Star Wars Episode VIII The Last Jedi

[synrgy]

I mean, I wouldn't suggest there is an alternative.

Scores are useless, to me, but I recognize that's just me. A movie getting a 2 or a 8 doesn't help me understand if I might like it. For better or worse, I mostly rely on plot synopsis, trailers, and a bit of additional merit (or demerit) based on recognition of director, cast, and/or studio.

There's nearly always a gap between 'critic' and 'audience' scores, and - wrongly or otherwise - I think the reason for that is the willingness (or lack thereof) of the audience to think. Exhibit A = Transformers movies are STILL. HAPPENING.

 

[wankerness]

I would say scores which are being bombed by mad people with multiple accounts are the only meaningless ones out there.

I generally trust critic ratings unless it's the kind of movie that only certain critics will appreciate. I guess what I'm saying is reading reviews, especially from people you are familiar with the taste of, is vastly more important than a number. But, in general, RT and meta critic are very useful to go on.

I disregard audience scores with almost everything cause they almost never diverge from the critic ratings in the direction I agree with. Ex, movies I dislike with bad reviews almost always have higher audience ratings, and challenging movies I like usually set off the audiences that walk in unprepared (ex, Mother, Neon Demon). Jigsaw was mentioned in here as an example of when the audience score is definitely more useful, however, and I agree with that.

Re:Rey's parents, give me a break. If she's just yet another in the family of like five important Jedis in these movies, that's a million times less interesting to me than the "nobody" explanation. Either we have a standalone character with her own personality and ability, or we have yet another in the endless stream of hero stories like Harry Potter etc where you're born special and your parents were magic heroes and blah fuck. I guess if it makes the fanboys like this retroactively and stop complaining about it then sure.

Considering only Leia was allowed to reproduce as far as "characters with the force" go, it sure seems to make it inevitable.

If she's Darth Vader's test tube baby that might make it worth it.

 

[StevenC]

Re:Rey's parents, give me a break. If she's just yet another in the family of like five important Jedis in these movies, that's a million times less interesting to me than the "nobody" explanation. Either we have a standalone character with her own personality and ability, or we have yet another in the endless stream of hero stories like Harry Potter etc where you're born special and your parents were magic heroes and blah fuck. I guess if it makes the fanboys like this retroactively and stop complaining about it then sure..

I don't know about this. Snoke said Rey became powerful in the force to counter Kylo. I don't see how this form of predestination is better. That's my biggest complaint about this reveal: it's a twist for the sake of it.

 

[wankerness]

I dont recall any hints in episode 7 that would suggest she was the kid of anyone important apart from audience expectation after the OT. Were there any?

This reminds me, was it ever confirmed that Darth Vader = Luke's father wasn't a retcon in the OT? That always seemed like it. I know there were always stories like "oh, George Lucas wrote out 9 episodes right at the beginning," but I KNOW that was a load. The dialogue in IV sure implies it wasn't at all planned at the time, even in the case of a hypothetical sequel.

 

[synrgy]

Story-wise, I'd prefer she just be an anomaly, but they did all those 'hint, hint!' scenes in 7, and if those prove out to just be prototypical Lindeloffian misdirection for the sake of, that'll be frustrating, for me.

I've only seen 8 the one time, but I still feel like Luke was handled perfectly. Kylo and Rey stuff, also pretty great. The rest, I could take or leave.

I don't think they could have done it any way where that wasn't going to be an issue, though, because the ending of 7 hamstrung 8: It was going to be The Luke Movie. He couldn't not be in it, and his character is so large that if he's in it, everything else is secondary.

In contrast, 7 had full freedom to set itself up from scratch. Han's interim backstory wasn't mysterious like Luke's; it was all laid out with a few simple lines of dialog. He 'lost' his kid and his marriage, so he went back to smuggling. (Badly.) That allowed 7 to be A Movie With Han, instead of The Han Movie.

So maybe that's a failure on the part of 8, or maybe it's on the part of 7? I'm not sure, really. If you think about it, JJ did kinda give Johnson (or whomever else would have done it) a bag of shit to hold. ANH, and even TPM, played things safe with the first movie being 'self-contained'. TFA was like 'screw all y'all, I'm ending this on the cliffhanger of cliffhangers!'

Just thinking out loud, per usual. Sorry for rambling.

 

[synrgy]

Were there any?

