Star Wars (Includes Spoilers!!!)

[Ebeneezer Goode]

Seems its just me from reading around but I can't say I got that excited from this trailer, we've seen X wings in space flights, Millennium Falcon taking on tie fighters before. The two best parts for me were the long range shot of (presumably) Rey practising with a saber as Luke watched and the last bit, other than that I didn't think it did much to get hyped about, but I appreciated there are 8 months till it comes out so plenty of time to ramp excitement. And the fact its likely to be a near billion dollar film perhaps they want to keep a lot hidden.

A billions dollars would be a disappointment for Disney at this point, The Force Awakens made double that.

 

[hodge]

A billions dollars would be a disappointment for Disney at this point, The Force Awakens made double that.

Fair point, it should be a billion and a half at least, would put it in the top 5 all time.

 

[Oaf]

 

[Jamie_SFC]

Didn't really rate Kylo Ren as a villain when he lost the helmet in TFA. Looks like it's a thing of the past in the new film as well.

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

I would rather Rey became the villain.

 

[hodge]

I'd like that, ending of this film being Rey turning dark side and Ben turning back to the light side.

 

[Ed Phelan]

Happy May the 4th chaps....not sure sure it will be of interest but I came across a 10% off sale on Star Wars toys.

 

[Gladders]

 

[JJ1532]

Very interesting. They are really starting to heavily tease Rey's possible arc. Goes to Luke, gives up on her, feels left alone, maybe turns to Kylo and Snoke.

I do wonder how many parrallels from Episode V they are going to take. The AT-AT walkers heading towards a base hidden in a mountain across a vast barren wasteland, with ground based rebel vehicles coming out to challenge them. Very much like the opening of Episode V.

Jedi apprentice being trained by a flawed and somewhat broken Jedi Master. Apprentice goes off to fight bad guys not fully trained, almost gets lured to the dark side by the Sith apprentice.

Meanwhile, her friends with the rebellion having running battles with the evil empire/first order. Interested to see what sort of arc Finn and Poe go on. Least it looks like they are giving Phasma something to do at last. Stoked me up for sure. More questions posed than the trailers for Episode VII, purely because we know something about the characters now.

 

[Oaf]

There's this idea floating around that the overall arc of this trilogy will be Rey and Kylo pretty much switching places... Rey will turn to the dark side because of the lack of Lukes help and Kylo will no longer be able to resist the pull of the light side. So it'll go from setting up Rey as a hero and setting up Kylo as a villain to actually turning out that Rey is the villain and Kylo is the hero.

Sounds farfetched now perhaps to think that Rey could turn that evil that fast, but if you watched Episode 1 and knew nothing else about Star Wars, you wouldn't really see much to suggest that Anakin would do what he does at the end of Episode 3 or become Vader. And remember, Anakins issues all pretty much started with leaving/missing his mother... Rey has clearly suffered some kind of abandonment issue in her past too. Now that the force has awoken (aw yis got that in there) in her, it's possible that the Dark Side may be stronger in her than the light and it's simply been laying dormant until now, waiting for its moment to lure her over.

And it may seem tricky to turn Kylo into a hero after killing Han Solo, but fuck it, if Vader was somehow seen to have "redeemed" himself at the end of Episode 6 (a guy who, let's not forget, KNOWINGLY tortured his own Daughter) I'm sure Kylo can find a way...

 

[Jockney]

More chance of David Lynch writing and directing the last instalment of the series than the writers doing away with the Campbell narrative structure. It's Star Wars, innit. You can't have a hero who has killed his father in cold blood. It's inconsistent with the moral laws of that universe.

 

[Jockney]

Sounds farfetched now perhaps to think that Rey could turn that evil that fast, but if you watched Episode 1 and knew nothing else about Star Wars, you wouldn't really see much to suggest that Anakin would do what he does at the end of Episode 3 or become Vader. And remember, Anakins issues all pretty much started with leaving/missing his mother... Rey has clearly suffered some kind of abandonment issue in her past too. Now that the force has awoken (aw yis got that in there) in her, it's possible that the Dark Side may be stronger in her than the light and it's simply been laying dormant until now, waiting for its moment to lure her over.

