4 minutes ago, TauntaunScout said:

It was never clear how Luke new about force-levitating his lightsaber in the wampa cave, either. Nothing like that was in his ANH scenes with Ben. No one freaks out about that.

I think because of the nature of the force, explained later in the same film, it was overlooked.


In the Sith lore surrounding Bane, we learn that some force skills happen naturally. It's not a far stretch to think that calling an object to yourself could be done on instinct alone as a force sensitive.

14 minutes ago, TauntaunScout said:

And he’d been shot. And unlike say, Elizabeth Swan, we know she can fight anyways.

It was never clear how Luke new about force-levitating his lightsaber in the wampa cave, either. Nothing like that was in his ANH scenes with Ben. No one freaks out about that.

I like to think that when it comes to Star Wars the movies are just there to set up the two sides and some of the characters now. The real meat of the franchise now is the T.V. shows, books, comics, games (the real failure that should be talked about), and miniature games.

I have a soft spot for TPM, truly hate AoTC for that romance plot, and find RoTS to be meh (Papa Palp is great tho). If you would of told me that some of the best spin off stuff would have come from those movies I would have never believed it a few years ago. I figure as long that the new movies don't burn anything more down (I would say spoilers say the movie is okay) then Star Wars will be in pretty good shape for the next few years.

15 minutes ago, EchoZero said:

While I genuinely enjoyed TLJ, if I had a solid critique, it was that they tried to pack too much into one movie. There was no feasible way to explore all the world building on screen like they did in the book.

If you want to see a movie that tries to pack in waaaaaaaaaay to much into one movie go re watch Revenge of the Sith. That movie could have been easily been as long as Lord of the Rings and still would have needed more time. I will never know how George Lucas had to rush/condense/skip all the major plot points of his own story when he had complete control of everything. It is really crazy the amount of major events that just happen back to back and the plot just keeps speeding along.

1 hour ago, RyantheFett said:

If you want to see a movie that tries to pack in waaaaaaaaaay to much into one movie go re watch Revenge of the Sith. That movie could have been easily been as long as Lord of the Rings and still would have needed more time. I will never know how George Lucas had to rush/condense/skip all the major plot points of his own story when he had complete control of everything. It is really crazy the amount of major events that just happen back to back and the plot just keeps speeding along.

I agree, but that's mainly because I think Revenge of the Sith represents what I think the Anakin story should have been about from the start.


I think the idea of Anakin falling because of his fear of loss didn't really make sense with the character of Darth Vader. Anakin KNEW he was doing something evil, trying to justify it to himself to save his wife. This doesn't track with the whole "he was seduced by the darkside" thing. In my experience the people society considers to be evil don't think there's anything wrong with what they're doing.

Some thoughts below

23 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

I still don’t get how anyone can find TLJ to be worse than Starkiller base.

Or how Rey’s abilities are that much more inexplicable than Luke’s.

TFA packs lots of very dumb things - like Starkiller Base - into a movie that is broadly entertaining the first time you watch it, and generally inoffensive/forgettable thereafter. TLJ packs a small handful of incredibly dumb things into a film with occasionally interesting cinematography that otherwise alternates between sneering budget-brand auteur pish and self-indulgent nonsense, and is therefore memorably bad. TFA was a missed opportunity, TLJ felt like ordering a glass of nice chilled lager and being served a pint of warm pee.

As to Rey vs Luke, is it really not obvious to some folk?

In ANH Luke gets called out a couple of times as a good pilot, is a good pilot when it counts, and has one minor display of force usage at the climax of the movie. His interactions with a saber amount to waving it about. In ESB he is able to call his lightsaber to his hand and chop off the arm of a dumb rampaging beast, then spends most of the film getting dunked on by Yoda and failing to properly learn from him(during which time the film's cuts, transitions, and costume changes imply a reasonable amount of time is passing - I've seen estimates of anywhere from a couple of weeks to a couple of months), and concludes by barely holding his own against Vader who isn't even trying to kill him then getting his hand chopped off. In RotJ he begins to display proper Jedi-like abilities; we see him use both Force Choke(which, along with his outfit, hints at the conflict between light and dark within him) and also Mind Trick(which demonstrates how far he's come, since that's the very power used to establish Obi Wan's mystical bona fides in ANH - the student becomes the master). Even so, he almost gets his *** handed to him until he almost goes full-darkside, and in the end his final victory comes not from the power of the force or his might in personal combat, but through his rejection of evil and the way it inspires the redemption of Vader. Luke follows the archetypical Hero's Journey, to a fault even.

