5 minutes ago, IG88E said:

Sorry but for me that milking scene was just a normal funny scene, and nothing special for interpretation

The same. I just thought it was pretty funny. If there was supposed to be some kind of an agenda behind it, then that was lost on me.

Seriously. How does everyone that has some weird theory about the milking scene forget that immediately following, they show Luke spear fishing for food. All these scenes are is establishing how Luke has been getting food and drink stranded on this little island in the middle of the ocean while getting Daisy to pull a funny face.

You guys are probably right. Perhaps I read too much into it. Lol

People do seem to want to read deeper than necessary into this movie

Theres something else; Seems that there's a little bit of that going around with some people on YouTube projecting this weird idea that Disney star wars is she propaganda or is catering to that stereotype because Rey does stuff and admiral someface has peculiarly pink hair

Personally believe rey is a Mary Sue by virtue of nonthreatening villains rather than what she does

The milking scene apprears to be part slapstick, part showing off luke drinking blue milk.

As far as him throwing away the lightsaber goes, I'm convinced that this was just another case of subverting the audiences expectations for the sheer sake of it, rather than it being some sort of deep reflection of Luke's change of character.

Some people are reading way too much into it, but they are also giving way too much credit where none is due.

As far as him throwing away the lightsaber goes, I'm convinced that this was just another case of subverting the audiences expectations for the sheer sake of it, rather than it being some sort of deep reflection of Luke's change of character.

I thought it set the tone of Luke and Rey's initial relationship fairly well. Regardless of why they did it it certainly serves its purpose, no?

22 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

Apropos of nothing, I've now watched Rogue One three times in the last week.

...I needed a palate cleanser.

It truly works for that, because it is so bland and tasteless
Perfect to run in the background while doing something more interesting.

2 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

People do seem to want to read deeper than necessary into this movie

Theres something else; Seems that there's a little bit of that going around with some people on YouTube projecting this weird idea that Disney star wars is she propaganda or is catering to that stereotype because Rey does stuff and admiral someface has peculiarly pink hair

Personally believe rey is a Mary Sue by virtue of nonthreatening villains rather than what she does

Which btw is the biggest weakness of the MCU as well. Villains which are so incredible weak and/or boring and uninteresting that they do little for the whole movie. Though I think they did a better job with TLJ, because Kylo actually got more interesting. Even Hux got more interesting as his position changed drastically and he is now out for Kylo's blood, while Kylo is aware of this perfectly and enjoys mistreating Hux to increase that hate even more.

Kylo is a great villain. Driver has really sold him. I am glad they got rid of the mask.

He improved massively.

6 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Which btw is the biggest weakness of the MCU as well. Villains which are so incredible weak and/or boring and uninteresting that they do little for the whole movie.

There’s this guy named Victor that might just put all the villains to shame now that the MCU gets to use him finally.

And speaking of Marvel villains, it seems the best ones are on Netflix.

still waiting for SW/Guardians of the Galaxy holiday special vol. 2: Boba Vader Life Day Sweater

On 15.12.2017 at 7:30 AM, Boom Owl said:

I don't have a opinion

.

Forgive me if this has been said before, not going through this many posts to check, but "I'll try spinning, that's a good trick!"

Truly the heir of Vader.

17 hours ago, Captain Nippon said:

The milking scene apprears to be part slapstick, part showing off luke drinking blue milk.

As far as him throwing away the lightsaber goes, I'm convinced that this was just another case of subverting the audiences expectations for the sheer sake of it, rather than it being some sort of deep reflection of Luke's change of character.

Some people are reading way too much into it, but they are also giving way too much credit where none is due.

Tbh I felt the lightsaber throw was a bit of Yodas attitude mixed with his old sentiment and a massive dose of frustration. Luke doesn't want anything to do with the old buisness, and when it catches up with him what does Rey do? Offer him a lightsaber. As if that is the core of the Jedi philosophy.

On 12/25/2017 at 10:50 PM, Larky Bobble said:

On a side note. You asserted a that high first week grossing movie can be expected to have a larger percentage dropoff second week. I've been scouring the internet, but I can't find any data or articles to validate it. Given your profession, could you point me in the right direction?

I've had a look at what I can share, and I don't think I can post anything to confirm it without contravening my NDA.

