DANA-kin Skywalker

I think I hate you.

 

I'm sorry, but the Skywalker family IS Star Wars and without them, even the main series would be little more than side stories like Rogue One. It just wouldn't be the same.

Oddly enough, now that Rey has turned out to come from nobody and is not related to the Skywalkers, it means this family has been nothing but a damn curse to the galaxy. Three trilogies where they've done nothing but cause the deaths of billions. Anakin helped bring the downfall of the Jedi and brought tyranny to the galaxy in the PT. As Vader he continued to terrorize everyone in the OT, allowing a whole planet to be obliterated, among other things. Now in the ST Kylo one upped grandpa by destroying a whole system rather than just a planet.

Even the Skywalkers who are supposed to be the heroic ones saving everyone from their own family failed. Based on what we've seen of the ST, Leia failed to unite the galaxy and end the Empire once and for all. Luke failed to do anything to prevent Kylo from murdering billions. Heck if it wasn't for Rey, he would've stayed rotting on that island while Kylo ran roughshod over what was left of the Resistance.

If you lived in this galaxy, the Skywalker name would be synonymous with Hitler or Stalin.

Sadly yes. And...since the Force itself kick-started this whole thing with Anakin, what does that say about it's very nature or purpose?

Will there be a romance between Kylo and Rey?

Bombs dropping in space:

 

Gravity has always present while on spaceships, so people always walk instead of float, things drop to the ground, etc. The bombs are INSIDE the ship, so they drop down.

 

Large ships like the death star with hangars wide open to space which don't get blown out into the vacuum of space. ANH mentions a "magnetic field" which keeps everything inside the hangar while allowing something to come in (or go out) at the same time.

 

Apply these two Star Wars logics and thats how the bombs drop out of the bomber wings.

I just remembered the map from TFA. So...who made this god damn map now?? Did Max Von Sydow make it himself? We know Luke didn't make it and stuff the rest inside Artoo along with an egg timer anymore.

Also, don't bombs fall in space in Empire when they are bombing the asteroids to find the Falcon? LOL. That may be it, the dumbest complain I've head. It;s ok for there to be explosions in space and sounds in space and ships to move in space in ways that are completely impossible but bombs falling!!! It's a disaster!!!

Yeah these complaints are minutiae. While true, Star Wars has already established the rules concerning this. It doesn't feel wrong in any way. Unfair nit-picks.

Choc:

 

I did build Snoke up in my mind. He was just Palpatine 2.0 and I thought there was going to be something different there, or that the lore would be expanded upon. It wasn't. He's not a Jedi or Sith (we think) but what is he? Doesn't matter. He came from the unknown regions of space; that sounds incredible, so that's where it was built up for me. I thought we'd get something new and interesting there.

 

Rey's parents being nobody is fine I guess. It just feels dull to me, but it confused the hell out of my wife. She is not really big star wars fan, and she had the hardest time understanding how Rey could NOT have special parents. Darth Vader was Luke's father, both powerful in the force, and that's how she understood the force. She said, "No, she's too strong she HAS to be somebody's kid, they're tricking her to join the dark side". I said "That's possible, I guess, but Rey seems to have known all along they were nobody".

Saw it a second time with my family, hopeful that my second viewing will change my mind about some things and I'll like it more. Nope. I think I actually dislike this movie more, because the plot holes are more apparent to me now. They're not just nit-picky plot holes, they are major ones: as in rendering the very plot of the movie stupid. My wife was confused, and the more I tried to explain things, the more I realized the plot holes. I went online for answers and instead found more criticisms.

 

The most annoying to me is the fact that some ships have shields, some don't. The big-ass dreadnaught doesn't have shields? Of course not...the script needs the resistance to be able to pick off the ships guns so the bombers can get close amd allow the movie to happen.

 

Distance and weapoms. What..the fleeing resistance ships are the perfect distance away from everything all the time? So position your ships differently! Call for reinforcements so another ship or two appears beside them or in front of them...something. surround them. Can't spare any reinforcements? Fine...like someone's already said on here: hyperspace a few ships that are out of range ahead of them. Problem solved. Of course we are led to believe that none of the first order ships can outrun these resistance ships in the first place. Yes...if only the first Oder had smaller faster tie fighters they could use OH WAIT.

