Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, on home media Mar. 13, 2018

[Bolt]

Well Vader certainly had his share of blood on his hands. Even before he was Vader..

But the tone and direction of Kylo is certainly more of a whinny, beoch who's constantly trying to be as big and bad as grandpa..disappointing in a would be Sith, indeed..

9 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I'd say roughly 0%, but that may be tainted a bit by my complete dissatisfaction with his work on the new series of Star Trek movies...

My fears exactly. 

I will be using Jedi calming techniques while sitting in the theater...

[Focslain]

9 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

I'd say roughly 0%, but that may be tainted a bit by my complete dissatisfaction with his work on the new series of Star Trek movies...

They've done such a good job of making [Ben Solo/Kylo Ren] an unlikeable little b***h, appropriate to his role as a major villain who jumped off the slippery slope feetfirst, that I really don't see a way for them to wrap up his arc short of Redemption Equals Death like they did for Vader.  Trying to go any other route, like having him see the light and repent, would just feel like a karma houdini for a guy who's got multiple counts of mass murder on his CV.

Honestly this series needs a good shot of fratricide, take them both out and let the next generation of force users forge their own path untainted the priors' views. 

Hopefully those books are on technic and not philosophy.

[Bolt]

1 minute ago, Focslain said:

Hopefully those books are on technic and not philosophy.

The expanded universe books were written before TFA. And a good deal of fans wished some of those plot lines would influence the new movies..

guess what. They didn't. 

(At least not to my satisfaction)

[Focslain]

7 minutes ago, Bolt said:

The expanded universe books were written before TFA. And a good deal of fans wished some of those plot lines would influence the new movies..

guess what. They didn't. 

(At least not to my satisfaction)

Was referring to the books Rey took.

[Seto Kaiba]

6 minutes ago, Bolt said:

(At least not to my satisfaction)

If you mean the Thrawn trilogy, I could perhaps agree.  The rest... eeech...

 

10 minutes ago, Bolt said:

But the tone and direction of Kylo is certainly more of a whinny, beoch who's constantly trying to be as big and bad as grandpa..disappointing in a would be Sith, indeed..

... but Kylo's grandad was also a sullen, testy, angsty little emo drama queen who dressed in rather too much leather, had stupid hair, and was stalking an obnoxious girl.

Maybe Episode IX will give us Rey chopping off a bunch of his extremities, setting him on fire, and assuming some nearby lava will finish the job so he can come back as a 7'2" asthmatic robo-gimp just like grandpa (but not as cool or menacing).

 

2 minutes ago, Focslain said:

Was referring to the books Rey took.

Protip... they're not really the ancient founding texts of the Jedi order.  Luke is upset because Rey ran off with his porn stash.  

[kalvasflam]

I would be curious to see how they wrap up this series.  I applaud the idea of a different direction, because if they didn't have Kylo knock off Snoke, it would've been a predictable redemption/reunion thing with Kylo (whether he dies or not is not relevant).  But this unexpected change with Kylo could be good or bad, you could literally see that they have a dumpster fire of an ep IX with some weird Kylo redemption thing or Kylo going off the deep end, and gets killed.  The one thing that they can't really do is not wrap up the Kylo/Rey arc.  But they set up too difficult a trajectory due to how Ep VII and VIII went, ythey have to wrap this up in one movie. 

One has to hope there are no more side shows with Finn, Poe, Rose, and company, because that's just going to lead us literally nowhere, and at this point, those characters all became extras.  I would give this series a more than even chance of being even worse than the prequel at its end, and that was with TFA having a pretty good start.  

[azrael]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

... but Kylo's grandad was also a sullen, testy, angsty little emo drama queen who dressed in rather too much leather, had stupid hair, and was stalking an obnoxious girl.

Hey hey hey. I'm sure your grandpa had questionable fashion choices by today's standards in his youth. And grandma might have been obnoxious when she was young too.

 

3 hours ago, Bolt said:

My fears exactly. 