This reminds me, was it ever confirmed that Darth Vader = Luke's father wasn't a retcon in the OT?

"It passed from father to son, and now it calls to you." I mean, WTF, Maz Kanata? Why mention the lineage in such a blatantly suggestive way, if it has nothing to do with Rey?

Initial searching finds multiple sources corroborating that in initial drafts of both ANH and ESB, Anakin and Vader were two separate characters.

 

[marcwormjim]

I know the gravity nitpicks were on the last page, but I’d like a fan theory as to why Carrie Fisher’s mass didn’t pull the ship to her. I have my own hypothesis about how she only accidentally pulled herself into the ship while she was trying to snort up the salt planet (the guy obviously only said it was salt so she wouldn’t try to snort it all), but I want to know what you guys think. Also, what do you think about Rey’s never having bathed in her life being why she has so many midi-chlorians growing on her?

 

[bostjan]

Yeah, the idea that Vader = Anakin was most likely added after Ep IV was made.

I agree that fans are being stupid about Rey's parents, Snoke's origin, etc. No one should care as much about where someone came from before the film than what that character is going to do in the film, but whatever, I don't think people here are really making that gripe. My big gripe is the overall bad/boring storytelling in the middle parts of the movie, and, to a lesser extent, the plot holes I mentioned.

 

[MFB]

I'm pretty sure that the general takeaway once the foaming at the mouth subsides is

I've only seen 8 the one time, but I still feel like Luke was handled perfectly. Kylo and Rey stuff, also pretty great. The rest, I could take or leave.

This was how I felt after my 2nd viewing, but I could straight up toss everything not related to that.

It starts strong, albeit with a slight stumble with the bombers being basically useless unless escorted - but I forgive it since as a whole it's a cool opening and part of Poe's arc for maturing; then nose-dives with Finn/Rose doing nothing helpful while Rey trains with Luke and Kylo tries to find them, and ends strong with the battle on Ho- I mean, Crait.

 

[synrgy]

The buddy I saw TLJ with has been texting me a theory of Rey being Obi-Wan's grandkid.

I remember the 'she's Obi-Wan's kid' theories making the rounds in the immediate wake of TFW, but I knew then that the timeline made them implausible. A grandchild, however, kinda checks out. Rey is 19 in TFW; Obi-Wan would have been 87-ish. Subtract Rey's age, then another 20-30 years for her parents to be of parenting age, and you end up in the middle of his exile period, preceding ANH by nearly a decade.

Similarly fun thought exercise: Vader was 46 in ROTJ. Luke caught him in the middle of a midlife crisis. Murdering Palpatine was like buying a Porsche.

 

[wankerness]

How, exactly, would changing the identity of Rey's parents in any way have affected her character? It's 100% irrelevant to anything she does and as a result making them 100% irrelevant people seems to follow.

 

[synrgy]

It wasn't my choice to make the question central to Rey's journey through TFW and the first three-quarters-ish of TLJ.

But I need to underscore again that this is just fun for me. There's no rage here, either way; I just like playing the prediction game in between releases, I guess.

 

[bostjan]

Someone on youtube posted a theory that Rey's parents were nobodies/junkers a while before the film came out. I don't understand the hate directed toward that idea. Anakin was nobody, Han Solo was a smuggler, R2D2 was one of a dime-a-bushel crate of astromech droids, and no one cares. Now everyone expects each character has to be connected to someone else, and I think it's ridiculous. I really really want Rey to be someone whose parents are nobodies, not because I think the whole "the force balances itself" idea (I actually kind of hate that), but because I'm so sick of fans getting uber-upset for all of the wrong reasons. I already wanted Snoke to be just Snoke for a long time, just because the idea of him being Darth Jar-Jar or some reincarnation of Sipho Dias or Plo Koon's stepbrother's favourite college professor's former roommate's nephew or whatever would be unimaginative and annoying. The character is Snoke, and we know nothing about him expect that he looks like nutsack after a bad vasectomy, and that he's really old and that he has a lot of power. That's not enough to go off and create any compelling fan theories. I think there's more evidence that Maz Kanata is connected to Lando than there is to connect Snoke with anyone other than Kylo Ren. Maybe JJ Abrams will retcon Snoke's backstory with Yoda's, such that Yoda was one of Snoke's boogers when he got midiclorionucleosis as a teenager? That'd be entertaining at least.

