Headscratchers / The Last Jedi

New entries go to the bottom of each section

• The Last Jedi Technology
• The Last Jedi Strategic Decisions
• The Last Jedi Character Motivations
• The Last Jedi Canon Consistency

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Other

"They Can Track Us Through Hyperspace"

• So...how and why does Leia know that they can do this? I mean, I guess we can attribute it to her Jedi intuition, but that doesn't really serve her anywhere else, and everybody just agrees with her. It feels very contrived.
  • Considering the First Order fleet tracked their position perfectly the moment they dropped out of hyperspace, this really wasn't a difficult conclusion to make.
  • The specific conclusion was that they could trace their hyperspace signature. There were other possibilities that weren't discussed, such as a ship being bugged (as in A New Hope), or Snoke or Kylo sensing Leia through the Force, or there being a traitor...The problem is not that it isn't a sound theory, but that it's treated as fact without any real proof.
  • Nobody really gave much talk to the method. The important point is that they obviously were managing it somehow; the details of how were immaterial. Besides, Holdo was acting as if they might have a spy on deck anyway.
  • Honestly, the way they kept putting focus on the locator beacons that Leia and Rey were wearing, I thought they were tracking that.
  • And I thought they were tracking Finn somehow.
  • Being followed after a hyperspace jump seems to have been fairly unprecedented. Snoke and Kylo have been hunting the Resistance for years, so the possibility that one or the other was sensing Leia may have been discounted long ago, on the basis that they'd have found her long before now if they could.
  • Except that they had already managed to do exactly that in The Force Awakens. Hux already pulled this trick once before when the First Order was able to detect Snap's X-wing reconnaissance run around Starkiller Base and track him all the way back to D'Qar. This implied that the First Order had such a capability even before the larger ships came into play.
  • Heck, they've been tracking ships ever since A New Hope. The empire put a tracking device onboard the Falcon, which allowed them to find the rebel base on Yavin IV.
  • Well, that last is specifically with a tracker attached to the ship. The implication here was that they were tracking all of the ships without anything of their own attached to them.
  • Ruling out a spy and/or beacon seems relatively plausible: it's fairly likely that at least one or more vessels in the fleet has sensory equipment to detect transmission (equipment that a small smuggling vessel would likely not have)
  • Also Leia's behavior is correct even if she *did* suspect a spy. Per Infernal Affairs, if you suspect a mole in your midst you should never let on that their cover has been blown, but rather make a public display of having been successfully misdirected meanwhile running a covert segmented misinformation campaign in order to isolate the culprit
• Fridge Brilliance: with the amount of stunts the Falcon and other Rebel ships pulled, it would make sense the Imperial Remnant (oops, First Order) would grow tired of the stunt and figure out a workaround. As for how they did it? A tracker on Finn is a possibility (they probably would have contingencies for their grunts deserting). A second possibility is the mundane spy on the ship. A third possibility is "Kylo Ren" tracking Leia via the Force, which ties into one of the arguments made by Kreia that family has such a powerful influence it's a Force Bond by default.

Rey on the Falcon

• This seems similar to the end of TFA where Rey hugged Leia despite never actually meeting her before; here, Rey flees Kylo Ren by stealing Snoke's personal cruiser...and next time we see her, she's suddenly on the Millennium Falcon. What gives?
  • Rey didn't escape on a personal ship, it was an escape pod. Plus, before she turned herself in, she specifically told Chewie to wait for her signal to come pick her up. It's clear that Chewie did in fact pick up up and Rey transferred to the Falcon offscreen.
  • Hux told Kylo that Rey took Snoke's ship. Maybe she ditched it to get back on the Falcon in case the First Order could track it.