 

Admiral Laura Dern leaving Poe out of the loop with her plan was silly and irresponsible. I guess she felt it more satisfying to show Poe who's boss around here. Yes, THIS is the perfect time for a chain-of-command prick fight, when you're about to all be annihilated. Instead of telling everybody to rely on hope just tell the damn plan already. Need-to-know escape plan... for no reason other than to annoy Poe and scare everyone. Sounds smart.

 

So, the space chase sequence doesn't make enough sense. Strike one.

The casino sequence was both uninteresting and unnecessary. And I love casinos. Strike two.

I did enjoy the Rey-Kylo-Luke stuff, but I still hate what they did to uncle Luke's character, sorry. Foul tip. We're hanging in there.

They screwed up Snoke. Rey's parentage was anticlimactic. The two fun mysteries from TFA...and they screwed it up. Strike three.

Rant #1

Rian Johnson and JJ Abrams WERE NOT on the same page. They weren't in the same book! Johnson seemed to want to undo everything that was started in TFA.

Precisely. You could totally tell these two had very different visions. JJ laid groundwork for the series by giving little threads for his successors to follow and explore. Johnson just cut those threads either for shock value or because he wasn't about to explore anything that wasn't his original idea.

Obi-Wan went to tatooine with a purpose: watch over Luke. In addition, this mission also served as a sort of penance for his failures, but at least there was a purpose. Watch over the boy. He will be a threat to Vader, and he knows this as said in ROTJ. He didn't train him however, not at first. He waited for Luke to make his own decisions, as per ANH. Perhaps his guilt prevented him from training Luke as a young age; due to his failures with Anakin he didn't have complete confidence in himself, or Luke for that matter. After all he's the dark lord's son, maybe training him isn't the wisest choice; so he adopted a wait-and-see approach.

 

Yoda, on the other hand...he just peaced out. He wasn't protecting anything. He could have watched over Leia, he didn't. He just kind of watched young Luke from his slimy mud hole, but never decided it was worth training anybody. Force Obi-Wan had to convince Yoda to train Luke. It probably took years of convincing too, and not just one on-screen arguement in ESB.

 

Luke, like Yoda, peaced out, but he did even less to make amends. He also cut himself off from the force. This probably means he couldn't see force ghosts anymore. Luke was far more directly responsible for the failure as he pushed a Kylo over the edge by almost doing something terrible.

 

Obi-Wan was indirectly responsible, Yoda even less so (although he felt far more responsible for it, because he was the big cheese, amd he has a huge heart). Obi-Wan's exile never bothered me, but always struck me as odd. Whatever, it's a movie. Yoda on the other hand may have bothered me a tiny bit, because he was basically did nothing and was unreachable. The rebellion called out to Obi-Wan, not Yoda.

 

Luke's exile does bother me a bit, because he's turning his back on the galaxy after he screwed it up.

I think that would have been hilarious!

No offense ZN, but your likes and dislikes confuse me. They are all over the place.

 

Not that they have to make sense to anybody. Opinions are what they are.

LDH you raise a good point with Yoda. It begs the question: what exactly can force ghosts do? What can't they do? Obi-Wan says they become more powerful than you van possibly imagine, but up until now all they've ever done is give advice.

 

Another thing I've always wondered: is the force ghost the person individually, or is it like some collective force consciousness? For example, when force ghost Yods says "Luke move on, let the old ways die", is that YODA's individual opinion, or is that merely the force speaking to Luke using a medium he can understand?

I'm not betting on it, but there's still a chance she could be a Skywalker. Kylo may have been lying. She may have been adopted.

She'll be dead before the movie starts. It'll be in the crawl. Maybe the movie starts with her funeral.

Yeah...this might be the best way after all. Just move on. No reason Poe can't take over the resistance now.

TLJ vs. TFA

 

I think TLJ had more great moments and ideas, but also more problems and things I just flat out don't like, but I think it's biggest problem is it dragged so much in the middle. TFA had good pacing.

 

I think TLJ was a superior movie technically; I think it was a better crafted movie, but my opinion on it is that I like TFA much more (at least after one viewing). If I can get over certain decisions I may like it more later. I just didn't...like the feeling it gave me when I left the theater.

 

I also enjoyed all the questions TFA raised, while TLJ kind of squashed them all and feels kind of anti-climactic. The only question I feel TLJ raised is where does this handful of survivors all on one ship regroup?

I see your schwartz is as big as mine.

