Star Wars: The Last Jedi release thread (spoilers)

[Nephtys]

The Red wall was great. I loved it. Because it provided huge contrast to the greeble we come to expect in an Imperial command room. It was just his pad, and the oppressing red made it more menacing than if it was just a copy of the DS2 Throne Room. I thought that made the scene more interesting by being so minimalistic and stark, and made the guards look more threatening too.

Agreed on the Casino Planet being a waste and distraction.

[Galvatron]

I didn't necessarily want greebles either. Maybe a giant mural of ancient glyphs or something that would make us all wonder even more about Snoke's origin.

[KraytKing]

I wish it hadn't just been sheets of red, though. They fell off when they burned. Someone rich as hell and flaunting their power would certainly have put in something solid. This just looked cheap.


While I'm at it, I hated the aesthetic they gave the new guards. They didn't look Star Wars, they looked like some Star Trek bullshit. Same problem as those tentacle monster in TFA.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I dunno, I think the red walls worked for Snoke. Doesn't give away anything of his origins to anyone in-universe and keeps any visitors' attention focused on him rather than some mysterious displays/tapestries. Also keeps the viewr's attention on him, Rey and Kylo, as it should be since they are what the scenes are about.

[Galvatron]

YMMV, but I thought it was an eyesore.

The new ship designs weren't aesthetically pleasing either. Those bombers and speeders got nothing on the B-wing or T-47. Star Wars desperately needs Joe Johnston to return in some form, IMO.

[Soontir C'boath]

All right, saw it this morning. Ups and downs and all around.

First and foremost, I think I will always be disappointed in the space battles. The level of kickassery I want may never be achieved even with Revenge of the Sith which is probably the best of them all so far. This is my own faulty expectation though since from the start with the Battle of Yavin, space battles has been about the individual pilots rather than the importance of the fleet as a whole. It was fighters and the Falcon that took out both Death Stars. It was Anakin in a fighter that took down the droid control ship in the Phantom Menace and him and Obi-wan to Grievous' ship in Revenge of the Sith. It was fighters that took down Starkiller Base and the dreadnought in the sequels. They really know how to write starfighters! They should just have fighter carriers launching squadrons of them to ride the story on! I really shouldn't expect the writers to care or have a grasp about the capital ships and how they operate even though it seems time and time again fighters are their worst enemy. Instead, they'll treat them like giant space faring catapults that are sitting ducks against the gnats and can slowly take out transports one at a time. (I don't even want to go into Rogue One and that had a fleet that was needed to advance the plot!) So with this frame in mind, expecting torrents of turbolasers and missiles to rain upon each other's fleets in a compelling manner is simply out of the question especially when we are back to the storyline of the small and poorly equipped rebellion against the big bad empire with a superweapon of the week again.

If instead, Poe was a different character with perhaps a different set of flaws to overcome and was an admiral who knew how to use his ill-equipped resistance fleet to outmanuever the First Order to win for the New Republic, I would fucking love him to death, but in the end, it's just not in the Star Wars DNA and it's my fault for expecting anything different than a really hotshot pilot who seems to be infinitely better than Anakin! It's simply too easy to write plucky ace fighters blowing shit up which just makes it all rather formulaic and boring after the second fucking time (which was Return of the Jedi). At least back in 1977-83, CGI was barely existent and in the 2000's it was still sort of in its infancy. At least with Revenge of the Sith, the battle made some kind of sense in that the focus was to rescue the Emperor. Now? Money is the major factor unfortunately it seems and the fleet is made to look like idiots. I don't mean the incompetence that the First Order was purposely written into either. The aesthetics and workings of the technology involved are just too close to home. Having a weapon look and work like a bombard just takes me out of the universe and back to the medieval period.