Secrets and Sellouts

• Holdo's plan was so secret that few of the other crew knew about it. Especially not Finn & Rose, who left on their special mission well before the secret was revealed, under the assumption that the only way for the Resistance to survive was to enable a hyperspace jump. After they're captured, DJ somehow clues in the First Order to look for the transports. How did he know?
  • His stolen vessel had the same stealth tech. He clued them in on it and it paid off.
  • More to the point, DJ was right there when Poe hotheadedly radioed Finn and Rose to update them on the secret plan. This also completely justifies Holdo keeping the plan from Poe in the first place.
  • Still doesn't quite add up, though... At the point Poe talked to the others, he still thought that Holdo was just going to jump ship and leave the rest of them to die, and that he had stopped her plot. There's a pretty big leap of logic/intuition/con artistry/whatever from a stolen high-roller's cloaked ship and a failed desertion to the huge payoff he received. Or maybe it was all just a gamble and he got lucky.
  • DJ shows us (well, Rose and Finn but you get the point) that the previous owner of the ship he stole was selling weapons to both the First Order and Resistance via information he gets from the ship's computers. He could also have found information that the Resistance was bulk buying stealth technology that's too small to fit in a frigate, too large to fit in a fighter, but just right to fit in a transport.
  • I don't think it ultimately matters whether DJ knew about the stealth tech or not. He knew the plan was to send people out in transports, and it's established that the transports were "stealthy" but not undetectable. The Raddus was to keep going to keep attention on itself and prevent the First Order from ever suspecting that any transports had launched in the first place. All DJ had to say was "Hey guys, they're sending everybody out on transports" and Hux could say "Well, I don't see anything, but yeah, start scanning. Oh hey, there they are, sweet."

FO sparing Finn

• Why don't FO blast Finn after Rose rams into him, and how the hell did he manage to return to base (correct me if he didn't) across a huge open field in plain view of the enemy force?
  • At that point, Kylo Ren had ordered all of his forces to concentrate fire on Luke, so perhaps those who noticed decided to ignore him due to fear of what the Kylo Ren would do if they disobeyed him. He said fire at Luke, but he didn't say to resume targeting the rebel scum. Given his temper and habit of throwing Hux around, the rest of the FO may reconsider shooting old targets, unbelievable as that seems. Or nobody at all noticed Finn and Rose because all attention was on Luke. "OMG the guns did nothing to him! And the Supreme Leader is now gonna fight him!" He's that interesting a sight.
  • Yes, sure, but all that excitement lasted for a couple minutes at best. Are you telling me it was enough for Finn, who was most likely wounded and dragging an unconscious person, to get back to the base on foot? The skimmers could only (barely) carry one person, so I don't think anyone could give them a lift.
  • They might not have 'spared' him as much as 'not noticed or paid attention to him'. They see two ships crash into each other, logically assume that the pilots have been killed in the crash, and proceed under that assumption without bothering to confirm it. Plus, they're gonna wipe out the base and kill everyone anyway, it's not like there's any urgency to kill any survivors from two junked out relics which have crashed.
  • No, there's not, but still, the timing doesn't add up. Finn and Rose crash right in front of the cannon, several hundred meters from the base at the very least, and two minutes later he's already inside.

Finn getting Rose back to the Crait hangar

• So Finn was able to pull Rose from her wrecked speeder, strap her to some debris, and slowly drag her all the way back to the hanger ... and the First Order just let him get away with that? None of the walkers thought to shoot at the downed Resistance pilots, or just a serious case of Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy?
  • Everybody was looking at the ultimate showdown of final destiny between Luke and Kylo Ren, I guess. I know I would.
  • Kylo Ren commanded all weapons focus on Luke. After that failed, he commanded everybody stand down. Nobody was willing to risk Kylo Ren's wrath just to pick off a couple of survivors who - for all they know - could be just grunts.
  • If they were even noticed, why waste the ammo? The only place they can run to is the massive bunker that, so far as anyone is aware, has only one entrance and exit, which the massed forces of the First Order are steadily marching towards. You're gonna kill everyone anyway, letting a couple of injured junker pilots have a brief Hope Spot isn't going to hurt you.

