Star Wars: The Last Jedi release thread (spoilers)

[CaoCao]

Snoke is uber powerful with the force, and can read and even link minds across the galaxy...but he fails to see the lightsaber moving right beside him. And ends up dying in a rip off Joruus C'Baoth way (in that he misinterprets what Kylo/Mara are about to do).

Snoke doing that is a lot like Palpatine doing that- that's how an apprentice kills a Sith Lord (or equivalent), get them when their eye is on the prize.

Bith C'Baoth and Palpatine (and most EU Sith Lords) were stronger but not so much compared to their apprentices. Snoke was moving Rey and Kylo around like puppets with no effort. It's one of the many situations in the movie that were at odds with what was stablished.

Here are a few other things that made no sense:

- After Han's character assassination, came Luke's. The same guy that had hope for his, fallen to the dark side, father, didn't have so much for his nephew.

- Phasma is a very good, very wasted character. Fell to her pit of Carkoon pretty fast (they even stole the mask breaking moment from Asohka vs Vader Rebels scene).

- Is Benicio del Toro some sort of Lando?

- The entire movie is about letting go of the past...until they double back and say the jedi order will live through Rey.

- Yoda gives Luke a pep talk about teaching Rey about his successes and failures, to which he nods and...croaks before teaching any of that (I know, probable force ghost).

- Already told this in previous post, but they stablished ships cannot enter hyperspace with objects in front of them (like the Devastator entering the frail in Rogue One). But one movie later they seem to have forgotten.

- In Force Awakens, Luke's school was burned down by Kylo and the Knights of Ren (all geared with their KoR clothing and weapons). They seem to have forgotten that and now it's burned down by Ben (still not Kylo and using his blue saber) and some unspecified other students (that are supposed to be the other KoR, but before becoming that).

Rey is still a Mary Sue, but there's so much nonsense happening that it's almost unnoticeable.

[Darksider]

So it looks like all of the spoilers I read were true. I couldn't be more disappointed in this film.

The character (and actual) assassination of Luke is something I can never forgive. Luke Skywalker was one of the first heroes I ever had growing up. When they described how he would be a "broken warrior" in this film, I was concerned, but I figured meeting Rey would snap him out of it and he'd go on to produce some sort of lasting legacy or have some lasting accomplishment.

Apparently the powers behind this film wanted otherwise. He barely trains Rey at all, which means if she does re-form the Jedi Order, it'll be with self-taught knowledge from the Jedi books she took with her. In addition to essentially erasing Luke as a lasting part of the story, this also cements Rey as a complete Mary Sue. She is exactly what Kylo said she was when he was trying to corrupt her: A junk rat whose parents sold her for drinking money. She's not important, so why is she the final savior figure of the entire fucking saga? She's bland and uninteresting, and the plot hands her whatever powers she needs to succeed. To erase all meaning from the stories of Luke and Anakin Skywalker and give it to her is an insult to everyone who grew up with those characters.

If you take the Sequel Trilogy as the be-all end-all of Star Wars, this movie works great, but as a part of the greater SW whole, it's absolutely atrocious.

[ray245]

So it looks like all of the spoilers I read were true. I couldn't be more disappointed in this film.

The character (and actual) assassination of Luke is something I can never forgive. Luke Skywalker was one of the first heroes I ever had growing up. When they described how he would be a "broken warrior" in this film, I was concerned, but I figured meeting Rey would snap him out of it and he'd go on to produce some sort of lasting legacy or have some lasting accomplishment.

Apparently the powers behind this film wanted otherwise. He barely trains Rey at all, which means if she does re-form the Jedi Order, it'll be with self-taught knowledge from the Jedi books she took with her. In addition to essentially erasing Luke as a lasting part of the story, this also cements Rey as a complete Mary Sue. She is exactly what Kylo said she was when he was trying to corrupt her: A junk rat whose parents sold her for drinking money. She's not important, so why is she the final savior figure of the entire fucking saga? She's bland and uninteresting, and the plot hands her whatever powers she needs to succeed. To erase all meaning from the stories of Luke and Anakin Skywalker and give it to her is an insult to everyone who grew up with those characters.

