The Last Jedi - There At First.. wait

[Scowling Dragon]

Anakin is the prophesied one to bring balance to the Force.

Ultimately its more a moral on overconfidence as opposed to anything else.

Nor would it be ever assumed to be a point about how the Jedi needed to be destroyed or how they needed to be on par with the Sith.

It reminds me of a Twilight Zone episode where a cruel person wills for all those that are evil to be shrunk down to nothing only to find himself the size of a teacup.

Running with the idea that the Force is just a rubber band and will correct itself to zero is utterly moronic in my mind.

So what the movie is saying is that being overconfident whilst still overall being very kind, protective, and selfless is BAD and so needs to be either brought down to nothing, or have at least 3,000 psychopaths running around as well.

Im sorry but the Jedi where still a force for good and the galaxy had much more lasting and longer peace with them around.

They needed the bathwater changed, to say the baby needed to be bloodily killed at the alter so that something new could come in its place (In theory) is just a bunch of bunk in my mind.

Edit: Good comic on the matter

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Chen, I'm not trying to beat up on your post in particular, but it's a good launching-off point for two things I wanted to say, so here goes.

The movie certainly has flaws, but I find it hard to say it's not, for the most, original, at least with respect to other Star Wars movies.

Seriously? It's a big mashup of ESB and RotJ to at least the same extent that TFA is a retread of ANH.

Spoiler: Plot Summary

Show

The movie opens with a bunch of Gallofree transports fleeing a Rebel Resistance base as a bunch of Imperial First Order Star Destroyers jump into the system, led by a Star Dreadnought Siege Dreadnaught.

The Rebels Resistance members narrowly escape with a rag-tag fleet, and the movie's protagonists split up. Luke Rey lands on Dagobah Ahch-To, a very rainy and remote planet not known to wider galactic society, where she asks Yoda Luke--a curmudgeonly old man living like a hermit in a little hut raising his own food--to train her, but he refuses because he feels Luke Rey is too reckless and undisciplined and because he doesn't want a repeat of the last time he helped train a powerful preteen Force-user, Anakin Skywalker Ben Solo, who was eventually seduced to the Dark Side by Palpatine Snoke. Luke Rey persists, and though she is ignored at first eventually the wise old Jedi Master relents.

We get a montage of the Jedi Master telling his pupil about the history of his Jedi Order, before it was destroyed. Detouring to a brief RotJ interlude, Obi-Wan Luke talks about how he couldn't redeem Anakin Ben, and Luke Rey says he's wrong:

Obi-Wan: When I first met him, your father was already a great pilot. But I was amazed how strongly the Force was with him. I took it upon myself to train him as a Jedi. I thought that I could instruct him just as well as Yoda. I was wrong.
Luke: There is still good in him.

Back to ESB, the Jedi Master shows his apprentice a hole in the ground with a powerful Dark Side presence, and the apprentice goes into the hole to face his her fears and insecurities. The movie gets a bit trippy, the apprentice faces great internal conflict, and slowly the face of Vader Rey's parents is revealed to be...his her own face!

Meanwhile, Luke Rey has a vision of Han and Leia Kylo on the far side of the galaxy, and feels that he she can save them if only she goes to them. She gets into a big argument with the Jedi Master about the vision and leaves to go meet up with them.


Back on the other side of the galaxy, Han and Leia Finn and Rose have snuck away from the main Rebel Resistance fleet in a beaten-up ship to go to the idyllic Cloud City Canto Bight, a neutral city in the current war known for gambling and fancy rich people stuff. They're searching for a top-class con man and smuggler, Lando Calrissian Maz Kanata's friend, to help them fix a little hyperspace problem. When they get there, the characters discover it isn't as idyllic as it seems, as beneath the surface the dirty work is done by Ugnaughts human slaves.

There, they run into Lando Maz Kanata's friend, are arrested by security forces, and are thrown into a jail cell together, where they have a conversation with Lando a different slicer for no particular reason who fills the same role; he offers help, they say they don't want it. In ESB Lando betrays them to the Empire first and then gives them access to a hyperdrive-capable ship and helps them escape, in TLJ he gives them access to a hyperdrive-capable ship and helps them escape first and then betrays them to the First Order, overall proving him less trustworthy than Han Finn originally thought. Oh, and their astromech buddy aids greatly in their escape with some novel tools and attachments.


Smash-cut to RotJ. Han and Leia Finn and Rose need to lead a small group into the Endor bunker Dreadnought to disable the device screwing over their fleet. To do so, they use an Imperial a First Order ship with a corresponding transponder, slip through the shields using some stolen codes--which an Imperial officer notices but lets go--and, surprise!, it's a trap, as they're surrounded by bad guys and captured. They escape thanks to timely intervention from their best buddy Chewie BB-8, who captures an AT-ST and starts shooting all the bad guys.

Luke Rey, meanwhile, has turned himself herself over to Vader Kylo Ren. They have a brief conversation on their way to see Palpatine Snoke, during which the Jedi claims there is still some good in the Dark Sider while the Dark Sider claims it is too late for him and the Jedi should join him instead (which is incredibly close dialogue-wise to the RotJ version). They walk out of the turbolift into a large throne room holding Palpatine Snoke on a throne surrounded by red-robed royal guards, with a small window looking out into space off to the side.

Palpatine Snoke taunts Luke Rey, takes off his her binders with the Force, and gloats about how he planted the seeds that caused everything to come to pass, how he will destroy the puny Rebellion, and how he will kill Luke Skywalker, complete with taking Luke's Rey's lightsaber and sticking it on the right arm of his throne and taunting the "Jedi Knight" about taking it back and striking him down. Luke Rey ends up helpless and weaponless before Vader Kylo while Palpatine Snoke assaults him her with Force powers, and in a shocking twist the Dark Side apprentice kills his master and the throne room starts disintegrating around them.