With that out of the way, I do like where the character development is going for all the characters. Well except for Finn who could have easily been written out of the story without consequence. I would not have minded at all if he had sacrificed himself into the siege canon as well. Let Rose take his place in the next movie. Also credit to them for having the less beautiful sister having more screen time. Given what I had heard of Hamil's disagreement with how Luke was written, I was prepared for Luke to do something like throwing the lightsaber away (damn indirect spoilers). It was a risk for sure to portray him this way, but at the same time, Luke barely had much training under Yoda compared to actual Padwans and basically self-taught on the ways of the Force. Expecting him to be better than Obi-wan who if I recall, even the Jedi Council thought was ill suited to train someone as unstable and old as Anakin, at least had some guidance from them however flawed the Jedi Order was, is simply asking for too much out of Luke. I would find it rather critical of the people who would criticize Rey for her abilities, but then turn around and expect Luke to be a flawless Jedi Master as well.

I am glad Rey's parents are unremarkable. Once Kylo Ren is defeated, the Skywalker dynasty can end and let new characters take their place. It's been forty years since the original trilogy came out, new life needs to be breathed into this franchise.

I could've done without the "comedic intro" with Poe and FO. I definitely can do without all the scenes that are just rehashes of the original trilogy. Whatever can be said of the prequels, at least they expanded visually what is in the universe. Whether it was Coruscant, Geonosis, Mustafar, etc, they offered various appealing eyecandy. If I didn't know any better, the rehashes are force feeding people the familiarity of what they think they want, but in the end, it is not actually what they wanted after all.

In the end, I'm tired of it all. The franchise seems tired. It offers the same shit over and over again and it is high time that Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, etc are put to rest.

Though at least with the Han Solo movie, hopefully we dive into a vastly different perspective of the SW universe than what we've been shoveled with so far.

Can't think of anything else to say and it doesn't help that I seem to have forgotten half of it already.

[Soontir C'boath]

I mean come on. You have this First Order that is suppose to be a remnant of the empire that can still manage to put together the resources to build a fucking planetary size sun/planet killer, that dreadnought, new star destroyers, etc, but the Resistance can't even find enough support in the entire damn galaxy to put up a sizable fleet? Am I to really believe that the New Republic demilitarized to the point that there is not even anything in storage for them to use or that apparently any pockets of smaller confederations with a fleet can't spare any ships to fight? I just can't, I'm sorry. It makes this universe pathetically lopsided in terms of believability.

And that aside from the small group that fits inside the goddamn Falcon, the people that we are suppose to believe that will fight against the First Order are the pockets of kids spread throughout the galaxy that will grow up to rise against them? With what fleet to destroy the First Order, by the way? Given how formulaic the two sequels have been so far, I suppose Kylo Ren will build another super duper weapon to scare the galaxy into submission and it will be up to Rey and Finn to blow it up with Ren in it. With a lightsaber duel beforehand of course.

[Meest]

Don't get the whole Skywalkers need to go or less of family saga. There's plenty of other and if anything more power non Skywalker force users. What's Yoda's lineage? Palpatine, these aren't some immaculate conception beings, there's plenty of non Skywalker force users, why it is being thrown around now it opens the universe up to sweeping boys becoming force sensitive? Obi-won's force ghost should have appeared and protested the stupidity from a certain point of view.

[Nephtys]

Luke, Obi-Wan, Yoda and the gang aren't the only characters in the universe. By tying everything to them and existing stuff we hear in the original movies, we get the utter idiocy of Darth Vader building C3PO as a child, or that Yoda was a shitty police chief who took shifts teaching Jedi 101 daycares. Basically, all the worst and most creatively bankrupt parts of the EU and PT.

We do need to end the Skywalker shit now. Rey being a spiritual successor is fine, given how refreshing that it was once again, a nobody from the hobo planet who pursues a quest, instead of being some weird bloodline prophecy nonsense. The entire premise of the movie in fact, was that the main characters on screen aren't the only heroes or agents of positive change.

I for one, don't want to know a goddamn thing about Yoda's species, parents, drunk uncle, or whatever.

