I just Watched The Last Jedi, why was it controversial??

Visanideth · Jul 6, 2018

Crossing Eden said:
Luke's sacrifice is the only one that works in the film. It was a huge trick meant to distract the FO so that the rebellion could live on and eventually defeat the FO.

You realize this is kind of a tautology? "It works because it works"?

Besides, the question is more along the lines of: what makes Luke's sacrifice right compared to Holdo and Finn's in the light of Rose's words? What qualifies it as right in relation to the movie's messages? Is Rose even right according to the movie?

PBalfredo · Jul 6, 2018

I'm shocked anyone could watch that movie and think a weaponless, half-melted, ramshackle ski speeder would have done any damage at all to the fully charged battering ram laser. If it didn't liquefy before even touching the laser cannon, it would have had as much impact as a gnat fart. It would have been the most pointless suicide ever.

LegendofLex · Jul 6, 2018

collige said:
I'm not sure the final fight on Crait could really be described as "unnecessary". As BetterOffEd points out, defending the gate was the only real course of action for the Resistance at that point in time.

I'm not saying the attempt to take out the gun was unnecessary.

But since they failed to stop the cannon from charging, there was nothing necessary about Finn's suicide run.

Visanideth said:
Besides, the question is more along the lines of: what makes Luke's sacrifice right compared to Holdo and Finn's in the light of Rose's words? What qualifies it as right in relation to the movie's messages? Is Rose even right according to the movie?

Holdo was already dead. She might as well take out some capital ships.

Luke's sacrifice is about more than just saving the resistance; it's also about trying to reach out to his nephew the only way he can while there's still time (now that his only way off the planet is gone).

Visanideth · Jul 6, 2018

BossAttack said:
We probably don't agree on liking The Last Jedi, but even as a fan of the movie it's pretty much impossible to not realize the movie's themes are muddled. The problem is that all of the characters are playing musical chairs with regards to where they start and where they need to be, with each characters arcs cris-crossing and sometimes hampering others. Basically, Finn needs to become Poe, Poe need to become like Leia and Holdo, Rose needs to become Finn, Rey has to become Luke, and Luke has to take up the mantle of Legend. All this becomes a problem when each character is told that who they start off as is wrong and they need to become more, which means that the other character who has to become like them ends up in a "wrong" position.

Honestly I take the fact that I agree with so many of the things you write about the movie and yet end up in a different place in terms of liking as a testament of the fact that we can still rationally analize a movie and then subjectively decide what's important to our enjoyment and appreciation. The fact that we can agree on flaws and merits of an artistic product and yet value them in different ways should be normal, really.

Visanideth · Jul 6, 2018

LegendofLex said:
The film repeatedly repudiates the idea that suicide runs should ever be considered successes.

That's why it ends up with Luke's suicide run being the pivotal moment in the story.

Yeeep.

BetterOffEd · Jul 6, 2018

LegendofLex said:
At the same time, the film just got done hammering our throats that there's no point in throwing a bunch of human lives against an enemy weapon if at the end of the day the enemy has more weapons in the wings anyway and you can protect more lives by avoiding an unnecessary fight.

This is a lesson Finn didn't get the chance to learn yet, but it's one that Poe (and Rose) definitely understood.

Gustaf said:
this is correct, those 12 speeders didnt do anything, like anything, neither did those soldiers who went out to attack, they just died, and the gate still was blown open

Except that the gate wouldn't have been blown up if Finn were allowed to succeed, and in such an instance, all the soldiers who died wouldn't have died in vein. This is where the thematic portion of the movie gets muddled and weird.

Finally, in response to both of these replies, why is this a lesson that Finn has to learn, but Luke does not????

Poe has called back hist troops. This closes his arc. He does not want to sacrifice more lives even if it would lead to success (as he sacrificed lives for success before). This is weird, since like half the speeders already went down and a buncha dude's in trenches got iced, but whatevs, Poe learned something and he's retreating to hopeless situation in the base. Arc closed

Finn disagrees, so now the only sacrifice to save the rebellion is Finn. One dude plans to go down to buy the rebels time. But he's stopped, apparentlly because he didn't get a chance to learn the lesson Poe and Rose did.

So what about Luke?

Luke does exactly what Finn was about to do. He sacrifices himself to buy the rebels time. Why did Luke not get the memo? Why does Finn have to learn a lesson, but Luke does not have to learn the same lesson? Why didn't Holdo have to learn the same lesson?

CloudWolf · Jul 6, 2018

It's not bad, it's not great. It's a perfectly servable Star Wars flick with some great stuff and some big issues. It's okay.

If I would rank Star Wars, I'd do it as follows (not counting Solo, because I haven't seen it)

1. Empire Strikes Back
2. Star Wars / A New Hope
3. Return of the Jedi
4. Rogue One
5. The Last Jedi
6. The Force Awakens
7. Revenge of the Sith
8. The Phantom Menace
9. Attack of the Clones

LegendofLex said:
The film repeatedly repudiates the idea that suicide runs should ever be considered successes.