I'm much more interested in where they take the story next. Will Kylo Ren be redeemed and become good? Nah, I don't think so, although if Rey goes evil in Ep IX, I would love to see Kylo flip to the light side and fight her. That would have been an interesting twist, except a bunch of people already predicted it, so it'd actually just be a sort of pandering, probably. I think the status quo storyline for Ep. IX, at this point, would be Rey rallies the resistance with Luke Skywalker being their "Remember the Alamo," then there's a big showdown between her and Kylo, then Rey and the Resistance win and they live happily ever after the end.

What I'd like to see would be (totally not a fan theory, just my personal opinion) a last installment where the First Order, led by Kylo Ren, destroys the Resistance and brings order to the galaxy, like the Empire did, and then it turned out not to be as bad as everyone thought after all the fighting was over. It'd fit the whole "Star Wars is like poetry, it repeats and rhymes" trope, because, in the Prequels, it gets you routing against the separatists, but then the separatists end up being the Rebels in the OT. Too sneaky? I'd dig it, but there's no way that test audiences would go for that.

 

[MFB]

Prediction for ep. IX

During the final battle between Rey and Kylo Ren, she can't bring herself to kill him despite knowing he'll never stop trying to either kill her or convert her; and in the end, he mis-handled his lightsaber and ends up falling on his own sword. I'm thinking something like him force-pulling his saber back to him and she side-steps and it ends up sticking him, very Frieza-esque. Rey doesn't strike me as someone who could strike him down knowing there's still a chance for him, so unless he goes full scorched Earth and forcefully (no pun intended) takes someone from her (perhaps he does end Leia?), she'll never be able to.

 

[synrgy]

To clarify my buddy's theory, Rey's parents would still be 'nobodies'. Middle-aged Kenobi would have had a relationship with somebody who fled when she found out she was pregnant, over fear of Ben's potential exposure. She - a 'nobody' - ends up in another relationship with some other 'nobody', whom young Rey would have known as 'Dad' (Maybe DJ -- the Benicio Del Toro character?). They get into trouble; debts/drugs/whatever. Eventually, they sell Rey to Unkar Plott on Jakku in return for an 'escape' to a new life.

And - in the theory - Ben never even knew he got the lady pregnant. Fast forward 10-ish years, he bumps into Luke, and then mere [hours?] later, he turns into a Force Ghost, whom we last saw at the end of ROTJ, merrily gathered around Vader's burning carcass with his buddies Yoda-Ghost and Anakin-ghost.*

It would explain them programming Sir Alec Guiness's voice saying "Rey" into the lightsaber flashback in TFA, and where Rey gets her 'Force Sensitivity', without retconning that her parents are 'nobody'.

To be clear, I'm not saying I want this to be the case. I'm only saying that as a theory, I think it stands up to some scrutiny.

Side Idea: Can we please hire Taika Waititi to direct The Force Ghost Movie starring Anakin/Obi-Wan/Yoda?

 

[wankerness]

Based on what happened with the Han Solo movie, as soon as it got too Waititi-ish they'd fire him and replace him with a director with no personality.

 

[bostjan]

It would explain them programming Sir Alec Guiness's voice saying "Rey" into the lightsaber flashback in TFA, and where Rey gets her 'Force Sensitivity', without retconning that her parents are 'nobody'.

Exact same reasoning could be applied to conclude that Rey is Yoda's daughter.

Side Idea: Can we please hire Taika Waititi to direct The Force Ghost Movie starring Anakin/Obi-Wan/Yoda?

Ep IX might become the force ghost movie.

 

[thesnowdog]

How, exactly, would changing the identity of Rey's parents in any way have affected her character? It's 100% irrelevant to anything she does and as a result making them 100% irrelevant people seems to follow.

So you're not a fan of Who Do You Think You Are? then?

 

[wankerness]

I'm a huge fan of Larry David's reaction to his slave-owning relatives. Rrr, I guess that was on "Finding Your Roots." Why are there multiple of that stupid concept?

 

[Lorcan Ward]

I finally saw this last night. Loved anything to do with Rey, Luke, Kylo Ren, Snoke and some of the ships. Hated everything to do with Fin, Po, Pink haired woman, most of the resistance plot and the casino planet side quest. I can see why fans were so divided on this film.

Way too much spoon feeding for my liking but thats the way most blockbuster films and shows are going these days.

Skellig Michael looked amazing. Probably missed my chance to ever see it now that its become an even bigger tourist hotspot.