[Ender]

Err...what? Your evidence that the dreadnought is facing head-on toward the planet is that it has a planetary ring behind it, and it "doesn't move relative to the ring"? There's literally no way for you to know that. Rings go...all the way around the planet, in a...ring. The dreadnought could be facing anywhere within a nearly 180 degree arc and have the ring hanging in space behind it with the planet anywhere from almost directly below it to directly above it. We also know that the dreadnought isn't facing directly toward the planet, because the cannons with which it shoots the rebel base on the planet surface are declined significantly to fire.

You can see the curvature of the ring.

So I broke out some (crude) 3d models and did a bit of experimenting to confirm this.


The left image is the Mandator is on to the horizon of D'qar (a tangent from the surface five planetary radii long) with its prow positioned ot intersect the surface in line with that tangent. The right one is two planetary radii above sea level. The rings on this model are a little greater than the planetary diameter and I think is relatively accurate. The models are for disclaimer purpouses, too big to be completely to scale.

But in any case I think it demonstrates that yes, the rings prove little; I certainly 'feel' the leftmost image is more accurate, but without knowing how wide the planetary rings of D'qar actually are in universe that demonstrates nothing.

So tl;dr you're right on that.

And I've got a better image of the actual fight.



So the attack ships are presumably still going to be ascending relative to D'qar, which means if they release unguided objects, those objects in motion will continue in uniform motion until acted on by an external force. So, again, there's no reason for the bombs to fall away from the ships that release them.

Yes, an unattended object placed over a planet will fall down toward it; but objects in motion have momentum.

It's fuckin wild that we went from the unassailable measuring of counting pixel blocks and doing basic trig to do gold standard calcs, to "yeah let me do a 3d render mock up for a quick back of the envelope estimate of what's happening"

[eMeM]

Luke, Obi-Wan, Yoda and the gang aren't the only characters in the universe. By tying everything to them and existing stuff we hear in the original movies, we get the utter idiocy of Darth Vader building C3PO as a child, or that Yoda was a shitty police chief who took shifts teaching Jedi 101 daycares. Basically, all the worst and most creatively bankrupt parts of the EU and PT.

We do need to end the Skywalker shit now. Rey being a spiritual successor is fine, given how refreshing that it was once again, a nobody from the hobo planet who pursues a quest, instead of being some weird bloodline prophecy nonsense. The entire premise of the movie in fact, was that the main characters on screen aren't the only heroes or agents of positive change.

I for one, don't want to know a goddamn thing about Yoda's species, parents, drunk uncle, or whatever.

It's funny to hear about "prophecy nonsense" and "Rey is fine" next to each other, conisdering that it is explicitly said she is the Chosen One Part 2: Midichlorianic Boogaloo, Or How Everything is Bigger, Stronger and Better In Our Trilogy.

[NecronLord]

It's fuckin wild that we went from the unassailable measuring of counting pixel blocks and doing basic trig to do gold standard calcs, to "yeah let me do a 3d render mock up for a quick back of the envelope estimate of what's happening"

I'm bemused at what you think would benefit from scaling by pixel here?

[amigocabal]

The entire Canto Bight side quest was a complete bore and the cinematography during the night scenes was way too dark.

Instead of making Canto Bight an expy of Monaco, they should have made it an expy of the Las Vegas Strip.

Imagine Finn and Rose rising those fathiers on an eight-lane road, amid limousines and double-decker buses with tourists.

[ray245]

Luke, Obi-Wan, Yoda and the gang aren't the only characters in the universe. By tying everything to them and existing stuff we hear in the original movies, we get the utter idiocy of Darth Vader building C3PO as a child, or that Yoda was a shitty police chief who took shifts teaching Jedi 101 daycares. Basically, all the worst and most creatively bankrupt parts of the EU and PT.

We do need to end the Skywalker shit now. Rey being a spiritual successor is fine, given how refreshing that it was once again, a nobody from the hobo planet who pursues a quest, instead of being some weird bloodline prophecy nonsense. The entire premise of the movie in fact, was that the main characters on screen aren't the only heroes or agents of positive change.

I for one, don't want to know a goddamn thing about Yoda's species, parents, drunk uncle, or whatever.

