Star Wars VIII: Spoiler Time

This will be the thread for discussion with ALL SPOILERS VISIBLE!

If you don’t want to be spoiled, get the hell out now!!

Ok lets get to it. (no particular order)

  1. Snoke being stupidly killed by Ren. After being able to dominate and even show force powers never seen before, even as he claims he is reading Kylo’s mind he doesn’t notice Ren moving a lightsaber to stab him with? What a joke.

  2. Snoke - no backstory. We are told nothing about him except he seems to be ancient.

  3. Ren - Driver’s weakness as actor were covered in Awakens but here glaring. He seemed to be on verge of tears entire movie. Zero gravitas or dread.

  4. Every First Order officer is a buffoon. Complete comedy relief.

  5. Jokes every other line seemingly. Snarky and not serious. Seriously everything was played for laughs and near parody.

  6. Leia dies and is jetted out to vacuum of space and all of a sudden wakes up (in space) and flies into the ship…and does nothing basically rest of the movie …wtf

  7. Rey’s parents being nobodies…she isn’t anyone…

  8. Luke was always a serious character. Here they forced Hamill to become a jokester who winks at people, acts like a millennial…it was awful…Hamill saying he was pissed about how they wrote the character makes sense.

  9. Finn storylines and entire presence in movie was pointless and continually played for laughs. He goes off with a new character to a casino planet and basically does nothing the entire movie. Only look baffled and startled. Then rides some alien horse around…echoes of episodes 1-3…

  10. Poe went from being a great leader and pilot in the Resistance to an arrogant, dumb as a rock, buffoon who ignored his superiors at all turns. Everything he did was literally the wrong decision.

  11. 3+ star destroyers plus another ship the size of a small planet, all filled with troops, fighters, carriers can’t board and catch a cruiser? Gimme a break…this lasts btw basically the entire movie they are slow mo following a Resistance cruises and “can’t catch it”…this is in real space not because it is jumping etc…

Lets start here…

WTF, spoilers dude!

Ha ha, I couldn’t resist.

So, there was a decent period at the beginning I didn’t like the movie. When I saw the metal dice, all I could think of was Spaceballs. I hated the part where Chewie BBQ’d the bird’s friend. That said, my GF is vegan and hates Thanksgiving for the Turkey Massacre and I’m thinking when she sees it, she’s gonna love this part.

When I came home my GF asked how I liked it. I told her, “I’m looking forward to seeing it with you, but I thought it was funnier than it needed to be.” I’ve never minded the goofy jokes in Star Wars, but this was too much.

I agree on the White Bronco chase. I was thinking, “really? all this can’t take down that?”

I have to separate myself from Ren because he is the twin of an ex-friend, who would probably behave that way. That similarity alone was enough to bring me out of the role anyway.

The master codebreaker reminded me of a role Brad Pitt would play.

I get the Resistance isn’t a formal military, but the dress codes for Admirals is certainly interesting.

That said, around the time Luke came clean about he handled Ren, I thought it picked up. I liked the scene with Yoda, and how they ended Luke’s arc. I liked the cruiser blasting through the other one.

I was happy with the ending and a little sad. I have no idea how they are going to handle Carrie Fisher’s death. I wasn’t sure if they would rewrite a part at the end to have her die. They have said they aren’t going Grand Moff her, so, I don’t know. It was also sad because to me, she isn’t recognizable as Carrie Fisher anymore, She aged in a way you can tell her lifestyle took a toll on her.

It felt long. I could do without the whole casino planet, but from the last shot I think they are setting it up for a place the rebels will hide out for a bit.

I liked it better than TFA, because it didn’t have the baggage I think a new Star Wars sequel has. The next movie will only really have Anthony Daniels as an original member. Even Chewie was a different actor.

Actually those dice go all the way back to the first movie. It’s a pretty great callback for the eagle-eyed.

star-wars-mistakes-dice

I stand corrected then.

This movie was so weird, but I think I really dug it. Primarily because - while preserving the status quo for the state of the universe - it also changes a ton of stuff in it. Contradictory. The whole movie is like that.