If you take the Sequel Trilogy as the be-all end-all of Star Wars, this movie works great, but as a part of the greater SW whole, it's absolutely atrocious.

The whole point of the new movies is to make sure the old cast do not overshadow the new cast. Lucasfilm even admitted that one of the reasons why Ep 7 was delayed was that they couldn't figure out a story where the old cast, especially Luke doesn't overshadow Rey. In very plain and frank words, the sequel trilogy is about erasing the shadow of the OT cast on the Star Wars franchise. It's to allow a new generation to take over.

Now, the problem is whether the new characters can stand on their own without the support of the old cast. Sadly, I think they can't stand well on their own. TFA made it too easy for the new heroes to succeed. Sure TLJ deconstructed some of it, especially with Poe, but as a whole, the new cast have yet to undergo any major challenge to their character journey.

Rey seems to have mostly gotten over her lack of important parents by this film, concluding her personal struggle with her "boring" heritage. Poe matured into a better leader. There's not much struggle left for the characters other than the next big showdown. The character arcs are completed even if the plot isn't.

[fractalsponge1]

I just saw it and I'm very conflicted by it. On the plus side I enjoyed it as a movie. As a Star Wars movie, maybe a little off. The pacing was good, the effects (if not always the design) was good, and there were some genuinely nicely done bits, like the throne room sequence. About half the humor was great, half was cringey, so par for the course. Shockingly not a reshoot of TESB like TFA did to ANH in places. Some major inconsistencies by demand of plot though that make me hard to be unstintingly positive about it though.

The best part about it was that it seemed like a garbage-disposal exercise following TFA. Snoke was cleaned up appropriately and entertainingly, and the way Ren did it was handled beautifully. Phasma got some good stuff. Still massive worldbuilding fail in general, but that's not so much the fault of TLJ, but rather TFA.

The bad I thought is that space warfare is just a total fiasco. If Snokes ship hadn't been such a presence on screen and died in such a spectacular and cinematically beautiful fashion I'd be livid about it. But it was all in all the triumph of the art major over the science major. I mean, the waddling bombers in literal Battle Over the Reich style and the...free fall gravity bombs (in SPACE?) and the spitball turbolasers and the fact that ships actually slow down after thrust is cut - I just can't even. This definitely ain't the Expanse. It's like they've forgotten how to do a good battle in more than detail, but in setup. Capital ships generally useless as usual in SW, but at least they killed some things with an actual standard weapon, even if it was a space onager in performance.

The escape leading to the casino scene was just dumb beyond belief. It's a convenient space battle that you can waltz in and out of when the plot demands it. Indulgent film-making, and regardless of how pretty and interesting it might have been in places this sequence is like the worst of Lucas' nonsense during the prequels, without oversight.

[Rogue 9]

IF IT'S THAT EASY TO KILL CAPITAL SHIPS WITH FIGHTERS, WHY THE EVERLOVING HOLY FUCK DO THEY HAVE CAPITAL SHIPS? Jesus tapdancing Christ on a pogo stick!

[Civil War Man]

My personal opinion was that it was a good movie, but a poor sequel to TFA. A lot of parts definitely gave me the impression of "we regret putting this in the last movie, so we're just going to flip the board and call a do-over," for better or for worse. The big examples of this are Kylo Ren's helmet, Luke's lightsaber, Rey's parents, and Phasma and Snoke in general.

Also, I do notice a bit of conflict between two of the main themes of the movie. One is "Let go of the past," while another is "Failure is the best teacher."

One thing that really confused by family when we saw it was the whole thing with those gold dice on a chain. They kept being emphasized as if they were something of great sentimental or emotional value to Luke or Leia, but they never appeared before this movie. If it was something that actually did appear before, like Han's blaster or one of his old vests, then I could see why they'd keep putting it front and center, but not these dice that were never seen before now and will probably never be seen again. Between that and that old guy in the beginning of TFA, there seems to be a running gag of the sequel movies going "Hey kids, remember this?" for stuff that doesn't show up in the earlier movies.

