Star Wars VIII: The Last Jedi

[Abagadro]

Heh, it is literally called the Skywalker Saga by those who are making it.

[Phildo]

As Haemish said, my ultimate point was that there were valid criticisms unrelated to SJW themes.  The movie itself was fine to forgettable, but it doesn't stand on its' own because it's part 2 of a trilogy.  IMO it fails as a sequel because it answers essentially none of the questions posed by the first one and aside from killing some secondary characters, leaves us right back where we were at the start.  That is the opposite of what we got in Empire, which gave a great deal of exposition on the mysteries of the first film's universe and advanced the plot significantly.

[TheWalrus]

You guys are REALLY going to be disappointed by Life: The Movie. Characters do a bunch of dumb shit, and die in really idiotic and embarrassing ways. You got guys that somehow get power that have no business having it because they're evil assholes that couldn't really run a birthday party, let alone a country. People do daring side quests in weird locations that don't pan out, and they're actually worse off for having tried it. You'll see some groups do repeated actions, note for note, and never learn from them. There's going to be a bunch of people that eat up screen time and you have no fucking clue why they're in the story. Oh sure, there'll be heroes, but you find out later they get old and their world view changes and it kind of shatters the whole immersion. And the acting. Jesus. Fucking ridiculous.

[lamaros]

I think this is the heart of divergent reactions to the film when you get rid of dumb trolling.

1) I was fucking delighted by the "her parents don't matter" twist. That was one of the four or five best things ever for me in Star Wars. It's right up there with Darth Vader being Luke's dad, for the same reason. It confounded expectations but also it makes a strong statement about the narrative going forward. The narrative after ESB was: this is a family drama, at its heart. The narrative after TLJ is: this is about being worthy, no matter who you are. This is about rising above a circumstance that should make you bitter and sad and instead being hopeful and strong.

2) Delighted by Snoke dying. This is: there is no ultimate evil who is behind it all. We've already discovered you can throw the Emperor down a shaft and then not that much changes. If you want liberation, justice, a better galaxy, you'll have to do better. The Old Republic fell not because of an ultimate bad guy in the end, but because its institutions and people were too weak (including the Jedi) to resist being manipulated and tricked. The idea of replaying the "throw the ultimate bad guy down a shaft" plot is pure hell. It's a huge galaxy: of course it has a decent number of predatory grifters who can manipulate the Dark Side of the Force.

3) Who the fuck cares about Maz? I'm glad to see her out of the story completely. Shit character, best discarded.

4) The Knights of Ren get about ten seconds mention in TFA. Were you really pulling that hard at yourself at the very thought of them, such that you needed them to be a big deal? I think it's pretty clear: they're 8chan, they're Kylo Ren's wanker wannabee squad who think he's all bad ass and probably have all gotten killed in comically stupid ways since the Jedi Academy Mark II burned to the ground. I mean, ok, don't worry, they're going to eventually tell the story of them, but it doesn't matter to moving the main thread forward.

Just because you like ideas doesn't mean they can't be shitfully delivered.

[Teleku]

Just because you like ideas doesn't mean they can't be shitfully delivered.

I think you distilled down the major disconnect right here.  While I liked (or at worst was ambivalent) about all the points Khaldun brings up, they are very minor parts of the movie.  Maybe 10 minutes total.  Unfortunatly I have to sit through the other 2 hour and 20 minutes lazy and badly constructed film making.  I can’t do that.  If ‘The Usual Suspects’ was just a shit ass plot filled with lazy writing and cliches, but still had the exact same ending, I wouldn’t magically like it just because of how awesome that scene was.

Obviously others have different priorities. 

[Lakov_Sanite]

You guys are REALLY going to be disappointed by Life: The Movie

Perhaps we can make an imaginary world where narratives make sense then and watch that for entertainment.

[lamaros]

You guys are REALLY going to be disappointed by Life: The Movie

Perhaps we can make an imaginary world where narratives make sense then and watch that for entertainment.

Promote this man.

[Khaldun]

That's the end of the family drama, and it's a pathetic end. The point of Rey not being someone's relative is that it opens the story up after this. Basically the nine films turn into "How one bloodline played a key role in fucking up the galaxy" but they begin and end with the bloodline not mattering. The first Jedi we see of the Old Republic is just a Jedi, he's nobody's father or son or a figure out of prophecy (Qui-Gon) and he's part of an order that's got thousands (tens of thousands, maybe) members who aren't sacred bloodlines etc.  The whole idea of the Force being exclusively hereditary is obscene to begin with--it just means the Jedi are mutants or something like that. So now the saga will end with a person who is not part of the bloodline, looking into a future where the Force rises in just anybody again.

