Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi (2017) (spoilers free to be seen)

[MartyS (Gromit)]

The theme of a terrible past mistake leading you to exile yourself is literally in A New Hope. It mirror's Obi Wan's story.

I hadn't thought of that before, it is the same story.  You could say Luke failed worse, at least Obi Wan failing to kill Anakin didn't really change what happened to the Jedi, they were wiped out by an army.  Luke's failure with his nephew Ben led directly to all the Jedi in training betting wiped out and gave support to the New Order.

Wishing they had made a different movie and saying Luke would never act the way he did are 2 different things.  Big budget movies are products of the time they are made.  Can't help that these movies were not made 30 years ago, or that the franchise wasn't handed over to an independent studio that could make a movie styled in a different era.   Rouge One isn't exactly a feel good movie, it's pretty bleak, is that what we go to see Star Wars movies for?  Only difference is it didn't have main characters we last saw happy 30 years ago.  Really think about the stuff that happens in Star Wars movies, it's about terrible stuff happening to people all the time.   

[goflyblind]

i mean, that's what life is: a series of down endings. all jedi had was a bunch of muppets.

[Imrahil]

You know Imrahil, Star Wars has to change, it has to on some level go some places past fantasy and tell tales that we all as people can relate to in a meaningful way...

It really didn't, that's the thing. There was nothing wrong with it. What this is isn't Star Wars anymore.

[Cyrusso]

Well I don't know what else to tell you Im. I think I've already said all there is to say... I admit probably more than once. Look, I'm sorry that you weren't thrilled but the thing is that some of us legitimately were. Your not liking it is by no means any fault on your part obviously but I still think there's something I'm missing from conveying a full understanding. Time will tell, I suppose.

[Imrahil]

Yeah. I was just trying to speak up against your suggestion that there couldn't possibly be anyone who took exception to it for any reason because it was a "well-made" movie.

It didn't need to happen. Nothing said we needed more Star Wars movies, particularly with THESE characters.  Star Trek TNG did it the right way with just picking up in the same universe much later with different people.

I like Rogue One. I'm curious about Solo.  Dunno about all these other projects, but I'm just going to pretend that the real saga ended at ROTJ.

[Pak-Man]

It didn't need to happen. Nothing said we needed more Star Wars movies, particularly with THESE characters.  Star Trek TNG did it the right way with just picking up in the same universe much later with different people.

Well the good news is different people is about all we have left!

Seriously, though, given certain inevitabilities, the new movies are about the best that any fan can hope for.

Inevitability 1: More Star Wars was going to happen. It was always when. Never if. The demand has been there since the curtain dropped on the prequels.
Inevitability 2: We were going to have to check in on Leia, Luke, and Han one last time. Just starting a new movie a thousand years later and calling it Star Wars just because it had Jedi and Space Ships was never going to cut it. And if everything was going great for all of them, there wouldn't be a movie.
Inevitability 3: The original cast was gonna get older. Not much to be done about that. And as such, they weren't going to be able to carry a flick themselves anymore. So:
Inevitability 4: There was going to have to be a passing of the torch. A goodbye to the old crew and an assurance that the universe would be in good hands after they were gone.

The ONLY way around all of this would have been to go mega-prequel and do an Old Republic kinda thing, but then the fans would just keep asking, "When are we getting Epsiode 7?"

I really don't know how they could be doing any better with the franchise than they are. It stings to watch the end of the old cast, but now the new cast gets to have adventures in a galaxy far, far away without any attachment to the old movies. Star Wars can go where it wants now. I'm pretty sure the sequels have been setting that table from the start. I'm excited to see where it goes from here.

[Edward J Grug III]

It didn't need to happen. Nothing said we needed more Star Wars movies, particularly with THESE characters. 

They have been making more Star Wars stories with these characters since Star Wars happened. And clearly the demand has been there the whole time.

[Cyrusso]

I'd like to address something that's been really bothering me if it's okay with everyone here, and if you are on Facebook and subscribe to certain things that contain any content about Star Wars it's basically impossible to avoid this train of thought. That is... that the character of Luke Skywalker was somehow assassinated. I could say all kinds of words expressing my feelings on this manner, a lot of them being very rude, but I'll just put it simply in saying that in my honest and perhaps unqualified opinion, NO, Luke's character was not assassinated.

I say this because another thought occurred to me watching Doctor Who earlier today. If you're a fan and have seen "The Day of the Doctor", you'll know that the Doctor acquired a powerful weapon called "The Moment". Now, this weapon had the potential to destroy the Daleks, the Time Lords, and The Doctor's entire home planet of Gallifrey. Now if you are the least bit familiar with the character of the Doctor at all, would you say that his acquiring and wanting to use this weapon to end the Time War somehow harms his character? No, of course not because the Doctor... much like Luke had been through changes. He's always been benevolent, "Never cruel, never cowardly". One could argue that the Doctor, for all intents and purposes tries very hard to never solve his problems through violence. But as I recall, nobody said the Doctor's character was either hurt or harmed by "The Day of the Doctor". And to further my point, he didn't face this decision alone, but also with two of his future selves. Even between the three of them, they still had to struggle with whether or not to use The Moment.

