Top 5 Things I Disliked About SW:TLJ

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5. Why do people want boring dead environments? Did you see the large sea creature during one of the fly overs of the island? All cool stuff. I loved the porgs (funny), crystal foxes (really cool looking and had a pivotal role in the plot), and the race horse-things were well done even if Finn's overall subplot could have been removed from the movie without any impact to the story line.

4. When I see people bash Luke they are the same people who don't get why Anakin went Darth or why Kylo Ren is Kylo Ren. They simply don't understand the (admittingly weak characterization) emotional state of these characters throughout their lives. Luke's character makes sense when actually pay attention to what he says, does, and fails at doing in the OT and then combine that to what this trilogy is saying happened up to the point of TLJ. Hell, even Yoda hits the nail on the head when he blasts Luke with the same folly Luke is continuously making.

Luke is an emotional wreck that has always been whiny and self-defeated. The only movie where he showed any actual confidence was RotJ and that was a facade due to his self-prescribed identity as a full Jedi even though he had zero of the training or guidance of any past Jedi. Ask yourself, why did he wait so long to begin to build a new Jedi order? Because his lack of self-esteem or actual confidence in his ability to train anyone. He knew he would fail and/or his continued fear (called out by Yoda many times) that he'd fail.

Then his fear progressed into views of the future which pushed his emotional state to insane action to almost murder his nephew (his own battle of dark/light manifested). This all makes sense.

The problem is that people expected to see another Obi Wan when Luke which was silly considering Obi Wan was stable... always. Luke (and Anakin / Kylo) was never emotionally stable.

3. SW never explains everything. We were never told who the Emperor was in the OT. We were never told how the Storm Troopers were trained/created in the OT. You don't know what's going to happen in EP9 yet and I believe in this movie we were deliberately mislead on Rey's parents. Fact is, SW loves its mystery. We may never know who Snoke was beyond a very powerful dark force guy. However, we do know why Luke was hid away and its not hard to determine why the map was left... he does love his sister but didn't want to be pulled back into the fight.

2. Luke's training in force before he started doing basic stuff was minimal as well. Basically identical where they both were just guided to 'use the force', reach out with feelings, etc. There is nothing crazy here. Her fighting Kylo in the last movie was not force specific, but a whole lot of other items. She demonstrated in that movie that she can fight very well. Anakin's pod racing proves that without training force can be used to greatly improve their reactions. On top of that, as I pointed out above, Kylo is emotionally and mentally unstable. He just killed his father in a significantly powerful emotional action. He also was wounded in such a way that very likely would have killed or at least taken out anyone else. Clearly all of that was a major factor in her ability to very briefly get an edge on him. She is very powerful, just as Yoda was or other past powerful Jedi. There is nothing she's doing that is out of the realm of possibility for her. Just people being narrow-minded and not following the full story. I honestly think that if she was male, there would be less bitching. Damn good to see girl power in this movie. Silly to conclude there could be no super powerful female jedi. Girls need superheros too.

1. Luke's part encompassed a combination of Anakin, ObiWan, and Yoda; emotional wreck, self-sacrifice to drive larger goals, and awareness that he needed to back away, that this time / influence was best left out.

I think you completely missed major Snoke statements in this movie. He stated that he was the reason why Rey/Kylo Ren were communicating and that he was controlling the visions. That means what they both saw about each other was actually the result of what Snoke wanted them to see. Her parents are not really known yet. That was a lie to break her.

I think you and many others need to watch both movies again without pre-conceived notions and think more about the context behind what is going on in this saga.