No Really, What The Hell Was Up With That Cave

• When she goes in we just see a bunch of illusory duplicates and then... nothing and it's never brought up again
  • Luke basically says its a focus point/nexus for the dark side of the Force the same way the Jedi temple above is deeply connected to the light side of the Force, or at least he implies as much when Rey first senses it and Luke remarks matter-of-factly that for powerful light to exist in a place there must also be a powerful darkness.
  • As for why she saw duplicates of herself, it seemed to be symbolism like the cave where Luke fought a Vader illusion that had his face. Rey wanted to see her parents, but they are dead and so the cave showed nothing but herself, because she is alone. Or alternatively/additionally it was symbolically showing her that she was the one with the answer about her parents (as Rey later admits she knew the truth but refused to accept it).
  • If you think about it, the cave is basically saying "you won't get any answers here," which almost immediately drives Rey into leaving to try to turn Kylo Ren - which is the best chance in the movie for the Dark Side to get Rey to turn or be killed. The Dark Side was showing her nothing but herself in order to sow despair and get her to go where its servants had a chance to work on her.
    • It always came across as weird that characters (as well as some viewers) see the cave as offering a truly honest answer when it's full of the dark side, which has always been established as corruptive. At best it makes Rey's honest feelings of loneliness, and fear she is no one, a truth Froma Certain Pointof View, to do dishonest work in sliding her into a place she could fall to the dark side from. Palpatine used Anakin's love to corrupt him in the right circumstances too and got Anakin into the right viewpoint to set up the fall - honest feelings, dishonest work. Luke even notes that she went right to the dark because it offered an answer, but it's never said to be the right one. It's basically what Kylo Ren does later (whether he is actually right is notably still up for debate); gives her a painful answer designed to break her when she's vulnerable.
    • Just because it's the dark side doesn't mean it's not capable of honesty — especially if, as argued even here, a painful truth is going to be more devastating for someone than any number of lies. Undoubtedly, that truth would be presented in a way best designed to hurt and break Rey (its still the dark side), but that doesn't make it not true. And it's also not like the light side is the side of pure, unfiltered honesty which can be unquestionably trusted, as I'm sure Luke Skywalker would point out when it comes to the subject of Obi-Wan, Yoda and the identity of his father.
• Another question: How is a woman who's lived her entire life on a desert planet know how to swim?
  • Babies instinctively know how to swim due to the amniotic environment they just spent nine months in, and while that skill fades if it isn't kept up, the basics are still in our subconscious. Therefore, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to think that Rey was just floundering until she touched land and operating on pure fight-or-flight (plus, the water wasn't terribly deep and she landed relatively close to the shore).

Swimming

• When Rey finds the Dark Side nexus on the island, she falls off a cliff and swims a short distance. How exactly did a person that has lived on a desert planet for her entire life know how to swim?
  • Already answered in one of the above headscratchers so I'm just copying the answer here: Babies instinctively know how to swim due to the amniotic environment they just spent nine months in, and while that skill fades if it isn't kept up, the basics are still in our subconscious. Therefore, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to think that Rey was just floundering until she touched land and operating on pure fight-or-flight (plus, the water wasn't terribly deep and she landed relatively close to the shore).
  • I don't think babies do much swimming in the amniotic environment, given that there's nowhere to swim to and anyway they're tethered by the umbilical cord. Spending time in a watery environment doesn't automatically teach you how to move around effectively. (There's also the fact that infants plainly don't know how to swim, as several tragic incidents can attest...). The best I can say is that maybe someone on Jakku has a pool.
  • Lifeguard here. Babies definitely DO NOT have any instinctive swimming ability. At best they MIGHT have an instinctive "stop breathing" ability.
  • She only swam ten feet and yet came out of the water gasping like she had just competed in the water Olympics. I think she didn't swim so much as flail towards shore.
  • Indeed, it should be remembered that in real life people who can't swim don't necessarily just sink to the bottom. They tend to flail around at the surface for a bit and may move some distance while flailing (hence why people who try to rescue them risk getting dragged down).
  • The fact that Jakku has a breathable atmosphere and at least some wildlife (the metal-eating pseudobirds) suggests it's not totally devoid of water. There's probably an oasis or large vaporator-stocked cistern at the village where she traded in her scavenged junk, with an adjoining bathhouse that people can pay to use. When she was still a child, the trader who'd bought her from her parents probably covered her entry fee at times when she got too grubby to stand downwind of, and she seized the opportunity to take a nice dip in the bathhouse's tiny pool.
  • Even if she couldn't swim: we must remember this is an alien world... There's every chance that the "water" isn't plain old H₂O, but some other weird liquid with far more buoyancy. Like how in real-life, anyone can easily float in the Dead Sea because of its unusually high salt content.
  • Just guessing here, but the movie shows Rey basking in the rainfall on Ahch-To, right? Because it’s something she wouldn’t have experienced living on Jakku? In that same vein, maybe since she was on an island surrounded by water, she took the chance to give swimming in it a try just to see what it was like.
  • Shadow of the Sith reveals that Rey's parents ran a moisture farm on Jakku before they left her with Unkar Plutt. Provided they had enough water to do so, it's possible that they taught her how to swim, especially since the text implies they didn’t plan on living there forever. The book also tells us that she wasn’t made into a scavenger immediately after her parents left, since they planned on coming back for her eventually. So she may have had some privileges back then that included access to whatever swimming or bathing facility Plutt had available, like was suggested above. Letting her amuse herself in a splash pool all day wouldn’t be a terrible way to keep a little kid busy.

How did DJ know about the escape plan?