I will be using Jedi calming techniques while sitting in the theater...

JJ is a good ideas-man. After that, I can't say his productions have turned into spectacular works once they leave his head, however.

[Bolt]

6 minutes ago, azrael said:

JJ is a good ideas-man. After that, I can't say his productions have turned into spectacular works once they leave his head, however.

It all jus got LOST!

could'nt help myself..

[Dynaman]

Vader got lucky - we didn't see his whiny teen side till the prequels.  Our first look at Kylo is as a whiny teen.

No matter what Kylo does at any point will match the epic failure of "NNNNOOOO..."

This from a guy who calls Kylo Darth Millenial.  Don't get me started on the other kids in the gang too.

[Chronocidal]

2 hours ago, azrael said:

JJ is a good ideas-man. After that, I can't say his productions have turned into spectacular works once they leave his head, however.

I can't even necessarily say he's a good ideas man, just one with too many of them to organize in any coherent manner.  The sheer volume is enough to blind you to the fact that they don't really amount to anything.  Spray enough buckshot around, and even a blind man might eventually hit an intended target once in a while.

TLJ is what happens when someone else tries to follow through on JJ's epileptic logic trees.  It'll be interesting to see how JJ picks up where he left off, and whether he actually finishes anything of what he started, or just goes off in million new other unfulfilled directions.

[David Hingtgen]

I honestly think I would have enjoyed a movie about Matt the Radar Technician™ more...

[Seto Kaiba]

15 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

TLJ is what happens when someone else tries to follow through on JJ's epileptic logic trees.  It'll be interesting to see how JJ picks up where he left off, and whether he actually finishes anything of what he started, or just goes off in million new other unfulfilled directions.

That's going to be the tricky bit... Rian Johnson pulled a 180 on a fair few subplots from The Force Awakens in The Last Jedi, so Jar-Jar Abrams is gonna have to decide whether he's going to have to abandon those orphaned plot threads or try to unpick the Gordian knot Rian Johnson left him.

Considering the First Order basically already won in The Last Jedi, having reduced armed resistance to their agenda to barely enough people to form their own baseball team, it's going to be hard for them to come up with a credible way for the Resistance/Rebellion to turn it around in the space of just one movie.

[Bolt]

"Allies in the outer rim" 

that never showed up..

[Roy Focker]

2 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That's going to be the tricky bit... Rian Johnson pulled a 180 on a fair few subplots from The Force Awakens in The Last Jedi, so Jar-Jar Abrams is gonna have to decide whether he's going to have to abandon those orphaned plot threads or try to unpick the Gordian knot Rian Johnson left him.

I know some people didn't like The Force Awakens become it was mostly a remake but Abrams did a good job of introducing plots that could be use for the entire trilogy.  Did you ever play the group story telling game?  Where one person starts a story and passes it to the next person in a circle?  Johnson is the jerk who ruins the game because he doesn't like the story that was passed on to him.

[kalvasflam]

The funny thing is that by the end of TLJ, the Resistance effectively became a terrorist organization.  A small cell of insurgents bent on undoing the existing power structure.  

I'm sure more than enough discussion has been had about how empty the rest of the movie was in terms of filling in the blanks on what the state of the rest of the galaxy was.  I might be misremember but very little was said about the rest of the New Republic.  The FO essentially blew up one system and whatever was around it, but what about the rest of the galaxy as a whole?

34 minutes ago, Roy Focker said:

I know some people didn't like The Force Awakens become it was mostly a remake but Abrams did a good job of introducing plots that could be use for the entire trilogy.  Did you ever play the group story telling game?  Where one person starts a story and passes it to the next person in a circle?  Johnson is the jerk who ruins the game because he doesn't like the story that was passed on to him.

Yeah, I'd agree there, he essentially said, screw it, I'll substitute in my own idea, and if you want to finish it intelligently, I want to head up the next movie.  Job security.   Rian Johnson basically had the same effect on the new Trilogy as Brett Ratner on the first three X-men films, the only difference is that Ratner screwed up the last of the trilogy, Johnson's doing more damage since he whacked the middle episode. 