Smash-cut back to the start of ESB, where AT-ATs AT-M6s are attacking the secret Rebel base on Hoth Crait, a remote white planet with a base built into a mountain, complete with massive front door and secret back entrances. (To their credit, it's not a direct ripoff of the Hoth base visually, it's a ripoff of that and the ANH Yavin IV base.) Rebel Resistance soldiers dig trenches in front of the base with cylindrical anti-vehicle blaster cannons dotted along them, and the soldiers jump in, pointing their rifles toward the oncoming walkers as one of them looks at the walkers through macrobinoculars (in what is, again, almost shot-for-shot the opening of the ESB battle).

The walker slowly lumber forward until they get within range to destroy the shield generator front door while low-flying airspeeders that don't have the weapons to penetrate the walkers' armor fruitlessly distract them until they can come up with a crazy plan to take down the thing that will destroy the shield generator front door. Though the bad guys destroy their objective, the good guys escape to safety on the Millennium Falcon.

Is it a complete beat-for-beat recreation of ESB and RotJ, and are the derivative events the only things that happen in the movie? No. Are there some differences in context that shed new light on certain events, and do characters react differently to some of these events? Yes, sometimes.

Is it "mostly original"? Hell no.

I mean what would be truly fresh by that definition?

Ironically, the way to make Star Wars sequel movies that were more fresh than Original Trilogy re-treads would be to blatantly and repeatedly steal from the Expanded Universe that Disney tossed out for no good reason. (Well, tossed out to "free them from the past" only to immediately re-use the Centerpoint Station, Anakin+Jacen Solo, and Kyp Durron storylines for Starkiller Base, TFA Ben Solo, and TLJ Ben Solo, at least, and in a worse way at that.)

Here's what the EU situation looks like one or two decades after RotJ, spoilered for space and for anyone who doesn't want Legends spoilers:

Spoiler

Show

The Rebellion has successfully re-established the Republic, now the New Republic to distinguish it from the Old Republic. The New Republic has to deal with squabbling member planets and internal politics, but the Rebels are war heroes respected by the public. The Empire is still around in two forms, the Imperial Remnant (just as loyal to the Empire's philosophy but headquartered on Bastion instead of Coruscant and much diminished in manpower and resources) and various Imperial warlords who went rogue with their battle groups after the Emperor's death. The Remnant and the warlords can still trouble the New Republic because the Imperials are now the ones with mobile forces attacking stationary defenses and have Imperial fanatics on their side, while the New Republic is now the one on the defensive and has to focus on placating their constituents more than eradicating the Empire.

Luke has established the Jedi Praxeum on Yavin IV. He's had some students go Dark on occasion, but he didn't go to Dagobah to mope, he went and turned them back to the Light as best he could. He has collected all the lore on the Jedi that he could to inform his teaching practices and restore forgotten knowledge, but he isn't slavishly recreating the old Jedi Order; he realizes there were flaws in Yoda's and Obi-Wan's approaches and is taking a more moderating approach emphasizing empathy, family, and self-sacrifice over moralizing, isolation, and self-deprivation.

Leia is Chief of State of the New Republic and Han is a General, though he finds the responsibility of being a military officer a bit stifling. Leia negotiates major treaties, helps refugees from the war, and gets some Jedi training, while Han kicks Imperial butt repeatedly including helping liberate Kashyyyk, and they eventually marry and have a family.

It's possible to tell new kinds of stories in this scenario--obviously, since many such stories were told in the EU, even if you don't retell those stories in particular--and, what's more, you can tell the same stories they were trying to tell in TFA and TLJ and often do them better. For instance, Poe's "You're a hotshot fighter jock and there's no need for people like you anymore" storyline works in a scenario when the New Republic needs to win peoples' hearts instead of shooting down TIE fighters, but is a ridiculous sentiment when the Resistance is still at war and pulling off crazy plans is the only thing that has allowed the Rebellion and Resistance to survive as long as they have.

In this scenario, there's a logical progression of setting and characters from RotJ instead of doing a hard reset to the ANH situation, the nonsensical Republic/Resistance split never happens, and a fractured and resource-strapped Remnant makes much more sense than a united and superweapon-building First Order. Keeping the EU around and building off that (and overwriting it judiciously and where necessary like the prequels did to the pre-ANH EU material) would have been infinitely better than the unoriginal and repetitive new movies we got.

[Cikomyr]

I just watched Wisecrack's analysis of the themes of the movie, and i finally realized what Luke's story reminded me of.

DS9's Once More Into the Breach

The story or Kor's last days. The fact that the man, in his olden age, failed to live up to the legendary stature he was elevated to, and thus lived in regret of his own failings.

And the chance for one final redemption. For letting the legend resonate throughout the Galaxy. Because the Legend of Luke Skywalker will forever kindle the hearts of the oppressed and downtrodden. Because Luke the man was faillible, but the Legend is eternal.

I remember now Worf's words:

The only real question is whether you believe in the legend of Davy Crockett or not. If you do, then there should be no doubt in your mind that he died a hero's death. If you do not believe in the legend, then he was just a man, and it does not matter how he died.

Do you believe the legend of Luke Skywalker? That the man stood up to all the might of the First Order and made a fool of their Supreme Leader?

Or do you think Luke was just a man, who failed his students and his family?

