revelthedog wrote:

I was looking for the kid with the broom but I didn't see him move it with the force.

At the end? I thought it was clear on my second viewing too. Broom moves towards his hand.

hylian_elf wrote:

revelthedog wrote:

I was looking for the kid with the broom but I didn't see him move it with the force.

At the end? I thought it was clear on my second viewing too. Broom moves towards his hand.

Yep, definitely.

Definitely moved, dunno why that's any sillier than anything else.  Didn't mind it myself.

I just had to go and read who Darth Plagueis is, having no recollection of ever hearing about him, and I still couldn’t care less. The whole thing reeks of the nerdy need to lore the fuck out of every insignificant detail in a franchise. What a load of dull, uninteresting bullshit.

Ram, your paranoid theory is nuts. There are echoes of the past, but it’s not a remake. Out of interest, though, how do you feel they’ve changed Luke?

Rev, the broom thing is blink-and-you’ll-miss-it. The broom is resting against a wall, the boy reaches to grab it, and it comes part way to meet his hand. It moves maybe a foot at most. I don’t see it as treating the audience like idiots; it’s just following the cinematic rule of show, don’t tell.

@adkm Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis the wise... ?

I’m with Andy on the whole Snoke thing. I think it was good that they did something different to what you would expect to happen.

I also think it is pretty much the ideology that the young are killing the old as that is what needs to happen to the films for Disney to be able to move on. The Skywalker arc needs to die.

Smoke must be really good at cunnilingus

@Andy obviously not scene for scene remakes, but for me they feel a lot like someone re-writing the originals rather than sequels that tell a new story...and they're actually better if treated like that.

I'm not sure how you would need it explained that Luke has changed, so I assume you're teasing or trying to catch me out. Still, I'll bite.
Yes, 30 years have passed so he would change, perhaps wiser, change of views perhaps. But there is nowhere near enough explanation or justification for the complete change in personality, ideals and ultimately compassion for those dearest to him.
He's changed into a person that considers murdering his nephew in cold blood out of fear. He basically creates Kylo Ren, then goes into hiding. He refuses to help, even to return in person, as his sister begs him to, whilst a new evil force destroys everything he previously fought for.

Subverting things for the sake of it is not interesting narrative. Why not go the whole hog and decide that Luke is actually a kiddy-fiddler, that's what was going on in his school?  That's why Ben got evil, that's why he killed everyone to end their shame, and he's wracked with guilt and hurt. There's a new interesting narrative that subverts everything, and adds layers of social commentary and questions the idolisation of heroes into the mix.

And it's not just that this a 'pacifist' Luke rather than a gung ho hero. He's not even brave about it...he's not the protester standing in front of a tank in Tienanmen square....he stays in hiding, avoiding the problems he caused, he pretends he's standing in front of the tank for a minute, then kills himself.

Even without the baggage of Luke, what he means to me as the hero of this series. What does he achieve as a character, a major plot point in these two films? He gives Rey some half-arsed teaching, he allows some call backs to the original movies, then he tricks Kylo Ren for 2 minutes whilst the rebels sneak out the back door. How many good people died trying to find him, to keep his location from the New Order? In hindsight, the resistance would have been better off giving them the map...he's just a grumpy old man that won't help regardless, and Kylo flying all the way there would have wasted much more of his time than Luke teasing him for 2 minutes during a battle.

Everything that the 'Luke' character does in these movies would have been better, and much more believable, if he wasn't called Luke. If he was just a mysterious old Jedi Master, perhaps called Yoda, that had passed into legend and lived on some uncharted planet. Someone that our hero could seek out in the second movie of a trilogy, to get a bit of teaching and philosophy. Which brings us back to my 'rewrites disguised as sequels' theory.

Member when Luke thought he could talk his dad round to being good?

Y'know? His Dad? The second most evil guy in the galaxy?

Things like that are why this film is a joke. +1 for Rams sentiments. Luke should have been using the force directly and lightsabering as a last resort guy. Like Yoda taught him in Empire before they ruined Yoda in the prequ....

Oh my god...

It's like poetry? They rhyme?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooooooooo etc.

Prolly saw the Dark side in himself too when he almost killed him. Got scared.

meh I need to rewatch the og trilogy. its been you long, right you may be, remember I cannot.

No, that’s pulling in unnecessary shit that most people don’t care about.

Andy wrote:

I don’t know which original trilogy you guys watched, but Luke has always, always, always been a whiny, petulant, arrogant, scared little know-it-all. His going into hiding is a) exactly what the Luke of ESB and RotJ would do; and b) not dissimilar to what Yoda did. Yes, he tried to convert Vader, but he also went into a red-mist-rage and tried to kill him. He’s seen what the dark side did to his dad, and nearly did to him, so of course angry, scared little Luke shat the bed when he saw the same darkness in his nephew. He hasn’t changed at all.

On the flipside. i don't know which original trilogy you watched, but Luke was also a hero who cared about doing right and standing against evil, who would risk his life for his friends even if it meant sacrificing his own 'force' training, who surrendered himself and suffered torture and pain to try to reach a 'lost' family member and to save the galaxy from the Emperor.
So, completely different.

He sacrificed his force training to save his friends.

He's had 30 years to think about what happened since RotJ though, is he really going to be teetering on the knife edge of the dark side at this point?

Instead of projecting, why doesn't he just go to the planet directly if the intent in the story is to kill him off? It's like the least impactful option. They are killing the main character in the whole franchise and he dies of fatigue in a fucking cave! What a colossal waste of the story opportunity they had, it's just a total disservice to the character, the actor and people who waited since 1983 to see Luke again and this is what they got.

I think a lot of the criticism I have of the film comes down to the wasted opportunities. They're just so blatant that I question how the fuck the script got through and what a fucking mess the first draft must have been.