?

Holdo's sacrifice is the literal definition of a suicide run and that works wonders.

LegendofLex · Jul 6, 2018

CloudWolf said:
Holdo's sacrifice is the literal definition of a suicide run and that works wonders.

Holdo's ship was 100% going down regardless of what she did.

Visanideth said:
That's why it ends up with Luke's suicide run being the pivotal moment in the story.

There's a huge moral difference between going on a kamikaze run and offering yourself up to the wolves without fighting back.

Crossing Eden · Jul 6, 2018

Visanideth said:
You realize this is kind of a tautology? "It works because it works"?

It works because like Leia, Luke believed that the new generation of heroes could actually succeed. Crait is the culmination of everything the new generation has learned in the film as well as the official passing of the baton from him and Leia. He senses when Rey rescues everyone and that's when he deactivates his lightsaber. It wasn't a suicide run in the traditional sense as he was never actually there to begin with. Just the idea of him.

CloudWolf said:
Holdo's sacrifice is the literal definition of a suicide run and that works wonders.

Holdo's original plan went as followed, drive the FO away from Crait as she's the sole person left on the ship, sacrifice one for the many, this was a WAY better plan than what she did out of pure desperation. In fact, it's similar to Luke's plan, it's as if there's a trend in the film where the older characters are in the right and the younger ones aren't and that they learn how to do things the right way by the end of the film. I wonder if there's anything in the film that confirms that....

Musubi · Jul 6, 2018

I really hate the notion that goes around in a lot of circles that your some depraved MRA type who hates women and minorities if you didn't like TLJ read a few posts in and we've already had a few of those responses.

There are extremely legitimate reasons for hating large chunks of that movie. The writing is just bad, inconsistent and attempts to shove excessive amounts of comedy in a film that is supposed to be a DARK movie.

Like think about what is going on in TLJ. The remaining resistance has been dwindled down to just a handful of people. They've lost several legendary heroes like Han Solo and Luke and there are just attempts at comedy relief that consistently undercut the thematic elements of the movie. The movie tries to have its cake and eat it too constantly and it fails quite more often than it succeeds.

I also think they just really dropped the ball and really underutilized good characters like Finn in the movie. Finn was such a big part of Episode VII and he was great and Rey and Finn are great together on screen and then they see each other in VIII for a total of like 5 minutes at the very end.

It seemed like they had a story built for Rey, Kylo and Luke and had no clue what to do with all the other characters.

Spinluck · Jul 6, 2018

Because some Star Wars fans for the most part don't know how to balance expectation vs reality.

Not even saying that the movie isn't without its issues, but the backlash it got was incredibly dramatic.

baron doggystyle von woof · Jul 6, 2018

Because star wars fans are the worst. It was a good movie and the "twist" was great.

CloudWolf · Jul 6, 2018

LegendofLex said:
Holdo's ship was 100% going down regardless of what she did.

But that's exactly what a suicide run is. When in an unwinnable situation, you try to sacrifice yourself while taking down whatever you can of the enemy. In Finn's eyes (and the viewer's) the situation on Crait was very similar to the one Holdo found herself in, he couldn't know Luke Ex Machina would come to save the day. It wasn't unnecessary or illogical at all at that specific point in time.

BetterOffEd · Jul 6, 2018

LegendofLex said:
The film repeatedly repudiates the idea that suicide runs should ever be considered successes.

But this is nuts! Holdo pulls one out of nowhere to massive success! The movie practically stops and asks you to be in awe of her actions

Then Luke does exactly what Finn was trying to do, in a different way. And the entire galaxy is invigorated for it!

And this gets to the heart of what I don't like about the script. It tries to say so much that it becomes hypocritical. Case in point, you have somehow gotten the message from the film that suicide runs are bad, despite the fact that this movie contains the two biggest in the franchise

The movie tries to have all of these themes and higher meanings, but they are surface level. They are shouted at the audience while the opposite is shown. The script is littered with confusing inconsistencies once you dig deeper

The takeaway I get from the movie is as follows: "Sacrificing yourself to save your friends for a cause is bad because you are worth more than that, unless you are one of the characters who has been written to make a bad ass sacrifice for their friends or a cause, in which case the galaxy will sing your praises"

LegendofLex said:
Holdo's ship was 100% going down regardless of what she did.

So was Finn's if Rose hadn't stopped him! How are these things different? The only difference is that one of these characters was written to die and the other is contracted for three movies! As an author, why draw attention to that fact????

Pooh · Jul 6, 2018

I still don't know what people wanted from Luke, he did basically the coolest and most "light-side" Jedi thing ever. Totally badass.

Crossing Eden · Jul 6, 2018

CloudWolf said:
But that's exactly what a suicide run is. When in an unwinnable situation, you try to sacrifice yourself while taking down whatever you can of the enemy. In Finn's eyes (and the viewer's) the situation on Crait was very similar to the one Holdo found herself in, he couldn't know Luke Ex Machina would come to save the day. It wasn't unnecessary or illogical at all at that specific point in time.