[Scowling Dragon]

Or do you think Luke was just a man, who failed his students and his family?

The latter easily.

In DS9 the klingon didnt get 10 billion people killed by his negligence. And millions of children enslaved, the government destroyed...
And Luke didnt fail as an old man, just as a middle aged teacher offscreen.

In a burst of out of character idiocy.

[Peelee]

Do you believe the legend of Luke Skywalker? That the man stood up to all the might of the First Order and made a fool of their Supreme Leader?

Or do you think Luke was just a man, who failed his students and his family?

I don't see how they are mutually exclusive. Plus, I kinda agree with the last bit Scowling Dragon said.

[Dr.Samurai]

As Peelee said, I don't see the conflict in being both. Aren't all legends just men or women? Or is there some type of new species of being simply called "Legend".

They're all people. Luke didn't redeem his father because he is legendary. He did it because of the choices he made. Because of his character.

Besides that... who wants to see a story about how Luke failed to be a hero in his older years as well? Or even just a stellar guy?

Who needs to learn the lesson that "legends are just people"?

Star Wars, the franchise you can go watch at the theater to learn that heroes aren't really anything special, all types of people profit from war and are bad, animal cruelty is bad, and... I don't know, what else did they cram into this movie in place of actual Star Wars stuff??

[Darth Ultron]

Im sorry but the Jedi where still a force for good and the galaxy had much more lasting and longer peace with them around.

This might be true, depending on what you think good is, but it is not the point: It's the Force that is unbalanced.

[Jayngfet]

It's completely not though. There is a chase and a jedi master in hiding, but what they mean in this film, what they mean to the characters, how those characters develop, how they are resolved is totally different in ways that make the comparison futile.

Yeah, because they also filed the numbers off Return of the Jedi so they could have the walkers vs speeders, dark side cave, and guy who may or may not betray them, but also another space battle against a superweapon, a confrontation in a throne room, and a bunch of A-Wings.

By saying "well this time the Lando character doesn't really go anywhere" and "well I guess this time they didn't follow through" doesn't change that.

[Reddish Mage]

Seriously? It's a big mashup of ESB and RotJ to at least the same extent that TFA is a retread of ANH.

Spoiler: Plot Summary

Show

The movie opens with a bunch of Gallofree transports fleeing a Rebel Resistance base as a bunch of Imperial First Order Star Destroyers jump into the system, led by a Star Dreadnought Siege Dreadnaught.

The Rebels Resistance members narrowly escape with a rag-tag fleet, and the movie's protagonists split up. Luke Rey lands on Dagobah Ahch-To, a very rainy and remote planet not known to wider galactic society, where she asks Yoda Luke--a curmudgeonly old man living like a hermit in a little hut raising his own food--to train her, but he refuses because he feels Luke Rey is too reckless and undisciplined and because he doesn't want a repeat of the last time he helped train a powerful preteen Force-user, Anakin Skywalker Ben Solo, who was eventually seduced to the Dark Side by Palpatine Snoke. Luke Rey persists, and though she is ignored at first eventually the wise old Jedi Master relents.

We get a montage of the Jedi Master telling his pupil about the history of his Jedi Order, before it was destroyed. Detouring to a brief RotJ interlude, Obi-Wan Luke talks about how he couldn't redeem Anakin Ben, and Luke Rey says he's wrong:



Back to ESB, the Jedi Master shows his apprentice a hole in the ground with a powerful Dark Side presence, and the apprentice goes into the hole to face his her fears and insecurities. The movie gets a bit trippy, the apprentice faces great internal conflict, and slowly the face of Vader Rey's parents is revealed to be...his her own face!

Meanwhile, Luke Rey has a vision of Han and Leia Kylo on the far side of the galaxy, and feels that he she can save them if only she goes to them. She gets into a big argument with the Jedi Master about the vision and leaves to go meet up with them.


Back on the other side of the galaxy, Han and Leia Finn and Rose have snuck away from the main Rebel Resistance fleet in a beaten-up ship to go to the idyllic Cloud City Canto Bight, a neutral city in the current war known for gambling and fancy rich people stuff. They're searching for a top-class con man and smuggler, Lando Calrissian Maz Kanata's friend, to help them fix a little hyperspace problem. When they get there, the characters discover it isn't as idyllic as it seems, as beneath the surface the dirty work is done by Ugnaughts human slaves.

There, they run into Lando Maz Kanata's friend, are arrested by security forces, and are thrown into a jail cell together, where they have a conversation with Lando a different slicer for no particular reason who fills the same role; he offers help, they say they don't want it. In ESB Lando betrays them to the Empire first and then gives them access to a hyperdrive-capable ship and helps them escape, in TLJ he gives them access to a hyperdrive-capable ship and helps them escape first and then betrays them to the First Order, overall proving him less trustworthy than Han Finn originally thought. Oh, and their astromech buddy aids greatly in their escape with some novel tools and attachments.


Smash-cut to RotJ. Han and Leia Finn and Rose need to lead a small group into the Endor bunker Dreadnought to disable the device screwing over their fleet. To do so, they use an Imperial a First Order ship with a corresponding transponder, slip through the shields using some stolen codes--which an Imperial officer notices but lets go--and, surprise!, it's a trap, as they're surrounded by bad guys and captured. They escape thanks to timely intervention from their best buddy Chewie BB-8, who captures an AT-ST and starts shooting all the bad guys.

