Hiku said:
Veknoid_Outcast said:
- The map to Luke Skywalker
Did Luke give the map to Lor San Tekka? Or did he discover it? Honestly, I don't know. Maybe someone can chime in. But that's a big difference.
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On Wikia it says this: while Lor San Tekka was given a portion of the map by Skywalker.[2]
I can't really see where the source of that statement is going when I click the link. But either way, Luke left it behind or chose to not destroy it.
Maybe he had a change of heart? Maybe he wanted the right person to find him? I don't really know. I don't think it changes my enjoyment of either movie in a meaningful way, regardless.
- The treatment of Luke's character
This is the "error" I see most often, but I really don't think it counts. Yes, the conceptualization of Luke in TLJ is different from the conceptualization of Luke in ROTJ. However, 30 years have passed. People change. Seeing Luke grow from a callow teenager to a Jedi knight was great, but did people seriously expect a human being to remain unchanged over the course of three decades? Believe me, this isn't how I saw Luke either, but a character isn't bad or inexplicable just because he's not what you wanted/expected. Some might argue that an unexpected, unconventional take makes the character more interesting. |
People can change. But my question is, if a character goes through such an enormous change to the point where their actions are basically the polar opposite of what they used to be, should there be no explanation for how the character reached this point? What was his journey that lead him to (at least for a moment) consider butchering his nephew in his sleep? If a film decides to not show this journey at all, is that good writing?
Rian Johnson chose to leave such a drastic change to our imagination. That's very easy to do, and lazy. I'm not arguing that it isn't interesting. But I want to be able to buy it. Not feel like it doesn't make sense. So he could have given us something. Anything at all. Just off the top of my head, maybe Luke became susceptible to the dark side of the force for a moment, because of Snoke. If I had 12 months to plan out the script, I could probably think of something better. But anything is better than nothing in this case.
Everything I posted here isn't necessarily just plot holes, but things I don't think make sense from a writing perspective.
There IS an explanation. Johnson spends a lot of time on the island, explaining how Luke got to this lowly state. This is one of the most fleshed out characterizations in the whole movie. We learn that he lost faith in the Jedi way, that he thinks the Force belongs to no man and no institution, that his own legendary status inspired the wrong kind of hero worship among others. Luke pondering violence against someone he was in the process of mentoring/rescuing isn't that crazy. Remember in ROTJ when Luke flew off the handle and tried to hack Vader to death when Vader even suggested messing with Leia? Is it that wild to think Luke would react violently after seeing premonitions of all his loved ones in pain?
- Holdo not telling anyone her plan
I interpreted this as Holdo telling the plan to senior leadership, and Poe was excluded. |
So you agree that Rian Johnson left us having to guess what her motive was? Ok but why not just tell us?
We could have had a scene where she tells Leia that "we had reports of a mole in our ranks, so we didn't want to risk leaking the plans." But we got none of that, so we are left having to guess why Holdo decided to torment everyone on the ship and make them think that all hope was lost and they were all going to die, when in reality she did have a plan.
But you skipped the most important thing I mentioned. Why did she not at least tell Poe once he staged the mutiny? Why did she prefer to let it escalate to violence?
Well, to maintain secrecy. Military compartmentalization. You ask why Holdo wouldn't tell Poe about the mission. Yet later in the movie the hacker overhears Finn telling Poe about the mission, which indirectly leads to the hacker offering up that information to the First Order, and almost destroying the Resistance outright. The less people who know about a life-or-death mission the fewer opportunities for the secrets of the mission to escape, as they did later in the movie.
- Rose saving Finn
I'm not sure how she caught up. So I'll give you that one. Honestly, the bigger problem is that Finn should have died. That would have been a great ending to his arc. I'm not sure what he's supposed to do in the next one.
For Holdo, I dunno. Maybe they needed a human at the helm to respond if anything went wrong. Maybe it's a resistance tradition for captains to go down with their ships -- we see this happen earlier. Maybe everyone was in a tense, life-or-death situation and wasn't thinking straight.