[Dynaman]

The fault for screwing up the new trilogy lies solely with the higher ups at Disney.  They should have MUCH tighter reins on the franchise then they are enforcing.  Normally that is considered bad (for the director's vision, blah blah blah) but in this case directors are more like directors on a serial TV show - they have to agree to the overall vision or bow out.

 

  

Edited October 4, 2018 by Dynaman

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Bolt said:

"Allies in the outer rim" 

that never showed up..

That's one of the plot threads in The Last Jedi and The Force Awakens that doesn't really make sense when you think about it.

The whole reason the Resistance exists is because the New Republic was organizationally aligned to Lawful Stupid, not only having left a significant Imperial remnant kicking around the galaxy but also disbanding a large part of its armed forces to make some kind of bass-ackwards political point.  For them to have allies in another part of the galaxy who are powerful enough to realistically challenge the entire First Order militarily but can't be arsed to intervene to save the Resistance kind of means they're not actually allies.  If they were supplying the Resistance with weapons and training, it'd be them using the Resistance for plausibly deniable proxy warfare with the First Order the way the US used Afghani insurgents against the Soviets.

 

3 minutes ago, kalvasflam said:

I might be misremember but very little was said about the rest of the New Republic.  The FO essentially blew up one system and whatever was around it, but what about the rest of the galaxy as a whole?

IIRC, the official explanation of the assertion that the First Order had effectively overthrown the New Republic simply by destroying the Hosnian system was that the Hosnian system happened to be the seat of the New Republic government AND where the bulk of its defense fleet was based.

So when the whole system suffered an earth-shattering kaboom, it took the New Republic's entire supranational (supraplanetary?) government and military out of the picture.

 

 

28 minutes ago, Roy Focker said:

I know some people didn't like The Force Awakens become it was mostly a remake but Abrams did a good job of introducing plots that could be use for the entire trilogy.  Did you ever play the group story telling game?  Where one person starts a story and passes it to the next person in a circle?  Johnson is the jerk who ruins the game because he doesn't like the story that was passed on to him.

Really, I don't think Rian Johnson was deliberately setting out to f*ck things up out of malice or even idiocy.  He noticed - because you'd have to be a real idiot not to - that The Force Awakens was just a by-the-numbers remake of A New Hope and that the sequel was set to be more of same.  He wasn't going to get away with a total plot derailment, so he attacked the script with the manic energy of a writer-director who is either a brilliant visionary or a card-carrying member of the Dunning-Kruger club and injected a few ill-considered twists in an effort to subvert the usual Star Wars narrative of The Chosen One.

On some levels it worked pretty well, IMO.  Rey is a more interesting character as a blank slate who isn't being railroaded down her path by family ties and a mysterious past.  She has more agency as the lead character that way.  She's less The Chosen One and more The One Who Chose.  

On others... well... Canto Bight.  

[kalvasflam]

42 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

IIRC, the official explanation of the assertion that the First Order had effectively overthrown the New Republic simply by destroying the Hosnian system was that the Hosnian system happened to be the seat of the New Republic government AND where the bulk of its defense fleet was based.

So when the whole system suffered an earth-shattering kaboom, it took the New Republic's entire supranational (supraplanetary?) government and military out of the picture.

On some levels it worked pretty well, IMO.  Rey is a more interesting character as a blank slate who isn't being railroaded down her path by family ties and a mysterious past.  She has more agency as the lead character that way.  She's less The Chosen One and more The One Who Chose.  

Oh man, how sad, the entire New Republic is essentially just one system.  Take it away, and there is nothing.  That's really putting all your eggs in one basket.

Good point on how they managed Rey, her part of the story and Kylo's in terms of interactions was actually pretty good.  And the lightsaber fight was still awesome.  But the rest of it, like the escape from FO,  well it seemed like someone decided it was a good idea to mutate Empire Strikes Back and then crossbred it with the worst parts of the prequels, except they couldn't quite make it all fit, and decided to get high and come up with some weird stuff.