EDIT: Also, I regard the whole Space Leia thing as on par with Legolas running up the falling stones in the third Hobbit movie.

But, lest it seem like my entire post is nothing but criticism, I did like a bunch of other stuff. Kylo Ren in particular is a much more interesting character in this movie than he was in the last, and actually came across as more of a threat.

[ray245]

My personal opinion was that it was a good movie, but a poor sequel to TFA. A lot of parts definitely gave me the impression of "we regret putting this in the last movie, so we're just going to flip the board and call a do-over," for better or for worse. The big examples of this are Kylo Ren's helmet, Luke's lightsaber, Rey's parents, and Phasma and Snoke in general.

Also, I do notice a bit of conflict between two of the main themes of the movie. One is "Let go of the past," while another is "Failure is the best teacher."

One thing that really confused by family when we saw it was the whole thing with those gold dice on a chain. They kept being emphasized as if they were something of great sentimental or emotional value to Luke or Leia, but they never appeared before this movie. If it was something that actually did appear before, like Han's blaster or one of his old vests, then I could see why they'd keep putting it front and center, but not these dice that were never seen before now and will probably never be seen again. Between that and that old guy in the beginning of TFA, there seems to be a running gag of the sequel movies going "Hey kids, remember this?" for stuff that doesn't show up in the earlier movies.

That's my thoughts as well. I don't Rian Johnson is too happy about the direction JJ Abrams was trying to take. It's why he is willing to step in, mess up JJ's mystery box, then throw it back at him.

It's a direct refutation against JJ's directing/storytelling style.

[Guardsman Bass]

I saw it a few hours ago and really enjoyed it.

1. It's nice to see Poe have an arc, with his stupidly reckless plan turning out to be . . . stupidly reckless (and fail badly, although it's not his fault that Finn and Rose decided to trust in a shady hacker guy they'd never known about or met before). It reminds of a line from Halo: "with all due respect, this war has seen enough dead heroes". And at the end, he finally realizes he's being stupidly reckless again and calls off the attack to save the lives of his fellow rebels.

2. There's only really two plot issues I can think of. How did DJ know about the secret evacuation plan from the rebel cruiser if Finn and Rose didn't know? And if the rebels were just fleeing in a straight line, why didn't Hux call in more ships to try and pin them from other directions? Even if they jumped to hyperspace, they'd just be followed again. I assume the first order has more than a handful of star destroyers plus the command ship.

3. I like that Kylo Ren is absolutely not menacing at all. Snoke's "take off that ridiculous helmet" line made me laugh.

4. The reveal of Rey's parents being nobodies who abandoned her was good, too. It fits thematically and is much more interesting than having her being some special child or another Skywalker.

[Rhadamantus]

The weird inconsistency with the RO hyperspace entering scene could have a rationale.
First off, the rebel ship is a Cruiser, a real one. At 3.5 Km long, it's probably 10 times the size of a star destroyer. Second, it was accelerating for a lot longer. The Devastator came out at 100 km or so from the rebel ships. The Supremacy was much much farther away and so it hit a lot faster.
Guesstimating, the corvettes were 1/200 ISD size and had been accelerating for 2 seconds. The cruiser was 10x ISD size, and accelerated for 20 seconds. That's 10 times faster, and 100 times more energetic per pound, 200,000 more energetic overall. It's certainly plausible that the cruiser dumped enough energy to shatter the shield panel with a temporary overload of something in the neighborhood of triple digit petaton numbers and sliced through the massive underarmored beast.

[Rhadamantus]

Also, shield bubbles are now canonically a thing, which is interesting.

[Terralthra]

The dice were hanging in the Falcon's cockpit since ANH. They were never pointed out as super important, but they were absolutely there all along.