It's funny to hear about "prophecy nonsense" and "Rey is fine" next to each other, conisdering that it is explicitly said she is the Chosen One Part 2: Midichlorianic Boogaloo, Or How Everything is Bigger, Stronger and Better In Our Trilogy.

Oh that's true. She might not have a destiny, but she is the one literally chosen by the force itself to match the "darkness". She's not really a nobody. She is basically space-jesus mk 2.0! Minus the virgin birth thing.

[Abacus]

The entire Canto Bight side quest was a complete bore and the cinematography during the night scenes was way too dark.

Instead of making Canto Bight an expy of Monaco, they should have made it an expy of the Las Vegas Strip.

Imagine Finn and Rose rising those fathiers on an eight-lane road, amid limousines and double-decker buses with tourists.

Nope, doesn't make it any better.

[Kurgan]

It's been said before, but the Last Jedi was just a huge middle finger to TFA and anyone who liked it (which wasn't me particularly, I'm of the "it's a big budget fan film remake thinly disguised as a sequel" camp... still, big reset button, again). Luke's character arc is completely trashed which is probably the worst part, even though his "training" scenes were some of the most entertaining acting-wise. And again, the most interesting parts were ripped from a previous film (ESB this time). Wonder if the next one will be another reset button?

The instant hyperdrive thing (from TFA) and the constant manned kamikaze attacks (by the Rebels but never the "bad guys") were annoying, but those bombers were the most annoying part, and I don't care what rationalizations people have tried for them. I hate when they do that ship! Saw the movie once in theaters, and that was enough... the only "disney star wars" I've cared for so far was rogue one, and that one still can't touch the prequels for overall entertainment value.

Every fan I've talked to in person has loved the movie of course, many have seen it multiple times already and probably consider it their favorite star wars film, if not the best film they've seen in years (or ever). It'll make 2 billion dollars and is critically acclaimed. Whatever...

[Kurgan]

Also, apparently "Grandmaster" Snoke reads a lot of Chick comics...

[Ender]

It's fuckin wild that we went from the unassailable measuring of counting pixel blocks and doing basic trig to do gold standard calcs, to "yeah let me do a 3d render mock up for a quick back of the envelope estimate of what's happening"

I'm bemused at what you think would benefit from scaling by pixel here?

Nothing? I'm noting how we went from pixel counting and highschool temperature transitions as deeply involved projects in 1997 to "yeah let me just recreate it 3d as farting around" in 2017

Tempus fugit

[NecronLord]

In fairness. I'm going to pixel scale that explosion when I get the DVD. Just for a radius of effect.

[Vendetta]

It's been said before, but the Last Jedi was just a huge middle finger to TFA and anyone who liked it (which wasn't me particularly, I'm of the "it's a big budget fan film remake thinly disguised as a sequel" camp... still, big reset button, again).

I think this presumes that TFA was written with any specific plans for any of the things it was setting up.

It wasn't, because that's not how JJ rolls.

He is not interested in answering questions, just in setting things up to be maximally ambiguous so that audiences can theorise forever and never have to be "wrong".

[Galvatron]

Despite all my theories, I'm less disappointed in Rey's origin than I am with Snoke's. I feel like they NEED to explain his rise to power in the same way the prequels explained Palpatine's.

Okay, maybe not three movies worth of political bullshit, but SOMETHING. Even a passing line about how he was some exiled dark Jedi marooned on some world in the Unknown Regions before he was found by what was left of the Empire. Our imaginations can do the rest.

[The Romulan Republic]

Despite all my theories, I'm less disappointed in Rey's origin than I am with Snoke's. I feel like they NEED to explain his rise to power in the same way the prequels explained Palpatine's.

They'll put it in some EU book that at least 95% of the film's audience will never read.

[Galvatron]

See my edit above. I don't even need an entire novel devoted to the subject.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

He wrote three of those books Yoda wanted to burn and helped found the Republic, but despite his wisdom those fools kept pushing him to the side, marginalizing him, mocking him! until he left in disgrace to watch in bitterness as their much vaunted temples and government rose on a pillar of hubris destined to shatter.

[Galvatron]

Not bad.