In TFA Rey can fly like an ace because she wants to. She can use Mind Trick with zero actual training because she wants to. She goes toe-to-toe with a trained darksider using a lightsaber she's barely even held before that moment, and comes away from it better off than Luke did against Vader in ESB. In TLJ(which, remember, follows immediately on from the conclusion of TFA - both movies cover a period of less than two weeks) she spends literally two days on Ahch-To, half of it being ignored, and half of the rest with the film telling us Luke doesn't even have much to teach her, then proceeds to engage in a Prequels-level saber melee which she and Kylo win pretty easily, and then, having once again displayed her ace space combat piloting skills, proceeds to force-lift a couple of hundred tons of rock with all the visible effort of lifting a glass of water to take a drink(and you'll recall CW-era Yoda, Grandmaster of the Jedi Order and Number One Force Badass end up grimacing and trembling to grab and suspend a single chunk of machinery at the end of AotC). Rey doesn't have any kind of journey; we meet the character, and over the few days we're allowed to get to know her she's just capable of anything she tries her hand at, without any meaningful training whatsoever, and with no explanation as to why.

And just because someone will inevitably try the usual shenanigans; I actually don't dislike the parts of Rey that actually approach being a character. My objection to the way she's written isn't that she exists, it's that the hacks writing and filming this stuff have done a potentially very cool protagonist a huge disservice.

8 minutes ago, Yodhrin said:

In TFA Rey can fly like an ace because she wants to.

Now this is pod racing.

I like that a 9 year old can be the only human capable of piloting a high speed racer near flawlessly and that's business as usual, but a grown woman, who's piloted speeders and such (likely her whole life) and has the same powers is doing it "because she wants to" even though she's not even doing it particularly well (TFA she was dragging that ship all over the dirt.) One neat trick is all she did. Well within the lore of untrained force users....

13 minutes ago, Yodhrin said:

She can use Mind Trick with zero actual training because she wants to. She goes toe-to-toe with a trained darksider using a lightsaber she's barely even held before that moment, and comes away from it better off than Luke did against Vader in ESB. In TLJ(which, remember, follows immediately on from the conclusion of TFA - both movies cover a period of less than two weeks) she spends literally two days on Ahch-To, half of it being ignored, and half of the rest with the film telling us Luke doesn't even have much to teach her, then proceeds to engage in a Prequels-level saber melee which she and Kylo win pretty easily,

Whew lad. Way off.

They cover this pretty well in the book. Kylo Ren was never fully trained. Even with techniques like reading minds. When he read Rey's mind, he opened his own. When she read his mind, simply by being a force user and connected by kylo's attempt to read hers, she imprinted herself with his training. It was accidental, but she has all the training he has. That's why she knows the mind trick after the interrogation, how she calls the saber, how she picks apart his lightsaber technique. She's essentially just as trainas kylo. Plus whatever experience she had growing up on a Outer Rim planet, which we can see in TFA is not minimal, she bagged a pack of goons pretty quick.

19 minutes ago, Yodhrin said:

having once again displayed her ace space combat piloting skills

Wasn't chewie piloting in TLJ? Isn't he like 400 years old, and one of the best pilots around?

20 minutes ago, Yodhrin said:

proceeds to force-lift a couple of hundred tons of rock with all the visible effort of lifting a glass of water to take a drink(and you'll recall CW-era Yoda, Grandmaster of the Jedi Order and Number One Force Badass end up grimacing and trembling to grab and suspend a single chunk of machinery at the end of AotC).

I think we're to assume that she is that much more powerful. Even Luke is visibly shook by her connection to the force. Though we don't know why yet.

