Star Wars: The Last Jedi [SPOILERS]

[GandALF]

X-wings have been banking in a vacuum for 40 years!

The appearance of slow moving gravity bombers who individually can take out a Dreadnought immediately after the end of TFA also begs the question as to why they didn't deploy them against Starkiller base in what was a last ditch effort to save the Resistance.

There's an actual plot point about them only being able to get X-wings through the shields, it's also why the Falcon has to leave hyperspace in the atmosphere and basically crash.

[Fixer]

There's an actual plot point about them only being able to get X-wings through the shields, it's also why the Falcon has to leave hyperspace in the atmosphere and basically crash.

That was the Falcon getting through the shields. Getting the shields down so the X-Wings could attack was the reason why they did the crazy lightspeed through the shield trick and threw Phasma into the trash.

[GandALF]

http://www.starwars.com/databank/cobalt-squadron

Six Resistance bombers, including Paige Tico’s Cobalt Hammer, make up Cobalt Squadron. The squadron was unavailable for the attack on Starkiller Base because it was bringing supplies to insurgents opposing the First Order in the Atterra system. The bombers rushed back to D’Qar aboard the Ninka and were sent into combat to buy time for the Resistance evacuation.

[MissKittyFantastico]

So just curious - I've watched the film twice now (the second time taking a few moments to look around backgrounds and such, rather than just being riveted to what was actually happening), and googled to no avail; has anyone spotted one of these ridiculous things at all? Based on the minifigs it looks like it's supposed to be involved in the Crait action, and I had a good look around the wide shots during that - spotted some old AT-ATs among their big brothers - but if they were there, I missed it.

[cilantro]

Okay, so here is the thing that still is bothering me. So, in the Star Wars universe they have technology like lightsabers, hologram messing, sentient and semi-sentient droids (and they can feel pain, btw), space travel, etc.... BUT they don't have auto pilot so ALL of them can just board the lifeboats and go down to that planet?

[Admiral X]

Or since they didn't have to worry about running into anything, just setting a direction and a speed? Of course the real reason was that they needed to have someone turn the ship around and do the lightspeed kamikaze, but yeah, I wondered the same thing. Same with how the other two ships evacuated before they ran out of fuel, yet the captains stayed aboard to die with their ship.

[TGLS]

Maybe it's just the tradition of the captain going down with the ship.

[GandALF]

So just curious - I've watched the film twice now (the second time taking a few moments to look around backgrounds and such, rather than just being riveted to what was actually happening), and googled to no avail; has anyone spotted one of these ridiculous things at all?

IIRC they were in the Supremacy's hangar, BB8 commandeers one during the fight.

[MissKittyFantastico]

IIRC they were in the Supremacy's hangar, BB8 commandeers one during the fight.

That was just an AT-ST, pretty much like the Endor ones (bit of extra head armour) - there's a Lego set of that too (as in, a headless AT-ST, strong contender for least impressive set in recent memory). I'm wondering if these heavy walker things just got cut out of the movie entirely sometime after Disney mailed off the designs; I read somewhere that in TFA there was meant to be a chase on Starkiller Base using the snowspeeders, there's quite a fancy Lego set of one, and in the final movie it was only watching it on DVD that I noticed our heroes crouch down behind one for like half a second before running off into the forest. Haven't even been able to find any design drawings for them, or basically any evidence that the things exist outside of Lego, but Lego only invents its own SW vehicles for the much smaller Battle Packs.

[SlackerinDeNile]

Hoooooo boy...I finally saw the film yesterday and I did not like most of what I saw.

The good?
- Loved most of the special effects, fight choreography and battle sequences, didn't mind most of the critters (loved the adorable crystal ice foxes, but maybe a bit too much of the Porgs for my taste.)
- Kylo Ren and Rey were even better in this film than the last one, I really liked their interactions and developing relationship throughout the story although Rey's attitude was a bit repetitive early on (constantly calling him a monster, etc). Luke, for the most part, was fantastic and I actually liked his snarkiness, he's not Obi-Wan so he's still going to retain some of his old (or should I say young?) attitude and self-deprecation.
- I really enjoyed the call-back to the beginning of Luke's journey in A New Hope with the setting sun at the end, signifying that his journey has come to an end, I actually wish that had happened at the end of Return of the Jedi with him and the ghost of his Dad staring off into the sunset, I know this concept will no doubt piss off a lot of you or make you think 'Ha! That's so queer!' but I'll explain this in more detail soon.
-Luke running down to some sort of giant cross between a Loch Ness monster and a manatee to milk it's udders for blue milk. That's so strange it's awesome. If only there could have been more weird, imaginative moments like that.
- I wasn't too keen on Admiral Tumblr feminist but she was kinda clever and it's nice to see a liberal hippie woman in a position of authority, especially in a friggin' navy.