• After being captured, DJ buys his freedom and a large reward by telling the First Order about the Rebels' plan to escape in cloaked ships. But how did DJ know about the plan? Finn and Rose didn't tell him, they didn't know about it. DJ wasn't any part of the Resistance. How could he sell out a plan there's no reason for him to know about?
  • He used the same trick to get them onto the flagship. He took a gamble that that's what the Resistance was doing and it paid off.
  • I think the idea is that he overheard that radio conversation where Poe tells Finn about the transport ships. IIRC he didn't tell Finn about the cloaking devices (because he himself didn't know about them), but apparently DJ figured that out on his own.
  • When Poe finds out about the transports, but before learning about their real purpose, he IMMEDIATELY gets on the comms with Rose and Finn while the latter are flying through hyperspace to reconnect with the fleets. He blurts out the transport plan loudly and carelessly, without even acknowledging whether R&F had the codebreaker with them or even if said codebreaker could be trusted to hear that information. The camera even lingers meaningfully on DJ while this conversation is going on.

Kylo's statement about Rey's parents

• Why does everyone take Kylo Ren's statement about Rey's parents being "nobodies" as the absolute truth? The man is a Sith Lord (or a "Knight of Ren" or a "Dark Jedi", or whatever you wanna call him), who specialize in manipulation and deception. The statement was made during a time when Kylo was tempting Rey to join the Dark Side. And the previous movie dropped several hints about Rey's parents having significance in the larger scheme of things. All of this points towards Kylo lying to Rey to win her over, yet for some reason everyone assumes he told the truth.
  • The short answer: Villains Never Lie.
  • And you would be right, he could be lying. BUT, as I pointed out on another example, the evidence for there being a script change between The Force Awakens and this film is everywhere, especially if you listen to Mark Hamill's scathing criticism of this Luke Skywalker. Its hard to believe he would have come back if this was the brief he was given before he signed the contract. My personal opinion is that it boils down to two things: Change of director, and the negative fan response to Rey, because like it or not, the amount of people who have accused her of being a Mary Sue are gigantic. Famous parents, can fly the Millennium Falcon as good as Han and Chewie, wins a lightsaber fight against a Sith Lord without any training, learns to use her Force powers far quicker than Luke ever did, makes friends with the Resistance without effort etc. Changing her heritage from Skywalker/Solo/other great figure to nobody has watered down a lot of the criticism.
  • About the script changes: Daisy Ridley's confirmed that JJ Abrams always intended Rey's parents to be nobodies, he just didn't force Johnson to adhere to it (but he chose to anyway). So this being because of a script change isn't possible.
  • Now, as for why people don't think Kylo is lying: he doesn't say Rey's parents are nobodies. She does. What Kylo actually does is offer his two cents on why they left her. The way the series presents and intends it, Rey always knew the truth, hence her line about him having a father who loved him (she knows she doesn't), the mirror sequence showing only herself (because she knows the answer), and Maz's line about Rey already knowing her parents are never coming back in The Force Awakens. She just pretended otherwise to cope. Secondly, Rian Johnson confirms he's neither lying to nor manipulating her. Thirdly, while Kylo's Dark, he's absolutely terrible at manipulation (and again, according to Word of God, hasn't engaged in it).
  • Kylo probably doesn't know exactly who Rey's parents were or what happened to them any more than Rey does, but he's offering what is a plausible and likely narrative about who they were and what happened to them in order to underscore what Rey herself deep down knows — her parents weren't special, they abandoned her, they aren't coming back and, ultimately, she doesn't need them.
  • Also, on a more meta level, Rey's parents' being just some random people fits with the general theme of The Last Jedi, which is to take the cliched tropes of Star Wars (and heroic fantasy in general) and subvert them so that Surprisingly Realistic Outcome occurs. Poe acts like a Military Maverick, but instead of managing to save the day by breaking the rules, he screws everything up. DJ is seemingly a Lovable Rogue, like Han Solo was in the original trilogy, but in the end he doesn't turn out to be Jerk with a Heart of Gold, and instead he sells out the heroes. Luke is shown to be extremely disillusioned with the Warrior Monk philosophy of the Jedis, which was the moral backbone of the previous' movies, but now it's implied to be only one of many alternative ways of approaching the Force. So with all those subversions, it's quite fitting that The Last Jedi also discards the ages-old tropes of Lost Orphaned Royalty and Changeling Fantasy (which were used in the original trilogy with Luke), and instead shows with Rey that you can become a hero regardless of how prestigious your bloodline is.
  • The prequel novel Shadow of the Sith supports the interpretation that Ben was just using his imagination to fill in the gaps in Rey’s backstory. At the very least, the book establishes that her parents weren’t junk traders (they were moisture farmers who occasionally dabbled in junk trading for parts), they didn't sell her for drinking money (they actually bartered with Plutt to look after her) and that they aren't buried in a pauper’s grave on Jakku (their bodies were recovered and laid to rest on another planet, unbeknownst to Rey). So she knew they were nobodies who left her and weren't coming back, and he took that and spun it in an unfavorable way to steer her toward his “Your past doesn’t matter” ideology.