22 minutes ago, Yodhrin said:

Rey doesn't have any kind of journey; we meet the character, and over the few days we're allowed to get to know her she's just capable of anything she tries her hand at, without any meaningful training whatsoever, and with no explanation as to why.

I think that's the point. Realistically I don't think these movies are really centered on Rey's growth, as the events just kind of happen to her. We're focusing on Kylo's growth. In many ways Kylo is the equal and opposite to Luke during his journey in the OT. I see many parallels.

24 minutes ago, Yodhrin said:

And just because someone will inevitably try the usual shenanigans; I actually don't dislike the parts of Rey that actually approach being a character. My objection to the way she's written isn't that she exists, it's that the hacks writing and filming this stuff have done a potentially very cool protagonist a huge disservice.

I mean, I believe you, but at the same time I just provided you with all the answers. If what you're saying is true you'd change your mind. Somehow I doubt that's the case.

19 minutes ago, EchoZero said:

I like that a 9 year old can be the only human capable of piloting a high speed racer near flawlessly

Anakin is also a Mary Sue (or Gary Stu in this case), he was making a comparison between Rey and Luke.

20 minutes ago, EchoZero said:

They cover this pretty well in the book.

Yeah but the movie is not the book. It has always been this way for every other franchise. If you need the book to explain the movie, it means that the movie is bad.

1 hour ago, Yodhrin said:

In TFA Rey can fly like an ace because she wants to.

And learned flying inside the dangerous confines of a crashed Star Destroyer. Which is more than we saw Luke do besides talk about his own piloting skills.

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using a lightsaber she's barely even held before that moment,

But she IS established as using melee weapons well. Dunno why everyone focuses in so much on it being a lightsaber. This isn't my beloved D6 RPG where lightsaber combat was a necessary skill. And again, more than we saw of Luke. He got seriously pwned by that Tusken Raider.

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and comes away from it better off than Luke did against Vader in ESB.

Because Ren is a bargain basement version of Vader. That amateur wasn't even fathered by The Force!

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then proceeds to engage in a Prequels-level saber melee which she and Kylo win pretty easily,

That scene was possibly my least favorite fight choreograpy in all of Star Wars. I think it's just (the ongoing, unfortunate trend of) directors doing stuff because the SFX tech exists to do it. Still not as bad as Han watching 5 planets explode at once. I don't use The Force so I don't know what it's supposed to do. I DO look up at the sky and I know I can't clearly discern other planets with that level of clarity. Besides, what are the sheer odds I can look up at the sky on any given night, and be able to see 5 planets at once? That only happens every several years in our own solar system.

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Yoda, Grandmaster of the Jedi Order and Number One Force Badass end up grimacing and trembling to grab and suspend a single chunk of machinery at the end of AotC).

But not to move the X-Wing in ESB. Inconsistencies are the new normal, and this issue predates the sequels.

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Rey doesn't have any kind of journey; we meet the character, and over the few days we're allowed to get to know her she's just capable of anything she tries her hand at, without any meaningful training whatsoever, and with no explanation as to why.

There was explanation as to why she's skilled at things. What she lacks is believable motivation . Along with the rest of the sequel characters. Why does a scavenger care if BB8 gets scavenged? Poe fight bad guys cause he's a good guy. Finn refuses to shoot innocents... so he shoots up the only family he's ever known, what is that?

The stories are overly complex. You can tell this stuff is done by someone who is used to creating pointless (from a story perspective) television cliffhangers to boost next weeks viewing numbers. A movie like this needs a protagonist who wants something, and everything in the story should represent them getting closer or farther from it. For sequels and prequels, it's quite muddied who the protagonist was or what they wanted.

The sequel films are very problematic, but people complain about aspects of them, that I do not understand. My summary of them is as follows:

The Force Awakens: let's look at moving pictures of all the things Star Wars fans like!

The Last Jedi: you have been waiting 40 years for a new movie about Luke, but he's dead!

16 minutes ago, ResoluteHusky said:

Anakin is also a Mary Sue (or Gary Stu in this case), he was making a comparison between Rey and Luke.

