Hello and welcome! This here thread is a spoiler-free zone!
Things that are acceptable here:
- Trailers and trailer speculation
- Discussion of Star Wars movies and shows, and what we would like to see/not like to see in them.
- Discussion about anything and everything Star Wars, just...no spoilers.
Things that are not-acceptable here:
- Spoilers! No talking about the leaks!
- Being mean! If you disagree with someone's opinion, try not to come across as mean or rude.
And here. we. go.
Things that are acceptable here:
- Trailers and trailer speculation
- Discussion of the Star Wars movies and what we would like to see/not like to see in them.
- Discussion about anything and everything Star Wars, just...no spoilers.
Things that are not-acceptable here:
- Spoilers! No talking about the leaks!
- Being mean! If you disagree with someone's opinion, try not to come across as mean or rude.
And here. we. go.
Rise of Skywalker Final Trailer:
Mr. Sunday's Ten Easy To Miss Details in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Final Trailer Breakdown):
This cool mashup of Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker and Avengers: Endgame trailers:
And also here's a trailer for The Mandalorian:
Edited by Mrph1 on Aug 31st 2024 at 8:23:29 PM
I don't think anyone here was talking about Luke's moment of fear in Kylo's backstory. Personally, I think it's perfectly in character for him - considering how he handled his fear when fighting Vader, it'd even be considered a moment of improvement.
It's really everything else about how Luke (and especially Ben) was handled that kind of stinks.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Jul 6th 2022 at 11:25:33 AM
Yeah.
I'd argue that the moment is less on Luke (who did pull back), and more on Ben.
What does it say about Ben that when Luke saw Snoke's influence, his first instinct was to consider murdering him? Not trying to reach out to him, but killing him?
And like, it's not like there's not a laundry list of issues with Ben already. This just makes him seem even worse.
One Strip! One Strip!If nothing else, I find it surprisingly easy to see TLJ as the grand finale of this series after Luke dies.
I actually like that.
Edited by RedHunter543 on Jul 6th 2022 at 2:28:34 PM
"The Black Rage makes us strong, because we must resist its temptations every day of our lives or be forever damned!"I go with a much arguably darker interpretation:
Luke was told by the Force to kill Kylo Ren and not killing him resulted in billions of death.
Because, yes, he WAS that bad and if he'd died, the galaxy would have been a better place.
And THIS caused Luke to turn on the Force.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.I think the impression is given of a very rapid self-fulfilling prophecy, though I don't think that's necessarily what happened.
Of course, another issue is we don't know precisely what Ben's corruption was like if you will. For example, how Ben acted before he fell and such, if there were any problem signs in his behavior beyond just "psychic bad vibes".
Personal headcanon on the matter is that Ben was having what he believed were divine revelations (in truth, visions sent by Palpatine) about Darth Vader and The Chosen One Prophecy. Something to the effect of "Darth Vader had an important destiny to fulfill that he couldn't because he was too weak and corrupted by the Light Side of The Force, you aren't weak like he was, though!"
This is why he, for example, wanted to kill Han, to prove to himself he could succeed where Vader "failed" (IE, killing a blood relative). Also why he killed Snoke when he did ("I have my Sidious-expy and my Luke-expy in one place...Vader died under similar circumstances, let's not do an exact repeat here").
How this would have manifested back then is likely delusions of grandeur and paranoia.
Leviticus 19:34Honestly was there really a reason for Luke to die at the end of Last Jedi beyond fears that him being present would automatically overshadow Rey? Because I actually really like his "fight" with the first order with Luke being played as someone using the force to outsmart his enemies rather then overpowering them.
I think there was potential in going forward with Luke in more of a schemer role that wouldnt nececarely diminish Reys role. But in practice we had a movie where Luke spends most of it as a more dour version of OT Yoda, gets one really cool scene that shows quite a bit of potential and then gets quickly removed from the story.
