SPOILERS Last Jedi discussion for those who saw it SPOILERS

Well if you've entered this thread after reading the title, you can't complain, articles with spoilers have been online since before the public debut screening. I just went back and read the ones I'd bookmarked.

OK, so a big point of debate is around Rey's parents, or even possble lack thereof. Was Kylo Ren telling Rey the truth that her parents were nobodies who sold her for drinking money, or was he just trying to get in her head? How would he know anyway?

Here's what I think. Every hint about who her parents are in the movie screams that she's certainly not related to the Skywalker family in any way. The Cave of Evil 2.0 shows shadows and then her own reflection when she asks who her parents are. Caves of Evil generally show helpful if cryptic information (maybe they should be called Uncomfortable Caves of Cryptic Helpfulness?), so the message is "It doesn't matter" or perhaps even "It's you, like almost literally," suggesting some kind of unconventional birth like Anakin's.

Second clue: We can now rule out Rey being Luke's daughter, between him treating her like she was a random stranger who showed up and now having a rather complete picture of Luke's life which doesn't include settling down and having a kid. That was the last possible relationship she could've had to any Skywalker.

Third clue: The kid sweeping the stable floor in Space Monaco at the end. Now we have no reason to believe that there is anyone younger than Luke/Han/Leia related to the Skywalker family other than Kylo Ren, and here's another kid who has force powers seemingly at random.

So the remaining possibilities are "What Kylo Ren said, or something close to it" and "She's a Force Baby."

It makes a certain sense that she's a nobody, as it signifies that not everyone has to be a Skywalker to be a hero. I think the whole clincher on it being the truth was that Kylo Ren used a variation of Vader's line when he told Luke that he was his father. Honestly though, it was a bit of a letdown after all the talk about how important her parents were and how big a plot point it was in VII. Personally, I liked the theory that she was somehow a Kenobi.

Speaking of spoilers, pour one out for poor Admiral Gial Ackbar. He deserved better.

NickD said:

Speaking of spoilers, pour one out for poor Admiral Gial Ackbar. He deserved better.

Yep, dies off-screen after being sucked into space...

The Kenobi theory was always a flimsy one. We see in the prequels that Obi Wan, chief advocate of Jedi celibacy to Anakin, is not getting any action, and then he goes off to live alone out in the desert of Tattooine. Judging by the age difference it's debatable whether she's old enough to have been conceived by Obi Wan at all.

To me, the kid is the indicator.  

Considering that entire scene could have easily been left out, all it could do is add a drop of information.  

And assuming that the last Jedi that even remotely could have parented that kid were Rey, Leia, Luke, Kylo/Ben, and Snape (yea, I know, Harry Potter), I don't see that possible at all.  Rey and Leia would totally know if they had other kids, Luke was already away, and Kylo was in the process of being his grand dad.  Snape was too far gone to be a parent.

Plus, Rey and Annikan have similar backgrounds- alone on a desert planet.  AKA- just random abandoned kids.  Sure, sweeper kid was probably abducted to be a slave, but parents are very gone.

Nothing wrong with that, as long as there is balance between good an evil.

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Some of them said she was hsi granddaughters. Other theories said that she was the reincarnation. Yes, it was kind of flimsy, being largely based on her hearing him in the dream in VII and the fact that both had British accents, but it seemed interesting,

Also, RIP Phasma. Pretty sure she's dead. Too bad, she looked and sounded awesome and did absolutely nothing. 

As for Snoke, not entirely sure he's dead. If he is dead and that's all we get of him, that's pathetic.

GameboyRMH said:

NickD said:

Speaking of spoilers, pour one out for poor Admiral Gial Ackbar. He deserved better.

Yep, dies off-screen after being sucked into space...

The Kenobi theory was always a flimsy one. We see in the prequels that Obi Wan, chief advocate of Jedi celibacy to Anakin, is not getting any action, and then he goes off to live alone out in the desert of Tattooine. Judging by the age difference it's debatable whether she's old enough to have been conceived by Obi Wan at all.

Her and Kylo are almost the same age- and that was way after Kenobi died.

Snoke is suuuuper dead (Remember that Hux comes back hours after he'd been cut in half and finds his corpse all but collecting flies. No action is taken). Phasma could come back as a cyborg...I kind of hope so because killing her off just like that is a waste.

Rey being Obi-Wan's granddaughter has almost all the same problems as being his daughter, PLUS the requirement for a generation of Kenobis to exist offscreen.

Not explaining anything about Snoke pissed me off. Now it just feels like they made a bad guy mcguffin so we had a bad guy. 

Kylo and Rae talking to each other was something new and cool. But to what end? 

 Did the title mean the Luke was in fact the last one? Or is Rae the last one? Is Luke implying that she will become something else, because the Jedi were flawed?

Too many new questions. Not enough answers.