Also, I don't understand the complaints about the gravity bombs "in space". They were over a planet, remember, not in deep space, and under thrust the whole time, not orbiting stably. Yes, if you are over a planet under thrust, and you drop something, it will in fact fall toward the planet. That's how gravity works.

[PREDATOR490]

The whole opening sequence is a complete clusterfuck of stupidity in-universe and out.

This universe has guided missiles and torpedoes that can seriously damage capital ships, we literally see one of the First Order fighters hit the command bridge of the Rebel Cruiser with two missiles and kill everyone without a hilarious act of plot save. The cruiser was still running from the First Order so Leia should have been road killed by the cruiser as it slammed into her or flys right past her. This is in the same film where running out of fuel instantly causes the Rebel ships to slow down and fall back.

Although, the film really should have ended when those same missiles were used on the ENGINES but this film is nothing but a story that is full of stupidity and act of plot.

This new brand of Star Wars is making no small effort to rip off elements from the previous films down to making bigger Star Destroyers and AT-ATs. It is disgusting they introduced a completely stupid bomber when the Y-Wing or B-Wings were established AND they have weapons that can cripple capital ships (Rogue One). Those atrocious bombers were clearly meant to be a poor imitation of WW2 bombers and it is appalling that noone shit canned this entire scene.

Starting with a Dreadnaught that gets crippled by a single X-Wing while the Escorts do fuck all and ending with the introduction of bombers that have no logical reason to exist or be used in-universe or out.

The much more sensible and far more visually awesome scene would have been multiple fighters engaging the defences so that a large group of Y-Wings or B-Wings could let off a volley of guided missiles / torpedoes.
If someone was even remotely competent - The bombers would strike the underside of the whale since all of it's fighter defence was stuck on the top. Cause space ships work exactly like WW2 battleships or something.

For a franchise called STAR WARS. The actual space battles of these new films are abysmal.
Rogue One is the only film that seems to have actually made an effort to have a real space battle AND do it pretty well.


End of the Jedi

We literally see the Jedi texts in the Falcon - Thus Yoda lightning stuck a tree for nothing which makes Luke and Yoda look like idiots. All to somehow establish they want to get rid of the old but... they keep the old books anyway ? - Obvious attempt to leave a backdoor kinda undermines this entire film. Not to mention Luke outright calls Ray the next Jedi so... what the fuck ?

Film cannot even have Luke be consistent or clear about its message of no-more-Jedi


Chase Premise

This entire film revolves around the chase concept and it is stupid start to finish.
We see fighters can seriously harm capital ships to the point it is more than reasonable Kylo Ren and his fighter escorts could have damaged or destroyed the cruisers engines thus ending the chase.
We see multiple ships jumping into the chase from elsewhere in the galaxy so... the FO could have called in for reinforcements to jump ahead of the Rebel fleet and pincer them.
Alternatively, the escorting Star Destroyers that did nothing for the film could jump out and back for the same effect.

Fin and Co. coming up with the tracking stuff was an utter ass pull of information they should have NO reason to have. Why the fuck is a Janitor going to have access to plans and locations for multiple restricted locations on highly sensitive ships / bases ?
How the fuck would they know that every FO ship can track a ship in hyperspace but only ONE of them would do it at a time AND how to disable it.

The rebel fleet jumped to a secret base so far out that the First Order could chase them for a day all the way there even before they knew they could be tracked through hyperspace.
The ships that ran out of fuel - could have logically jumped to hyperspace or pulled the exact same hyperspace ramming tactic

This film is simply one massive contrived situation that only exists because the entire fucking cast is inept except when the plot magically grants them a need to do something even when they have shown no reason to be able to do that thing.

[Terralthra]

End of the Jedi

We literally see the Jedi texts in the Falcon - Thus Yoda lightning stuck a tree for nothing which makes Luke and Yoda look like idiots. All to somehow establish they want to get rid of the old but... they keep the old books anyway ? - Obvious attempt to leave a backdoor kinda undermines this entire film. Not to mention Luke outright calls Ray the next Jedi so... what the fuck ?