Everyone was telling him to come back.

BetterOffEd said:
But this is nuts! Holdo pulls one out of nowhere to massive success!

The FO immediately attacked Crait almost the second they got it up and running. How is that a massive success?

collige · Jul 6, 2018

LegendofLex said:
I'm not saying the attempt to take out the gun was unnecessary.

But since they failed to stop the cannon from charging, there was nothing necessary about Finn's suicide run.

The implication is that the impact would've stopped the gun from firing.

Holdo was already dead. She might as well take out some capital ships.

Luke's sacrifice is about more than just saving the resistance; it's also about trying to reach out to his nephew the only way he can while there's still time (now that his only way off the planet is gone).

This is related to one of my issues with the movie that no one ever seems to bring up which is why it was necessary for Holdo to stay on the ship and die to begin with. Are we to believe that these highly advanced space ships can't stay on autopilot for a couple of minutes without a human on board? The same thing happened with the captain of the medical ship that got shot down towards the beginning when they stared running out of fuel. I wouldn't normally mind the "a captain goes down with their ship" trope since that's the kind of old timey stuff Star Wars is built off, but TLJ is explicitly about rebuking those types of valor.

BetterOffEd · Jul 6, 2018

Visanideth said:
You realize this is kind of a tautology? "It works because it works"?

Besides, the question is more along the lines of: what makes Luke's sacrifice right compared to Holdo and Finn's in the light of Rose's words? What qualifies it as right in relation to the movie's messages? Is Rose even right according to the movie?

Exactly, this is the question. Rose is not right according to the movie. Rose saves Finn out of selfishness. She is in love. There is no other reasonable way to interpret this

She doesn't even look at the base going down. This was a deliberate decision by the director. She is doing this for Finn

Beyond this, the movie's "message" is very muddled

Crossing Eden · Jul 6, 2018

collige said:
The implication is that the impact would've stopped the gun from firing.

Characters in the film:This literally isn't gonna work. Everybody retreat.

Finn:Wait I got this.

Characters in the film: Finn retreat.

*Film shows Finn's aircraft being torn apart as he gets closer and closer to the cannon*

Some audience members:ThE ImPLICATion iS thAt the impacT WoUlD'vE stOppEd tHE GuN FROm firiNG

Visanideth · Jul 6, 2018

LegendofLex said:
There's a huge moral difference between going on a kamikaze run and offering yourself up to the wolves without fighting back.

I really don't think we get to put Luke's sacrifice on a moral pedestal when it's based on lying to the First Order and then lying to the good guys.

Remember that the entire "spark" nonsense is based on the idea that somehow the First Order won't tell people how things actually went down ("Skywalker the coward never really showed up, he just appeared as some sort of hologram in order to buy time for his allies to flee"). It relies on creating some grand lie about what happened, pretending Luke actually faced the FO, pretending he didn't die in the process and so on.

It's one of the most nonsensical elements of the plot. We're supposed to think that the idea that Luke Skywalker, the guy who's the last hope of the galaxy, the guy the Resistance has sold as the ultimate McGuffin to defeat the FO, simply showing up as an illusion and dying of extertion without taking down a single stormtrooper is the spark that makes the galaxy who wouldn't answer the Resistance's call rally to their side.

"You know those few guys we wouldn't aid because they were doomed? Well their McGuffin showed up and now he's dead, but they managed to escape, so now they're as weak and powerless as they were before, just somewhere else. We should totally join the resistence!".

Either they lie about what Luke's done, or there's no spark to speak of.

What makes this even more deliciously stupid is that IN THE SAME DAY you have not one but TWO resistance fighters (both women, which in RJ's now misoginistic version of SW could be a problem) that performed minor achievements like, I don't know, actually killing Snoke and escaping unscathed, on top of being as important as Luke in saving the Resistance survivors, or destroying half the FO's fleet (including their flagship and Snoke's throne of power) severely damaging their war assets.
But no, these women actually doing shit and crippling the First Order won't inspire people. Luke Skywalker dying on extertion in a glorified prank call will.

CloudWolf · Jul 6, 2018

Crossing Eden said:
Everyone was telling him to come back.

Yes, because they saw that they were getting picked off and decided to retreat, not because they had a better plan, but because they didn't want to be sitting ducks. If Luke hadn't shown up, the Resistance was going to be wiped out 100% regardless, so Finn tried to do something by pretty much replicating Holdo's move. Regardless whether or not it had succeeded or failed, it wasn't some sort of weird or illogical idea for him to try to stop the cannon. If he had finished his run and had been successful, he would've effectively saved the Resistance for now (since there was no way those nuAT-AT's were getting through the gate).

Crossing Eden · Jul 6, 2018

CloudWolf said:
Yes, because they saw that they were getting picked off and decided to retreat, not because they had a better plan, but because they didn't want to be sitting ducks. If Luke hadn't shown up, the Resistance was going to be wiped out 100% regardless, so Finn tried to do something by pretty much replicating Holdo's move.

