Yes, that would have been infinitely more powerful. Like I said, they kept talking about being the spark that started a rebellion. Luke dying would have done that. Luke’s force illusion disappearing with a snarky comment, not so much. He died alone, and it had no resonance for me at all.
Now maybe they compensate for that in the next movie, as his force ghost will certainly be returning. But for the next 2 years or whatever, it feels awful that they would throw away the protagonist of the first movies in such a way.
Yes, because there was no reason for the added complexity of Luke being a work-from-home consultant. It was pointless, it added nothing.
Additionally, Luke doing a lightsaber fight by Skype and then dying from an excess blue milk consumption heart attack doesn’t have quite the same gravity as Obi-Wan’s death (or frankly, even Liam Neeson’s).
The hate isn’t strong within me. I just didn’t like it!
I definitely enjoyed some moments… but 48 hours later, they’re escaping me. TLJ was forgettable.
The franchise has no pull on my kids. Since I’m not a kid, I get some vicarious thrills watching my kids get excited. They’d rather watch Youtuber’s playing Pokemon or Minecraft. My 11 year old son said, ‘So the last movie they re-started Star Wars, and then this movie, they re-started Star Wars again. Are they going to re-start it again in 2 years?’
I guess so.
I never paid attention to the Extended SW universe, but I guess it has nothing to say since they’re just re-shuffling the same cards over and over.
My kids loved the both Guardians of the Galaxy flicks, Thor: Ragnarok, and dig the Marvel U, so we have some franchise movies we can look forward to year to year.
Seriously. He should have shown up in person, Force crushed the entire First Order land army into a huge steel ball and tossed it into space. Then I’d be cool w/ his death-by-exhaustion.
There was a Dark Horse comic story years and years ago, Luke shows up in a hooded robe standing in front of AT-ATs and a monologue balloon has him thinking something like, “As my old master once said, size matters not.” He lifts a few fingers up, and gestures to the side with them as he begins knocking the AT-ATs over in an impressive display of the Force. I was really hoping TLJ was going to go there, but nope.
It’s not snow. I think he said it was salt. And I believe the tech was old, very old, like a generation of something that barely doesn’t needs roads kind of thing. I didn’t think they could fly really, not like the ships in the rest of star wars.
The movie met my requirements of a Star Wars movie. There were only a few things that made me think… that was weird and a lot more well that was cool. I like all the new heroes.
The CGI in these movies seems off to me. I can’t really describe it. It’s not that’s it’s cheap but it just doesn’t blend well with everything else.
To each is own, but I hate that god-like power attributed to the force. There was a similar fight in the original clone wars cartoon when Mace Windu is single-handedly dismantling an entire droid army.
That kind of power fantasy isn’t impressive, it’s silly and empty to me.
Which is all the justification I need to appreciate the idea of Luke merely projecting himself to Crait. I think the execution was still clumsy in some ways, but I was relieved when I realized he wasn’t really there at all and hadn’t truly survived that sustained fire from the entire First Order ground force.
I got choked up at the beginning with R2 and Luke. I loved the visuals. I liked yoda (more or less dialogue was not great, but the whole movie had bad writing) and it really felt like Star Wars when Rey and Kylo joined forces. I’m not sure why, but that moment I thought, this is Star Wars.
What I hated in no particular order:
Why does Rose sound like she’s a Disney Park employee. So cheering it was disturbing.
I love how they tricked Gwendoline Christie into a 2nd movie where she did nothing.
Someone tell Leia the force doesn’t work like that.
Laura Dern, If BB-8 can pilot an AT-ST We have droids and auto pilot please notify the other captains as well.
Why are we having an Austin Power chase scene in space. Send some ships ahead to blow up the rebel ships. That was just freaking stupid.
Finn is quickly becoming the Jar Jar Binks of this trilogy. He comes off clumsy and dumb and every time he speaks it’s like he’s not in a Star Wars film. “Cops” is not a Star Wars word. See also, “are we really doing this?”
