Luke got his shit pushed in when he tried to take on Vader in Empire, looking back at their fight it's actually kind of pathetic how easily he gets stomped. They also actually show him training over the course of three movies, and while I don't know the time frame of the OT (Google suggests about 4-5 years), it does give the impression of him having "earned" his skills. I havn't seen TLJ yet, so I don't know how much it goes into Rey's training, but that was why it bothered me in TFA.

 

No, it didn't make that clear, that's one reason why I regard this movie so lowly. I don't really want to get in an argument about that on here, but Kylo was able to move fully without any visible restrictions, he was able to use the force - in a nutshell he didn't hold his own while barely being able to stand, as it should have been at that point.

 

@Taure I thought Luke disappeared because the strain of his projection was just too much for him.

 

I think back to Kylo's great introduction in TFA when he froze a blaster bolt in mid-air. Where was that skill in the fight with Snoke's guards? He wasn't nursing a hole in his gut. He was struggling against those guys who gave no indication that they were Force sensitive.

They don't know what they're doing with those movies.

There's a 3 year timeskip between Episodes IV and V and then there's the whole training on Dagobah. Rey was on the island for 2 days, floated some pebbles, broke a rock, and that was her Jedi training.

 

If so that can handle the lack of in-story justification but the lack of functional difference between projection vs turning up in person remains.

And the conversation between Rey and Leia makes the issue unnecessarily ambiguous if they intended us to understand it was the strain that killed him.

Speaking of Leia, really not sure how they're going to handle her in 9.

 

Off-screen death or Rogue One style CGI.

 

Spoiler

I believe it has already been stated that they will not use CGI or Carrie Fisher's likeness in the next film. My best guess is that they will have the equivalent of a funeral scene at some point early in the next film, with Poe likely in attendance. Obviously they couldn't anticipate Carrie Fisher's death, but if there was ever a time to kill off Leia in this film, her, not Holdo, staying behind to do the epic lightspeed battering ram would have made for quite the send-off.

As for Luke showing up in person vs being a projection, him showing up in person likely would have given us the whole "Luke casually lifts the X-Wing" scene which would have been a spectacular moment, but the fact that Luke wasn't there in the end only amplified the scene in my mind, not lessened it, showing that Luke is still the Master both in terms of raw Force prowess but also in terms of his forward thinking and cleverness there.

That said, not sold on having him die there, though I understand how it fits into the broader theme of the film, but I suspect he'll be back as a Force ghost in the next film anyway.

 

Cool. Do you know the time between Empire and Jedi? Luke seems to make the most significant strides there, considering he's a full fledged badass when he walks into Jabba's palace.

 

1 year. No longer canon in the new Disney continuity, but the Shadows of the Empire novel portrayed him building his new lightsaber and advancing further in the Force in that interim time period.

 

Spoiler

Was anyone surprised that Luke was not physically present at the end?

I thought it was fairly obvious that something was up when he appeared in black robes, looking much younger and taking up much less space, to put it politely. In fact, I think he appeared to be in better shape than even at the point of him and Kylo‘s first confrontation at the temple barracks.

Initially, I thought that this might have been Kylo as he envisioned Luke to look after all those years, but then I seem to remember Leia seeing the same version of him before that, so I‘m not quite sure what to think of it after all.

 

@Nevermind

Spoiler

"If I'm gonna project myself across the galaxy after living the Hermit Life for so long, I might as well not let everyone know I've let myself go."

 

Funnily enough, if they weren't as bad with a scale as they're in these new films, Luke's projection would work as a very good explanation how he could get there in time to help the Resistance when they needed him most. As it is, he probably could just take any ship and be there within minutes anyway.

 

I knew something was up when he turned on his lightsaber and it was blue/Anakin's instead of his green one.

 

This, Kylo explicitly states to Rey during one their many mind-joining-long-distance calls that she'll kill herself when she's trying something, couldn't remember what but I think she tried to use the Force on him somehow. Anyway, it appears that using the Force for particularly advanced tasks can now kill people. Still didn't seem any more OP than what Snoke did to Kylo and Rey and he seemed fine, then again, who knows what the fuck is up with Snoke?