This is also part of the reason those films were panned, because they had huge tonal issues, with themes inappropriate for those sort of characters in that sort of universe.

And it may seem tricky to turn Kylo into a hero after killing Han Solo, but fuck it, if Vader was somehow seen to have "redeemed" himself at the end of Episode 6 (a guy who, let's not forget, KNOWINGLY tortured his own Daughter) I'm sure Kylo can find a way...

Vader found redemption, but he only found it at the last and he wasn't allowed to live. We have to see Ren die at some point now, no matter what happens.

 

[Oaf]

Stop using logic to poke holes in my batshit crazy theories for fucks sake.

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

The Jedi are light side supremacists.

 

[JJ1532]

Well, just got back from watching the Last Jedi. An enjoyable movie and probably a good one all things considered, but....

Spoiler

My word was this thing riddled with story inconsistencies, plot holes and necessary fluff.

The film starts off with the resistance trying to flee an incoming rebel attack, much like in Ep V. For some reason, they go on this bombing mission against a dreadnought and lose all their bombers. Somehow these bombs fall in space, assuming they are propelled downwards, but they are never shown to be propelled.

Then they get chased through light speed by the first order fleet using some vaguely explained technology and Finn is sent to try and find a master hacker guy. Leia gets blasted out of her ship, yet somehow she doesn't die in space and is able to, I assume, force pull her way back to safety. Oh and is able, despite being unconscious, create a 'force' field around herself to keep her from dying. That is fucking ludicrous, was genuinely astounded at how ridiculous that whole scene was. Totally robbed the film of a meaningful moment and for me, was just bad. What a really strange decision.

Anyway, Poe sends Finn off with Rose, who was the sister of a bomber gunner that we saw die in the earlier battle. Yeah, not sure why she was added, could have totally cut her character out. They go to some horse/alien racing place and instead of finding this master code breaker, they get arrested and thrown in jail. There, through an incredible coincidence, they meet some random guy who can help them complete their mission. Talk about a lucky break eh? Jeez, another un-neccessary character. That master code breaker that Maz told them to find, never mentioned again. Finn and Rose just trust this guy for no reason as well.

They arrive on snoke's ship and surprise surprise, dodgy guy betrays them. No idea what happens to him, but we don't need to have that explained.

Then we have Poe. He is obviously banking everything on Finn turning off the tracking becon. But instead of telling the new leader what his plan is, he keeps it a secret because...reasons. The new leader decides not to tell everyone that the plan is to reach this old rebel base, launch the transports under cover of cloaking devices, which would have resolved all conflict in the cruiser, but she doesn't. So we have this stupid mutiny plot happen for no good reason and in the end, there are no consequences to it because Poe is just forgiven anyway.

Then we have Rey. She finds Luke, he doesn't want to know. But then he does train her, kind of. For some reason though, she can talk to Kylo over great distances. I suppose that was hinted as a thing Jedi could do in Empire when Luke and Vader talk to each other. He tricks her into leaving and going to Snoke's ship, but not before she goes down some random hole in the island and having this strange moment that also isn't really explained.

She is brought by Kylo to Snoke. Snoke takes the piss out of her, tossing her all over the place and generally looking like a bad ass. Kylo then, as he looks like he's about to kill Rey, turns her lightsaber on Snoke and slices him in half. Jeez, talk about some dramatic build up to kill the guy off in such a pathetic way. I also imagine we'll never find out who Snoke was and where he came from, which is kind of important to understanding Kylo's turning to the dark side. Meh, maybe that's coming in Episode 9.