Now this does raise the question of the Chosen One, balance in the Force and all that bullshit--like basically, WHERE does that even come from? Is that the will of the Force? Why on earth would it have wanted the Skywalkers to have their three-generation story, what on earth did it all accomplish? But the chance to make that make sense was lost in the prequels, so best we just make it into something like a minor bureaucratic division of Force Central Consciousness got behind on its paperwork or something.

[eldaec]

Here is a short list of mysteries that JJ Abrams set up which Rian Johnson threw out to defy audience expectations in what I felt were really unsatisfying ways.

TFA: Who are Rey's mysterious parents?  Why was she left on that planet?
TLJ: They were nobody and it doesn't matter.

TFA: Who is Lord Snoke, supreme leader of the First Order?
TLJ: Doesn't matter, he's dead and we're moving on.

TFA: How did Maz get Luke's lightsaber and what is Rey's mysterious connection to it?
TLJ: Barely even mentions Maz.  She's practically a cameo.

TFA: Who are the Knights of Ren?
TLJ: ...

Note that none of these deal with gender/diversity issues or plot holes.

Rey's parents : They are nobody but it really does matter. It central to the force 'awakening' and the themes of both films.

Snoke : I get this is as a criticism of the sequence of films but not as a criticism of TLJ itself. This didn't bother me at all in this film and I'm not bothered that we only know of Snoke the same that we knew of the OT emperor. But I do understand the criticism that in the OT it always seemed like the filmmakers knew more. There is a meta-criticism of how the star wars world is built that nobody really believes anyone has decided who Snoke is. It doesn't weaken this film one iota, but since the film I think I've changed my mind about how it affects the star wars universe. If I honestly thought there was an outline somewhere of Snoke's history - I'd be happier even if I never saw it.  But leaving it for Filoni or whoever is fine.

Maz : yeah, Maz is little better than Dexter from the prequels, or the ewoks. But she is only in the film for 10 seconds so I don't care. I really don't care about Luke's sabre and tbh I struggle with why that plot line is even there. I'm glad TLJ literally chucks it away inside 10 seconds.

Knights of Ren : See Snoke, but I don't see what place they'd have in TLJ anyway. Seems they would be relevant only after Kylo attains supremacy. I assumed they are just dudes under the influence of Kylo Ren. Either way not relevant to the events of TLJ. A parallel in the OT is that after hearing Obi Wan talk about the clone wars, nobody even realised whose side the clones were on.

[eldaec]

Now this does raise the question of the Chosen One, balance in the Force and all that bullshit--like basically, WHERE does that even come from? Is that the will of the Force? Why on earth would it have wanted the Skywalkers to have their three-generation story, what on earth did it all accomplish? But the chance to make that make sense was lost in the prequels, so best we just make it into something like a minor bureaucratic division of Force Central Consciousness got behind on its paperwork or something.

The skywalkers did still stop the Sith. Well one of them did anyway.

Though to be fair it was never entirely apparent why Palpatine needed to be stopped. He was clearly a bit mean but we never did get any real view of how he was worse than the Republic.

[Ironwood]

Uh, Dude blew up planets.

Just saying.

[Phildo]

I bet taxes were higher under the Empire.

[Cyrrex]

They were fairly racist as well.

[TheWalrus]

You guys are REALLY going to be disappointed by Life: The Movie

Perhaps we can make an imaginary world where narratives make sense then and watch that for entertainment.

But we've seen that movie thousands of times.

[HaemishM]

You guys are REALLY going to be disappointed by Life: The Movie. Characters do a bunch of dumb shit, and die in really idiotic and embarrassing ways. You got guys that somehow get power that have no business having it because they're evil assholes that couldn't really run a birthday party, let alone a country. People do daring side quests in weird locations that don't pan out, and they're actually worse off for having tried it. You'll see some groups do repeated actions, note for note, and never learn from them. There's going to be a bunch of people that eat up screen time and you have no fucking clue why they're in the story. Oh sure, there'll be heroes, but you find out later they get old and their world view changes and it kind of shatters the whole immersion. And the acting. Jesus. Fucking ridiculous.

You mean much like this ENTIRE POST?

[TheWalrus]

Quite.

