had first time around - and I would never rank it behind any prequels, because the prequels are utterly awful and people should feel shame for liking them - was gone second time, because I realised I projected my expectations to the narrative and that played into the narratives game. Going in neutral a second time, even going in being unimpressed but not surprised, I saw what the film was saying and the story it was telling and I'm probably putting it up in top 5. I think I prefer TFA, but like Rogue One this is a very mature take on the franchise.

I know a lot of people project their own headcanon or fanfic onto this film and are annoyed Rey is just Rey; Snoke was just Snoke, etc but that's not the doing of the film...

3 hours ago, TrainedMunkey said:

Conjecture not subtext. While I love to create such conjectures in Star Wars. We need to realize that’s what it is. Can’t wait until the novel comes out, hopefully that will actually give the movie some depth and not more playground humor.

Are you drunk, or..?

The film had depth. This is why it's creating such controversy. People like to add layers of depth to Star Wars, but it's pretty much just a shallow endeavour. The film subverts the entire message of the films to date, including Rogue One. It is an inherently anti-dynastic message, and when you consider the importance of being someone's offspring - Jyn Erso, daughter of Galen Erso. Luke Skywalker and Leia Organa, son and daughter of Darth Vader. Kylo Ren, son of Han Solo and Leia Organa - it's a bold choice.

When one out of the 6 good and frankly worthwhile Star Wars films (there are three others that I don't acknowledge, as they were born out of wedlock - bastard spawn of the unholy union of George Lucas and his yes men, where actors and editors couldn't save him from himself) can legitimately be called deconstructionalist, accusations of a lack of depth make it look like you, rather than Johnson, have no idea who Derrida was.

40 minutes ago, Endersai said:

The film had depth. This is why it's creating such controversy.

I disagree that depth is creating the controversy.

Quote

The film subverts the entire message of the films to date, including Rogue One.

That is why the film is creating controversy in my opinion. It seems like the majority of viewers had built up some preconceived notions about what should have happened and that isn't what was received.

Yes, but that is not the fault of the film! That's the fault of the audience.

An audience that took Star Wars for granted.

1 minute ago, Endersai said:

Yes, but that is not the fault of the film! That's the fault of the audience.

An audience that took Star Wars for granted.

I agree with the former. Don't know about the latter.

The audience thought it had a right to expect certain things from Star Wars; that's the very core of taking something for granted.