The question that makes this whole position valid or not is whether or not Luke ACTED on his feelings... but he didn't. He merely had a feeling, a very brief moment of feeling like he had to strike down Ben... much like when Mace Windu was going to strike down Darth Sidious/Palpatine. Even Anakin as you'll recall said words to the effect of "You can't, it isn't the Jedi way", so tell me, was the character of Mace Windu assassinated by his desire to strike down a helpless Emperor Palpatine? Because I don't recall anyone crying foul on that. You could argue Ben was helpless too, but we saw that he was already powerful with the dark side and hardly helpless. 

My feeling is that Luke didn't go there so much to kill or strike down Ben, but to confront him. I'm giving Luke a LOT of credit here because The Jedi aren't just the guardians of peace and justice, they also have a keen insight into the mind. Luke looked into Ben's mind and clearly saw something like death, destruction, suffering, pain, basically... the loss of further life. If you respect Luke as I do, then you'll understand why Luke armed himself, because in his mind he was going there to confront what was already potentially little more than a monster.

There are two sides to every story, and for whatever reason it seems as though detractors of The Last Jedi have clung to Kylo Ren's version of events and have condemned that movie in large part due to this. But hearing out what Luke said and what he's experienced... he's seen the Empire destroy whole worlds, he's seen it and the First Order annihilate his family and friends, and he saw in Ben's mind the potential for the Empire to be reborn. Even in the wisest man there is fault sometimes. Yoda even said he failed in Revenge of the Sith. Was that character assassination too?

I think what happened is that people idolized Luke a little too much, elevating him in pop culture to be something of a messiah or Christ figure... which is ironic considering who his father was, or was supposed to be. Here's the thing, ignoring his incredible connection to the force,  Luke is just like any of us, only human. Therefore he is subject to the same imperfections and difficulties we all have to learn to cope with and deal with as individuals.

Long story short (Too late, I know), people took this little failure of Luke and magnified it to a ridiculous extent and have as a result, come to call the movie utter garbage. I don't know what this effect is called or if it even has a name, but I think people were so pissed off by the great scores on places like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic and wanted to use any excuse to strike out at the movie to an extreme degree.

[Kete]

i mean, that's what life is: a series of down endings. all jedi had was a bunch of muppets.

Jedi came out 11 years prior to Clerks.  Clerks came out 24 years ago.  We are all very old.

[RVR II]

I think Scarface agrees with Im

[Cyrusso]

Okay, so now I'm seeing some more negative opinions here. What is it with people? Has the negative side not voiced their complaints often enough in this thread and everywhere else all over the net? You know, there gets to be a point where I have to wonder.... why do people have to lodge a complaint all the time? Yes, you have your right to your opinion and all but when you're a little too vociferous about your negativity that in my mind makes you a little less credible with every subsequent post. I know you didn't like it, okay, fine, whatever, but no matter how many memes you share, you cannot ignore how good episodes 7 and 8 were. They didn't get great ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic by accident.

[Quirk]

There's more negative comments about it because the people who liked it have moved on. You should too.

[kunedog]

Okay, so now I'm seeing some more negative opinions here. What is it with people? Has the negative side not voiced their complaints often enough in this thread and everywhere else all over the net? You know, there gets to be a point where I have to wonder.... why do people have to lodge a complaint all the time? Yes, you have your right to your opinion and all but when you're a little too vociferous about your negativity that in my mind makes you a little less credible with every subsequent post. I know you didn't like it, okay, fine, whatever, but no matter how many memes you share, you cannot ignore how good episodes 7 and 8 were. They didn't get great ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic by accident.

I really have no idea what you're talking about.  Seriously.

I didn't come back to this thread when it was bumped for the bluray; blspro didn't either.

It was you who did that, to restate your opinion and express bewilderment that anyone disagrees.  Only then did Imrahil try to explain his side of it again, and obviously the argument got rekindled.  Now here you are again, wondering aloud about those who disagree with you, and how it's them who should lose credibility for being "too vociferous."

[Pak-Man]

And he was OK with just letting it go (At least he liked the sentiment.) So let's not rekindle the unrekindled rekindled argument!

In other news, I totally got my Blu-ray last Friday. I had preordered it for store pickup at Best Buy, because I wanted one of those hard-to-get steelbooks. For some reason they changed it to "Ship to Home" and shipped it right to my home like a week early.

So I have something before the rest of the world! I feel powerful.

[Kete]

And he was OK with just letting it go (At least he liked the sentiment.) So let's not rekindle the unrekindled rekindled argument!

In other news, I totally got my Blu-ray last Friday. I had preordered it for store pickup at Best Buy, because I wanted one of those hard-to-get steelbooks. For some reason they changed it to "Ship to Home" and shipped it right to my home like a week early.

So I have something before the rest of the world! I feel powerful.

Yeah, I bought it last week at Target.