The ending feels both like a major bookend while also opening things up. Like - a huge open ending, but one that makes you wonder how the story will wrap up in just one more film. The only thing I can think of is that it can’t - except maybe for Kylo Ren. They said this trilogy will cap off the Skywalker storyline, so who’s to say Rey, Finn, Poe, and Rose can’t continue on?

Anyhow - some of the stuff cited above were no issue for me. I thought Driver’s performance and character were even better than in TFA. Ridley also does a great job with some meaty material. I love the inversion here, where you’ve got the one character tempting the other to the Light instead of the Dark. I dig breaking down Poe as a character. Instead of just making him the generic heroic dude with swagger who scoffs at the rules, they have him learn that actions have consequences, personal vendettas and attempts at glory don’t win wars, and that sometimes a battle is better lost if a cause can continue. And I believe it.

Finally, as for the Snoke stuff … man, I don’t care about any of that. The Emperor had like no storyline in the original trilogy, nor did he need one. We don’t need to know who Snoke was, we just care about him in relation to Kylo Ren. He’s a story tool, and one I thought was effectively used.

My only problems with the film were maybe one or two too many one liners, and the oddness of Luke’s ending.

Shit, I think I could keep going.

Cool, definitely disagree with almost everything you said.

The moment when Leia floats through space after the First Order destroy the Resistance ship’s bridge was so poorly done. :(

I hated that they ripped off Battlestar Galactica miniseries plot, but did it with much shittier writing that relies on characters being stupid and doing stupid things.

I hated that Snoke was teased as someone really interesting when he was the exact opposite of that and went out like nothing.

I hated that whenever there was a scene with main character potentially dying (and my being optimistic that they have some balls), they undercut it in the most ridiculously stupid cringy way possible - happened with both Leia and Finn.

I hated how little charisma and chemistry all the characters had, with exception of Hamill who is just a god damn bad ass in his old age. Adam Driver remains woefully miscast and is never gonna get better. Finn and Rose had zero chemistry.

I hated the cringy “any kid can become jedi!” ending scene.

I hated the forced humor which made the villains into even more of a joke than they already were.


I liked Millenium Falcon flying through the red caves with classic SW music playing, nice nostalgia.
I liked Hamill and the reversal of expectation regarding his training of Rey.
I like the new meme with Leia flying in space to Superman music.

I disliked all of it, except perhaps the Yoda scenes. The continuity issues PechSOG mentioned are spot on, although I will add that I’m quite sure Snokes isn’t really dead.

Finn’s role is literally the black dude, he is joined by the Asian girl and both of them made no impact in the story. If their scenes didn’t exist, the main plot would have played out in exactly the same way. Very, very poor writing.

Ben is a joke, he looks like a constantly constipated teen going through an identity crisis. Neither villain inspires fear nor dread, they don’t inspire anything really, they’re empty shells. That general blonde dude was Gwen from Galaxy Quest(during the mine seige, his role was to repeat the captain’s orders, wtf??).

After 2 movies I still don’t know who the main characters are, what they want, what their strengths and weaknesses are. Compare that to episode IV n V which had properly built characters by the end, that many of us loved… or hated or made us feel something, anything. This soulless travesty made me feel bugger all.

The rave reviews are a disgrace but I suppose the ‘critics’ have to put food on their table and Hollywood’s menu is what it is these days.

I was surprised they didn’t actually kill Leia and will apparently have to do it offscreen? I guess they wanted to keep her brief reunion with Luke in, otherwise, I thought for sure she would stay behind on the cruiser and Laura Dern would stick around as the sorta Leia replacement.

I liked that without Leia the rebellion was quickly falling apart from the inside. I liked that their plans failed, and it was largely their fault for not trusting each other.

I really liked the whole hopeless chase thing, but thought that the jaunt off to space casino planet really took away from that. That whole segment could have been cut with the important bits happening another way and I think the movie would have benefited. Yoda was great. Felt like classic Yoda and not prequel Yoda in any way.