DJ in prison

• Why do these people keep putting inmates into cells without searching them first? This is the second time now (first was in Rogue One) when criminals are allowed to keep things that let them escape! At least in RO it was some backwater terrorists, but here it's a regular police force on a rich and advanced world!
• Also, whose bright idea was it to put male and female prisoners in the same cell? There're good reasons this isn't done in real life.
  • The rich inhabitants of the area are established as corrupt. They probably just don't give a crap if anything happens between prisoners.
• If DJ could escape so easily, why didn't he do that before?
  • It looks like he was sleeping before Finn and Rose got in. Since he can get out any time he wants he might as well take a good nap before having to outrun some angry guards, no?
    • Or, from some of his behavior, maybe he was drunk/high/whatever and was sleeping it off first.
  • According to the Visual Dictionary, he intentionally got himself arrested for a petty crime because the cell is the only place he can get some sleep without being pestered by the police.
    • So, the second best code-breaker in the galaxy cannot find decent employment in the den full of fat cat arm dealers? Did he also have crippling parental issues like Rey did?
    • Maybe he can't get work because he's a backstabber who'll turn on you when he gets into trouble.
    • His motto and moniker is "Live Free, Don't Join"....He's not a guy who wants an honest job or live "in society". He doesn't do bosses, rules, laws, etc. He prefers living the life of an outsider. A regular job wouldn't be his "bag"!
  • The one-shot DJ: Most Wanted comic also explains why he was in jail. His crime this time around involved a complicated caper involving competing casinos, some gangs, a car-chase and an alter-ego of his called "Denel Strench" (which was messed with by a droid DJ annoyed earlier).
    • ....which leads to another question about that comic; DJ actually had an apartment of his own (a droid he annoyed earlier broke-in and hacked into DJ's 'Denel Strench' Alter-Ego program) so why does he need to get arrested every night in order to sleep? Also; Considering that people need sleep every night, wouldn't he have the longest rap-sheet in the galaxy? On the same token, wouldn't a chronically-arrested person just get tossed into a more serious prison-sentence, instead?
  • Rose and Finn were arrested for a parking violation. This is the equivalent of the overnight holding room ("the drunk tank") used until they go to trial or pay their fine, not prison. It's understandable that they would be somewhat lax with non-violent offenders.

What's with the stormtrooper parade?

• The hangar Rose and Finn are brought into to witness DJ getting his 30 pieces of silver and then almost get executed features hundreds of stormtroopers standing at attention arranged into neat squares and blocks. Now this is clearly meant to mirror similar scenes in the Original Trilogy, however there it was a welcoming ceremony for the arrival of the Emperor. Surely they wouldn't throw a military parade as a send-off to DJ, much less for the two rebel scum that are about to be beheaded. So why all that pomp and circumstance? What's the occasion?
  • I think it's less about two rebels and more about Finn specifically. He resisted brainwashing and turned traitor; that's something that might inspire other Stormtroopers. Parading him like this before executing him would be a way of saying "see, this is what happens when you turn on the First Order".

"It's salt"

• So why does the guy taste the ground in the first place other than to let the audience know it's salt? Does he do this on every planet he visits?
  • He can probably smell the salts in the air and was trying to work out where the scent came from. Not like there is a great many candidates as to the source.
  • Plus the stark blood-red footprints everyone left probably clued him in that it's NOT sand or dirt.
  • Basically yeah, he’s trying to figure out what this white thing is as his eyes and scent of smell is telling him that it’s certainly not snow, sand, mud, or dirt.
  • Just more proof of how poorly-briefed the Resistance personnel were. Although, Leia or Holdo admitting that they are going to hide out in a base on a planet covered in salt, where they would likely die from dehydration in very little time, all while desperately hoping that Leia's Outer Rim allies would dispatch a fleet to fight the First Order and save them, would have probably have seen the mutiny throw Leia back out into space and Holdo with her!

