NeoGoomba wrote: ↑2017-12-29 10:00am
Thanas does bring up something I had been hoping for after TFA: Master Luke going up against ALL of his traitorous students that later became, supposedly, the Knights of Ren. There was zero mention of them at all in this.
The Knights of Ren are implicitly mentioned when Luke says that Ben left with some of his apprentices while killing the rest.
Thanas wrote: ↑2017-12-29 10:24am
I dunno, worked in plenty of other movies before where they show people - without knowing anything about them - being inspired by the actions of a hero.
Maybe, but there's nothing wrong with showing kids you've already seen.
It is however not quite right that she gets Luke's story. This to me speaks of a lack of creative writing. This random character who has had a saber for a few days, had a few days of training and some books is having his arc. Which is pretty ridiculous on its own, but my main gripe is this:
This isn't a writing criticism to me. This is like that old addage Lucas said about looking at a house the artist has painted white and wanting it to be green. That's fair enough as far as it goes, but I don't see how Rey has Luke's 'arc'. Luke isn't entitled to any particular arc.
They don't have to tear the old characters down to make the new ones great unless the new ones are so bad that they cannot stand on their own in the presence of legends. Which again speaks to writing.
It's not just about tearing old characters down to build up new ones, but also to make the old characters go through interesting changes from which you can mine dramatic material. We've seen the wild old teacher three times in these movies now (Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda).
I think we will luke see training her. But for how long? Another two lessons? Or is he going to be hanging around for years to train her so she can fully tap into her mary-sueish wank potential? Then why kill him in the first place.
I doubt we'll see him training her. He'll pop in and out to give advice. Possibly even harass Ben. If Luke could train Rey, why didn't Obi-Wan continue Luke's training after his death?
If they're smart, they'll effect a significant multi-year time jump where we can infer Rey taught herself further from the Jedi texts. It's not like we didn't infer that with Luke's massive increase in competence in between TESB and ROTJ even though he had never returned to Yoda in between that time.
Honestly it seems like they just want to wipe the board clean of the OT people so the new ones can do everything instead of building off of it. Which begs the question of why use the OT characters in the first place? Well, the out of universe answer is of course that they wanted to do a cash grab. And the in-universe reason? I cannot find one that necessitates this diminishing of well-loved heroes.
Ben's relationship to his parents is pretty essential to the plot of the film.
If it goes against everything of an established character then there needs to be a better explanation than "people change". People do not change their core characteristics for no reason.
I don't think it does. What about RotJ's ending would lead us to believe that Luke would be an amazing Jedi master who would never make a terrible mistake, suffer a terrible reverse, and sink into a funk? He was a young man saddled with the responsibility of training and incredibly powerful apprentice, and he fucked it up. Worse, it was his own nephew. This is not something he ever dealt with before. He had no measure of responsibility for Darth Vader's fall. Luke dying, pleading for his life wasn't going to turn Ben's heart as it did Vader.
https://www.avclub.com/this-is-not-goin ... 1821472840
But then, this is always the risk—and the inevitable disappointment—of epilogues. When Disney first acquired Lucasfilm and announced a new series of movies to take place after Return Of The Jedi, it was an implicit announcement that the victory our heroes had achieved, the one that fans had been celebrating for decades as an example of light always winning out against the dark, was about to be undone. Star Wars fans had dealt with this idea before in the post-Jedi stories of the Expanded Universe, in which new threats arose to take up the mantle of the not-wholly-vanquished Empire. But there Luke, Han, Leia, et al. were still young-ish and virile, and imbued with the lasting confidence of their win. They—and we—knew there wasn’t anything they couldn’t handle now, and there was little to challenge that notion—or to upset ROTJ’s perfect holiday photo ending of them all basking in their triumph while the Ewoks drummed joyfully on the hollowed-out skulls of the Stormtroopers they just ate. (They definitely ate them.) It’s why, when George Lucas decided there was more story to tell, he retreated to the safety of history, knowing there would still be that happy ending out there waiting. Nothing can erase that.