Luke Rey, meanwhile, has turned himself herself over to Vader Kylo Ren. They have a brief conversation on their way to see Palpatine Snoke, during which the Jedi claims there is still some good in the Dark Sider while the Dark Sider claims it is too late for him and the Jedi should join him instead (which is incredibly close dialogue-wise to the RotJ version). They walk out of the turbolift into a large throne room holding Palpatine Snoke on a throne surrounded by red-robed royal guards, with a small window looking out into space off to the side.

Palpatine Snoke taunts Luke Rey, takes off his her binders with the Force, and gloats about how he planted the seeds that caused everything to come to pass, how he will destroy the puny Rebellion, and how he will kill Luke Skywalker, complete with taking Luke's Rey's lightsaber and sticking it on the right arm of his throne and taunting the "Jedi Knight" about taking it back and striking him down. Luke Rey ends up helpless and weaponless before Vader Kylo while Palpatine Snoke assaults him her with Force powers, and in a shocking twist the Dark Side apprentice kills his master and the throne room starts disintegrating around them.


Smash-cut back to the start of ESB, where AT-ATs AT-M6s are attacking the secret Rebel base on Hoth Crait, a remote white planet with a base built into a mountain, complete with massive front door and secret back entrances. (To their credit, it's not a direct ripoff of the Hoth base visually, it's a ripoff of that and the ANH Yavin IV base.) Rebel Resistance soldiers dig trenches in front of the base with cylindrical anti-vehicle blaster cannons dotted along them, and the soldiers jump in, pointing their rifles toward the oncoming walkers as one of them looks at the walkers through macrobinoculars (in what is, again, almost shot-for-shot the opening of the ESB battle).

The walker slowly lumber forward until they get within range to destroy the shield generator front door while low-flying airspeeders that don't have the weapons to penetrate the walkers' armor fruitlessly distract them until they can come up with a crazy plan to take down the thing that will destroy the shield generator front door. Though the bad guys destroy their objective, the good guys escape to safety on the Millennium Falcon.

Is it a complete beat-for-beat recreation of ESB and RotJ, and are the derivative events the only things that happen in the movie? No. Are there some differences in context that shed new light on certain events, and do characters react differently to some of these events? Yes, sometimes.

Is it "mostly original"? Hell no.

I take issue with saying that TLJ is as derivative as TFA. TFA is beat by beat. It features similar scenes and features that are used to the same effect.

TLJ may follow the formula, but everything it puts in has a distinctly different flavor, then it immediately takes everything out and burns the soup.

Ironically, the way to make Star Wars sequel movies that were more fresh than Original Trilogy re-treads would be to blatantly and repeatedly steal from the Expanded Universe that Disney tossed out for no good reason. (Well, tossed out to "free them from the past" only to immediately re-use the Centerpoint Station, Anakin+Jacen Solo, and Kyp Durron storylines for Starkiller Base, TFA Ben Solo, and TLJ Ben Solo, at least, and in a worse way at that.)

In this scenario, there's a logical progression of setting and characters from RotJ instead of doing a hard reset to the ANH situation, the nonsensical Republic/Resistance split never happens, and a fractured and resource-strapped Remnant makes much more sense than a united and superweapon-building First Order. Keeping the EU around and building off that (and overwriting it judiciously and where necessary like the prequels did to the pre-ANH EU material) would have been infinitely better than the unoriginal and repetitive new movies we got.

I see two claims here.

One is that EU stories would be vastly better and more original than what we got. The proof of this is it builds on the earlier movie instead of pushing things into a hard reboot like what we get with TFA.

I haven't read enough EU stories to know. You yourself say the EU stories are essentially being appropriated in these movies (which also suggest they retread ideas in the OT). Early EU stories do things like revive the Emperor for a villain (and do it again) as well as recreating the Death Star and other super-weapons. Additionally, the criticism of the EU is it has got repetitive.

Moreover, EU stories were made for novels, not the screen. A movie adaption may be difficult for numerous reasons for many of these stories. Finally, I don't think the EU has caught up to TFA in terms of the timeline.

Still, its not hard to create a Star Wars movie that avoids repeating the plot points in the OT. Lucas made three movies that were original that way.

The other is that building the EU is the way to build the franchise, a clean slate is unacceptable. There are many, many reasons for Disney to favor a clean slate, including the desire to write a whole new slate of materials around the times the EU already had covered. Disney's reboot with TFA, resetting the timeline so everything looks about the same as it did around ANH, is certainly not the only way they could have gone, and many other movies they could have made would have been more original than TFA.

The EU is one way to do it, its not one Lucas even ever insisted on, always insisting that the canon consisted of the six movies, and the Clone Wars animated series just because. I can see how adhering to a massive canon can be hard if not impossible for any franchise and is simply not desirable from a creative standpoint. Writers have to grapple with decades of prolific history (only a fraction of which they know) with every story they write. Plenty of good ideas have to be scrapped simply because don't take into account the historical events, technical capabilities of the technology, and other details that go on ad nauseam.

Maybe the EU provides superior titles to the Disney movies, but even assuming that's the case, Disney should have scrapped the EU and for the perfectly justifiable reason that the EU is simply too difficult to work with for a new studio that wishes to produce a new industry of Star Wars novels, comics, cartoons, live action TV and other media.

[Scowling Dragon]

It's the Force that is unbalanced.

Again that was a sign of their hubris and stagnation more then having too many Jedi.

Because guess what: When the prophecy was finished with the Death of Palpatine and Vader, Luke was still alive!
Jedi aren't the Yang to the Siths Ying here. They are good and the Dark side is all bad.

The JEDI became unbalanced when they said you couldn't love and feel and such. Not becasause googliness.