[Seto Kaiba]

19 minutes ago, kalvasflam said:

Oh man, how sad, the entire New Republic is essentially just one system.  Take it away, and there is nothing.  That's really putting all your eggs in one basket.

Militarily, at least, it's not an unprecedented loss.  What the First Order achieved by destroying the Hosnian system is basically what Imperial Japan attempted to accomplish with the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.  One swift strike to destroy their enemy's fleet and cripple any attempt to coordinate counter-offensives aimed at preventing their advance.

The First Order just had a lot more success since they did it with a super-WMD instead of through a sneak attack with conventional weapons.

(WRT putting all one's eggs in a single basket... it's worth remembering that the United States keeps its capitol building and its supreme military headquarters in extremely close proximity to each other as well.  They're only about four miles apart, as the crow flies.)

[Sildani]

Which is why we have many failsafes and backups for the C3 system. Granted, most of the people in the order of progression are still all within 6 miles of each other or so, but that’s the price you pay. 

As for Star Wars: I still like it.

[kalvasflam]

6 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Militarily, at least, it's not an unprecedented loss.  What the First Order achieved by destroying the Hosnian system is basically what Imperial Japan attempted to accomplish with the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.  One swift strike to destroy their enemy's fleet and cripple any attempt to coordinate counter-offensives aimed at preventing their advance.

The First Order just had a lot more success since they did it with a super-WMD instead of through a sneak attack with conventional weapons.

(WRT putting all one's eggs in a single basket... it's worth remembering that the United States keeps its capitol building and its supreme military headquarters in extremely close proximity to each other as well.  They're only about four miles apart, as the crow flies.)

I think there are too many unknowns with the state of the rest of the galaxy to be sure.  It would be pretty weird if the bulk of the Republic military and all of the decision making authority was just in one system.  Sure, you might be able to take out the seat of political power, but  there is usually someone left over, and the militaries typically don't act that stupidly to concentrate everything in one place. 

Also, for the US, DC can be turned into a crater, and that still wouldn't buy whoever it is reprieve from retaliation.  The military command structure would still be there, and there is always a designated survivor somewhere.  I don't how deep the line of succession goes really, but you'd have to take out a whole lot all the way to eliminate the US government.   But anyway, I guess we're probably expecting a bit too much for movies to emulate the reality.

Edited October 5, 2018 by kalvasflam

[TehPW]

Soooooooooooo…… what happened to Cortisone(sp)? Wasn't that where the Old Republic (as well as the Jedi Council) held it's UN-ish Mega-Senate? OK, so the FO nukes Hoshi-land and said fleet. The Galaxy is big, surely they can go form a more perfect union someplace else and still tell the FO to eat a &^%, yes?

 

[tekering]

2 hours ago, TehPW said:

what happened to Cortisone(sp)?

Still sold in drug stores everywhere.  

[Negotiator]

i need some of that croissant creme.  damn mosquitos had a field day on me

[Chronocidal]

2 hours ago, TehPW said:

Soooooooooooo…… what happened to Cortisone(sp)? Wasn't that where the Old Republic (as well as the Jedi Council) held it's UN-ish Mega-Senate? OK, so the FO nukes Hoshi-land and said fleet. The Galaxy is big, surely they can go form a more perfect union someplace else and still tell the FO to eat a &^%, yes?

If I remember what was mentioned at one point, the New Republic decided to shuffle the capital every so often, or something like that.

Your second point is one of my biggest issues with the entire trilogy.  It's like the rest of the freakin galaxy doesn't even exist.

[renegadeleader1]

The planet is Coruscant.

[eXis10z]

How did the new republic even let the FO grow to their current strength in TFA is the weird part.

[renegadeleader1]

10 minutes ago, eXis10z said:

How did the new republic even let the FO grow to their current strength in TFA is the weird part.

They went full Neville Chamberlain.