The bad? Where do I even begin?
- I detested what they did with Snoke, he was given so much build-up in TFA and he just turned out to be a bland rip-off of Palpatine. We learn ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about this guy, he's just a cheap plot device and not only that, he was rather dull, the voice actor did a great job I'll admit but did this character really need to be computer generated? That's a nitpick I guess. Plus his throne room was rather disappointing as well, the Emporor's temporary throne room on the Death Star 2 in Return of the Jedi is one of my favourite movie sets of all time. Granted I have a feeling that this was done for pragmatic reasons, to have that cool fight scene with the Royal Guards but they could have at least put up some more decorations or effects on the walls besides 'scaaaaryyyy red...'
- Leia, flying through space and going on to live through the entire movie. For god's sake, this was downright disrespectful, they should have had her die heroically and with dignity in this film, no matter how much it may have hurt the other characters. Sorry to sound so harsh but face it, Carrie Fisher is gone and Leia needs to go with her.
- Everything on planet 1930's Cuba, this was straight-up prequel territory (which explains why MithrandirOdin loves it, not that there is anything wrong with that.) It just wasn't an interesting world, in the original trilogy you had the inspiring, 50's raygun gothic Cloud City and the seedy, scummy, rough, alien Tatooine, some of the coolest and most inspiring space opera environments of all time. Here, it's just some 1930's casino resort with a bunch of aliens thrown in, where's the effort and imagination? I'll get to this issue in more detail soon. Everything featuring the peasant children irked me as well and just reminded me of Phantom Menace with Anakin and his slave friends on Tatooine, it was unnecessary pandering to the younger fanbase (or people who feel childlike watching Star Wars media, not that there is anything wrong with that.)
- All the sociopolitical pandering, this was such an unnecessarily emotionally manipulative film. I didn't mind Rose as a character but she didn't need to jam the message of poverty and inequality down our throats, how many times does it need to be said? SHOW! DON'T TELL! Unless you can tell it in an interesting and memorable way. Her 'message of peace' to Finn at the end also came across as pretty stupid when you consider that that's what probably brought down The New Republic in the first place...
-The structure and pacing of this film. It didn't need to be quite as long as it did, it dragged on a lot near the end, it felt like a random events plot in some ways, what with the misinformation, the stream of failures on the part of the good guys, the way Rey and Kylo's arc turns out and how so much of what characters do in this film ultimately turns out to be for nothing. To some people this may come across as refreshing and I can understand that but to me it just came across as pointless, why should I even bother going to see the next film if the good guys might fail again or if it just turns out to be a straight up remake of the second half of ROTJ?
- Rey's parents, again, so much build up, why throw it all away? I don't understand...
- Poe's arc was messy, it started out fine with him clearly needing to learn to follow authority more and not blindly rely on his own judgement and ego, but it didn't really feel like he learned this. I mean, his mutiny is quelled, for the right reasons, but why didn't they just let him in on the secret plan to begin with? He's clearly a loyal member of the resistance, even if he is a hot-head who doesn't always follow orders.
-The last remaining resistance members speeding away on the Millenium Falcon at the end. Come on, isn't the Falcon important enough? It's already an iconic symbol of the franchise and one of the most revered fictional starships of all time. This just feels like a deliberate use of symbolism by Disney to get us to accept that they aren't going to do anything truly new, interesting or challenging with the franchise beyond this film and that they're going to continue to rely on nostalgia and established symbols and concepts. If it sells well then I guess we can't change their minds.

-

The Empire and the Rebellion were simple concepts, but there was no reason to think an Empire couldn't be in power (and the prequels explained how that happened). Here, there was a time of peace, and yet the Republc never grew beyond a small handful of planets apparently within the same system. The Republic never had a military of its own, it never seized the Empire's old assets/technology, and the First Order and Snoke arose out of nowhere. I would say it's poorly thought out, but it doesn't seem like they gave the universe at large any thought at all. Granted, this is as much a JJ Abrams problem as it is a Rian Johnson problem, but they really doubled down on it here.