Film cannot even have Luke be consistent or clear about its message of no-more-Jedi

Errr...you get that the whole point of Luke's arc is that he changes his mind based on the events of the film, right? Are you familiar with the concept of a character arc, like, at all? It's staggering to me that you consider "a character changes their mind because of things that happen" a flaw.

[Nephtys]

The talk of 'character assassination' is silly. Holding the events of the OT as holy canon is what gets us a trash and unimaginative EU full of books about Porkins or random nobodies, or continuing drama with 50 Skywalker/Solo children.

In TFA, Solo's character is perfectly in line with who he should be: A scoundrel who was never really fit for respectable life. So he falls back to what he knew: And incidentally, what Solo knew gets him in trouble.
In TLJ: Luke has a lot of in between time, when he thinks he has it down. He after all, played a pivotal role in the downfall of the Empire. So he tries to do things right: And in focusing so much on the problems of Vader, his hubris (inherited from Kenobi mind you), creates a new Vader. So he too becomes his surrogate father, Ben. And cue his confrontation to 'strike me down and I'll become stronger' moment, as well as leaving his pupil with the seeds for the future. He vows to never make the mistakes of the Jedi again. But then in his experiences with Rey, and how she forces him to confront his own mistakes in a different way (plus some talk with Yoda), he decides to do something else and that there IS a future.

All of this is perfectly in character.

--
As for the technical shit, come on people. Needing it to be spelled out for you is why we got garbage like Yoda learning the Appear as a Ghost Class Ability from Qui-Gon's Ghost, so we could be 'explained' how some of the magical wizards get to be blue ghosts but not Sam Jackson.

Here's a quickie: Remember when the Rebel Cruiser mentioned to focus shields backwards? That, plus a lack of fighter coverage, lets Kylo's wing get close and under the front shield, where they can bomb a specific target, the bridge. Which was after all, Kylo's intention until he hesitated. It also sets up Kylo's destruction of the flight deck, which prevents Poe from using a fighter to try and solve his problems in the only way he knew how.

Also remember, the space battle serves solely to accentuate the characters: Kylo's hesitation, setup for the siege and fuel situation for the rebels, Leia's situation, decapitation of leadership. Even the bomber plan serves only actually to grow Poe in starting off as a reckless hothead, kill off the Bomber Crew Sister to set up Rose, and ultimately destroy a military target that is in fact, meaningless to the universe as a whole.

Those are what Star Wars battles are meant to be about. Not clusterfuck bullshit like the Prequels which are just CGI Spaceship Porn without heart or reason.

[NecronLord]

The dice were hanging in the Falcon's cockpit since ANH. They were never pointed out as super important, but they were absolutely there all along.

Also, I don't understand the complaints about the gravity bombs "in space". They were over a planet, remember, not in deep space, and under thrust the whole time, not orbiting stably. Yes, if you are over a planet under thrust, and you drop something, it will in fact fall toward the planet. That's how gravity works.

The ship will drop towards the planet at the same rate toward as the things on it.

In orbit there is microgravity not because the space station/capsule is completely away from all planets, but because everything aboard is falling toward the planet at the same rate, this is why we call it freefall.

This is also why the vomit comet is able to do its thing by having the plane dive downward - to the point where the plane and everything on it are falling at a uniform rate.

The thrust you are thinking of is the counterforce to the force of the engine.

An unsecured object on a ship that is moving would move opposite to the direction of thrust. Star Wars ships traditionally have an interial compensator handwave to stop everyone being plastered to the back wall. But no, that's not what's being depicted.

It would need a launch mechanism to push them out of the vessel because the bombs are 'dropped' perpendicular to the direction of thrust.

[eMeM]

But was the destruction of the Matador meaningless? With a "fleet killer" the chase would end very fast, and if not the Crait base could be just nuked from orbit.