Anyway, Kylo and Rey have a cool team up fight to kill Snoke's bodyguards. Then, they wrestle for Luke's lightsaber and it breaks. At the same time, the resistance escape in the transports and in a bid to save them, Holdo turns the cruiser towards Snoke's ship and jumps to lightspeed, destroying the ship and most of the support ships. Biggest plot here occurs right here. Rey is on Snoke's ship, yet she next turns up in the Millenium Falcon somehow. No idea how that happens, I assume the director just forgot to explain that one, because its a huge hole.

The resistence are on Hoth...nope sorry, another barren desolate place where there is a rebel base with cannons and trenchs and vehicles which skim the surface, just like in Empire. And they are attacked by big AT-AT like walkers, who blast the base door with a big cannon. Finn is about to destroy this cannon, in what would have been an impactful, meaningful death, giving the film a real solid moment. Nope, Rose saves him by....crashing into him?! What a stupid fucking idea. Then she kisses him in a forced romance that the film did absolutely nothing to set up and didn't seem even remotely believable.

Finn then manages to drag her all the way back to the base and the resistance(the handful that are left) escape out of an unseen back passage, because of course they do. They are able to do this because Luke appears. Wow, what a moment. He speaks to Leia, hands her a trinket Kylo had then he was Ben Solo. He steps out of the base and faces the entire first order army. He looks to have been blasted away, but comes out unscathed. Another cool moment, he must have used the force for that. What a badass. Kylo goes and confronts him. He tries to kill Luke, which again would have made for an impactful moment, Luke being killed by his former apprentice much like Obi-Wan was killed by Vader. Nope, Luke was projecting himself and he was still on his island. Another rubbish moment which removes all the badassery out of the scene. Luke then disappears like Yoda did in Ep 6. Quite how he was able to project himself to all the people there, I don't know. It seemed that when Kylo and Rey did it, they were the only ones that could see each other. The resistance escape aboard the Falcon and yep, that's it.

So, sorry for one long plot run down, but there was so much going on and so many holes in the various plot points that made no sense, I had to type it out to make sense of it all. What I feel the makers of this movie did wrong was include too many sub plots. Finn, Poe, Rose, Leia, Holdo, Phasma(who, bar one action sequence, was in this film even less than she was in Ep 7 and she gets beaten by a cheap shot sucker punch by Finn. Another waste of a potentially good character), Del Toro's character. All of this could have been streamlined.

What made the original trilogy so great was the condensed plot. In 4, it was rescue the princess, get to the rebel base, blow up the death star. In 5, Luke was trained by Yoda, Han and co were chased by the empire, eventually they meet at the end. In 6, it was about blowing up the new death star. Luke goes on his side quest to defeat Vader and the Emperor, but there was no other sidetracks, apart from the Ewoks of course. You could literally take Finn out of the movie and all the characters that he comes into contact with and still end up with the same result. Rose, Del Toro, that horse racing planet, even his bit at the end where he is flying towards the gun. Remove him and its still the same movie.

But this film, god does it bloat things out. Carrie Fisher dying has created some real story issues, which I'm not going to blame them for. She was written as a big part of the plot and filming had clearly mostly finished when she died, so they couldn't reshoot to write her out. Do wish they'd found a way to give her a proper send off, be interesting to see how Ep 9 deals with her departure.

Wish they'd given Luke a decent send off as well. Him projecting himself Loki style at the end pissed me off. Hey, maybe he'll be back as a hologram for Ep 9. I would have liked to see Finn die, not really digging his character. Him dying by flying into the supergun would have been a great moment but they chickened out on it as big films tend to do with lead characters.

Rey and Kylo's arc is good to watch though, her good to his bad. Him killing Snoke and looking like he might turn was a cool moment, even if it did make Snoke completely dispensable and look pretty shit. Kylo and Rey's show down in Ep 9 will be good to watch, hopefully they properly go at it. Rey I like, but her backstory is even more confusing that at the end of Ep 7. Her parents were nobodies who sold her off for money? So how is she so powerful with the force? How does she know how to use a lightsaber so well despite one battle with Kylo and a bit of swinging it about on Luke's island?