You're literally acknowledging that his sacrifice would've been pointless.

Visanideth · Jul 6, 2018

Crossing Eden said:
Characters in the film:This literally isn't gonna work. Everybody retreat.

Finn:Wait I got this.

Characters in the film: Finn retreat.

*Film shows Finn's aircraft being torn apart as he gets closer and closer to the cannon*

Some audience members:ThE ImPLICATion iS thAt the impacT WoUlD'vE stOppEd tHE GuN FROm firiNG

Just because the movie says it it doesn't mean it's logical or right. Movies can be stupid. TLJ takes pride in being stupid at an alarming frequency.

LegendofLex · Jul 6, 2018

BetterOffEd said:
But this is nuts! Holdo pulls one out of nowhere to massive success! The movie practically stops and asks you to be in awe of her actions

Holdo was absolutely, definitely going to die with her ship. Presumably someone had to do so to avoid letting it fall into the hands of the First Order.

Luke, likewise, had no way off the island without using Force projection, and chose to use it not to blow shit up but to reach out to his nephew one last time and try to apologize for hurting him.

Finn was in no way obviously condemned to die regardless of what choice he made. Finn also wasn't giving himself up nonviolently out of love.

These three kinds of self-sacrifice aren't the same. If you can't see that, I'm not sure how much you really know about the moral compass of Star Wars.

Visanideth said:
Remember that the entire "spark" nonsense is based on the idea that somehow the First Order won't tell people how things actually went down ("Skywalker the coward never really showed up, he just appeared as some sort of hologram in order to buy time for his allies to flee"). It relies on creating some grand lie about what happened, pretending Luke actually faced the FO, pretending he didn't die in the process and so on.

Nah, this is some grade A bullshit, and none of it would have changed how incredible that story would have been for those in the resistance who experienced it.

Gustaf · Jul 6, 2018

Visanideth said:
I really don't think we get to put Luke's sacrifice on a moral pedestal when it's based on lying to the First Order and then lying to the good guys.

Remember that the entire "spark" nonsense is based on the idea that somehow the First Order won't tell people how things actually went down ("Skywalker the coward never really showed up, he just appeared as some sort of hologram in order to buy time for his allies to flee"). It relies on creating some grand lie about what happened, pretending Luke actually faced the FO, pretending he didn't die in the process and so on.

It's one of the most nonsensical elements of the plot. We're supposed to think that the idea that Luke Skywalker, the guy who's the last hope of the galaxy, the guy the Resistance has sold as the ultimate McGuffin to defeat the FO, simply showing up as an illusion and dying of extertion without taking down a single stormtrooper is the spark that makes the galaxy who wouldn't answer the Resistance's call rally to their side.

"You know those few guys we wouldn't aid because they were doomed? Well their McGuffin showed up and now he's dead, but they managed to escape, so now they're as weak and powerless as they were before, just somewhere else. We should totally join the resistence!".

Either they lie about what Luke's done, or there's no spark to speak of.

What makes this even more deliciously stupid is that IN THE SAME DAY you have not one but TWO resistance fighters (both women, which in RJ's now misoginistic version of SW could be a problem) that performed minor achievements like, I don't know, actually killing Snoke and escaping unscathed, on top of being as important as Luke in saving the Resistance survivors, or destroying half the FO's fleet (including their flagship and Snoke's throne of power) severely damaging their war assets.
But no, these women actually doing shit and crippling the First Order won't inspire people. Luke Skywalker dying on extertion in a glorified prank call will.

i really dont think luke will be the only one mentioned when rallying up people for the resistance, Rey will be a key factor on the future of the resistance. and you are nuts if you think holdo's sacrifice wont be mentioned

CloudWolf · Jul 6, 2018

LegendofLex said:
Finn was in no way obviously condemned to die regardless of what choice he made. Finn also wasn't giving himself up nonviolently out of love.

Yes, he was. The entire Resistance was fucked on Crait. They were massively overpowered, had no obvious way out of that base besides the front door, their only way of even trying to fight back was with speeders so flimsy you could kick your feet through the floor and their only defense was a door which the First Order had the means to breach. At the moment in the movie where Finn decided to do his suicide run, he was definitely condemned to die. It was only after that that Rey showed up to open up the convenient back door that no one knew about and that Luke showed up our of nowhere to delay the First Order.

Hell, the only reason he and Rose even survived Rose's "rescue" was because the script decided no one from the First Order would notice someone dragging someone else back to the Resistance base.

Visanideth · Jul 6, 2018

Gustaf said:
i really dont think luke will be the only one mentioned when rallying up people for the resistance, Rey will be a key factor on the future of the resistance. and you are nuts if you think holdo's sacrifice wont be mentioned

But CrossingEden told us her sacrifice was pointless!

(It really wasn't, it contributed to saving the Resistance as much as Luke did, I'm just trying to follow the delirium here).

BetterOffEd · Jul 6, 2018

Crossing Eden said:
Characters in the film:This literally isn't gonna work. Everybody retreat.

Finn:Wait I got this.