Yeah... and people don't even get what a Mary Sue is/was. When it was said that "everyone loves a Mary Sue" that literally meant that Kirk, Spock and McCoy (maybe also Sulu, Scotty, and Chekov!) all fell in romantic love with her. A Mary Sue is much worse than a 1 dimensional heroine.

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If you need the book to explain the movie, it means that the movie is bad.

This over and over.

To be clear, I don't hate the sequels, but I don't think they're particularly good either. Through sheer production values and acting, if nothing else , I think they'll manage to hold up better than most movies. And to be fair, it's sort of unfair to compare any movies to the OT, which changed all of American pop culture. That level of impact wasn't going to happen again with the prequels or sequels. You only get to alter the underpinnings of the very culture itself, once.

Rey’s Lightsaber

11 hours ago, EchoZero said:

I mean, I believe you, but at the same time I just provided you with all the answers. If what you're saying is true you'd change your mind. Somehow I doubt that's the case.

Other have helpfully pointed out why your "answers" are guff, but I did have to just complement you on this conclusion anyway, it's masterful snide double-talk. "I believe you, but unless you accept my entire argument obviously you were lying all along". Classic stuff.

19 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

19 hours ago, ResoluteHusky said:

Anakin is also a Mary Sue (or Gary Stu in this case), he was making a comparison between Rey and Luke.

Yeah... and people don't even get what a Mary Sue is/was. When it was said that "everyone loves a Mary Sue" that literally meant that Kirk, Spock and McCoy (maybe also Sulu, Scotty, and Chekov!) all fell in romantic love with her. A Mary Sue is much worse than a 1 dimensional heroine.

If there is one thing I have taken away from the sequels is that I truly hate the word Mary Sue and all the conversations that come with it. I think it is all made worse by the above explanation that explains how wrong it it used by a lot of people.

24 minutes ago, Imperial Advisor Arem Heshvaun said:

As much as I loved the idea of Kylo discarding the pretense when he destroyed the mask, I LOVE the design for this mask. Very clearly reflects the art of Kintsugi, which is beautiful both visually and symbolically.

I really hope this means that where Kylo was once a broken individual he has repaired himself and come into his own. I'm excited for this film.

8 minutes ago, EchoZero said:

As much as I loved the idea of Kylo discarding the pretense when he destroyed the mask, I LOVE the design for this mask. Very clearly reflects the art of Kintsugi, which is beautiful both visually and symbolically.

Excellent!

In the last six weeks I’ve had to explain what Kintsugi is at least 20 times, and responses have ranged from “oh’ that’s beautiful” to “why would you want to break a bowl then fix it.” 🤣

Just now, Imperial Advisor Arem Heshvaun said:

Excellent!

In the last six weeks I’ve had to explain what Kintsugi is at least 20 times, and responses have ranged from “oh’ that’s beautiful” to “why would you want to break a bowl then fix it.” 🤣

I think the art of kintsugi resonates really well with most people. Many people suffer from losses that metaphorically "break" the person. The symbolism behind the art form is not only encouraging to see, but is beautiful. It's interesting to see it in a mainstream movie.

Also it glows. Which, rule of cool, is baller AF.

Dryden Vos had the same vibro axe as part of his collection.

I like the nods to the In Universe continuity.

J J Abrams on bringing back Emperor Palpatine the Great.

On 9/27/2019 at 1:13 PM, Imperial Advisor Arem Heshvaun said:

Excellent!

In the last six weeks I’ve had to explain what Kintsugi is at least 20 times, and responses have ranged from “oh’ that’s beautiful” to “why would you want to break a bowl then fix it.” 🤣

@EchoZero hey some nerd named J J Abrams backed us up 🤣

Can’t wait for this book to come out!

https://www.starwars.com/news/resistance-reborn-exclusive-excerpt?fbclid=IwAR2E32qS-9fq0w218XJ2cKokWwGhwvpQjnL6dlrbiPRPtqLSdvupkanLoOM

The Return of General Wedge Antilles

New Mon Cal General. It could be Aftab Ackbar but I have no confirmation as of yet.

New Dominic Monaghan Image

“If you only knew the true power of Nostalgia.”

- J J Abrams (maybe)