And yet, that’s not how life works. Victories fade, replaced by new challenges. Heroes get older. They become broken-down and kind of pathetic, bearded and cynical. Sometimes they even end up all alone, stewing over decades-old fuck-ups, suckling at the nipples of sad, mutant cows. Happy endings are always undone because “endings” don’t really exist. Time doesn’t stop when you want it to. Your “destiny” can and will be slowly eroded away by the many small, cumulative abrasions of life that inevitably follow after you achieve it. This is real, and it’s disillusioning, and it can fill you with righteous anger at the unjustness of it all. And then, you die.
In tackling this notion head-on—in being willing to not only challenge Star Wars’ happy ending, but to question whether happy endings actually exist—these new films are giving the saga something that it’s always somewhat lacked, even in all its constant grappling with themes of the spirit versus the machine: humanity. That’s not always an easy fit with the kinds of myths that Star Wars updates; rarely do we talk about the fact that Hercules, for example, triumphed over his Twelve Labors, only to end up a twice-married widower who got killed by a shirt. And the very idea of it pisses off people who cling to the illusion that their own hero’s journey will someday be “complete.”
And yet, that’s the story of life. We get to what seems like a comfortable end—married with children, say, accomplished in our careers, content to just let things remain status quo forever. Then life intrudes, because we’re only one small chapter within its story. Those things change and slip away. We may “fundamentally disagree” with what life decides for us. Life writes its epilogue anyway.
Essentially, Luke got a dose of real life.
If shoestring-budget TV shows regularly manage to do so in this day of age I see no reason a billion dollar movie cannot do the same thing. It is just a lack of creativity.
TV shows go for like 12-13 hours over a single season. It's a question of time, not budget.
I also disagree that Luke is not in the main cast of this movie. Mark Hamill is credited before any of the new heroes and certainly treated as a main character by all the media.
Because he's the actor playing Luke Skywalker, not because he's main cast. That's just marketing. The screentime he gets is not on par with those of the actual main cast - Rey, Finn, Poe and Ben.
And yet he gets plenty of screentime here and his parts are widely considered the strongest of the movie.
Of course they are - and he's interacting with Rey in nearly all of them.
Do you agree or not agree that this version of Luke is a realistic one? This is a difference of opinion. I vehemently disagree on that, mainly because while I can accept one or two of the OT heroes utterly failing at everything after Endor, I cannot accept all of them failing at the same time. That is completely unrealistic.
I'm not sure what 'realistic' means in terms of fictional character development. Do I buy Luke becoming how he is based on what happened to him, according to the film? Yes.
CaoCao wrote: ↑2017-12-29 03:01pm
Abrams said that the vision, at least that part, was of the past. The past of the Force (Kylo, the Knights and Luke) and her past (when her parents abandon her).
Now, if you want to believe it's about a cosplay party Ben and friends went to...well...I won't say anything.
So what if it's the past? Is the destruction of Luke's training temple the only thing that could possibly have happened in the past? Kylo and his Knights did nothing in between then and TFA?
That she had the knowledge because she had the books. It is clearly implied that she had everything she needed inside of her (the connection to the Force and her good personality). That was a particular moment of good writing.
Then someone decided to dumb it down and make a more literal passing of the baton (screwing the previous scene).
Or it was always a double-meaning. I see no reason to insert some sort of interfering someone for no reason.
You're pulling this out of...nowhere. He explained in detail why he thought the Jedi must end, never why they should continue nor did he recognize a mistake in what he said. He "returns" to save his sister, risking his death, in a close to in-character moment.
Erm - at the very end of the film Luke literally gloats to Ben that he won't be the last Jedi.
It's closure, a good bye. Something he could have done in person and would have mattered. Making it an astral projection (force ghosts are translucent and blueish), cheapens the moment.
How does him being physically there change anything about their conversation?
The real theme was, to let go of the past, and they dumbed it to be pretty obvious. Even in interviews when facing criticism.
Kylo Ren keeps saying 'kill' the past, I'm not sure the movie is agreeing with him.
And that it's Rebellion vs Empire in a wacky scale (bigger but smaller). Point is, noone learned from any past mistake if you're rehashing the OT, and everything happens in almost the same way.
The only way they're 'alike' is that the First Order has an Imperial aesthetic and the Resistance has (or had) a rebel aesthetic. As of this film, the First Order is threatening to control the major systems in 'weeks' according to Rey (i.e. it does not control the whole galaxy) and the Resistance has been near wiped out.
yeah glad we're not the nerds and star wars fans here on stardestoyer.net, that would be terrible.