Like most of the movie, Poe's arc is a badly executed cliche relying on people acting like morons, with in-your-face moral that would feel out of place in Star Wars Rebels. In fact The Clone Wars did it better... a copule times.

[tezunegari]

But was the destruction of the Matador meaningless? With a "fleet killer" the chase would end very fast, and if not the Crait base could be just nuked from orbit.

Like most of the movie, Poe's arc is a badly executed cliche relying on people acting like morons, with in-your-face moral that would feel out of place in Star Wars Rebels. In fact The Clone Wars did it better... a copule times.

Poe sacrificed the bomber wing to kill the Dreadnought. A ship that could one-shot-kill theirs and got demoted for it. He ignored a direct order from the Leia herself. But considering the firepower the ship had and that apparently the only competent Admiral was aboard the Pizza slice dreadnought... I think he did the right thing.

And that FO Admiral was good. he was the only one complaining about the missing fighter screen and recognized the Resistance plan immediately. (Strangely I kinda like the design now, after seeing it in action and from different angles.)

Also Poes mutiny was justified, at least in my opinion.
The new General pretty much said "trust me even though I give you no reason to."

If she had told him "We are working on a plan, nothing final yet. Now get me some alternatives." the whole Casino planet plot could have been avoided.

It felt as if she was a traitor to be honest until she went hyperspace shotgun on th Supremacy.

And somehow I got the feeling that Rian Johnson didn't like the direction JJ Abrams had set up with TFA and just wrote his own story instead.

[Abacus]

NecronLord said it best there. Physics were screwed in this film (more than usual for a SW film imho). Not to mention that those same bombers don't appear to have any kind of magnetic shield keeping the ship's atmosphere INSIDE the ship when they open their bomb bay doors...it just opens out into space...which would mean there should be a lot of people and things being thrust outwards due to escaping atmosphere. It made zero sense.

Also, when I saw that dreadnought and they called it "a Fleet Killer" - I immediately asked myself: why the hell did they ever make Starkiller Base? Why not build dozens and dozens of these things? [*rage off screen for a few minutes*]

As I said in my initial post, the First Order completely fails at being a military force.

[NecronLord]

Also remember, the space battle serves solely to accentuate the characters: Kylo's hesitation, setup for the siege and fuel situation for the rebels, Leia's situation, decapitation of leadership. Even the bomber plan serves only actually to grow Poe in starting off as a reckless hothead, kill off the Bomber Crew Sister to set up Rose, and ultimately destroy a military target that is in fact, meaningless to the universe as a whole.

Those are what Star Wars battles are meant to be about. Not clusterfuck bullshit like the Prequels which are just CGI Spaceship Porn without heart or reason.

See, I can sympathize with this point of view but in view of the persistent nihilism of the sequel trilogy I find it undermines the characters.



Even in Empire when the Rebels are being beaten down and killed off, they are still fighting for a cause beyond themselves. The Resistance is a tiny tangle of people, a few hundred, when they go to Crait they are dwarfed by the scale of the old Rebellion. The Rebellion is worth fighting for, it's a cause bigger than the few named protagonists.

The Resistance is now one step more meaningful than a dozen people spitballing about overthrowing the First Order in a bar. It's the revolutionaries in Les Mis; hoping the people will rise but clearly misguided. The minimalism - compared to the original movies, not some EU stuff of a million star destroyers - is more than just 'the space battles are unrealistic' it's 'these guys don't have a cause, or a hope.'

This film hammers you over the head with the irrelevance of the Resistance; no one is coming. No one cares.

What's the point in Poe Dameron being a good fighter pilot if no one gives a shit and two more fascists will appear for every one they kill?

[NecronLord]

Also, when I saw that dreadnought and they called it "a Fleet Killer" - I immediately asked myself: why the hell did they ever make Starkiller Base? Why not build dozens and dozens of these things? [*rage off screen for a few minutes*]

Eh, the Starkiller Base did after all destroy the mighty New Republic Fleet.