[Seto Kaiba]

13 hours ago, TehPW said:

Soooooooooooo…… what happened to Cortisone(sp)? Wasn't that where the Old Republic (as well as the Jedi Council) held it's UN-ish Mega-Senate? OK, so the FO nukes Hoshi-land and said fleet. The Galaxy is big, surely they can go form a more perfect union someplace else and still tell the FO to eat a &^%, yes?

I may be completely wrong, but the impression I got was that the First Order's entire schtick was that they regard themselves as the Galactic Empire's de facto government-in-exile and that the main goal of their overthrow of the New Republic was to restore Imperial governance across the galaxy.  That's kind of an awful thing for most of the galaxy, since IIRC the Empire saw non-humans as second class citizens at best and had legal slavery and all kinds of other atrocious behaviors.

If the map I found is accurate, we're talking at least half the galaxy... relocating THAT population is a rather big ask, and abandoning them to their fate isn't something the former Rebellion/New Republic would find ethically sound.  (Plus, the First Order isn't likely to just let them go and would probably pursue them to wipe them out.)

 

10 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Your second point is one of my biggest issues with the entire trilogy.  It's like the rest of the freakin galaxy doesn't even exist.

The galaxy's a populous place?  I mean, the Old Republic-turned-Empire supposedly controlled most of it, and the First Order's looking to recapture that.  Being Space Rome, the rest is the unexplored wilderness and full of who knows how many hostile powers who might resent massive amounts of refugees flooding their space.

 

6 hours ago, eXis10z said:

How did the new republic even let the FO grow to their current strength in TFA is the weird part.

Stupidity, mostly.

[kalvasflam]

8 hours ago, eXis10z said:

How did the new republic even let the FO grow to their current strength in TFA is the weird part.

For the answer to that, I direct you to this famous quote: 

Dark Helmet: Now you see that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb.

Thank you Mel Brooks and Spaceballs.

Edited October 5, 2018 by kalvasflam

[kajnrig]

So I spent the last few days ignoring this thread in favor of poring over the paper, and... yeah, it's not the best. Or rather, I can understand some of the assumptions made by the author for the sake of keeping the scope manageable for a single person, and to its merit, the paper acknowledges this drawback, but at the end of the day, the findings are so minuscule as to be inapplicable to the real world. As a demonstration of the author's understanding of his projects, it's... fine, despite some misgivings on my part. Given funding to hire people to do a more thorough study, I think they might be able to explore some of the assumptions that again had to be made for the sake of a manageable project.

But would I give them funding for such a project in the first place? Based on this paper... maybe, maybe not.

Egh. The media feeding frenzy was more disappointing, and more obviously a case of media outlets generating clickbait for revenue rather than "journalism."

I'm sure most of this has been covered by everyone already, so I'll just leave it at that. Disappointed in myself for falling for the clickbait like a schmuck. Oh well, lesson learned.

[danth]

19 minutes ago, kajnrig said:

I'm sure most of this has been covered by everyone already, so I'll just leave it at that. Disappointed in myself for falling for the clickbait like a schmuck. Oh well, lesson learned.

I think you just have to look at it for what it is: data analyses of Rian Johnson's feed. They did find that over half of the negative comments were from either trolls, bots, or political accounts that often tweeted about Trump. I think only 10% of negative comments were from Russians, but still that's a surprisingly high number. 

[Chronocidal]

On ‎10‎/‎5‎/‎2018 at 8:05 AM, Seto Kaiba said:

The galaxy's a populous place?  I mean, the Old Republic-turned-Empire supposedly controlled most of it, and the First Order's looking to recapture that.  Being Space Rome, the rest is the unexplored wilderness and full of who knows how many hostile powers who might resent massive amounts of refugees flooding their space.

That's the part that I can't process though.  Recapture most of the galaxy with what army?  Yes, it's a populous place... and we've seen nothing to indicate the First Order is any bigger than just enough to populate the single planet where they built Starkiller Base. 