I also agree that Finn without Rey fell flat.

They could have spent more time fleshing out Snoke, but they also never really did much with the Emperor. I did enjoy how effortlessly he was able to deal with Rey.

Not at first, but in the original trilogy just being The Emperor was enough. The rules of the setting were less codified. Later, we had the prequel trilogy which firmly established how he came to power, and the nature of the Sith.

Now we get Snoke, seemingly much more powerful than Palpatine, and apparently old enough to have been a contemporary. We get absolutely nothing about his backstory or how he fits into the bigger picture. And given the perfunctory way in which he was dealt with here, it seems unlikely they’ll backfill any of that in future. It absolutely undermines the setting, which generally bothers me a lot more than questionable character beats because I’ve always loved the ‘Star Wars Universe’ more than any particular character.

The disregard for careful world-building seems to be a recurring problem in the new trilogy (but is something Rogue One actually got right) and its sloppy handling in this movie actually makes The Force Awakens’ worse in retrospect. That movie needed to provide a much more solid foundation for this one to work.

Adam Driver was excellent in The Force Awakens and has only gotten better with more to do in The Last Jedi.

On that I won’t even bother debating anyone, if you disagree you’re wrong and I don’t care and if it was built into Discourse I’d just block you.

For the rest of the film, things I really liked:

  • Everything about Rey’s connection and interactions with Kylo and with Luke.

  • Rose, and her relationship with Finn

  • Everything that goes down in Snoke’s throne room with Kylo and Rey. I honestly didn’t know what was going to happen. I never believed that Rey would turn irreversibly, but I was seriously considering she might go dark in this film and not be redeemed until IX. I could’ve imagined her killing Kylo, Snoke, or both. And likewise, I really could imagine Kylo being redeemed, and I loved that he wasn’t evil evil, he was “thinking he’s doing the right thing” evil, and that he and Rey were so close to coming together on this that they got to fight together. That was awesome, and a beautiful scene from start to finish.

  • Rey’s lineage. I love that it doesn’t matter. That not everything in Star Wars has to incestuously connect to every other damn thing from another movie. Likewise, Snoke doesn’t need some elaborate story for how he connects to anyone. The Force is what holds the universe together, it’s out there, everywhere, and you don’t need to be born into it. You need training to learn the ways of the Jedi or Sith, but anyone, anywhere could be strong in the Force. And maybe they never do anything with it but grab a broom. Or maybe something sparks them to do more.

  • Luke and Kylo’s history. It makes sense, a moment of doubt in Luke irreparably destroyed their relationship. It’s excellent justification for Kylo’s hatred of Luke.

  • The humor: most of it.

But there was a lot that bothered me too:

  • Everything with spaceships was duuuuuuumb. The primary offense was hanging the tension of the whole movie on this countdown to running out of fuel, but in a scenario that makes no sense at all. The First Order should’ve just sent one of those decorative Star Destroyers (seriously, they never engaged or did anything in any fight) into hyperspace one or two “space miles” ahead of the rebels, and game over. The idea that they were all just moving the same speed in this weird slow pursuit and neither side could do anything to break out of it was awful and contrived.

  • But also the rest of the things in spaceships. Poe’s opening attack on the dreadnaught also relied on complete incompetence from the First Order. They know they’d be vulnerable to an attack from tiny quick fighters up close, even if they want to humor him and hear out his message, why don’t they already have TIE fighters in position? It was a silly fight, not a thrilling one. And then on the surface of Krayt, those junky little ships looked beautiful stirring up the red salt on the ground, but what was the plan? I swear they didn’t even have weapons. It didn’t even look like a fight until the Falcon showed up, just an interminable stalling tactic to no apparent end.

  • Most of casino planet was dumb. Too digital, too silly, and in a movie that felt too long, this should’ve been cut. I did like the opportunity for Finn and Rose to inspire the future of the rebellion, and I liked Del Toro’s character so they would’ve needed another way to bring him in, but overall the movie bogged down there.