Characters in the film: Finn retreat.

*Film shows Finn's aircraft being torn apart as he gets closer and closer to the cannon*

Some audience members:ThE ImPLICATion iS thAt the impacT WoUlD'vE stOppEd tHE GuN FROm firiNG

What about my breakdown of this scene demonstrated that Finn would've stopped the gun is tantamount to "members:ThE ImPLICATion iS thAt the impacT WoUlD'vE stOppEd tHE GuN FROm firiNG"

I'd really love to see some actual argument instead of fingers in ears and headcanon

I'm willing to be convinced that somewhere in that scene it is indicated that Finn won't succeed, but having analyzed the scene thoroughly, I'm not finding it. And I haven't seen anyone give any indication I should interpret the scene otherwise

Gustaf · Jul 6, 2018

Visanideth said:
But CrossingEden told us her sacrifice was pointless!

(It really wasn't, it contributed to saving the Resistance as much as Luke did, I'm just trying to follow the delirium here).

finn's sacrifice would be pointless, FINNS

TuturuJones · Jul 6, 2018

The only thing that annoyed me about the movie is the idea that bombers are needed in zero gravity situations. There's no gravity so the bombs wouldn't actually fall and they could technically just fling them from their ship as they wouldn't lose speed.

ABK281 · Jul 6, 2018

The controversy is that it sucks. Less a force awakens style of sucking and more an episode 1 suck-fest. Could be worse, there's always Rogue one to look down to, a movie surpassed in direction and writing in all but the worst of Star Wars' extended universe books.

Crossing Eden · Jul 6, 2018

BetterOffEd said:
What about my breakdown of this scene demonstrated that Finn would've stopped the gun is tantamount to "members:ThE ImPLICATion iS thAt the impacT WoUlD'vE stOppEd tHE GuN FROm firiNG"

I'd really love to see some actual argument instead of fingers in ears and headcanon

I wasn't quoting you.

Gustaf said:
finn's sacrifice would be pointless, FINNS

DING DING DING DING DING

Holdo only briefly delayed the FO. People saying it's a massive success are overplaying how effective it was at stopping the FO, who was able to immediately recover and mount a siege.

collige · Jul 6, 2018

LegendofLex said:
Holdo was absolutely, definitely going to die with her ship. Presumably someone had to do so to avoid letting it fall into the hands of the First Order.

How could the ship have been prevented from falling into the hands of the First Order without blowing it up like she did? Furthermore, if the First Order was really that interested in capturing Resistance ships intact, they wouldn't have wasted time firing on them after they knew they were running out of fuel.

Charcoal · Jul 6, 2018

Vern said:
Asian girl with bad haircut I think is the main thrust of their argument.

What a horrible first post.

Visanideth · Jul 6, 2018

Gustaf said:
finn's sacrifice would be pointless, FINNS

Only if we assume he wouldn't have hit the cannon.

But are we supposed to believe Rose's high school poetry is about practicality and cinism? What she really meant to say was "Don't waste your life if it's pointless, only get yourself killed when it's worth it?". If so, why does she say "Destroying what we hate" instead of "Attempt to destroy what we hate and fail, like you would have"? Because the juxtaposition in her sentence doesn't really work if the point is that Finn wasn't going to destroy anything to begin with.

We've probably devoted more time dissecting Rose's line than RJ's spend thinking of it and writing it by now.

Crossing Eden · Jul 6, 2018

collige said:
How could the ship have been prevented from falling into the hands of the First Order without blowing it up like she did?

The FO wasn't planning on capturing the ship. They were planning on blowing it up as soon as the shield generator stopped working.

Visanideth said:
Only if we assume he wouldn't have hit the cannon.

Even if he hit the cannon it would've either destroyed the cannon, only delaying the inevitable as the resistance had no way out, and/or it wouldn't have and the FO would've destroyed the door anyway, there's no scenario where you spin Finn's sacrifice into something substantial without it becoming something comical like setting of a chain reaction that destroys all the AT-ATs while everyone claps.

MagicHobo · Jul 6, 2018

BetterOffEd said:
The takeaway I get from the movie is as follows: "Sacrificing yourself to save your friends or a cause is bad because you are worth more than that, unless you are one of the characters who has been written to make a bad ass sacrifice for their friends or a cause, in which case the galaxy will sing your praises"

I think the Poe, Finn, Holdo, Luke sacrifices are hard to parse, but represent different realizations of the purpose of sacrifice.

In the beginning Poe made a reckless run to destroy the dreadnought to beat the first order, not necessarily to save the resistance because retreat was an option. He did not retreat, however, and it came at a high cost. It did end up being a helpful call in the end, it potentially saved them on the next leg when they were pursued, but it was a sacrifice of other pilots for perhaps the wrong reasons. It is also possible that delaying the retreat gave the First Order time to establish tracking, unbeknownst to Poe.

Holdo's sacrifice was to save the resistance. She destroyed what she hated to save what she loved, but an important distinction is that retreat was not an option. No live to see another day, it was her only option.