Luke knowing about the events of the Prequel Trilogy

• While Rey is trying to convince Luke to teach her the ways of the Force, Luke talks about how the old Jedi Order was flawed. He goes on to talk about how the Jedi's arrogance allowed Darth Sidious to rise to power. While it's great that he understands the mistakes of the old Order, how could Luke possibly have known any of this? How did he know Palpatine's Sith name or that the old Jedi Order fell because they got complacent? It's not like there were history books documenting the truth, given the Empire destroyed any knowledge about the Order. Luke couldn't have learned about this from any other Jedi given that they are all dead. Additionally, throughout the Original Trilogy, Palpatine was always referred to as "the Emperor". He was never referred to as "Darth Sidious" prior to the Prequel Trilogy. So when did Luke discover Palpatine's Sith monikor? While I understand that it was supposed to be a Continuity Nod, it seems almost impossible that Luke would know any of this.
  • From Luke's own experience he knew Palpatine was a Sith lord; it would also be common knowledge that Emperor Palpatine started as Senator Palpatine, and Luke's bright enough to know that he didn't suddenly become a Sith Lord overnight; ergo, he can conclude that Palpatine, a Sith lord, was hiding under the Jedi's noses for decades. Hell, speaking to them in the same room about finding the Sith lord behind everything. It's not a huge leap of logic to conclude that the Jedi had missed him because they became complacent based on what Luke knows or could have found out from public information.
    
    Alternately, when the empire fell, maybe Rebels raided Palpatine's office on Naboo and/or Coruscant and found his journals or something.
  • Luke probably found out the same way he found out he had a twin sister - from ghost Obi-Wan. I imagine that he consulted Obi-Wan and Yoda quite a bit while trying to set up his new Jedi training facility, and they knew all about what had happened.
  • It's also possible that Yoda may have alluded to some of what happened during his training on Dagobah (not anything specific but perhaps cautioned Luke about the dangers of complancency and the existence of a Sith Lord named "Sidious") and then Luke pieced together the rest of the story after the war was over, using what he had learned about Vader and Palpatine's relationship from his battle above Endor. It's also within reason that he may have consulted with Anakin through the Force directly while forming the new Jedi Order, learning from him on what to change going forward (besides Dooku, Anakin was one of their harshest critics, after all).
  • So far as we know, Artoo has not had his memory wiped since before the Clone Wars. While it raises the question of why he never told Luke what happened during the Original Trilogy, Luke might have nonetheless been able to dig it out of his memory at some point. In fact, Luke's bitterness towards the old Jedi Order could have been a hand-me-down from his father, as Artoo would have known about Anakin's difficult relationship with the Jedi.
  • Considering Luke's dad was the second in command of the Empire, no doubt he'd want to do extensive research to figure out just what the hell had happened.

Why the Broom Boy doesn't use the Force to get rid of his and his friends' slavedriver?

At the end of the film, we discover that Temiri Blagg, the Broom Boy of Canto Bight, is Force-sensitive. This is meant to emphasize that the Force can be found even in people with humble beginnings. However, despite that he and his friends are constantly abused by Bargwill Tomder, their slavedriver, the boy never uses the Force against him. The Comic-Book Adaptation of the film even shows Tomder pushing Blagg aside for trying to defend a fathier he is whipping! Why Temiri doesn't use the Force to either Force choke Tomder to end his abuse upon them or just performs a mind trick on him to convince him of not abusing him and his friends?

• What makes you think he knows how or is strong enough in the force to do either of these things? Mind tricks don;t work on everyone and force choking someone pretty much requires the use of the dark side.
  • The very fact that the kid is capable of using telekinesis is already proof he has absurd amount of potential. Force abilities start off relatively subtle; the most telling signs in children tend to be things like limited Precognition, Enhanced Reflexes, etc. In ANH, Luke’s first major use of the Force involved taking a million-to-one shot and striking true without his targeting computer. In a PM (despite its...interpretation with midichlorians...) even has Qui Gon explaining as such, all but saying that Anakin was absurdly gifted in the Force to be capable of Pod Racing as a kid. In that movie, Obi-Wan’s major use of Telekinesis was grabbing his own lightsaber (which, according to some EU sources, is made with the Force and therefore bonded to some extent). Hell, Anakin’s fruit levitation game in Clones is also supposed to be impressive use of the Force. Basically, Telekinesis is already an impressive ability, and Johnson shot himself in the foot for not giving a shit about the setting. Further, Force Choke is not inherently Dark Side; Luke uses it effectively in Jedi, though with the caveat of relinquishing his grip after they’ve fallen unconscious, unlike Vader breaking the necks of his subordinates. Basically, Dark and Light is dependent on emotional state and intent. Plo Koon, a Jedi Master, uses his own variation of Force Lightning to non-lethally subdue enemies (treating it as a magic taser), compared to Sidious getting his evil jollies from torturing people. Darth Vader is also capable of using the Dark Side to Heal others...usually to keep them alive through torture/interrogation sessions.
  • He doesn't try to fight Tomder because he doesn't know what Tomder would do—whether Tomder is immune, or might have Force powers of his own. He doesn't know how much effort he would need to oppose Tomder or avoid retribution. How much is he likely to know about the Force or Force powers?
  • How much is he even aware of? He was staring out into space when he pulled the broom. He may have pulled it to himself while thinking he just reached out and picked it up.