Oh and how could I forget BB-8. Rey was the Mary Sue of Ep 7, well BB-8 is the Mary Sue of this film. He fixes Poe's ship in the first battle, he helps Del Toro steal a ship to help Finn and Rose. He pilots an AT walker to help Finn and Rose escape, again. He literally turns up whenever the plot needs a do it all character. Phew, I'm done.

Sorry for going on there. I liked the film, but felt it was bloated and riddled with strange directorial choices. Worth seeing, but if you overthink films to read way too much into them, then I don't know if the issues with this film might eventually drag it down.

 

[epic73]

Seeing it on Boxing Day.

 

[Pagnell]

Seeing it tonight. Got the tickets for half price so even if its a bit meh (which I expect) it's no big loss.

 

[hodge]

Feel pretty let down by it having just come out, doesn't feel like there's much of a plan for the trilogy.

 

[The Southbank]

Found it a bit boring if I'm honest, seemed to drag quite a bit until the last act. I can't really get onboard with this trilogy, it seems so far fetched plot wise and a lot of ideas have been taken from the originals.

Unanswered questions....

Spoiler: Spoilers

The Luke death scene felt a little weak. I'm not sure I understood it fully anyway, mind you.

Why does Benicio Del Toro's character have a stutter? Was this really necessary - does it add any character value?

Kylo Ren just doesn't come across as a villain. Compare him to the scary Darth Vader and you get more of a villainous feel to proceedings.

How is Rey so powerful in the force if she is from a nothing family?

Snoke's death was a little weak as well; surely someone of his power could have stopped that? Do we get no information as to his past? This bloke is seemingly older than the Emperor and a strong field wielder, yet just dies and that's that.

The forced comedy was shit - it just seems to ruin any tension to the film.

I did like the very end, though, with the 'young' jedi on Canto Bright? Could that be the start of the 'new trilogy'?

The Leia force scene where she flies back into the ship was ill-thought out.

 

[TheMinsterman]

Spoiler

I guess it's pressing to point out I went into this really wanting to love it, I was hoping to get something memorable, something with some great defining moments that stand out in the universe of films for Star Wars and I was most of all hoping I'd leave excited for the third film.

Honestly I left the cinema at 3am feeling a bit deflated, conflicted and not entirely sure about how I felt about the film.

Let's get onto one part that made me genuinely angry to get it out of the way. Snoke. Who in the absolute fuck thought it was a wise idea to kill off Snoke before a) we learn a single thing about his backstory b) really learn about how his and Kylo's relationship and c) only to immediately replace him with Kylo. I'm sorry, but you built this guy up and added so much intrigue around him then you basically just snuffed him off without ever bothering to explain anything whatsoever about the guy other than he corrupted Kylo (yeah no shit we got that), no explanation for how he came to be in command of the First Order, no explanation for why he has any level of force training and no real exploration of his motives beyond evil villain stereotype. It is a monumental fuck up of galactic proportions, you essentially made it so that Snoke may as well never have been in the film. You could have completely removed him and just had Kylo fall to the dark side without a physical evil force tempting him into it, in fact in the context of the big reveal him turning dark after Luke tries to kill him and thus making Skywalker create the monster he was desperate to prevent is much more compelling than, presumably, a random Sith you don't develop in any meaningful way who gets snuffed off half way through the movie. Atrocious writing, even more so in the context of the gaping flaw in this movie.

Utterly pointless subplots that really weren't necessary to drive the narrative home.

