Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi

[Steve Green]

Not sure about it going nowhere, but did feel like it scuppered the ticking clock, with them caring more about giant bunnies and the evils of the elite than their rapidly exploding mates.

Depending on how it's shot, people on CGI creatures can leave me cold - this felt like another 'watching someone else play a game' like the Hobbit platformer.

It led to DJ spotting Holdo's plan (the one that involved no-one in the FO fleet looking at a window) and it led to the godawful Tiny Tim scene at the end.

It just highlighted the bits I hated and was preachy to boot.

[Steve Green]

I assumed she just felt that she didn't have to explain herself to an unruly and recently demoted subordinate, but yes she could have avoided a lot of trouble if she'd just come clean.

Poe endangered the fleet, the plan would have worked perfectly if he hadn't sent Flynn to get the code breaker, which is what led to him telling Bernicio del Toro about the plan, which led to the transports being fired on as they left the cruiser.

If Poe hadn't disobeyed orders the Dreadnought would still have been able to track them through hyperspace, and it would have likely ended them before they even got to that point.

Poe and Maz's plan would have worked - it's not entirely their fault that Finn and Rose are fuck-ups.

[TordelBack]

I just can't get my head around the idea that the Canto Bight bit was pointless. Far from it. It introduced a whole range of ideas and images that hadn't existed in SW before (movies that is, TCW explored a lot of this kind of thing), it gave us Rose's backstory, some character development for Finn, and as well as being a spectacle the bit with the Fathiers served as a metaphor for the whole struggle and our heroes' place in it.  'Saving what you love', driving 'a fist through the whole lousy beautiful town', bringing the hope of freedom to the enslaved and downtrodden - which, remember, was what L'il Ani promised to do in TPM and then never even tried (in the movies).   

Without Canto Bight, all we have in the movie is another isolated retreat planet (albeit beautifully realised), and a bunch of soldiers pounding on each other in space. 

With CB, we have a fantastic collection of new aliens to oogle, a magnificent recreation of that shot from Wings, a whole level of GFFA society we never knew existed, a new option presented to Finn (neither FO nor Rebellion, just 'don't join'), a chase through a brilliantly dressed cityscape, and some understanding of both the FO's wealth and the broader setting of the Star Wars themselves. 

We all complained that there was no context in TFA, we didn't get any idea of what the New Republic was, or how the Resistance fitted in, or where the FO came from: Canto Bight offers exactly that kind of fleshing-out of the story (albeit not those specific things), and sense of a larger galaxy beyond the 'splosions and 'sabres. 

No question that the movie is too long (and that the pacing and internal timing is a problem) but I think savings could be better made in some overlong speeches (Snoke, I'm looking at you), rather than this rather lovely-looking new world and its important themes.

[TordelBack]

BAH: ...and the sidetrip is Finn & Rose's contact with one of the central points of the movie, 'failure, the best teacher is'.  Don't tell me it wasn't a great moment when Poe realised they'd failed, and then [spoiler]got zapped by Leia[/spoiler], and then [spoiler]DJ's betrayal, and then the escape transports getting blasted like gungans in a bongo[/spoiler]....  That was some tense cinema, for me at least.

[Colin YNWA]

I just can't get my head around the idea that the Canto Bight bit was pointless....

I'll not quote it all as you can read it yourself. Just suffice to say as ever 'What Tordelback said' and we can all leave happy.

I loved this sequence, so fresh for the franchise.

[Definitely Not Mister Pops]

I haven't read the whole thread here, but has anyone mentioned how good Mark Hamill was? Possibly the best performance in any Star Wars movie ever. If I were to rate his performance to his in the original trilogy I would have to use a logarithmic scale

[JOE SOAP]

I just can't get my head around the idea that the Canto Bight bit was pointless.

Little in the film is pointless; there are set-ups and pay-offs in each storyline. The film is a bit too long but it'd be a hard one to cut down because it's all effectively a game of dominoes and Canto Bight is about as short as it could be without it completely losing its point – maybe shorten jockeying the space-nags.

I think Canto Bight suffers because it's just not quite as good as all the other stuff going on around it and probably would've been a better served location if it was a larger part of the story and set-up earlier. I'd have loved a larger arms-dealing subplot – or to go total fan-wank have Lando as one of the rich elite secretly funding the resistance trying to get more ships and weapons to them – but that kind of 'film-making' in hindsight is bollocks. The film is the best made since the OT and is filled with simple yet clever scene staging that enhances the story and the characters.

Rey compelling Luke into telling her what actually happened during his dark night of the soul between him and Ben Solo is notable; with Luke forced down on his back floating just off the ground while Rey holds the saber over him. The staging effectively reverses the POVs of the characters in the past: Luke is telling it to Rey and seeing it from Ben Solo's point of view as Rey is seeing it from Luke's while she also holds a threatening saber. The poignant call-back to Luke's robotic hand lifting and igniting the saber neatly underscores the impulsive yet mechanical reflex of action without thinking and obviously old D.V. himself.

Another stand-out is Snoke's red-room and the light/dark saber fight; shot like a musical number it still manages to perfectly play the fine line of looking like an improvised fight but choreographed at the same time.

[JOE SOAP]

Don't tell me it wasn't a great moment when Poe realised they'd failed, and then [spoiler]got zapped by Leia[/spoiler]

It was great: [spoiler]sparking the door then bursting through[/spoiler] looking like a negative version of her Da in Episode IV.

[Rara Avis]

My apologies I assumed that the more their fuel ran out the less capable they would have been of making a final hyperspace jump.