[Scowling Dragon]

Maybe the EU provides superior titles to the Disney movies, but even assuming that's the case, Disney should have scrapped the EU and for the perfectly justifiable reason that the EU is simply too difficult to work with for a new studio that wishes to produce a new industry of Star Wars novels, comics, cartoons, live action TV and other media.

I actually agree with this and I like the EU.

It just feels insulting because the end result is it feels like something with passion, heart and allot of interesting elements was killed for the very worst of those ideas to come front and center.

Disney had the opportunity to separate the weat from the chaff, and somehow they managed to keep the chaff and burn all the wheat.

[Jayngfet]

In all honesty if they wanted the EU gone it should've been a clean break. None of this "Well this series is canon and lets rebrand and publish this book" stuff or "well lets wait a bit and bring back a few models and characters". It should've completely rebuilt itself from scratch with new ship designs, new factions, and new characters to fill those niche's and stood on it's own merits.

[Devonix]

I was unimaginabbly happy about the reveals for Snoke and Rey. I spent the entire movie worried that they were going to end up being some super special mystery background for them.

[Scowling Dragon]

I was unimaginabbly happy about the reveals for Snoke and Rey. I spent the entire movie worried that they were going to end up being some super special mystery background for them.

They still did they just didn't explain it.
Its like if Supermans parents didn't tell him about the ship he came in. Hes still superman.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I take issue with saying that TLJ is as derivative as TFA. TFA is beat by beat. It features similar scenes and features that are used to the same effect.

TLJ may follow the formula, but everything it puts in has a distinctly different flavor, then it immediately takes everything out and burns the soup.

Oh, I agree. I was just saying that TLJ pulls from ESB and RotJ to the same extent that TFA pulls from ANH, as far as copying massively from the OT; it's definitely less one-for-one than TFA was, if only because it steals from two movies instead of one.

I haven't read enough EU stories to know. You yourself say the EU stories are essentially being appropriated in these movies (which also suggest they retread ideas in the OT). Early EU stories do things like revive the Emperor for a villain (and do it again) as well as recreating the Death Star and other super-weapons. Additionally, the criticism of the EU is it has got repetitive.

Well, yes and no. The EU is very varied in terms of stories it covers, from Force-centric stuff like the Jedi Academy Trilogy and Young Jedi Knights to military-centric stuff like the X-Wing series and Thrawn Duology to scoundrel-centric stuff like Tales of the Bounty Hunters and Scoundrels--and that's just the books, not counting comics or video games or RPG supplements. The claims about repetition, I think, are less about the EU repeating itself and more about later EU stuff being "Star Wars with" (Death Troopers is Star Wars with zombies, Fate of the Jedi is Star Wars with Lovecraft, etc.).

As far as EU stories being appropriated for the movies and so originally being retreads, it's actually that the stories were fairly different from the OT but were contorted to be more like the OT in their adaptation to the movies. Two examples in the spoiler:

Spoiler

Show

Centerpoint Station
The EU introduces a space station called Centerpoint Station in the Corellia system (Han's home system). It was created by an extinct race of aliens and was a mystery to the system's inhabitants for a long time. Eventually it was discovered to be a station with a star at its core powering what was basically a trans-hyperspace tractor beam that could pull, repel, or destroy things in other star systems, from space ships to stars. The New Republic and the Empire clashed over it several times due to its immense power, and it was fired a few times to great effect.

Now, this fulfills a similar "big honkin' superweapon" slot that the Death Star does, except that narratively it's very different in the particulars. It wasn't designed by the good guys or the bad guys, so there are no plans to steal. It is claimed by the Corellian system, whose scientists have been studying it for years, so "blow it up" isn't necessarily the right choice. It is immobile but can fire through hyperspace, so it is at once more threatening than the Death Star and also more vulnerable.

Starkiller Base is basically Discount Centerpoint Station--planet-sized, uses stars as fuel, fires through hyperspace, check check and check. But in translating it to the screen, they make the concept worse, both in general terms (vacuuming up a star to fire? really?) and in terms of retreading OT ground (it was somehow built by the Discount Empire and the good guys somehow get the plans, and it belongs to the Discount Empire so destroying it is an obvious option), so you get Death Star Trench Run 2.0 with no variation or subtlety.

Jacen and Anakin Solo
Han and Leia have three kids in the EU, twins Jacen and Jaina and younger son Anakin. All three were strong in the Force and all three trained at Luke's academy. Jacen and Anakin had two very different approaches to the Force, however. Anakin always felt that he had a special connection with Darth Vader thanks to his name, and he hated it. He viewed the name as a burden, he had nightmares about being visited by the Force ghost of Vader, he constantly feared falling to the Dark Side, and he was always wary of using the Force for violence despite the many misadventures the siblings got up to (often being kidnapped to use against Leia or Luke), but he stayed true to the Light Side until the end, eventually sacrificing himself for his friends and allies.

Jacen, meanwhile, was always a bit more reckless and more inclined to use the Force as a tool than Anakin. He flirted with the Dark Side for many years, sought out other Force traditions that didn't see the Force in the same Light/Dark manner the Jedi and Sith did, and eventually--after doing many Dark things "for the greater good"--fell to the Dark Side and became Darth Caedus.

So we have a Force-sensitive Solo son with a Vader obsession and a Force-sensitive Solo son who went Dark. Both had a lot of exploration into their reasons for doing what they did and good justifications for their final fates. Ben Solo simply smashes those things together to make a power-obsessed Dark Sider with basically no justification besides "Snoke made him" and without any of the depth. We get Vader 2.0--or 0.5, really, given that he's a pale shadow of the real deal--instead of anything new and different.

