The Last Jedi **WARNING: SPOILERS ALLOWED**

[_EAllusion]

Also, what Rey did at the end of TFA was no more preposterous than what Poe Dameron did in the first 5 minutes of TLJ. Wonder when the man-o-sphere will get around to raging about that.

Luke goes from a backwoods farm boy to the savior of the galaxy in a span of days in the first film. He succeeds where everyone else fails. And this is fine when you understand it in its context. TFA is deliberately written as a soft reboot of that movie with Rey as Luke remixing many of the same elements of storytelling. It's not as well made, but they are written similarly in terms of being characters who are overly competent for their background. Star Wars is a little better at having some rushed foreshadowing of what Luke will ultimately do, but it's rather thin if you think about it too much. This is not what it means to be a Mary Sue, but if it was, then Luke would be an example too.

TLJ has a couple of lines that are meta-jokes poking fun at this. Most of the jokes in TLJ don't quite work because they are tonally off, but those actually some of the few that land.

[_EAllusion]

A List of Some of the Times TLJ Told the Other Star Wars Movies to Eat S***

That's a good list of examples, though I think it missed point of the Rashomon flashbacks, but a lot of those examples come with a caveat that the need to do this hurts the coherence or momentum of the overall story. Look at where the movie ends and tell me if things have moved much beyond, say, the opening crawl of the first movie.

Also, bullet point #4 is one of my favorite moments of the movie - I'm not kidding - and I think it's one of the most Star Warsy things in the film.

[_Gadianton]

Lucas made his last great scifi film in THX1138

That was pretty good, and for the budget, probably really good. Way better than Star Wars, but still not that great. Even as a kid I didn't like Star Wars. I liked Sci-Fi, Close Encounters had a tremendous impact on me. I remember a neighbor kid gave me a Darth Vader action figure for my birthday and it didn't really fit with my other toys and I kind of thought it was weird and embarrassing, and kept it away from my other stuff.

I haven't watched any of the new Star Wars movies and have no plans to. So go ahead and drop the spoilers, doesn't bother me.

[_EAllusion]

I think THX1138 is a good movie if you handicap it for being a low budget quasi-student film. If you aren't grading on a curve, then it's alright, but I wouldn't sing its praises or anything. It's sound design is great, which is what George Lucas's real calling is in.

I think Star Wars is really good and succeeds spectacularly at what it sets out to do. It's too easy to take its strengths for granted 40 years later. It's also a film that was made when George Lucas had people around him that could rein in some of his bad instincts. Star Wars is widely thought to have been a much worse movie on paper that was saved in editing with a big assist from his then wife.

[_cinepro]

This is after the first movie occurred in which Luke succeeds where the rest of the rebel force fails in blowing up the death star using the Force - a mystical concept he barely knew of only days prior.

That's not really what happened. Other rebel pilots made it to the exhaust port, and it was a group attack. If Luke had just flown in by himself and blown it up then you might have a point*. But he had a lot of support. Plus, he was already a really good pilot. The Force only kicked in at the last moment for the final targeting of the port. He very well might have blown it up without the Force helping him; it just gave him a little nudge and guidance at the very end.



Spoiler Footnote:
*especially if he had done it without a ship, which apparently the Force would have allowed him to do...

[_EAllusion]

This is after the first movie occurred in which Luke succeeds where the rest of the rebel force fails in blowing up the death star using the Force - a mystical concept he barely knew of only days prior.

That's not really what happened. Other rebel pilots made it to the exhaust port, and it was a group attack. If Luke had just flown in by himself and blown it up then you might have a point*. But he had a lot of support. Plus, he was already a really good pilot. The Force only kicked in at the last moment for the final targeting of the port. He very well might have blown it up without the Force helping him; it just gave him a little nudge and guidance at the very end.

Spoiler Footnote:
*especially if he had done it without a ship, which apparently the Force would have allowed him to do...

That he's good pilot is only established by him saying he's a good pilot, though in the context of a backwoods farm boy with little experience of the broader world, and the movie making him one. That describes his hyper-competence, not defies it. Sort of like Rey being a fabulous engineer based on years of scavenging, I guess.

The movie goes to great lengths to make it seem like his shot is, pun intended, a long shot. One in a million. The tension in the scene comes from this. He does it because instead of relying on technical ability like everyone else who fails he gives in to using the force. How he knows how to use the force, when he just learned about it only recently, is something we're expected to just accept as how the force works. It's fine because this isn't hard sci-fi we're talking about here, but it does establish that in this universe, force-use is something minimal knowledge and faith cover.

If we just presume that Luke could've just as easily done this without the Force, it undercuts the whole point of that sequence.

Rey's later use relies on audience expectation of how the force works coupled with the same "it comes naturally" writing. It's not a jarring contrast between someone who is good at everything and someone who has to earn success through painstaking experience.

[_EAllusion]

I have been watching the Red Letter Media reaction. It makes a lot of the same points in this thread, though it does seem more down on the film than I am. It was a good listen. It does point out something that gnawed at me a little:

Why the heck is Yoda behaving like the fake character Yoda was playing to test Luke? I don't think Rian had the right take on Yoda's character from that movie.

(Also, Rich Evans makes fun of Doc at the end, so there's that.)

[_Water Dog]

That's not really what happened. Other rebel pilots made it to the exhaust port, and it was a group attack. If Luke had just flown in by himself and blown it up then you might have a point*. But he had a lot of support. Plus, he was already a really good pilot. The Force only kicked in at the last moment for the final targeting of the port. He very well might have blown it up without the Force helping him; it just gave him a little nudge and guidance at the very end.

This. Plus Vader, being his dad, didn't want him dead. He was always playing a game of letting him get close.

[_EAllusion]

Darth Vader isn't his dad in that movie. That’s a later embellishment in the storytelling that isn't foreshadowed in the original film. In the original he's just a chief henchman rather than the most important character in the whole galaxy. You are putting in context that isn't present in the actual film.

He was on the cusp of killing Luke just like the rest until Han Solo bailed Luke out at the last second. It's just a fun moment that's earned just enough not to feel corny. (Your corny mileage may vary.) Luke then pulls off what we're told is borderline miraculous using the Force.

And if you are going to keep adding extra context not present on screen to downplay Luke, then you can do that with Rey too. Nothings stopping you from that. Especially since the second movie is out and Rey is portrayed as far from being admired by everyone and successful at everything.

[_Analytics]

I liked it.

After taking some time to digest TLJ, the real canonical message we get from the prequels is that Jedi training is incredibly overrated and that the Jedi order is an evil religion that makes its adherents pompous, arrogant, self-righteous, and blind.

I much prefer the Force to be used by conscientious people living in anarchy rather than as a tool of a religious order.