If you’re going to use the original cast freaking use them and don’t sideline them to cameos R2D2 together 3PO > than BB8.
When is BB-8 being renamed MAR-E-SU?
If all that’s left of the resistance is on the falcon and all that’s left of the new order is Kylo and Hux where are the Hutts or Darksuns to take over the galaxy?
Why is everyone in the film buying time for the group. I get that message, but how many times do we need to hear it? Also how many times does Rey need to tell Luke why she is there?
Bombs in space. Um look I love WW2 and I get Star Wars is based on it and I’m the last person to nitpick SW physics, but that’s just stupid. You don’t have bombs in space (magnets?) and ships that run out of fuel don’t just suddenly slow down drift out of control.
Why is Mumbles from Ususal Suspects in Star Wars?
Instead sneaking off the ship, finding an slicer and sneaking aboard the Star Destroyer, why don’t they just find the tracking device on the rebel ship.
Luke is not a tragic character! That’s his father and now his nephew, but not him. I flat out hated it. He wouldn’t have even thought to kill Kylo after confronting vader etc. and him not even showing up for the fight, terrible. He should have been there and should have sent them running.
If the republic is the established government and this episode takes place shortly after episode 7, why do people have secret decoder rings hiding the fact that they are part of the resistance/republic etc?
Why are we having another attack on a super weapon? Send all our ships the destroy that giant door knocker.
So Maz?
The weird way they shot the Kylo/Rey chats.
When did Poe go from being smart soldier to Maverick from Top Gun?
So…Snoke.
I really would like to know how much interaction the directors of 7 & 8 had with John Williams. I miss the good old days when every track on a star wars film score was memorable. Granted that hasn’t been since ROTJ, but still.
Not every sci-fi film needs to be Guardians of the Galaxy or Thor Ragnarök. I have no problem with humor in Star Wars. Humor is part of it’s charm, but they were really pushing it with this one. Although the light saber to the back of the head and porg dinner were fun.
People keep bringing this up everywhere. Stop it. Just stop. When Empire came out they were still world building. Everything was new and unknown. Now we are in Chapter 8 of this crazy book and we know a lot more. Snoke came out of nowhere and had no impact. It’s really bad storytelling.
And if you bring up the bad guys in the prequels I will turn this car around so help me jeebus.
It taught me that they had no game plan for this trilogy. It reminded me that there’s no reason you can’t have a star wars film without the original cast, but that you don’t need to kill them off just to push your new toys/franchise etc.
There isn’t a tracking device on the target ship (the rebels in this case), it was just some sort of new advanced tech/technique with the thing on the First Order ships that the rebels were trying to sneakily disable.
Yeah, agreed, there was no tracking device on the Rebel ship. The whole plan seemed to be they’re tracking on one ship. We’ll disable it, and they won’t know it because they’re just slow mo chasing at the moment, visually, so they’re not really paying attention. When the Rebel ships jump, they’ll just track and… ooh, it doesn’t work anymore. They have no idea where they went… lost them.
“Possibly” is all you need for someone to argue he didn’t lose his only way off the island—since we don’t know for certain either way, you can’t really refute that possibility. But like I said, I agree with what you’re saying overall about the themes.
I don’t think anyone is upset about the themes you’re discussing, Kylo Ren overtly explained them in the movie, killing the old to make space for the new. The failure was in implementation.
Nobody complained when Han Solo died because that death was earned. It had consequences, it was shocking, and ultimately it was necessary. Luke was just as important and his death was utterly wasted. It didn’t have any consequences, he wasn’t martyred, it didn’t move the dial at all, it just delayed the bad guys for 5 minutes (which to belabor the point, they didn’t even know was the plan, they may have thought he intended to destroy the entire invading force). Nobody except Leia and newgirl knew about it. And it wasn’t necessary; it didn’t make sense that he would just keel over. Yoda didn’t say “do this, and surrender to the force you will”.
I don’t think The Last Jedi will be remembered as one of the better entries in the series. Better than 1 and possibly 2, worse than the rest.