So if they had just slapped the EU stuff on the screen verbatim it wouldn't have been nearly as derivative, but the adaptation introduced retreading where it hadn't been before.

Moreover, EU stories were made for novels, not the screen. A movie adaption may be difficult for numerous reasons for many of these stories.

Again, I'm not saying that the specific EU stories should be reproduced in movie form (much as I'd desperately like to see a Thrawn trilogy on screen made by someone more competent and respectful of the source material), rather that the EU provides a much better starting point for what stories can be told.

Finally, I don't think the EU has caught up to TFA in terms of the timeline.

The EU actually stretches all the way out to 45 ABY (After the Battle of Yavin; TLJ is set in 34 ABY) before timeskipping out to 130-139 ABY for the Legacy era. 34 ABY is right after the New Jedi Order era, but frankly I'd be perfectly happy for them to set it in 24 ABY before NJO since NJO changes things beyond recognition for a while for casual fans.

Maybe the EU provides superior titles to the Disney movies, but even assuming that's the case, Disney should have scrapped the EU and for the perfectly justifiable reason that the EU is simply too difficult to work with for a new studio that wishes to produce a new industry of Star Wars novels, comics, cartoons, live action TV and other media.

Hardly. There was pre-ANH material out there before the prequels were produced, and when Lucas changed things around authors and game creators simply routed around them, changing things and minorly retconning things to make them fit in with the new canon, so working with an existing canon doesn't straitjacket them into anything. As far as keeping things consistent, everyone managed to do that just fine before Disney blew things up, so there's no reason Disney couldn't have done the same; heck, they could just hire a Keeping Things Canon team with all the money they have.

I'd even not mind too much if Disney had scrapped the EU and then actually done what they said and gone in a totally different direction. But as Scowling Dragon and Jayngfet pointed out, they brought in the same characters, same authors, same plotlines, etc. and then screwed them up massively (don't even get me started on what they did to Wedge Antilles...), so there was no point to the slate-wiping in the first place. Given that Disney can't help but do the same ol' same ol' thing, the EU is much better than starting from scratch because at least they have more stuff to copy from.

[Devonix]

They still did they just didn't explain it.
Its like if Supermans parents didn't tell him about the ship he came in. Hes still superman.

The point of it was that it flat out doesn't matter who her parents are. It doesn't matter where you came from, it doesn't define you. Her parents may have been nobody special. No one worth ever knowing about, but that doesn't mean she isn't.

I for one hope we never see her parents grave.

[Blackhawk748]

I'd even not mind too much if Disney had scrapped the EU and then actually done what they said and gone in a totally different direction. But as Scowling Dragon and Jayngfet pointed out, they brought in the same characters, same authors, same plotlines, etc. and then screwed them up massively (don't even get me started on what they did to Wedge Antilles...), so there was no point to the slate-wiping in the first place. Given that Disney can't help but do the same ol' same ol' thing, the EU is much better than starting from scratch because at least they have more stuff to copy from.

I dread to ask, but what did they do to my favorite non Force using Pilot?

Also i agree with everything else you said, if they had stuck with the EU more we could have had K-Wings onscreen instead of the flying Tic Tac containers.

The point of it was that it flat out doesn't matter who her parents are. It doesn't matter where you came from, it doesn't define you. Her parents may have been nobody special. No one worth ever knowing about, but that doesn't mean she isn't.

I for one hope we never see her parents grave.

I rather like the basic idea there, their implementation of said idea was just terrible. Kinda sums up the whole movie for me.

[Scowling Dragon]

The point of it was that it flat out doesn't matter who her parents are.

It's the random superpowers she gained that do.
Its like saying your parents don't matter, its your genetics that do. That's kinda even worse.

They haven't gone back to the force being something for everybody (But hard to understand or master like enlightnment or martial arts), its still speshial force sensitives, Bloodlines are still a thing, she is just a new Chosen one.

[janusmaxwell]

Wanted to throw out my thoughts on this movie, which I saw last night. And as I thought more about it, the stuff that mildly annoyed me has swollen and been added to by other details that are casting shadows on the film as a whole.

I will spoil anything I THINK is to spoileriffic, but otherwise the general stuff will not be.

1. The movie was a roller-coaster ride with too many loop-de-loops. You need to give an audience SOME time to breathe between intense and loud action scenes/suspenseful moments. Trying to keep the dial on 10 and occassionaly dipping into a 5 or 6 is not Star Wars, because you had slower moments, and times to ramp up to the next sequence.

Example: A New Hope, after Obi-wan dies. Luke is on the Falcon, "I can't believe he's gone." And Han tells him to get on the guns. It's a slow build to the realization that they're still being chased and then that action sequence, followed by an ACTUAL calm period where there aren't any explosions going on.

If that scene had been written in the same style as THIS movie, Luke would have said his line, and-SUDDENLY THE FALCON IS ROCKED BY IMPACT AND HAN IS SHOUTING AND LUKE IS SCRAMBLING FOR THE GUNS AND ALL THE ADRENALINE EVER-

You get the idea.

2. This movie was not JUST designed by a committee. It was written by people who looked at the fan theory's and speculation and used that as a reverse-checklist. "People are saying Kylo and Rey might be brother and sister, so DON'T put that in! Then it'll catch them by surprise and be ORIGINAL!"

Just because somebody in the audience gets to say, "CALLED IT!" doesn't mean it's a bad thing! Know what else is an original idea!? Gluing a fork to your tongue and frenching a hair-dryer! Just because something is an original idea, doesn't mean it's a good idea!!!