Did Luke really have to sacrifice himself?

• By the time Luke starts to duel Kylo Ren, Rey has already landed in the Falcon and is about to push aside the rocks and rescue the Resistance survivors. So what if Luke had just ended his Force projection right then? There's probably no way the First Order troops could have stormed the base quickly enough to catch the Resistance survivors...and perhaps some less exertion on Luke's part would've allowed him to survive.
  • In-Universe, I guess it was meant to deal a blow to the ego of Kylo Ren and his followers: after all, a large part of the FO staff just saw their supposedly powerful new commander humiliated by what's essentially a talking mirage, and this would have weakened the trust they had in their new leader, which doesn't seem much but is a serious hindrance in an army. Out of Universe, I guess that to hammer the point of "let the past die" home, Luke's demise was necessary, or at least coherent.
  • Humiliated how? All they saw was that Kylo fought Luke, then stabbed him, and then Luke disappeared, exactly like slain Jedi are known to do. Which is obviously how Kylo would also tell it. If anything, Luke has just reinforced Kylo's badass image tenfold, by letting him defeat a seemingly invincible opponent.
    • Good point. From a doylist perspective, the creators probably just didn't put the pieces of what the FO saw and the context they had together, so canon will treat is as if they knew and saw everything the audience did. Though to be fair, Jedi aren't necescarily "known" to do that; none killed during Order 66 did, and even Vader seemed surprised by Obi-Wan doing it (though that's partially the fault of Early-Installment Weirdness, as the first film treated the Force as far more mental than physical.)

Speaking of blame...

• During the course of the movie, Luke pretty much blames the Jedi for pretty much everything bad that has happened to the Galaxy and claims that they should go extint for the sake of everyone else, with the movie itself (initially anyway) hinting of a close future with no Jedi to "guide the Galaxy/representing the Force/whatever". However, while Luke's words are the moments are biased by his current disillusionment and crisis of faith, it has two serious flaws:
  • Point 1: While indeed the Jedi Order failed to stop Palpatine from gaining power and establishing the Empire while he was right under their nose, the same could be said for the Republic itself, which was actively used by Palpatine as a way to wipe out his opponents and establish an Empire (and from what I've seen it was the ties the Jedi had with the Republic that forced them to become generals and warriors). And in the current timeline, the New Republic itself is clearly ignoring the threat of the First Order, letting what's essentially an outnumbered, understaffed and outgunned army of partisans do all the work for them. I find that's almost a double-standard that the Jedi have to go while the Republic, with his flaws and incompetent leadership, can stay there where it is.
    • Luke's a Jedi, not Chancellor (or dictator, as he'd have to be to dissolve it) of the Republic. Continuing the Jedi Order or letting it die out is the only relevant choice he can make, and so it's the only one he comments on, at least when talking to Rey. Plus, Luke's just not the most political person, that's really more Leia's thing. He doesn't understand, or at least pass judgement on the whole system of government and its recent history.
    • Also, bear in mind, the idea of the New Republic as having only been wiped out because it was terribly incompetent is largely an invention of the New EU, which the writer’s of this film probably didn’t know much about. In TFA, the New Republic is generally framed as a powerful, benevolent government tragically destroyed by the First Order, which serves to establish how powerful the First Order is, villify them, and revert the galaxy’s power dynamics to those of the Original Trilogy. The EU writers then swooped in to explain away the Fridge Logic of how the First Order could have gotten so strong without the NR’s knowledge, and how a single attack could destroy a whole government, explaining that the NR government was full of Stupid Good senators, bickering, greedy idiots and First Order supporters. And even then, the idea that this shows the NR to be criminally incompotent and not just unlucky or outplayed by malicious forces is a fan extrapolation. Luke doesn’t acknowledge the NR’s failings, because the film’s writers didn’t know about the EU where they were explained, and even the EU writers didn’t see them as failings.