Thank you, granted the Empire in A New Hope was never given a great deal of explanation but it didn't need any, we understood what it was and why it had to be stopped, the whole conflict could be argued to be an expy of the idealistic elements of The American Revolution with some World War 2 and the fascist powers of that era thrown in. With the First Order it just feels like an idiot plot, why the hell didn't The New Republic do anything about these guys when they had the chance? Why didn't they stop them from building the Starkiller? Why should I feel any sympathy for this 'Resistance' if it's their own ignorance, apathy and laziness that got them into this mess?

This was one of my problems with TFA and I was hoping that this film would answer some of my questions, but it doesn't. I still don't know anything about The First Order other than that there an expy of the Empire and that they're the designated villains.

I've watched both RedLetterMedia's and the Nostalgia Critic's reviews of this film and I feel quite similarly to how they do, RedLetterMedia even theorise that Rian Johnson is deliberately trolling the audience and pulling some sort of Springtime for Hitler for whatever reason, which is hilariously awesome in a way. I have a feeling that Rian and the other writers who worked on this film probably thought they were being clever with the twists in this film and how the payoffs expected from TFA never come, but it just comes across as lazy and unimaginative to many viewers such as myself.

I'm even going to go as far as to say that I preferred the prequels to this film. They have A LOT of problems sure but at least they served a purpose, at least they had A LOT of ambition and effort and imagination behind them, at least on the part of all the talented artists and designers who worked on them. They did introduce a lot of cool characters, locations and environments to the franchise.

I'm sorry but I'm giving up on Disney's Star Wars from here on out, I love the original trilogy (yes even Return of the Jedi) but this is all way too manufactured (even moreso than the prequels.) I'm just not comfortable watching these films anymore, I don't want to see inferior remakes of the original trilogy and this film was too much disappointment for me to handle. If you enjoyed this film, that's fine, I've got nothing against you, as long as you can tolerate my own whiny critique. I haven't got high hopes for the anthology films either, the Han Solo 'biopic' sounds like it's going to be a mess.

Finally, regarding what I was trying to say about Luke and the symbolic sunset. I personally would liked to have seen that at the end of Return of the Jedi in some form. Having Luke and the ghost of Anakin stare at a binary sunset would have been the perfect way to end the trilogy to show that these two conflicted characters, one who is now a good, spiritual hero and one who has redeemed himself and found the light again, have reached the end of a long, hard, complicated journey, the two suns being symbolic of themselves and their place in the eternal force and universe. The benefit of hindsight I guess. Why did I get defensive and bring up that people might get mad about this? Because Star Wars fans are a varied bunch and many of them tend to have slightly limited (I really don't want to say childish) views on how it should be. A lot of people believe Darth Vader should always be this hate-filled, psychopathic, murderous monster instead of a conflicted, violent but somewhat noble fascist who just wants to bring some form of order to the universe (not that I like him, he's still evil). People forget that it wasn't him who destroyed Alderann, he didn't even care for the Death Star, and he only killed one Imperial officer on screen (who was subtly hinted to be slightly sympathetic to the rebels) and tortured another for their failure (the Star Destroyer Captain who lost track of the Millenium Falcon, I'm convinced he wasn't killed but just knocked out from the pain and suffocation.) (People forget that he likely suffered further PTSD from his failure at the end of A New Hope and sought revenge against Solo and The Millenium Falcon, not that it makes him sympathetic but it does help to put his actions in further context.) Why shouldn't there be room for some kind of redemption? Why should fictional and mythical villains always be villains in our eyes?

Why the hell did I even bring that up? Because this is clearly how Disney wants Kylo Ren to be. Think about it, if Kylo had killed Snoke and then realised just how pointless this fascist Sith Empire was and how it would inevitably crumble without any effective enemies he could have slowly gone onto the path of redemption without Rey or Luke's help. I'm actually kind of glad that they included the part of Luke almost killing Kylo, I don't entirely blame him for nearly doing so, even if it is kind of hypocritical. The writers did take some risks with this film, but I can't respect them for it because the film hits several reset buttons in the last act. I strongly agree with RLM that Rey and Kylo's 'new order', even if they were the antagonists in some way for the rest of the trilogy, would have been an interesting and more challenging concept to explore. Admittedly it would have also worked better if we actually knew who the hell Snoke was, who and where the hell the 'Knights of Ren' are and how the hell this all happened in the first place. :\