This new trilogy seems to be half sequel and half reboot the way they're tooling around with the universe.

 

Pretty sure the old Legends continuity did similar things too. Really, the whole idea of pushing your body/powers too far and burning out is a pretty common fictional trope.

 

This movie is... weird.

I've seen it twice now. The first time, I left the theater feeling super confused -- not necessarily because the movie was hard to follow, more because this movie has both some of the most incredible scenes ever in a Star Wars movie, and also some of the most shit.

The second time solidified it for me: I didn't like the film. I doubt I will ever watch it again, and I genuinely think I would rather watch any of the prequels than this movie. I also pity JJ Abrams for having to sort this whole thing in one film now since Rian Johnson basically just gave him the finger and refused to develop anything that was begun in the first movie. It's actually striking how little new there is at the end of the film. I suppose we are led to believe Rey is now more competent with the Force. Otherwise, nothing has changed; in fact, we've slid backwards. The Resistance is reduced to like ten people, Luke is dead, Snoke is gone. Just... what was the point?

There were good scenes. Great scenes, even. Despite the fact that I think killing off Snoke so soon is underwhelming, the scene where it happens is incredible -- the tension was absolutely palpable. And after Rey and Kylo Ren kill the guards, the fact that Ren didn't turn is actually interesting and pretty well done. This sequence overall was very powerful. Other standouts include the gorgeous shots of Snoke's ship being cut in half by Holdo's cruiser and of course, Luke's standoff at the end.

The sad thing is, though, that each of these scenes that could've been iconic are undermined by their surroundings. The Snoke scene is awesome, but then you realize they just killed off the only real threatening force in the galaxy with no buildup. The hyperspeed ramming is beautiful, but basically is ramming a bunch of holes into the plot of every Star Wars film (and it really should've been Leia on that ship). Luke's standoff is brilliant and seeing it on opening night genuinely dropped my jaw. "See you around, kid," had the entire theater applauding. It was a fantastic moment, a subversion of my expectations in the best way: they weren't just following the Obi-Wan structure, they were being gutsy and keeping Luke alive and making things interesting --

Then in the next scene Luke dies, and I'm once again left with this feeling of why did this matter? What's the point of the Force projection if you're just going to kill him off anyway? What did the bait-and-switch gain you?

Above all else, this movie reminds me of Sherlock, and Stephen Moffat. In the series 2 finale of Sherlock, we watch Sherlock apparently commit suicide. It's revealed in the next moment that Sherlock actually lived, but faked his suicide. Until series 3, fans put in a ton of effort generating increasingly elaborate theories for how he survived. Then, when series 3 came out, the show seemed to explore some of these theories -- only to call them out as stupid, pointless, and have John Watson outright say "I don't care how you survived. That isn't important." It never offers an answer to this question.

This kind of egotistical bait-and-switch is just an easy way for the writer to feel smugly superior to the passionate fans who cared about this sort of thing, and this movie does this in almost any scenario where we had expectations. It doesn't seek to subvert our expectations in the service of making a unique or interesting storyline; it does it because the writer had a post-it note next to them that said SUBVERT EXPECTATIONS and so any time they got anywhere near something people expected, they ridicule it as much as possible to make sure everyone knows just how self-aware and subversive they are.

All that said, this isn't a bad movie. It's a big-budget action movie. The CGI is great, the fight choreography is fantastic, the cinematography is very well done, and the score is wonderful. Every mechanical part of this movie is beautiful -- which we should expect, given how much money is being poured into it. But the script is fucking garbage, and I couldn't rate this film any higher than a 6/10, and I honestly think my opinion is going to drop over time.

 

Saw it. Loved it. Have questions.

How did the Resistance expect to be able to sneak away if a simple scan by the First Order was able to detect them, and if it was that easy why were they not watching for that sort of thing all along?

And no really, who the fuck is Snoke?

 

So you're telling me that 80% of the troubles in the movie were from lack of information sharing amongst the Resistance's top people?

 

Yes. As much as I enjoyed the film, an awful lot of the plot wouldn't have happened if people had talked to each other.