  • Point 2: Luke talks as if the complete disappearence of the Jedi Order and ways will forever rid the galaxy of all the Force-related trouble... However, as this series (and arguably Palpatine himself) demonstrated, Sith are uncanningly good at surviving, lying in wait like spiders and showing up at the worst possible time. The Rule of Two's greatest asset is the fact that, since true Sith are limited in numbers they'll take many precautions to survive and regroup, and considering both the Oppress brothers (Savage and Maul), one can receive Sith training in the Force without previous experience with Jedi training. Luke himself should know this better than anyone else, since witnessed the death of Vader and the Emperor, the last two Sith, only to see someone else corrupt Ben to the Dark Side. So, even if the Jedi disappear, what prevents the Sith for going to town on the entire Galaxy and re-establish a Sith Empire? Yes, as one ancient Sith Lord pointed out (again, quoting from here, TV Tropes), the "modern" Sith have become too obsessed with the Jedi and their struggle, but really, the disappearence of the Jedi would probably result in some decrepit Sith Lord hidden in some forgotten planet to declare the end of the Rule of Two and start an academy of Sith to create an army of evil Force Users to control the Galaxy. In this light, I guess that the Jedi should be present at the very least to keep the Sith in check, or at the very least have Force Users that don't go around frying people with lightning at the slightest provocation.
    • Well, Luke is framed as wrong and overly bitter in this film due to his trauma, so we're not really supposed to see what he says as logical, let alone correct. In his defense, though, his "fight the whole First Order" quote all but explicitly states that, in addition to doubting the Jedi's supposed divine wisdom, he doesn't think the Jedi are physically powerful enough to turn the tide of whole wars, which is actually kind of true; during the clone wars, even the most powerful Jedi like Anakin and Mace Windu needed armies of their own to have a chance at winning large scale battles. Even at the height of their power, the vast majority of the Sith Empire's soldiers were non-force sensitives or droids. He believes, possibly correctly, that even armies of force sensitives (which can't realistically number more than thousands), let alone individual "heroes" like him are overrated. If the Sith return, either the galaxy's normals can kill them off, or they'll use cunning to make the normals their army (see above), and the Jedi won't be able to stop it. In either case, there's no good justification for continuing the Jedi, especially if there's such a good chance they'll just end up creating the next breed of Sith.

What are those creatures?

• Near the end of the movie, as Finn is about to fire at the weapon, there is a brief shot of some rabbit-like creatures, at about 2:04:41 into the movie. What are those, and why are we shown them?

No Midichlorians Neccescary?

• Where was it implied that anyone could use the Force? Sure, Rey and the stable-boy’s parents aren’t anyone special (according to this film), but neither were Obi-Wan’s, Yoda’s, Palpatine’s… sure, the films never dived into their origins, but Force-senseitivty being a genetic trait than can be inherited or result from mutation like any other seems like an easy thing to extrapolate given what we’d previously seen in the films alone, and all this film does is confirm the latter as a possibility. If the writers really did want to make a statement against the midichlorian count one is born with being the be-all-end-all of Force-powers, wouldn’t they at least imply that Rey doesn’t have a high midichlorian count, or that Poe or Finn could use the Force despite Kylo not having sensed it was strong with them?
  • Midichlorians only raise more questions:
    
    Where do midichlorians even come from? Who thought the idea of blood-testing for them was a good one? What were Shmi Skywalker's origins? Was she Force-sensitive, and if not, who was Anakin's father? Devil's advocate here: In the long run, are they a good thing for this universe? The families blessed with them have been responsible for trillions of deaths and galactic instability... I'd throw good money after a narrative around Force-sensitive characters learning to fight an unfortunate tendency to go mad and/or create dictatorships.
    
    The only families shown in-universe to have high midichlorian blood counts are the Palpatines and the Skywalkers, establishing that world-breaking Force-sensitivity is akin to hereditary monarchy and that anyone displaying off-the-charts levels thereof is related to one of these bloodlines. This is the core of the issue; midichlorians are only a symptom and a lightning rod. Unless we see other Force-gifted characters unrelated to either of them, it's a safe assumption that just anyone can't use the Force.
  • We've seen plenty of gifted Force wielders; Yoda and Windu both put Palpatine on the back foot (though fans have been arguing for years that he let Windu win to get Anakin on his side) and Obi-Wan beat Vader twice. Human, near human, and not at all human characters have been shown to be gifted. It's just this is the story of the Skywalker family, so that's the only lineage we've seen.