Star Wars has always played fast and loose with space. |
Yeah if this was a list of things I don't like about Last Jedi, I would have mentioned that as well about Finn in that scene. But that's just my preference. What doesn't make sense to me however is saving him while trying to relay the message of "killing enemies with love" and "not sacrificing the ones we love... but it's ok if Holdo and Luke sacrifice themselves." Not to mention how they got out of there without being shot, as if no one from the Empire saw that there was a ship about to kamikaze into their cannon.
As for Holdo, yeah we don't know. It turned out well because she ended up using warp speed to take out the enemy. But she didn't stay on the ship because of that. She clearly hadn't thought about it yet, because she let many of her friends get shot down one by one before she realized that she could do it. And it looked cool and all, but why hasn't anyone ever done this before? It cut right through the enemy shields and ship like butter.
The ending of that sequence was a mistake, we agree on that.
- Rey's parents, and her lack of training
Rey's parentage was the right move, I think. Weren't folks tired of every important person in a galaxy of thousands of planets being either a Skywalker or a Solo?
Lack of training, I will give you. I think you can justify the fight at the end of TFA because Ben was totally unhinged after killing his father and bleeding out from a shot from a weapon that had, earlier in the movie, thrown Stormtroopers back 5 yards.
But she gets even stronger in TLJ. It's just boring. She's boring. I want a hero with a flaw. What is Rey's flaw? Missing her parents? For me, Kylo is by far the more interesting, conflicted character. |
I didn't have a problem with her parents either, but after seeing the first film, where she beat Kylo, I figured she either had some training and her memory had been wiped, or she had some special lineage that could explain it.
And yeah, Rey's journey in this film doesn't really take her anywhere, except back to where she started. She always does the right thing, and doesn't experience any real dilemma. But that would belong to a list of "things I didn't like".
Yeah, Rey needs a dark side. I would have liked to see her join forces with Kylo in some kind of "gray side" truce, and Episode IX would deal with the consequences of that decision.
- Why didn't Luke tell anyone that he was a projection/hologram?
Maybe the act of facing down The First Order and surviving a imperial barrage is more inspirational if the onlookers think you're really there? I don't have any problems with this. |
But I'm talking about things that don't make sense from a writing perspective. As in what was Luke thinking? He was not thinking about the audience. Because they don't exist to him.
There's a difference between pleasing the audience, and maintaining a story that makes sense. You should not do the former without the latter.
The onlookers aren't the audience in my post. They're the remaining resistance fighters, who Luke came to inspire and save. This is Luke's redemption. He had closed himself off from the Force and left the Resistance to die. This is him literally reaching out with the Force, inspiring the Resistance, and distracting its enemies.
- The first mainline Star Wars film without a lightsaber duel
I LOVED this. I appreciate a movie subverting expectations and forging its own path. |
Well I stand corrected then. Didn't think there was a demand for this.
After the lightsaber orgies of the prequel trilogy, I'm glad to see more restraint 
- Snoke is so powerful and such an evil mastermind
Snoke is just a crummy villain/character design and I'm glad he's gone
But seriously, his death proves his overconfidence and Kylo's raw power/ability to hide his true feelings. |
Which is interesting. The man-child who bursts into a tantrum at any given moment, (the very second Rey hesitated to join the Dark side he started screaming "No, you're STILL HOLDING ON!" And moments later he did the same when he saw Luke.) was able to mask his emotions in a way that even someone as powerful and confident as Snoke couldn't sense it at all...
That's... I don't know? I guess it's ok. A bit weird, but it was the least of my concerns from the list.
- What happened to the Knighst of Ren?
Maybe they'll be in Episode IX, maybe they were out terrorizing another pocket of the galaxy . |
That one isn't a closed chapter, so we will see.
I'm just per-emptively putting that out there in case it's not addressed in Epi 9.
| I regret that legitimate criticism of the movie is being conflated with inconsequential details. |
I don't know if the majority of what I've said is inconsequential. It's not too much to ask to be able to plausibly conceive what Luke could have been thinking when he went out to buy them time, without telling them that.
I dunno. There are plot holes and leaps of logic in almost any movie, especially movies with laser swords, ghosts, space wizards, FTL technology, and Hayden Christensen.
I don't think the holes in TLJ are crippling, or even distracting. But I totally respect and understand your take, and I appreciate you taking the time to respond to me.
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