Finn was, by some stretch, my favourite new protagonist of TFA. He was likable without being overly goofy, sympathetic due to his upbringing in the Frist Order, admirable due to his loyalty and actually a character who went through genuine growth from his anxiety and cowardice initially as he vies to escape the First Order at any cost to his becoming selfless over selfish when he puts himself in extreme harms way to save Rey. So why exactly did we go back to Finn the coward within scenes of him regaining consciousness? All so we could set up a new side plot with the new character Rose who quite literally could have never existed at all and really shouldn't have considering the films overarching flaws. Their entire adventure together and the forced romance at the end was just pointless and serve very little purpose and just made Finn essentially recreate his coward to hero arch of TFA.

Instead of some vague technology that can track crafts through lightspeed, why not make Finn himself the "thread", he is a Stormtrooper after all, maybe all of them are fitted with tracking technology. You then present a moral quandry of, Finn is one of us, but he's putting us in danger, what can we do? This would then give Finn a motivation to leave the Rebel ship, not out of cowardice, but as an act of self sacrifice to help the rebels have an opportunity to escape with their limited fuel reserves. He could then vanish to Canto Bight as it's one of the only "neutral" planets in the galaxy playing FO off against the rebellion to search for somebody who could remove the tracking device, where he could meet Rose still in servitude to the elite, learn about the grey area of arms dealing etc and eventually get sold out by the DJ character to Phasma who takes him back to the big ship ready to have him in place for the final act of the film, finally learning that even in "neutral places" the FO can get to him, and thus there really nowhere "safe" in the galaxy.


Rather than a strange buddy cop partnership to setup a romance between Finn and Rose where they go to find a hacker who they find, then you never see again because he some totally random guy who is obviously sketchy happens to be in their cell, so let's infiltrate a FO craft to do some convoluted nonsense to turn off a tracker which serves little purpose because we follow enough villains to see inside their craft, the infiltration just feels like a forced plot line. This forced subplot also indirectly creates the pointless Poe mutiny plot thread and the Haldo secret for no reason evacuation plot thread, forcing us into this long, tedious, slow pursuit set piece that bogs down the entire middle of the film, lacking any of the tension they were obviously going for re: limited fuel supplies. It drags on and on and it feels like it is simply there to allow these mostly pointless sideacts to play out when you could use my idea or any other to remove Finn from the ship and be doing something else that isn't contingent to what is then happening to the fleeing rebels. The entire Finn/Rose/Poe/Haldo plot arch grinds the film to a tedious, dull, halt after an action packed opening sequence by forcing their character development to be intertwined in such a way that they are literally just stuck there in space waiting for the sidearchs to be resolved.

Then there is the utterly pointless non-death of Leia. Very early into the film the bridge of the rebel fleet gets blown up, killing Ackbar etc and, presumably at that stage, Leia. It was impactful because Kylo resist being the one to fire the missiles into the bridge to kill her as the two connect telepathically, it was touching as in that moment you could argue that Leia gets to see the son she loves and lost for one last time before dying and the humanity in Kylo as he still struggle with the conflict of light and dark. It would have been a nice, noble way to send her off as Kylo loses another last vestige to the light... but instead she somehow survives and force pulls herself through space in a scene that was so incredibly cringeworthy to watch before ending up in a coma for most of the middle portion only to come back and other glib soundbites about hope, she is just... there. I know Carrie's death may have caused obvious issues, but with a bit of reshooting to cut her out of the final third and having her just die in the explosion would have been much better than what felt like her hanging around for the sake of it contributing very little when she obviously is now not going to be in the third movie anyway, yet she survives to the end and Luke dies.