I thought TLJ totally set it up for Leia to not have a big role. She even says, "What are you looking at me for? Follow him!" about Poe.

 

And if they're no longer trying to redeem Kylo Ren, it's fine that she doesn't have a big role.

 

Personally I want them to put Leia on a bus somewhere. I want her to still be alive in universe when all this is over with.

 

I also want Luke to haunt Kylo the entire movie, muahahaha.

Yeah, she was grooming him for leadership the entire movie.

I don't thing they will circle back two movies to explain the Knights of Ren. But then again, maybe episode 9 takes place far enough in the future for Rey to train a few Jedi, and have her and these handful square off against Kylo and the rest of the knights of Ren.

Luke's totally returning as a force ghost. "nobody's ever really gone," and "see you around kid" hint at that big time.

 

I'm surprised Lando wasn't in that TLJ casino! That's totally the place Lando would hang out. I'm kind of glad he wasn't actually. That whole story thread is the part everyone's going to fast forward through. Since were now fresh running out of OT characters, I think the odds of him appearing go up. Lando's probably loaded, and the resistance needs resources!

 

For carrie fisher, they might repurpose footage from TLJ for critical-only scenes, preferably unused footage without dialogue, then exposition her a bit, and give her character a proper send off. Maybe give her an Admiral Laura Dern kind of moment of self sacrifice, although I'm kind of all done with that. There was a ton of sacrifice in TLJ already. Maybe her internal injuries were too great from her Skywalking scene, but she ignores medical advice and keeps fighting until they get the better of her. Maybe she can somehow tie into Lando? A last-ditch effort to reach out to him for help, she doesn't make it, but it drives Lando to get off his old butt, pick up the football and run the last few yards for her and Han.

 

I thought the Knights of Ren were the Red Guards in Snoke's throne room at first, because they looked like the dudes from Rey's vision from TFA, but they definitely were not using the force. Well trained but clearly not Jedi. I'm not convinced we'll ever see them considering how TLJ treated Snoke, Phasma, etc. This trilogy is big on red herrings and one-offs.

...and of course he didn't. Which is funny in it's own right.

The last time a Skywalker murdered a child he became Darth Vader and resulted in thousands, if not millions of deaths.

 

Murder bad. Diplomacy good. If that confrontation ends in the same result, as in kylo still goes bananas, at least you could say you tried to do the right thing instead of being an a55hole, and are justified in taking him down.

 

Plus I'm generally not a huge fan of child murder in my movies. Although I have been known to make exceptions.

Any thoughts on whether Johnson might use those kids as the basis for his own trilogy?

I was about to ask that. And I hope not.

The idea was to blow Endor up only if the shield generator went down.

Yes of course it was, but what's the point then? The rebels on the moon aren't the real threat anymore. If the shield goes down you need to destroy the ships attacking the death star even faster now. Your priorities don't change. You have far more assets on that moon than the rebels do. You don't use a super weapon to take out mere infantry. The rebel ships alone are a higher priority, not to mention the number of people on them are probably more numerous than those on the moon, plus they hold more strategic value. What's better, taking out 20 infantry or a capital ship with specialized personnel and high ranking officers? Shooting the moon is a laughably dumb idea and is obviously why the scene was cut. It may have made more sense in some other version of the movie they may have been playing with though, just not the final cut.

I think you guys are overlooking something-- he wasn't wrong about Kylo Ben. He ignighted the saber, and regretted it, but he wasn't wrong. Kylo kills Han and joins the first order. He looked into him and saw something darker and more irredeemable than Vader, and knew he was the only one that could do something about it.

Yes he was wrong. That's the whole point of Luke's failure. Kylo does these things AFTER the kid wakes up with his Uncle, Jedi Master Luke all ready to kill him. He drove Kylo to the darkside. Luke was the root cause. I'm sorry, but if you're thinking about killing a kid, your nephew in his sleep, you're a horrible Jedi, a despicable uncle, and a terrible human being. Forget about meditating or working with him...let's just kill the little bastard. Luke's character deserves better than that. My point was RJ could have found another way of accomplishing the same goals without resorting to child murder and taking a giant dump on Luke's character.

 

Since I don't read EU I can't relate to your point there, and I never considered Jedi to be good family people. The movies show them to be quite the opposite, philosophically. Except Yoda. He'd be the best grandpa ever.