At least ESB had that establishing shot of the fleet to show that yeah, they've got a lot of ships, and a ton of people.  The Empire was big.  But we've seen nothing to indicate the First Order even owns more ships than we've seen on the screen at a single time (and Holdo's calamari torpedo wiped out half of those).  How big are they supposed to even be, and if they're huge enough to actually accomplish that, what the heck was the rest of the galaxy doing while they built up to that size?  Did the First Order just vacate to unknown space, and start doing nothing but making babies for 30 years straight?

Really though.. if the galaxy is so huge and full of people, do they just flat out not care that the heads of state and capitol of the entire republic was just photoshopped out of existence?  It's not like it wasn't visible from literally everywhere in the galaxy at the same time.  

Edited October 7, 2018 by Chronocidal

[Dynaman]

Trying to make sense of the size of the First Order and how they came to be without the Republic taking any steps to stop them is an exercise in frustration at best and a path to gibbering insanity at worst.  Or it could just be very bad writing.

[Seto Kaiba]

2 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

That's the part that I can't process though.  Recapture most of the galaxy with what army?  Yes, it's a populous place... and we've seen nothing to indicate the First Order is any bigger than just enough to populate the single planet where they built Starkiller Base. 

The First Order doesn't need to occupy every planet in the galaxy in order to become its de facto rulers... they just need to be able to project more force than any other interested party.  With the bulk of the New Republic fleet having been wiped out along with all the planets in the Hosnian system, they are now the dominant military power in the galaxy.  They're essentially ruling the galaxy using the Klaus Wolfenbach method: "Don't make me come over there."

What makes this possible is that Star Wars is a setting where interstellar faster-than-light travel on a pangalactic scale is available to all and sundry.  It doesn't take an inordinate amount of effort for the First Order to shift a fleet with more firepower than any one system's defenses can hope to resist, and that fleet can be on your doorstep in a matter of days.

It doesn't help that the New Republic, like the Old Republic before it, seemingly concentrated all of its military power into a single centralized armed force.  The Old Republic's member worlds had no way to realistically defend themselves from the Grand Army once it turned on them to serve Palpatine.  With the New Republic defense forces crippled by the loss of their main fleet, most if not all of its member worlds likely have little in the way of defenses.  Had the New Republic not been scaling down its military, it might not be screwed.  (IIRC wasn't it a thing in the now-Legends continuity that many of the Rebellion's warships were modified starliners and the like.)

 

2 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

At least ESB had that establishing shot of the fleet to show that yeah, they've got a lot of ships, and a ton of people.  The Empire was big.  But we've seen nothing to indicate the First Order even owns more ships than we've seen on the screen at a single time (and Holdo's calamari torpedo wiped out half of those).  How big are they supposed to even be, and if they're huge enough to actually accomplish that, what the heck was the rest of the galaxy doing while they built up to that size? 

That blowing up their massive headquarters installation (Starkiller Base) doesn't seem to have slowed them down much, I think we can surmise that the First Order is VERY VERY BIG.  IIRC it's supposed to have been started by Imperial Forces who didn't surrender after Jakku.

I'm sure the Disney EU has a lengthy and detailed explanation as to how the New Republic stupidly (yet realistically) ignored a huge and painfully obvious threat brewing on their doorstep.

 

2 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Did the First Order just vacate to unknown space, and start doing nothing but making babies for 30 years straight?

Didn't they also abduct a crap-ton of kids and indoctrinate them into troops like Finn?

 

2 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Really though.. if the galaxy is so huge and full of people, do they just flat out not care that the heads of state and capitol of the entire republic was just photoshopped out of existence?  It's not like it wasn't visible from literally everywhere in the galaxy at the same time.  

They're probably only just finding out around the time The Last Jedi takes place.

The total loss of the Hosnian system barely gave the people there enough time to look up and go "What's that?", so the sudden loss of communication would not have instantly be interpreted as "The First Order blew it up".  It would be down to the Resistance to get word out, and they don't seem to be as big or as connected as the Rebellion was.