[Rogue 9]

Okay, so after reflecting on it for awhile, I think I've about pinned down the things that bothered me about it, a lot of which has already been said in the thread, but here goes.

It feels like Rian Johnson knows what goes into a Star Wars movie. The plucky heroes, the lightsaber battles, redemption stories, Star Destroyers, starfighters, etc. He definitely knows these things. But he then chucked them all into a blender, poured out the resulting soup, and screened it. Much of the plot - such as it is - relies on the characters either being complete fools or having knowledge that they should have no way to possess.

For instance: Apparently the heroes SOMEHOW know that the First Order's Star Destroyers can track ships through hyperspace - evidently not even needing to be present when they jump, since Snoke's ship wasn't - which had previously only been achieved through Vader following the Tantive IV using the Force after seeing it escape right in front of him. Yet somehow, they ALSO know that despite every ship in the pursuing armada having this ability, only one of them will be using it at a time. For some inscrutable reason.

Then there's the random criminal dude they broke out of prison at the casino (where apparently EVERYONE present was in the arms trade, because as we all know, there are no other ways to make money!). I was kind of on board with that right up until he cut a deal with the First Order. And not because he did that; he's a random criminal dude, who should be expected to do that kind of thing. No, because of Finn's exact question: "With what?" What did he give the First Order to get them to agree to pay him, give him a ship, and let him go? Was it an unexpected yet inevitable betrayal, telling them that the break-in was in progress? No, he turned after being caught. What then? He told them about the Resistance plan to escape their cruiser in cloaked transports ("No ship that small has a cloaking device!"). HOW DID HE KNOW THAT? Finn and Rose didn't know about it; how would he possibly have learned? (And then Hux lets him go before ascertaining the truth of his report. "Will wonders never cease," indeed.)

Then there's the general lack of military sense displayed by anyone in the movie except for the First Order admiral who dies on the Dreadnought in the beginning. The First Order had many ships. Those ships had hyperdrives, and apparently much larger fuel reserves than the Resistance cruisers. Why not jump out, jump back in ahead of them, and cut them off?

So, the Millennium Falcon can jump out of hyperspace right in front of a Star Destroyer, drop off an object, and jump out... and they just take it on board. If they're that stupid, send them a bomb.

A real head-banger: They made a big deal about getting to a base facility with enough power to broadcast a distress call, but they can apparently call Maz Kanata right up to quiz her about ways to disable tracking beacons, so apparently they could have just done that from the cruiser. They didn't.

In addition to, once again, HOLY FUCK WHY DO THEY BOTHER WITH CAPITAL SHIPS?

I just can't even.

[Rogue 9]

Though I will also say Kylo Ren taking over the First Order instead of going for redemption was not a surprise. We were clearly seeing a Sith apprentice betrayal in action from the beginning of the scene.

[CaoCao]

The weird inconsistency with the RO hyperspace entering scene could have a rationale.
First off, the rebel ship is a Cruiser, a real one. At 3.5 Km long, it's probably 10 times the size of a star destroyer. Second, it was accelerating for a lot longer. The Devastator came out at 100 km or so from the rebel ships. The Supremacy was much much farther away and so it hit a lot faster.
Guesstimating, the corvettes were 1/200 ISD size and had been accelerating for 2 seconds. The cruiser was 10x ISD size, and accelerated for 20 seconds. That's 10 times faster, and 100 times more energetic per pound, 200,000 more energetic overall. It's certainly plausible that the cruiser dumped enough energy to shatter the shield panel with a temporary overload of something in the neighborhood of triple digit petaton numbers and sliced through the massive underarmored beast.

The Supremacy has a wingspan of 60 km. Anyways, you are talking about damage by accelerating an object. For hyperspace, it's supposedly entering another dimension where the only physical obstacle are objects that generate gravity (like planets, stars and Interdictor cruisers). It is not some kind of slingshot. Anyways, it was a visually nice, pretty cool plot device, that makes space battles useless, and makes building cap ships a waste of resources.