The movie does do some things well, Rey develops much more in this film (though the total brush off of her parentage with no real explanation as to why she is so powerful then) and her relationship with both Luke and Kylo is well done, her determination to bring Ren back to the light side, even at great personal sacrifice is well done, Luke grappling with his failure and the big reveal of his fall from grace is the strongest element of the film (Seeing Luke flawed as he tries to kill Kylo even though he hadn't yet turned, ultimately pushing him and giving Kylo the motive to turn his back on them all as his own uncle tries to butcher him was brilliant). Kylo's power struggle with Hux is good again and honestly Kylo once again is one of the better characters and is well acted by Driver, by teaming with Rey and submitting himself to the light only to reveal he is too devoted to inherently flawed idea of ruling the galaxy to restore order by destroying the old way of things (rebellion, senate, everything) was well done, it was interesting to see that ultimately he feels the conflict between the FO and the rebellion is kind of futile ultimately and that the old world needs to end added some nice depth. Much like TFA I felt he was one of the strongest elements of the new franchise, his relationship with Rey added some much needed depth to her character and unlike TFA she actually went through more meaningful personal development.

Overall I just can't see how this is getting the near universal praise it has been, it's a flawed film and nowhere close to Empire. When 50% of the your film just drags along and exists only to serve a bunch of side missions which ultimately could have been written differently or cut entirely you make it hard to not get a little bored watching. The entire experience felt very much like filler to simply prepare you for the final film in the trilogy, a lot happens but nothing really happens at the same time. They start the film running from the FO helplessly to then spend the majority of the film doing the very same thing, very slowly as the side arch try to make it so they can escape, only for the archs to fail anyway as they don't escape, cue last stand to set up the third film. It basically is a whole lot of nothing really advancing outside of Rey and Kylo, it's just there filling up time and taking attention away from the actually engaging plots going on. Where TFA and others at least feel concise and like they keep everyone's story moving along and not slowing the others down, this is the complete opposite. Finn could have just stayed in a coma til the finale, Poe may as well have gotten knocked out in the explosion in the hanger bay and not been in it til the end, Rose didn't need to exist, Leia should have died in the bridge explosion as she offered nothing after that and if you add all those together then Haldo wasn't needed either.

It isn't terrible, there are moments that are great (but on the flip side what makes them more disappointing is you think you're about to get something really cool.... and then they stop and go nowhere) but as a movie, it's fundamentally flawed, disjointed, has scenes that aren't needed and added characters that added nothing and actually took away from the new characters you were trying to establish.

 

[The Southbank]

Spoiler

It isn't terrible, there are moments that are great (but on the flip side what makes them more disappointing is you think you're about to get something really cool.... and then they stop and go nowhere) but as a movie, it's fundamentally flawed, disjointed, has scenes that aren't needed and added characters that added nothing and actually took away from the new characters you were trying to establish.

Spoiler

Excellent post, agree with pretty much all of it.

One major gripe is how it takes Anakin years to train as a Jedi, but Rey seemingly gets to grips with it within hours.

One strength of the prequels was that you felt, with enormous amounts of CGI, that you were in the Star Wars universe. This one doesn't, the Ach-to scenes felt like we were watching a LOTR film. Could we not have had a bit more political context?

 

[TheMinsterman]

Spoiler

Excellent post, agree with pretty much all of it.

One major gripe is how it takes Anakin years to train as a Jedi, but Rey seemingly gets to grips with it within hours.

One strength of the prequels was that you felt, with enormous amounts of CGI, that you were in the Star Wars universe. This one doesn't, the Ach-to scenes felt like we were watching a LOTR film. Could we not have had a bit more political context?

Spoiler

I understand the gripe, I felt the same about Anakin's flying skills to an extent but he did at least fly podracers and it was made quite clear in the plot how significant he was and like you stated, he still has to enter training before we are back for Episode II.

Allow me to partially quote Ian Malcolm from JP here, because I think it's apt for Rey as a concept.

Ian Malcolm: If I may... Um, I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're using here, it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You read what others had done and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it. You stood on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you patented it, and packaged it, and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now [bangs on the table]... you're selling it.