Finn's suicide run was teetering between the two, with the wrinkle that the threat was real. Retreat to fight another day was an option, but the threat to his friends was immediate. Like the rest of the film, he was challenged with two sides. Perhaps his sacrifice would have been justified, perhaps not. Rose saved him based on her ideal.

Luke's sacrifice represents the ideal. He saved what he loved without actually fighting what he hated. He doesn't hate Kylo, he pities him.

So TLDR:

Poe: Fought what he hated, not explicitly to save what he loved because retreat was an option and the dreadnought was not at that time an immediate threat in the way of retreat.

Holdo: Fought what she hated to save what she loved. She effectively had no other option.

Finn: Attempted to fight what he hated to save his friends, retreat was an option but the threat was imminent. He had a choice, made it, but Rose chose Love.

Luke: Simply saved what he loved.

Visanideth · Jul 6, 2018

Crossing Eden said:
DING DING DING DING DING

Holdo only briefly delayed the FO. People saying it's a massive success are overplaying how effective it was at stopping the FO, who was able to immediately recover and mount a siege.

So Holdo's sacrifice wasn't pointless? Can you stop flip flopping around the issue, please? I'm old and confused.

BetterOffEd · Jul 6, 2018

Crossing Eden said:
The FO immediately attacked Crait almost the second they got it up and running. How is that a massive success?

How are you arguing that Holdo's sacrifice was pointless? Don't you like the movie? Is the whole movie pointless?

Holdo's sacrifice solves three major issues, it's the junction point of three plotlines

Two heroes are about to be beheaded (that would've been a subversion for Star Wars ;) )

She also buys Rey the opportunity to escape and prevents the transports from all being shot down. How could you possibly get the idea that Holdo's sacrifice is pointless?

If you insist the movie's flawless, there's no need to invent things to make scenes work rather than accept the movie for what it provides. Double down on what's there! After all, that's the stuff you enjoyed. Pretending Holdo's sacrifice was useless just to prove a point on the internet only cheapens the movie. The film wants the Holdo maneuver to be important so badly that it cuts out all sound to emphasize what just happened. It's arguably the most pivotal point of the movie

LegendofLex · Jul 6, 2018

collige said:
How could the ship have been prevented from falling into the hands of the First Order without blowing it up like she did? Furthermore, if the First Order was really that interested in capturing Resistance ships intact, they wouldn't have wasted time firing on them after they knew they were running out of fuel.

Crossing Eden said:
The FO wasn't planning on capturing the ship. They were planning on blowing it up as soon as the shield generator stopped working.

Based on known technology seen in the very first Star Wars film, I'd presume they needed at least one life form to remain behind to keep up the pretenses that they hadn't abandoned ship. If the ship was fully abandoned, the First Order might have surmised this and salvaged it, possibly securing Resistance secrets in the process.

Anthanes · Jul 6, 2018

I seriously hated how they ruined Finn's character in the movie. He's been my favorite Star Wars character since The Force Awakens.

Crossing Eden · Jul 6, 2018

Visanideth said:
So Holdo's sacrifice wasn't pointless?

It wasn't a "massive success"

BetterOffEd said:
How are you arguing that Holdo's sacrifice was pointless?

Is there not a spectrum between MASSIVE SUCCESS and pointless? Because that seems to be the point of contention. Look at how not bothered their leaders are by not only the death of Snoke but the destruction of their ship:

Their reaction is literally, "We know where they're going, let's finish this."

Visanideth · Jul 6, 2018

MagicHobo said:
Poe: Fought what he hated, not explicitly to save what he loved because retreat was an option and the dreadnought was not an immediate thread.

The dreadnaught would have destroyed the fleet after the first jump, since it had long range weapons. Had Poe not destroyed it, the movie wouldn't happen because the FO would win in the first 20 minutes.
If praticality and efficiency is what marks the quality of the sacrifices here, Poe's suicide run is the most important of all, as it allows the movie to happen.

Luke: Simply saved what he loved.

He also fought what he hated. Luke Skywalker's very last words are mocking and taunting the nephew he pushed to the dark side by threatening to kill him in the middle of the night with a lightsaber. Not exactly about love there.

BetterOffEd · Jul 6, 2018

Crossing Eden said:
I wasn't quoting you.

I didn't say you were. But you are continuing to push a bizarre narrative that Finn wouldn't have succeeded which is patently not true, thus I am quoting you and reminding everyone that you are not backing up your position in any way

Crossing Eden said:
DING DING DING DING DING

Holdo only briefly delayed the FO. People saying it's a massive success are overplaying how effective it was at stopping the FO, who was able to immediately recover and mount a siege.

She prevented us from seeing Rose and Finn's heads rolling around on the ground in a Star Wars movie

Nobody is saying Holdo stopped the FO. You are building and knocking down straw men.