@Tordelback, I thought it was Poe's fuffing about that allowed the FO to be able to put a tracker on the fleet in the first place ...

if the lead ship had no fuel how was the final hyperspace jump carried out when they should not have had enough fuel to do it.

They said all along that they had enough fuel to make one jump, just not enough to make a second one. They made one jump. No plot hole.

[TordelBack]

The film is the best made since the OT and is filled with simple yet clever scene staging that enhances the story and the characters.

QFT.  The film is literally jammed with little bits of cleverness, including numerous call-backs to the OT and the Prequels that actually serve a purpose (usually to confound or invert), rather than just nerd-affirming cameos.  This visual richness is something missing from SW since TPM.

Another thing I particularly enjoyed (whether intentional or not) was the apparent reference to the Tartakovsky Clone Wars (previous holder of Best SW Since RotJ) in the Dark Side cave.  In the cartoon, the Jedi Council discuss Anakin's uncompleted Jedi Trials: the last of these is 'facing the mirror', an idea obviously derived from the Cave/Tree scene on Dagobah.  But here we seem to see a possible in-universe literal origin for the term, in the birthplace of the Jedi Order itself. 

The Cave offers knowledge, but is only a mirror that reflects what's in the supplicant's heart. Rey [spoiler]wants to know about her family, but in her heart she knows (or more likely fears) that she is all alone, herself and nothing more: the mirror shows her this, in the same way [/spoiler] it shows Luke that the enemy he fights is himself (or possibly his fear of becoming a monster). How true was the vision in Luke's case?  And in Rey's?

[JOE SOAP]

The Cave offers knowledge, but is only a mirror that reflects what's in the supplicant's heart.

The sequencing of all that is put together particularly well. 'No narration' was a bit of an invisible rule in editing SW films and it throws you a bit when she's talking about herself at the mirror but then revealing that it's Rey telling Kylo of the experience via the Force flips the whole subjective thing again, interrupted by Luke aptly tearing down the walls, leading into Rey's Luke confrontation/flashback.

The set-ups in terms of the physical after-effects of force-facetime really help make Luke's ending work: Kylo feeling the impact of Rey's blaster and the water wiped from his face indicate that Luke didn't just die of 'exhaustion' from projection but felt those saber burns. He was holding his side just before he phased-out  at the twin suns.

[JOE SOAP]

An interesting watch is MidAmeriCon (1976) Worldcon - Star Wars Q&A – an early promo tour before the release of the original film where Mark Hamill, Gary Kurtz & Charles Lippincott (Producer Judge Dredd) field fan questions/quibbles about plot, explosions in space, faster-than-light travel and why are they using swords?

[sheridan]

bringing the hope of freedom to the enslaved and downtrodden - which, remember, was what L'il Ani promised to do in TPM and then never even tried (in the movies).   

Did he do that in the novels / comics / other EU/Legends stuff then?

[JOE SOAP]

bringing the hope of freedom to the enslaved and downtrodden - which, remember, was what L'il Ani promised to do in TPM and then never even tried (in the movies).   

Did he do that in the novels / comics / other EU/Legends stuff then?

The Clone Wars cartoon rehabilitates Anakin somewhat by basically making him a different character: a person who actually gives a shit about the war, his men and other people in general. Strength of character is what the Prequel films lack and partly why Anakin's turn to the dark-side in ROTS is unconvincing and structurally flat. The decision to go full evil in that Windu/Palps duel seems to boil down to Anakin being caught in a bunch of convoluted trickery on behalf of the Emperor about cheating death and convincing him the Jedi are carrying out a coup.

Palpatine's plot-machine on overtime makes Anakin seem too stupid for my liking and undercuts what I thought could play a larger part in the Republic becoming the Empire and his fall, namely Anakin's disagreement with the Jedi's philosophy as guardians and peace-keepers, and being compelled by a real desire to stop the Republic being torn apart by bringing it under his military control.* No Order 66, thanks.

Instead he kinda slides into evil henchman by being caught under the Emperor's spells and bullshit tales of midi-chlorians – it's definitely another angle to the Sith all right but doesn't sit well with the ruling the galaxy part of Vader.

*Post-accident Vader would of course become a weaker lackey under the Emperor and rely on mahinery to keep him alive – so in effect it could be 2 falls: an initial fall to the dark-side, then falling under the Emperor's control.

[Professor Bear]

He's not really a stooge of Palpatine so much as simply biding his time, as evidenced by his willingness to turn on Palpatine in the OT, and more recently in the Lucas-approved alternate ending to the Revenge Of The Sith videogame where Anakin's besting Obi-Wan on Mustafar leads him to murder Palpatine.

The decision to go full evil in that Windu/Palps duel seems to boil down to Anakin being caught in a bunch of convoluted trickery on behalf of the Emperor about cheating death and convincing him the Jedi are carrying out a coup.

Although Anakin was already under Palpatine's thrall by then, Windu actually forces Anakin's hand by attempting to execute the democratically-elected leader of the Republic without trial, while also acknowledging he's acting illegally in doing so.
Though this forces Anakin to make a binary choice between the Republic and the Jedi, he hasn't "flipped" with this one act, he's still the same man he was when he told the Jedi that Palpatine was the Sith lord they were looking for, but Palpatine has by this point groomed Anakin to think that without the Jedi there's only one way forward for him: master the Dark Side and finally discover balance in the Force, just as he was destined to do before politics and romance confused his path.  He slaughters kids not because he's completely evil now, but because he's been duped - thanks in part to the "bullshit tales of midi-chlorians" - into thinking he has no other choice and that the ends - mastery of life and death - will justify the means.
A better actor and script would probably have helped, though.