Disney and the writers wanted a strong, female, protagonist, but it feels way too much like they started with the ends and didn't quite place much effort in the means. They took the Star Wars mythos, took the "quick learning" of potent force sensitives and they didn't have her earn any of it, she just lucked onto it with zero guidance from ANY Jedi (Even Anakin and Luke had Qui-Gon and Obi Wan respectively), they achieved it "as fast as they could" and all so they could market and package it and pump out merchandise. By completely removing her parentage as having any importance they needed to then set up how she was so potent in the force, it has wide reaching consequences, Anakin was literally an immaculate conception, Luke is his offspring, so why is the daughter of two junkyard traders essentially more connected to the skills of the force with no training than either of them in a much shorter window of time? None of it feels like she is just stumbling across these things in confusion (perhaps the mind trickery from fairy tales of the Jedi) and by chance and you can't just become proficient with a bladed weapon out of nowhere unless you possess some inherent gift, that they haven't bothered to establish, yet you teased a solution with the parents teases in TFA.

The reality is the flaws and issues with Rey are not "because she is a woman", its corny in the partially explained ways the Skywalkers pick stuff up fast already, she could be Raynold, or a alien species, the flaws would still be apparent, I'm quite content with women, minorities and whatever else in Star Wars (Like I said, I loved Finn and for her flaws I think Daisy Ridley really does wonderfully with the material she is given and is charming in her mannerisms), but you get the sense that they were in such a rush to achieve the idea in their head they haven't laid the appropriate ground work. Look at Phasma too, she could have been absolutely brilliant, they got a fantastic actress to play her, but she's rarely in the film, her antagonism with Finn is never established, only touched on, then she dies. It FEELS like they're trying to have these characters there to fulfil an agenda, but then robbing them with bad screenwriting. I could be 100% wrong, maybe I've been swayed by the back and forth articles making this facet of casting seem bigger than it is (plenty of left leaning and liberal sources spoke about how vital it was etc), but either way, even if you remove that, they rushed characters along, packaged them, used the established lore as a crutch to get over sloppy writing and then tied it in a neat little bow.

I'm actually frustrated at how they've not given these characters and actors/actresses the chances to shine they deserve.

 

[Pagnell]

Really enjoyed it, and more than Force Awakens. Not sure how they're going to do the ninth installment now though.

 

[Jamie_SFC]

Pretty disappointed with that to be honest. The story was a bit all over the place. Kylo Ren is just such a poor villain.

Gonna go rewatch that Vader hallway scene from Rogue One....

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

Spoiler

my fucking sides

 

[The Southbank]

Really enjoyed it, and more than Force Awakens. Not sure how they're going to do the ninth installment now though.

Spoiler

Maybe they will skip forward a few years? I can't imagine the next film will follow suit and resume straight after the last one like the TFA-TLJ time difference; the Resistance is practically dead. This at least gives time for them to go into some sort of hiding and regroup and gives Rey the chance to further her powers.

 

[The Southbank]

Spoiler

Pedant alert - how can Leia survive outer space and perform that cringeworthy re entrance into the ship, if Mace Windu gets flung out of a building yet can't perform something similar?

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

Spoiler

it would require much less force in the vacuum of space than on a planet with gravity working against you

still cringy tho

 

[Ebeneezer Goode]

Spoiler

https://streamable.com/tp5bo

 

[Jockney]

Spoiler

re. the Mirror scene and the Rey-parents red herring. I thought that was one of the more coherent themes of the movie: renewal, demystification, etc. Yoda forces the point home with the destruction of the idols. Rey's mysterious past is irrelevant, the force is something that exists omnipresently: a set of mystical principles that govern everything, whereas the Jedi is something of a subversion, an attempt to formalise and subsequently institutionalise the principles that bind everyone together. So in a sense, Luke is right but for the wrong reasons. Ren is dangerous because he also comes to understand this fundamental epistemological discovery (through Rey) and wants to exploit it.

Hence the scene at the very end, with the stable boy and the broom. I suppose it serves a narrative purpose by freeing up the new characters to make the new film their own, while also giving the writers space to break from the established rules of the universe.