Even if Holdo "only briefly delayed the FO", which is only a fraction of what she did, this is exactly what Luke did and the galaxy is singing his praises for it. It's also exactly what Finn would have done. Reduce Holdo that much and there's still no difference

But this is of course ignoring the narrative weight that the movie puts on Holdo's actions, and the fact that what she does allows all heroes to come back together on Crait

Why would you want to minimize one of the most important scenes in a movie you love, to prove that Finn wouldn't have destroyed the cannon (which would also minimizes Finn's climatic scene)? it's nuts

Visanideth · Jul 6, 2018

Crossing Eden said:
It wasn't a "massive success"

It was every bit as important as Luke's in saving Leia and the Resistance as the First Order was about to shoot down their transport right before she rammed them.

It also:

- saved Finn and Rose

- facilitated Rey's escape

- inflicted massive damage to the FO's war fleet, with actual implications on the war effort.

It was a lot more successfull than Luke buying some time (exactly the same thing she did) and then dying (like she did) without leaving any legacy in terms of actual damage to the enemy (this she did) or needing people to lie about what happen (people can tell the truth about Holdo's sacrifice and still rally people to the Resistance's cause).

Pilgrimzero · Jul 6, 2018

Lukes sacrifice made no sense. The "back door" the rebels thought existed didn't. And completely relied on Rey flying by at just the right time to save them.

Luke bought them time for an exit that didn't exist and as far as he knew didn't exist at all. His sacrifice could have meant nothing if Rey hadn't wandered by exactly when she needed to.

Finns sacrifice would have been more heroic because it actually would have stopped the baddies for a good while.

Crossing Eden · Jul 6, 2018

BetterOffEd said:
I didn't say you were. But you are continuing to push a bizarre narrative that Finn wouldn't have succeeded which is patently not true, thus I am quoting you and reminding everyone that you are not backing up your position in any way

Finn wouldn't have succeeded. The speeder attack was a failure:

We're as an audience conditioned to EXPECT it to work, but by all means, it would've done nothing but lead to the death of a great soldier and source of intel while delaying the inevitable had Luke not shown up. If the rebellion is gonna succeed, they need to be smart. Heroic yes, but also smart.

MoonlitBow · Jul 6, 2018

Visanideth said:
He also fought what he hated. Luke Skywalker's very last words are mocking and taunting the nephew he pushed to the dark side by threatening to kill him in the middle of the night with a lightsaber. Not exactly about love there.

I disagree. He confronted Kylo Ren with no intention to win any fight and no intention to kill anyone (it was a purely pacifist move), and even knew he wasn't going to convince Kylo Ren of anything. He did it purely to be a distraction since he knew Kylo was going to be obsessed with trying to kill him.

Jellycrackers · Jul 6, 2018

Dreams-Visions said:
Just watched it again in VR on my Vive Pro in what was about a 100-foot wide virtual screen because why the fuck not. Gonna babble because it's all fresh again so bear with me.

My #2 Star Wars film, pretty comfortably now, and its asking to have a conversation with my #1.

Sure it wasn't perfect and I have nit-picks about all of my favorite movies. They could have made the CG of Rose's speeder thing colliding with Finn's ship a little less...hard? They made it look more dangerous than I think it needed to be to make the point. And I'm still waiting on some sweet baddassery from Phasma, which I would have liked to see in this movie if possible. But goddamnit what a beautiful redemption story and coming of age story for Luke, Poe, Finn, and Rey. All in different ways, for different reasons, but all ending up growing up and/or redeeming their past mistakes to pave a future for the Rebellion.

Yoda said it best: the most important lesson (the one Luke didn't get a chance to teach Rey) is failure. It is a natural outgrowth of hope. It is through hope that we overcome repeated failure walk into our future success.

Luke needed to learn from Rey that there is still reason to hope. He needed to be reminded by Yoda that if you always look beyond today, you will miss what you must be and do right now. A different way of saying something my grandmother always said: "Don't be so heavenly minded that you're no earthly good." It's okay to look to the future, but do so with your feet firmly planted in what you must do today to get to your desired destination. In always looking toward and fearing the future, Luke missed all the good he could have been doing all this time, including and up to helping Rey in her time of need. Something that would soon rectified, but yes even Luke had a flaw in his armor. Legend and all.

Rey needed to learn from herself that her search for her parents will not define who she is; she is already more than enough as she is to be who she needs to become and protect those who need her. She needed to accept that coming from little and being left behind doesn't mean you're trash. A validation struggle that many in this world (and probably even this thread) can identify with.

Poe needed to learn from Leah, but mostly from Holdo how to lead with wisdom and see the bigger picture if he was going to be a true leader of men. From the beginning of the movie recklessly getting people killed to him waving off Finn and realizing what Luke was doing, he grew by leaps.

Finn needed to learn from Rose to see beneath the surface, to understand what the resistance means to the downtrodden, and to understand how to fight (and lead). He needed to see all of Canto Blight (whether some of you liked it or not), because he needed to go from shallow to complex in his understanding of what was happening. He needed that challenge from the code-breaker to make a decision of (a) whether he'd pick a side adn (b) what side he wanted to be on.

...and Kylo...well...he learned all the wrong lessons and in doing so, he will be the only one truly alone.