I can talk you through, though. The films that post the real outlying big opening weekends are doing so because they're compressing their box office into the front of the film's run, usually because they've got built-in fanbases who are going to rush out and see it. That's been discussed online many times as a superhero movie phenomenon but it's not really about superheroes, that's just another narrative thread that the box office media have created to foster 'debate' and drive clicks. It happens on a lot of superhero movies, but it also happened on Hunger Games, on Twilight, on Harry Potter, on Fifty Shades etc. It's a factor of that inbuilt fanbase who are going to make sure they see the movie in the first 24/48 hours. That creates a much sharper drop into the second week just because of the nature of the audience for that title. Then you get the occasional superhero movies that break that 'superhero trend' and don't drop rapidly, like Wonder Woman, Deadpool, Guardians of the Galaxy etc - films where the inbuilt fanbase was relatively small but the word of mouth was strong who won't have that big opening weekend and so are able to support smaller drop-offs into the second week.

So let's talk about The Last Jedi a minute. The Forbes writer compared it to the other Star Wars films and their drop-offs, but right off the bat we can discount any Star Wars films from before Force Awakens because the digital distribution model has transformed the nature of opening weekends & drop-offs. In the old days of actual reels of film being used in cinema there was a cost per reel that the studios ran off so they would only make enough to feed their biggest cinema customers, then in the 2nd and 3rd week those cinemas would start sending some of their reels back to the studios where they could be sent on to smaller cinemas. This distribution system both hampered opening weekend grosses (not every cinema had a copy of the film to show) and supported slower drops (the film started to be played in areas it hadn't been available in the first weekend). In the digital distribution era studios can just copy the film onto as many flash drives as they need and get it out to everyone at the same time for the first weekend (which btw has turned out to be a major PITA for us big chains as we suddenly have new competitors on our doorstep playing the same films on day 1, when previously we had a couple of weeks grace before they got a copy). The digital age creates the possibility for monster opening weekends, with bigger drop-offs, so we can't compare TLJ to any of the older films.

So let's compare it to Rogue One. Except audience anticipation for Rogue One was WAY down on what it was for The Force Awakens, just check google trends or something - Rogue One was barely a blip on the radar next to the market penetration they got on The Force Awakens. So Rogue One had a much lower 'must-see' and a weaker opening weekend, which gives it the opportunity to drop less hard as word of mouth got out that it was actually good. So we can compare to Rogue One, but if all we're looking at is the drop-offs then we know the deck is stacked heavily in favour of Rogue One because so many fewer people saw it in the opening weekend that it's going to behave more like a normal film than one of the front-loaded 'superhero' style of film.

So let's compare it to Force Awakens, which opened MASSIVE. And here TLJ definitely comes off worse - it opened almost as big as TFA but has dropped significantly faster. Like I said, there's no denying that it's performing worse than TFA. But then TFA is a ridiculous outlier that will never be repeated. And even here there are significant factors counting against TLJ and working for TFA. The 2nd weekend of Force Awakens was the 18th-20th of December, the 2nd weekend TLJ was the 22nd-24th and critically includes New Year's Eve when cinemas will close early. So comparison against The Force Awakens needs to allow for the fact that TLJ had 2.5 days of trade while TFA had 3 full days of trade. I'm sure TLJ still comes off worse than TFA, but not 'massive Justice League' disappointment worse.


And finally. Forbes' modus operandi is to feed both sides of a biased online argument, so after they got done publishing the article that took that nugget of box office fact and span it into a Star Wars disaster story they followed up rapidly with another article that debunked the original article and span the same nugget of box office fact into a Star Wars success story - The Last Jedi is such a box office dud that it's got a good chance of finishing as the 6th biggest film of all time worldwide, and #2 in the US. But then to read that side of the story you had to click their link again. Which is what they want you to do.

Dont click Forbes. They're garbage, spewing garbage out for garbage's sake and knowingly and deliberately misinforming their readership to create a literal phantom menace and get everyone worked up about it so they come back the next day to click and read the next installment.

Read just almost anybody else instead: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-last-jedi-dips-at-christmas-box-office-1070314

The lightsaber throw was the first of Rian Johnson's "oh you thought I gave any sort of **** about anything from any of the previous films? Haha, you nerd!" moments.