The talk of 'character assassination' is silly. Holding the events of the OT as holy canon is what gets us a trash and unimaginative EU full of books about Porkins or random nobodies, or continuing drama with 50 Skywalker/Solo children.

No, you don't get it. They can always give the old cast a nice send off (hell, thay could have been dead by the start of the new trilogy), respecting the OT (because we know them from the OT, what other source can be used). Example, make Ben's fall something else, and Luke to die in his stand before him, and not as a coward that kept hidden in a remote planet and died by drinking too much blue milk.

You don't get what Han or Luke are.

Han always get back to his friends. In a New hope, he went back to save Luke even though he got his payement, in ESB he risks freezing to death to search for Luke and doesn't leave without Leia, and in RotJ he even goes with the group to Endor. He plays the uncaring scoundrel but he always acts opposite to that. In the new canon, he didn't leave when things got sideways, he had already left for some racing patronship by the time of Bloodlines.

Luke is constantly shown to never lose hope in all other movies, so it's character assasination to make him lose faith in his nephew that didn't do anything wrong yet. Hell, in Battlefront he even has hope for Del Meeko, who is an imperial elite force (which this movie made canon, btw).

[KraytKing]

A lot of people have been saying that it was stupid for the heroes to know how the FO was tracking them through hyperspace and how to disable it. I thought the method was stupid. As soon as I heard someone say "They tracked us through hyperspace," I thought of how both Kylo and Leia are Force-sensitive and share a special bond. As seen in ROTJ, you can use the Force to track certain individuals, and as seen in Tarkin, you can track them through hyperspace. That's what should have happened. Kylo tracked Leia, and then he should have killed her, and then lost the scent. As is, everyone agrees a thing is impossible, unless you just use this technology that some people already knew about and has been around for a while.

[Rhadamantus]

The weird inconsistency with the RO hyperspace entering scene could have a rationale.
First off, the rebel ship is a Cruiser, a real one. At 3.5 Km long, it's probably 10 times the size of a star destroyer. Second, it was accelerating for a lot longer. The Devastator came out at 100 km or so from the rebel ships. The Supremacy was much much farther away and so it hit a lot faster.
Guesstimating, the corvettes were 1/200 ISD size and had been accelerating for 2 seconds. The cruiser was 10x ISD size, and accelerated for 20 seconds. That's 10 times faster, and 100 times more energetic per pound, 200,000 more energetic overall. It's certainly plausible that the cruiser dumped enough energy to shatter the shield panel with a temporary overload of something in the neighborhood of triple digit petaton numbers and sliced through the massive underarmored beast.

The Supremacy has a wingspan of 60 km. Anyways, you are talking about damage by accelerating an object. For hyperspace, it's supposedly entering another dimension where the only physical obstacle are objects that generate gravity (like planets, stars and Interdictor cruisers). It is not some kind of slingshot. Anyways, it was a visually nice, pretty cool plot device, that makes space battles useless, and makes building cap ships a waste of resources.

The Supremacy is roughly as large relative to the Raddus as the Hammerheads were to the Devastator.
There's the idea that the accelerating to hyperspace is rapidly gaining velocity before flashing across the light barrier. In that philosophy, since both were going sub-light but one was going much much faster, that's why it caused more damage.
The old explanation for why smaller ships don't just hyperspace kamikaze larger ones would have been that it could have been shot down, but since they clearly couldn't here, that doesn't work. The Supremacy absolutely could have dodged the Raddus if anyone had been thinking quick enough.
Rian Johnson clearly has no idea how acceleration or relativity works, though, so any conclusions that depend on those will be problematic. For instance, accelerating at 3000g for 18 hours ship time, should result in a velocity of essentially c, and having travelled 54 light years at just sub c velocities. Even if we went with pitifully low accelerations of 100g each, they'd still be travelling at velocities that they clearly aren't. Rian Johnson has them moving at seemingly 2000 km/s, with no acceleration.