Abrams basically proved himself capable of handling big budget blockbusters after gaining notoriety from Alias, but from the start many people were commenting that he was more of a crowd pleaser director trying to emulate his favorite movies instead of having a coherent style of his own. The one exception is his use of lens flares.
As for Luke in TLJ, my main issue wasn't the whole instigation surrounding Ben's push to the dark side (Kylo's choices are still his own, you need more than one moment of confusion to explain a life of evil). For me the claim in TFA is that Luke was traumatized and went into exile himself as penance and try to make sense of the situation. The implication is that maybe he is searching for answers or some other greater reason behind his exile (Mark Hamill said his mental backstory before TFA was he fell in love and/or had a child, and exile was to protect them from being discovered). Instead his exile is exactly what was said in TFA, he blamed himself for what happened and gave up, he spent years coming up with "everything I've dedicated myself to is useless." It creates a very flat and dull implication of what he has been doing all this time. TROS tried to fix that a little by saying Luke did spend some time tracking down signs of the Sith Eternal, which makes for better idea that there was more to his conclusions than "I screwed up, the Jedi need to die."
Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.The hypothetical versions where Luke disappeared because he was looking for a MacGuffin / protecting a hidden kid / etc don’t compel me because they feel like they gloss over the consequences of that course of action. It’s like what happened when TROS claimed Rey’s parents were protecting her all along by dumping her with a greedy slaver on a desolate world. Or also how TFA has Han regress into an absent father so that he can be a “fun smuggler” again. The moral dilemma in TLJ draws me more than replacing it with a plot trinket quest.
I admit, the movies don't say it but I always interpret Ben in the least flattering light possible. He joined the First Order because he's an awful human being who wanted to be praised and follow in his grandfather's footsteps.
His lack of a Freudian Excuse makes him an interesting character.
Good parents, good government, and no tragedy. He just chose evil voluntarily.
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.^^^^ There is something to say about overcomplicating what should be a rather straightforward idea or explaining so called "plot holes" that didn't need to be explained. Modern Star Trek and Star Wars seems to be filled with trying to explain away "Top Ten things that don't make sense in Star Trek/ Star Wars" Buzzfeed articles, which comes at the cost of actual story.
In TLJ, though, it is said explicitly that Luke didn't really read the ancient Jedi texts when he spent years on the planet. It's for the sake of a joke "Page turners, they were not" but it has the effect of making it seem like Luke wasn't really looking for answers and just found the easiest thing to justify himself. The moral dilemma is undermined when less effort is put into one side of it.
Edited by EmeraldSource on Jul 6th 2022 at 1:38:33 AM
Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures.And as So Uncivilized pointed out in the video he did regarding the sequels, it basically turns Han into a loser basically all his Character Development got flushed down the toilet.
Edited by DrunkenNordmann on Jul 6th 2022 at 10:43:39 AM
We learn from history that we do not learn from historyYes, TLJ is about Luke having given up.
TFA was about Luke being on a mystic quest.
So yes, there was a lot of dissonance even with the first two movies.
Han's change didn't bother me because he has the most reason to be emotionally devastated by events aside from Leia and she had the Resistance to turn to.
Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jul 6th 2022 at 1:46:17 AM
Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.But he’s shown to be terrible at it. He straight-up fails to play his creditors off against each other, and gets called out on it by them directly. He barely escapes by the skin of his teeth with Rey’s help and because he has the Falcon back. He’s lost his touch, because he “went back to the only thing [he] was ever good at” out of grief. I thought that was actually pretty well done.

"I mean, did cast a white Britsh guy as Khan in Star Trek, sooo..."
It's because having a non-white character as a villain was considered politically incorrect, not realizing that Khan was an example of "Mexicans love Speedy Gonzales."
Ironically, it can be argued that not letting a non-white character be a villain because it would be seen as racist is even more racist.
—-
This may be an unpopular opinion, but that Luke would make a mistake in a moment of fear doesn't seem so bad to me. He shows that despite being a hero, he is prone to mistakes.
Edited by DarthNoxIsCool on Jul 6th 2022 at 11:56:21 AM