They flushed any logical plotlines and threw in hackneyed writing stereotypes, then sent the mutilated script to a committee to have the rest of it lobotomized to make maximum dollars at the expense of decent writing.

Spoiler: The "Romance"

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Why was Rose there?

Actually, forget that question, because her character and actress weren't bad.

Why the **** did she KISS Finn and drop that cringe-worthy forced line about "The people you love."?!

I know why they did it, because I'm a cynical schmuck. There's a study/statistic that says, "Black guy and white woman romances lose ticket sales" and despite the chemistry and history between Finn and Rey through The Force Awakens, they tossed Rose at him so they could hit the "ROMANCE" box on the movie trope checklist and keep those tickets coming in.

This movie, didn't need anything resembling overt romance. The fact that they used this new character to shoehorn it down our throats and completely undermine the ship being built up all through the previous movie is just cowardly and greedy. They didn't want to risk a penny on showing an inter-racial kiss between a black guy and a white girl, (That stereotype doesn't go the otherway however, or apply when it's black guy with a hispanic/asian/other minority girl) OR make a movie without some kind of overt romance, even if it was freaking stupid.

And somebody DID say to me, "She was infatuated with him, and thought she was about to die" as an excuse.

That, makes sense from a logical perspective.

But this movie's plot is where logic goes to DIE, so I'm calling out the writing on the wall that FinnxRey is DEAD and buried as far as the script for the next movie is concerned, because that's how Hollywood works nowadays.

3. Pick up the phone, because I'm calling it now. Poe and Rey have all of 1 line together, which is Poe introducing himself. The SECOND I saw his face, which was the epitome of, 'I'm smitten with you already' I face-palmed because do we REALLY need yet another guy who's just AMAZED by Rey's presence?

But then this morning, it sunk in...Twilight, the EdwardxBellaxJacob love triangle. Pirates of the Caribbean, the ElizabethxJackxWill love triangle.

The next movie is going to have a "Subplot" (In that it's a half of a fully-functioning plot) of a ReyxPoexNOT FINN Love triangle, because it's on the movie checklist.

Spoiler: The Not Finn

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Kylo Ren? Really? REALLY!?! Did this NEED to be a thing!? Did they HAVE to make THIS a thing?! The sheer INEPTITUDE on display with that bull**** is unbelievable! Finn and Rey had chemistry, and people saw it working as a romance! People tossed out the idea that Kylo Ren and Rey were siblings! Which would have made WAY more sense for why Rey is able to use The Force like she does, rather than "F--- you, that's why"!

But no, they can't risk ticket sales with a FinnxRay romance, wanted to "Surprise" the fans and "Keep them guessing", and STILL hit every damn checkbox on their list of Blockbuster tropes and cliches. So Rose told Finn, "I love you after less than a day of knowing you" and Rey is trying to turn the 'tormented bad boy' Kylo back to the light side of The Force, but will be hampered in the next movie because of her feelings for Poe. (Like I said, I'm buying a lottery ticket, because I KNOW that's what's coming.)

Then, there's the bit I realized just now is a MAJOR plothole and one of the reasons for the "ALWAYS KEEP THE TENSION AMPED AT ALL TIMES" bit I ranted about above.

Spoiler: Benicio Del Toro's Character

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How did the codebreaker know about those cloaked transports? Poe stages a damn mutiny, because Leia almost died and her second-in-command wouldn't tell him that they had a way to safely escape from the Imperials (BECAUSE F--- YOU, THAT'S WHY) And right when it seems like the transports are safe, the codebreaker tells the Imperials about those cloaked transports which are suddenly being shot down and "Oh noes, everything is still suspenseful and explosions and-" yaddayaddayadda, you get the idea.

How. In the hell. Did that codebreaker who wouldn't have even known what was going on with the rebellion if Finn and Rose hadn't grabbed him off of a COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PLANET, know about the rebels' plan to jump ship and make off in what amounts to a dozen smaller lifeboats while the Imperials chase their abandoned cruiser?

I DARE someone explain that to me, because it makes zero sense to me, at freaking all.

Those are my thoughts. I walked out of the theater with a feeling of "Ehh, it' was okay, except for a few parts."

Now, the glitter has fallen off and I'm seeing more of the crud underneath....

[Darth Ultron]

Again that was a sign of their hubris and stagnation more then having too many Jedi.

Because guess what: When the prophecy was finished with the Death of Palpatine and Vader, Luke was still alive!
Jedi aren't the Yang to the Siths Ying here. They are good and the Dark side is all bad.

The JEDI became unbalanced when they said you couldn't love and feel and such. Not becasause googliness.

That is sort of the point though as Luke is the Last Jedi of the Old Ways. So yes the prophecy is ''over'', but the Force has yet to be reborn/used right.

Though look at the ''good'' Jedi...what do they do? Slavery is common in the Outer Rim, and what, the Jedi sit back and say ''oh well, that is not in the Republic."

[Scowling Dragon]

Now, the glitter has fallen off and I'm seeing more of the crud underneath....

There has been a slew of back and foruth but in general your, not the only one seeing the problems.

[Dr.Samurai]

Spoiler: Codebreaker

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I was going to suggest that maybe he overheard Poe telling Finn about Holdo's plan, but Poe doesn't learn about it until after he regains consciousness, and at that point he doesn't get to speak to Finn before the codebreaker reveals his psychic powers.

What is absolutely moronic about that scene is that if you're able to scan for cloaked vehicles, why wouldn't you be scanning for cloaked vehicles? Why would some random thief that you just captured have to suggest to you to scan for cloaked vehicles? And why would he suggest that to you? How did he know?