Yep Snoke was just a Sith throne-warmer, as I said in the other thread...another letdown.

Luke was sort of the last Jedi - the last Jedi as they were known before. All their political and religious heritage has been destroyed (in large part by ghost-Yoda who declared their religious texts to be worthless and lit them on fire with a lightning bolt), now they just have some people who know how to use Force powers and not be jerks, which ghost-Yoda thinks is good enough. The movie actually comes close to acknowledging the fan theory that all the trouble in the Star Wars universe centers around the Jedi as an unaccountable institution of vigilante warrior political advisers.

Appleseed said:

Not explaining anything about Snoke pissed me off. Now it just feels like they made a bad guy mcguffin so we had a bad guy. 

Kylo and Rae talking to each other was something new and cool. But to what end? 

 Did the title mean the Luke was in fact the last one? Or is Rae the last one? Is Luke implying that she will become something else, because the Jedi were flawed?

Too many new questions. Not enough answers.

Eh, it's the middle movie in a trilogy.  Makes sense that it wouldn't give too much away.  However, I agree that we need to find out who or what Snoke was in the third one.  

I believe that Rey's parents were nobody.  I was fond of the Kenobi theory, too, though I didn't necessarily think she had to be a descendant of Obi Wan.  Maybe he had siblings and she was a niece or something?  In any case, I think it's cool that she's just a random nobody from a backwards planet.  That galaxy has had enough of the Skywalker family squabbles.  

Loved the interaction between Rey and Kylo.  The fight scene after Snoke's killing was badass.  I also kind of dug the fact that the Resistance basically berkeleyed everything up the entire time.  Poe's bombing run that cost them a bunch of fighters and pilots, the attempt to flee at sublight speed, only to eventually get run down, the side mission with Rose and Finn to find the codebreaker, and finally the idea of holing up at the base on the salt planet.  None of it worked, and I like that, it subverts the whole "good guys always win" trope.  Also, the Finn and Rose subplot added some shades of gray to the whole "good vs. evil" drama that has always existed in Star Wars, with the revelation that the arms dealers are selling to both sides.  

There were parts that strained reason, though.  The "bombing run", for instance.  What makes those bombs "fall" in space where there's no gravity?  The whole sublight chase that makes up the bulk of the movie and the prime source of dramatic tension is kind of BS.  Why couldn't the First Order just jump a couple of star destroyers out ahead of the resistance ships to cut them off?  And for that matter, once the resistance decided to use the escape pods to try to get to the salt planet while Admiral Laura Dern stayed behind, why did it not occur to her to turn around and lightspeed into the First Order ships until half the pods had been destroyed?  She knew she was going to die and lose the ship anyway, why not take them out ASAP to save as many lives as possible?  I know, I know, this is a "pew pew pew" space fantasy, and I shouldn't read too much into it, but I like it when they stay consistent to their universe.  

Still really liked the film overall, though.

I mean, Darth Maul got cut in half in a similar manner and then tossed down a huge shaft of indeterminate depth (but clearly quite deep) and survived that and even fashioned himself a set of robot legs in that condition, so it's not the craziest thing if Snoke somehow survived. 

Tom_Spangler said:

There were parts that strained reason, though.  The "bombing run", for instance.  What makes those bombs "fall" in space where there's no gravity?  

You could assume that they're accelerated by the same artificial gravity used on everything down to tiny space fighters in Star Wars.

Tom_Spangler said:

And for that matter, once the resistance decided to use the escape pods to try to get to the salt planet while Admiral Laura Dern stayed behind, why did it not occur to her to turn around and lightspeed into the First Order ships until half the pods had been destroyed?  She knew she was going to die and lose the ship anyway, why not take them out ASAP to save as many lives as possible?  I know, I know, this is a "pew pew pew" space fantasy, and I shouldn't read too much into it, but I like it when they stay consistent to their universe.  

Still really liked the film overall, though.

Yeah, Vice Admiral Holdo was a terrible leader. She needed to communicate her plan in that scene where she took command, and didn't do so. When all your people can see is that there are no good options left and you think you have a way out, you need to communicate it to get everyone working towards the same goal. Not doing that cost way too many lives unnecessarily - had she done so, more of them would have made it to the salt planet and Finn and Rose wouldn't have gone on the side quest.

Appleseed said:

Not explaining anything about Snoke pissed me off. Now it just feels like they made a bad guy mcguffin so we had a bad guy. 

Kylo and Rae talking to each other was something new and cool. But to what end? 

 Did the title mean the Luke was in fact the last one? Or is Rae the last one? Is Luke implying that she will become something else, because the Jedi were flawed?

Too many new questions. Not enough answers.

I mean I think not a lot of answers makes sense for the middle movie but I do have to say I am worried they aren't going to fill in the backstory on Snoke and that will piss me off. 