  • The movie was paced wrong. The climax was the confrontation with Rey and Kylo and Snoke, and I spent the entire final act thinking any second we’d cut to credits to end on a cliffhanger. I knew, practically speaking, that we weren’t going to truly get such an abrupt cliffhanger since Rian wasn’t going to be responsible for IX. But that would’ve made more sense for the movie.

  • Some of the humor: ugh, that blue milk scene was awful. Luke brushing off his shoulder felt too glib and modern.

  • The Leia fake out. That was just stupid to take it as far as they did. Blow up the bridge, but have her use the force immediately, don’t float her out into space to asphyxiate, crystallize, and then have the force kick in.

I think this was intentionally set up to demonstrate incompetence from Hux. The captain of the dreadnought furiously complains that they should have had a fighter screen up five minutes ago.

I think the movie was mostly done by the time Fisher passed, I don’t think they really had a chance to rework things without delaying and seriously rewriting the film.

I groaned for a second when Yoda showed up because in the very first shot, he looked obviously digital. But I think that might’ve just been the effect of the glow around him, because for most of the rest of his scene, he looked really good. I wonder if they were really using a puppet again and just punching it up with the blue glow, because yeah, I really liked him too.

Oh yeah, good point. That’s a reasonable explanation from the First Order’s side. Still a terrible plan by the rebels to bank on that.

Regarding the first space battle, it seems that in a galaxy far away, they’re stuck at WWI bomber tactics (fly low, drop bombs, hope dor the best). Also, 3x suicide bombing is a bit too much for 1 movie(the initial space battle, the admiral in the cruiser and Finn’s failed attempt).

I don’t get the dislike for the movie. I was thoroughly entertained and enjoyed myself. It is Star Wars so I don’t care about plot holes or inconsistencies much. I liked where they took some of the characters and feel that Kylo Ren ist growing as a villain. I even liked the jokes and quips. It was not a “grown up” movie like Empire was, I freely acknowledge that.

A few things where odd and sadly underdeveloped (Rose and Finn are a glaring example) and I could have done without the Pogs. But still, I can’t wait to see it again. Had a great time in the cinema. And can’t wait for the disc.

Yes. In addition to what you said:

  • Why did the Dreadnought waste time firing on the defenseless and immobile base on the planet rather than the rebel fleet that’s about to escape any second now?
  • How about that great “stay in tight formation and arm your bombs early” strategy from the rebels?
  • Finn and Rose have no trouble escaping to a different solar system with nobody from either side detecting it, and then returning just as easily. The escape pods are clearly FTL-capable, and unless the ships are being designed by either incredibly callous people or total morons, they surely must have enough of them for the whole crew. The rebels have no intention of fighting. Why not just have everyone escape? Not enough pods? Just make a few trips, there was obviously enough time for that.
  • The Laura Dern character decides to pretend for no reason at all that the rebels have no plan at all and that they’re all doomed. Which would be stupid no matter what, but especially so when they actually do have a plan. Why demoralize your people for no reason at all?
  • The plan that Finn/Poe/Rose come up with depends entirely on the assumption that the imperials are only using one of the tracking devices, despite having one on each ship. It also depends equally much on the one that’s in use being on Snokes ship, despite a) there being no evidence that it’s the case, b) for the first jump the tracking had to be done by another ship since Snokes wasn’t yet around. There is zero reason to believe their plan will work.
  • But they believe the plan will work, and it’s not particularly risky. So just why do they decide to hide it from their commanding officer and eventually mutiny over it?
  • It’s suddenly revealed that in the Star Wars universe, ships in Hyperdrive will interact with matter in normal space. So a single rebel cruiser just slices and dices the huge imperial fleet. If every traffic accident has these kinds of consequences, how hasn’t every solar system been reduced to rubble by now. Why are there no hyperdrive missiles? Why aren’t these tactics used all the time, given how extremely effective it clearly is?

Absolute morons making plans that have no chance of working unless everyone else is a moron too.