And... if you can lightspeed ram ships, why not send those medical frigates on a kamikaze run since you knew they were going to run out of fuel first and be destroyed?

That whole plot was frustratingly awful.

I feel like we can make a nice robust list of all the flaws with this movie in distinct categories, where the plot suffers, continuity errors, the "fan hangups", etc.

[Scowling Dragon]

Though look at the ''good'' Jedi...what do they do? Slavery is common in the Outer Rim, and what, the Jedi sit back and say ''oh well, that is not in the Republic."

Because there are millions of planets, and Tattooine was one planet. Overall for like 10,000 people they did a great job.
But the "And then they never wen't back to tatooine to get anakins mom" was bad and contrived writing.

But AGAIN. Why butcher the baby? Why does the baby that kept the galaxy free of warfare for hundreds of years need to DIE for its all in all minor flaws.

And what happens without them? Slavery becomes common just about everywhere and the Sith return in full force in laughably tiny time.

Its doesn't make any sense to say that the Jedi where not really GREAT. Flawed yes, too sedintary and listless? Yes.
But Corrupt? Thats wrong on 30 levels.

[Devonix]

It's the random superpowers she gained that do.
Its like saying your parents don't matter, its your genetics that do. That's kinda even worse.

They haven't gone back to the force being something for everybody (But hard to understand or master like enlightnment or martial arts), its still speshial force sensitives, Bloodlines are still a thing, she is just a new Chosen one.

That seems exactly like what they're doing. That's the point of the coda at the end of the movie. The force is with everyone just reach out for it. It's why some rando kid with no training can force pull a broom to him.

[Dr.Samurai]

It's a stupid way to handle the Force from now on.

The Force balances itself? So whenever some great evil Sith, oops, I mean Dark Side User arises, the Force will create an equally powerful and competent Force User on the Light Side.

No need to train or earn your abilities. They just get gifted to you. Nice...

[Jayngfet]

That seems exactly like what they're doing. That's the point of the coda at the end of the movie. The force is with everyone just reach out for it. It's why some rando kid with no training can force pull a broom to him.

Except that's not how it works. That rando kid is one of the literal few who were born special who can do that. It's not like anyone can do it. That's how Disney's been playing the whole franchise and it hasn't changed. No it doesn't make sense in the context of almost anything else but that's their line.

Not that that's new, that's how it's been for literal decades.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

I dread to ask, but what did they do to my favorite non Force using Pilot?

Remember how Wedge used to have a similar background to Luke, where he started off feeling, as Luke said in ANH, "Look, I can't get involved. I've got work to do. It's not that I like the Empire; I hate it, but there's nothing I can do about it right now...It's all such a long way from here," never wanting to join the Empire but not particularly motivated to Rebel against it? Then when he saw what the Empire was capable of he joined the Rebellion to fight for peace, justice, and the Corellian way? And how he was always an independent person with strong morals and amazing piloting skills who could fly out of any Imperial ambush, whose first missions with the Alliance involved key victories against the Empire in space and on the ground?

Yeah...in the new canon, thanks to the Rebels series, he joined the Empire because he thought it would be "more exciting" than being a freighter pilot, got cold feet, contacted the Rebellion to come rescue him, failed to escape and got recaptured, allowed someone else to take the fall for him when there was a possibility of them being tortured by the Empire, and escaped again only to have to be rescued again. Highlights of his first missions include being utterly oblivious to a droid being an Imperial spy and almost getting a whole crew killed, crashing an A-wing and almost having to retire as a pilot, and (in Rogue One) staying behind at Yavin IV when everyone else went to Scarif to help with the Death Star plans.

An upstanding role model and the only person in the entire galaxy who survived the attack runs against both Death Stars, reduced to a bumbling idiot who joined the Empire because he was bored.

Also i agree with everything else you said, if they had stuck with the EU more we could have had K-Wings onscreen instead of the flying Tic Tac containers.

Indeed. The flying Tic Tac container that is basically "A B-Wing, but worse in every possible respect" and doesn't even get a name besides "Resistance Bomber." I'll take a K-Wing or even an Assault Gunboat any day.

Related to that, a big complaint I had about TFA was that they only had X-Wings and TIE Fighters without even the variety of starfighters we saw in RotJ, and then in TLJ

Spoiler

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we see that the gun-runners of Canto Bight were supposedly selling TIE Interceptors and TIE Bombers to the First Order, based on the hologram blueprints DJ showed Finn. So where the heck were they in TFA?

[Mando Knight]

Indeed. The flying Tic Tac container that is basically "A B-Wing, but worse in every possible respect" and doesn't even get a name besides "Resistance Bomber." I'll take a K-Wing or even an Assault Gunboat any day.

It's the MG-100 StarFortress SF-17. Other starships with their formal model names not mentioned onscreen in Star Wars: all of them.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

It's the MG-100 StarFortress SF-17.

Whoops, you're right. Turns out I couldn't find a name for it 'cause I googled "Rebel bomber" instead of "Resistance bomber".

[Devonix]

Except that's not how it works. That rando kid is one of the literal few who were born special who can do that. It's not like anyone can do it. That's how Disney's been playing the whole franchise and it hasn't changed. No it doesn't make sense in the context of almost anything else but that's their line.

Not that that's new, that's how it's been for literal decades.

And Poe was born with really good reflexes. And Rose was born being a good head for machines. We all have certain strengths or weaknesses. But the point is that the whole waiting for space knights and royalty as the only people who can save the galaxy is a thing that the movies need to move beyond. They need to be more than that.