I think theyre trying to set phasma up to be the next boba fett. Fancy costume. No backstory. Few lines. Let the audience run with it.

As for yoda burning the books, he didnt. There was a shot on the falcon at the end of them in a drawer, Rey had run off with them. Gives a different meaning yodas line- (paraphrased from poor memory)

There is nothing in the texts she doesnt already have.

blizazer said:

I think theyre trying to set phasma up to be the next boba fett. Fancy costume. No backstory. Few lines. Let the audience run with it.

 

 

As for yoda burning the books, he didnt. There was a shot on the falcon at the end of them in a drawer, Rey had run off with them. Gives a different meaning yodas line- (paraphrased from poor memory)

 

There is nothing in the texts she doesnt already have.

OK good - I thought I saw that at the end of the movie but wasn't positive.  

Overall I liked it, but i feel like there are now more questions than answers :-)

blizazer said:

I think theyre trying to set phasma up to be the next boba fett. Fancy costume. No backstory. Few lines. Let the audience run with it.

 

Except that there has been an ongoing Phasma comic as well as a Phasma novel. And she's a badass outside of the movies with a decent backstory. 

So....  if destroying the meg-dreadnought (seeeee, no deathstar in this movie!!) and most of the fleet was a simple matter of hyperspace jumping into it, why didn't they just do that with one of the other TWO ships that they let fall back (and piloted BTW)!!!

Starwars movies are entertaining, but sometimes are like listening to people in films or movies talk about cars, who have no idea what they are talking about.

One of the many issues I had with the whole thing was that by the end the entire "rebellion" was maybe 2 dozen folks fitting fairly comfortably aboard the Falcon.

Others include: why has fuel reserves literally never been mentioned before?!

Can we have a movie that doesn't involve cutsie little furry creatures?

Is it really necessary (or even possible) to fly a ship at speed through an enclosed space (death star, salt mine, a planet, whatever) in every movie?

In far advanced technology like this, is the best gunnery station possible a ball turret lifted from a B-17?

In reply to aircooled :  Right?!  Back when they had lots of ships (and that cruiser was OLD in Star Wars universe).  Launching suicide ships at relativistic speeds into star destroyers would have been a pretty effective way of dealing with them.

Has anyone ever considered the absurd cost of even a standard sized Star Destroyer?  Those things are HUGE and would have taken massive resources to build, equip, and man.

My single biggest problem with this movie (or franchise) is that after blowing up all the Death Stars, killing Darth Vader, supposedly  being victorious over the Galactic Empire, here we are back running from the bad guys, the rebels are severely outnumbered, blah, blah, blah, etc. How the heck did we get to this point - AGAIN? It's similar to letting the nazis regain power and take over Europe a second time. It's just stupid.  There were some new elements to this movie that were way overdue, but much was left unexplained.

NickD said:

blizazer said:

I think theyre trying to set phasma up to be the next boba fett. Fancy costume. No backstory. Few lines. Let the audience run with it.

 

Except that there has been an ongoing Phasma comic as well as a Phasma novel. And she's a badass outside of the movies with a decent backstory. 

Embarassing. I dont even keep up with the non movie star wars stories anymore. Someone just take my nerd card away.

In reply to ncjay :

Just because you kill Hitler, doesn't mean there aren't a load of fanatics who still believe. Oh, the Emperor and Vader are dead? OK, I'll take off this goofy suit and go home now.

KyAllroad (Jeremy) said:

In reply to aircooled :  Right?!  Back when they had lots of ships (and that cruiser was OLD in Star Wars universe).  Launching suicide ships at relativistic speeds into star destroyers would have been a pretty effective way of dealing with them.

Has anyone ever considered the absurd cost of even a standard sized Star Destroyer?  Those things are HUGE and would have taken massive resources to build, equip, and man.

 

If the Rebellion doesn't start scrounging up engines, nav systems and hyperspace drives and strapping them to asteroids and then launching those at First Order ships, they're a bunch of dopes.

NickD said:

blizazer said:

I think theyre trying to set phasma up to be the next boba fett. Fancy costume. No backstory. Few lines. Let the audience run with it.

 

Except that there has been an ongoing Phasma comic as well as a Phasma novel. And she's a badass outside of the movies with a decent backstory. 

So, she's the new General Grievous then?

I've read a couple articles that explain some of the letdowns in this movie, although the explanation won't make you feel much better about them.

Ep7 was directed by JJ Abrams. He likes to set up long-running mysteries, which he did.

Ep8 was directed by Rian Johnson. He thinks that long-running mysteries are dumb so he immediately threw the two big ones set up by JJ into the trash compactor, by answering the question about Rey's parents with "it doesn't matter" (he's stated that Kylo was saying what he believed when he made the big reveal to Rey), and promptly killing off Snoke.