And Luke will go on to be remembered as the most legendary of all Jedi, single-handedly saving them all. Whether he was there physically or not is utterly immaterial to the heroic degree of his gambit. What he did in the way he did it was simply EPIC. No way to travel there since the Falcon had already left, he did something basically impossible. And in doing so, he was able to actually stare down the entire First Order with swagger. Even the children on Canto had heard the tale. Epic final scene with him still looking off into the distance. Because that's just who he was. It was his strength and his weakness. As we are all both strong and weak...our lives and futures are a function of how we respond to those strengths and weaknesses and how the reflect in the decisions we make along the way.

As for the rebellion, the spark not only remains...if those kids have heard the story, it's already a wildfire. Hell yea.

I'm sure all of you knew this already, but it bears repeating anyway. I thoroughly enjoyed the subversion of audience expectations; it kept everything exciting. I enjoyed all of those arcs and the messages they left behind for the audience. It was maybe the ONLY Star Wars movies with something encouraging to say to its audience about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for those who had an ear to hear.

Well made. Well focused. Well done.

(sorry if some of you guys didn't like it. it really is too bad if you let minors get in your way of enjoying an absolutely fantastic movie. hope you enjoy the final entry into the trilogy, but if not...I really don't care. I sure will.)

Are you me?

Glad someone made a post like this. I think TFA is a tighter and overall better-made film, but the emotional highs, character moments, and inspiring visuals of TLJ make it my favorite. Rey's lessons, the "true" flashback scene with Luke and Ben, the throne room fight and dialogue with Rey and Kylo (omg their acting here), the lightspeed ram, and Luke "confronting" Kylo on Crait... All those scenes blow me away, and really drive home the themes of the movie. Luke being broken and full of remorse was perfect, and it gave him a really beautiful arc for this movie.

Finn and Rose - their mission may have ultimately failed, but like Yoda said, failure is a great teacher. The purpose of the Canto Bight stuff was to push Finn's character to where it needed to be by the end of the movie - in it for the Rebellion, not just for Rey. My main problem with the movie is how fast their story has to move due to the urgent time constraints from the cruiser's fuel depletion. I wish they had gotten more time to breathe, and unfortunately most of the deleted scenes were from this part of the story, and a couple of them were good character moments for Finn. It's a shame!

BetterOffEd · Jul 6, 2018

Crossing Eden said:
Finn wouldn't have succeeded. The speeder attack was a failure:

First off, you know that nothing in the novelization is relevant to what people did or did not enjoy in the movie. We've been over this before. In fact you've shared some cool back story from Bloodlines and some other media in the past and I've been vocally thankful for it. It's great to get the cool stuff from the books when you don't have time to read them. But once again, we are discussing why people didn't like the movie, and if something was added to the book that was missing from the movie, that likely backs up the idea that movie may have been lacking...

Concerning what you've posted, though, this only reinforces my analysis of the scene:

"The cannon was just a couple hundred meters away, but Poe refused to let himself be tempted. His speeder would be cooked before he got close enough for it to matter."

This is the only new relevant information in that passage. Poe believes his speeder would be cooked before he got close enough for it to matter. Finn shows us that Poe is wrong via the cinematography in the movie. This is one of the things I highlight in this post.

All of the dialogue here is the same. Poe sees this as a suicide run.

Crossing Eden said:
We're as an audience conditioned to EXPECT it to work, but by all means, it would've done nothing but lead to the death of a great soldier and source of intel while delaying the inevitable had Luke not shown up.

Yes, we are conditioned to expect this to work. I also broke down this conditioning in this post.

That doesn't mean we should assume it wouldn't have worked if it isn't allowed to happen. In fact, it's quite the opposite, we should assume it would have worked. This is the thing about subversion. You can't subvert expectations via implication, you have to follow through to make a subversion work. If Rian legit thought Finn wouldn't have succeeded, then he tried to have his cake and eat it too, which doesn't work here. He played into every trope to make it look like Finn would succeed, from re-iterating the canon's weak point, to playing the choir music, to showing the angelic light, to cutting to the desperate rebels, and so on. By not showing whether or not Finn would have succeeded, he leaves that question completely open ended

As I said before:
This is especially relevant when you are clearly going for a big climactic surprise. You can't bust out the angel choir, halo lights, and pensive Finn and intersperse it with cuts of forlorn Leia and company while they hear the canon is about to fire, and pretend "LOL Finn wouldn't have succeeded anyway" when you stop him right before impact. Everything about that scene points to Finn being about to save his buds. The only way to subvert those expectations would've been to actually show Finn failing, which would've really made this scene dark comedy. Just imagine how this scene would have looked, given how the first half was filmed, if Finn were allowed to impact the cannon and failed. This is the type of conditioning you are up against

Nothing about the movie indicates that it would have "done nothing but lead to the death of a great soldier and source of intel while delaying the inevitable had Luke not shown up". you are filling in the blanks

I just Watched The Last Jedi, why was it controversial??

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