[eldaec]

Uh, Dude blew up planets.

Just saying.

Only a little one.

And the old republic supported slavery and the rebels destroyed endor after tricking the inhabitants into supporting their coup.

So you know, politicians, all the same really.

[Ironwood]

Whatever you say Slog.

[Khaldun]

Candyman, Candyman, CANDYMAN

[MahrinSkel]

Never forget:

[Abagadro]

(adjusts glasses)

DSII was nowhere near the atmosphere.

[eldaec]

I dunno, some guy on the Internet reckons 2000km up is still enough to kill everything. The mainstream media doesn't tell you the whole story.

https://www.theforce.net/swtc/holocaust.html

[Goumindong]

(adjusts glasses)

DSII was nowhere near the atmosphere.

If we are going to go there then the DSII would also have been in orbit and so only the material of the explosion in the arc-seconds taken up by the moon would have been likely to land on the moon. Anything intitially traveling away from the planet or forward of the orbit trajectory would be traveling in excess of escape velocity. Anything traveling in opposite of the orbit trajectory might fall to the planet but a large portion would take ages to enter the atmosphere because it would enter a decaying orbit... or potentially be shot free in a slingshot effect.

Edit: distance by looking at the size of the object in he sky would suggest that, were it 100km in radius it’s probably somewhere in the 10,000 km range of distance. (To compare to the moon.  It orbits at about 380,000 km and is 1800 km in radius. DSII is 100km in radius and is about double the size of the moon in the sky putting it at 10,555 km. That number increases significantly if, as the Endor holocaust people suggest that DSII is 500 miles across. Or 4 times as wide as the official numbers would put its orbital distance at least 40km from the surface. It would also increase the returning mass by 64 times. )

Edit2: to put in perspective how big the DSII would look in the sky note that the Moon takes up about 1/2 degree of our vision. The DSII at that size and height would take up about 23 degrees of vision.  It would appear about 2,000 times the size of the moon

[Goumindong]

Edit: that was supposed to be an edit of the prior post...

[Cyrrex]

Science-y stuff appreciated and all that, but we know nothing about what drives that actual explosion, what secondary explosions would result and ultimately how big the remaining pieces would be.  We can't really say how big the pieces would be nor to what extent said pieces might simply burn to nothing upon re-entry.  I don't know the science, just doing my part to throw a hydrospanner in the works.

On the other other other hand, if the explosion was so power as to blow everything to tiny little bits, then it itself might do significant damage to the planet without the debris.  I mean, the station was fucking powerful, so presumably the explosion is going to be off the charts.

[IainC]

Plasma torpedoes can't melt Technetium beams. Watch this guy on Youtube with an annoying voice explain it to you badly for 3 hours. Research the truth, sheeple!

[eldaec]

We probably can say the explosion didn't impact the moon beyond debris, for three reasons...

 - The rebel junta's fleet apparently survived the immediate blast.

 - The Galactic Empire's strong health and safety culture means it is unlikely they would have risked a design where a massive radiation spike is a possibility.

 - There only physical way for an explosion to transmit energy through space that also allows for the delay enabling the ground forces to escape the next day is through the resulting debris cloud.

The assessment in the link seemed fairly generous in using the evidence of the Rotj epilogue to argue that the destruction of the Imperial defence facility did not result in (many) large surface impacts and that it probably did mostly burn up in the atmosphere.

The problem is that that much matter burning up would still lead to a severe nuclear winter that would kill off anything larger than a rat. Also even rebel pov sources report that the alliance forces evacuated the day after Rotj ended, and that ewoks were almost or entirely extinct shortly after Endor.

[schild]

this is about nine levels too deep on theorycrafting guys

[Teleku]

[Samwise]

You guys are REALLY going to be disappointed by Life: The Movie

Perhaps we can make an imaginary world where narratives make sense then and watch that for entertainment.

But we've seen that movie thousands of times.

[eldaec]

this is about nine levels too deep on theorycrafting guys

And yet the best part of the thread for 20 or so pages.

[Cyrrex]

this is about nine levels too deep on theorycrafting guys

And yet the best part of the thread for 20 or so pages.

[Shannow]

It's a low bar.

[schild]

best

As I said in discord

It's possible, nay likely, that star wars just sucks and people like a bad thing

It's y'all's Congo

At least Congo has Tim Curry

[jgsugden]

Like, Luke clerly used the force to send the large wreckage back into space, duh!