It was the first moment in the cinema where my spidey-sense really severely tingled, as I hadn't minded the Hux/Poe bit.

Not my impression, to me that move fit well with the philosophy imparted on Luke by Yoda...while also being a huge audience middle finger which is something I enjoy if done right, and here it fits into the universe like I said.

Oh well, that's just what I got from the scene, not going to claim that was the intention.

Yeah, that was pretty much my thought.

I've never liked the idea that lightsabers are this object of veneration for jedi, they're a tool, nothing more. That's where I thought he was going with that initially.

It being more 'I've given up on this, plss off' was also fine.

I had not problem with any aspect of Luke not wanting to train Rey, whatsoever.

But then, I listened to the trailers when they said 'this is not going to go the way you think'.

--

Or to put it another way, did people have problems with Yoda being a massive troll on Dagobah, refusing to train Luke, tricking him, nicking his stuff, and generally being a little green a-hole who'd turned his back on the jedi and turned into a reclusive hermit?

So why the issue with Luke?

On December 26, 2017 at 11:54 AM, ficklegreendice said:

People do seem to want to read deeper than necessary into this movie

Theres something else; Seems that there's a little bit of that going around with some people on YouTube projecting this weird idea that Disney star wars is she propaganda or is catering to that stereotype because Rey does stuff and admiral someface has peculiarly pink hair

Personally believe rey is a Mary Sue by virtue of nonthreatening villains rather than what she does

It's intersting that people say that others are reading too much into the movie. They are quite right, of course. As Hamill said, it is only a movie, and if you're expecting it to bring back childhood magic....

But...

The Star Wars movies spawned a religion! At least in the UK... When the census came round I, and enough others, made Jediism a larger religion than Judaism, Buddism or Sihkism. No other movie has that level of devotion, as stupid as it may have been.

It'll be interesting to see how it pans out in the next census....

Ref: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jedi_census_phenomenon

Okay so.

Lightsabers basically serve the same function of a Katana in Bushido. Except, Lightsabers were actually used the way their legends dictated.

So bearing that in mind, and given how much more closely bound one is to a lightsaber.

Yeah, Luke throwing it away meant something. That was a, "No. No, I don't want any part of that, piss off." moment.

How that could be twisted any other way is just 100% utterly beyond my comprehension.

However the lightsaber still is just the weapon and does not make the jedi. Yoda didn't keep his around visibly (he probably wasn't even supposed to have one when V was made, but that's just my speculation) and rejected the notion of being a warrior, because that is secondary to the Jedi way or what he intendes it to become.

All the goalposts in SW moved. That of lightsabers too.

Maybe Luke threw it away because it was blue. And he had got to be a 'green' level jedi.

"Blue, pah! This is beneath my force questing status! I am no mere 'defender' with a blue saber!"

She should have found his green one...

2 hours ago, Larky Bobble said:

Maybe Luke threw it away because it was blue. And he had got to be a 'green' level jedi.

"Blue, pah! This is beneath my force questing status! I am no mere 'defender' with a blue saber!"

Well, to be fair he had graduated from blue milk to green milk...

...on the subject of Luke, it looks like the Mouse has issued a gag order on poor Mark...

I missed a million posts.

The experience of art lies with the observer not with the artist, I think is pretty established theory. Anyone is free to argue against that, but I'm pretty sure they are in the vast minority at this point. Go to any institute of education, and your academics pretty much dwell on that. And thank's for that too, or a bunch of critics who shot down Star Wars in 1977 would have had a bunch of people listen to them and it would have died then and there (I remember, I was there).

There is no 'one most important interpretation' of Star Wars or any film or art. All claims to say Lucas' view, or Disney's view or some authors view is the best one and should be taken as gospel, says more about the person who believes that than it does about the source they are citing.

And again, thanks to that.

2 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

Well, to be fair he had graduated from blue milk to green milk...

...on the subject of Luke, it looks like the Mouse has issued a gag order on poor Mark...

Of course they did the last thing they need after so vocal a backlash is someone as loved as Mark hamill trashing the director.

Though I'd of loved a few cutting remarks in the jokers voice.

2 hours ago, FTS Gecko said:

...on the subject of Luke, it looks like the Mouse has issued a gag order on poor Mark...

That’s total bs.