Episode IX fan theories (warning: here be dragons).

[FaxModem1]

Or they just used Imperial iconography for legitimacy. Lots of regimes have done that throughout history.

Isn't that worth pointing out in some way narratively, or does that get in the way of the space horses being rescued as a side plot?

[Gandalf]

Since one of the key themes of the film is the worship of the past as people attempt to recreate it in the present, I thought it obvious.

[FaxModem1]

Since one of the key themes of the film is the worship of the past as people attempt to recreate it in the present, I thought it obvious.

No, not really. While the theme is there, the theme runs into the issue of the narrative reality. Someone had to fund the construction of all their ships, someone had to hire all those soldiers and indoctrinate them, someone had to kidnap or pay scientists to make Starkiller. So either this is all one big plot by unseen bad guys to turn heads and make them fight the New Republic, and will be revealed in Episode IX, or this is all just lazy iconography to ape the original trilogy with no thought behind it, and defending itself as, "It's the theme of aping the past, dude."

EDIT: And before you complain about the Original Trilogy not doing this, the bad guys were the state, so we can assume that poor people like Owen and Beru Lars were paying taxes to fund the Imperial War Machine. The Prequel Trilogy even does this, and established that the Seperatists were made up of very powerful corporations funding their own military.

[Gandalf]

So your greater issue is that we don't see the FO's balance sheets to show how they could afford what we've seen? That seems odd.

[FaxModem1]

So your greater issue is that we don't see the FO's balance sheets to show how they could afford what we've seen? That seems odd.

Yes, because I want to see Accountant wars.

No, I want a sense of who and/or what the FO are, because as presented, they are supposed to seem like the Empire 2.0, without any justified reason why they are Empire 2.0. Are they as powerful as the Empire? Are they not? Iunno, do you?

Because if they aren't the state, which the New Republic was, what are they? And where are they getting their wonderful toys?

Could Jabba, before being strangled by Leia with a chain, have made such an organization if he was so inclined, and been the main antagonist? Is it that easy in the Star Wars galaxy?

That's the issue, we're not given a sense of what exactly they are, aside from what they're masquerading around as. They're not the government, they blew up that. They're not a private military hired by some corporations as far as we know, because we don't have any statements regarding that. They're not some illicit underground group, because they don't seem to be using the same storytelling tools that are used for that.

So, what are they? If they're supposed to be the equivalent of North Korea, as stated earlier in the thread, who is funding their superweapons? And why doesn't the NR have better defenses against such things?

[Vympel]

Who cares about directors making vague references to other fictional characters after I have walked out of the theatre? It's absolutely irrelevant to the quality of the movie.

Yeah, you're note even pretending to engage. It's sad. I mean, this is this exchange, summarized:

"The characterisation is terrible!"

"The characterisation is great. It reflects the experience of mythic figures after their triumph as they grow old. Here's Rian Johnson talking about why he did that."

"LOOOOOL WHO CARES"

All I can do is shrug.

"Refusal to take the movie at its word"
That's a very amusing way of saying "just accept whatever shit the movie is shoveling your way and don't ask any questions". The movie happens to be a sequel that is supposed to continue the story of already well established characters. You don't get to just take the characters and do whatever you want with them with no rhyme or reason and then say well this bad thing happened to them so all previously established characterization is out of the window.

"No rhyme or reason" - again, lying about what the films tell us. A character suffering an extremely hurtful failure that he thinks he's responsible for, creating a lot of death and destruction and failing his friends in a deeply personal way, is a reason.

Again - you just don't like that this is what ended up happening. So yes, "refusal to take the movie at its word" is accurate. It's just a classic bad fanboy reaction - "I didn't get the story I wanted [Luke running around being heroic], therefore I'm going to throw all my toys out of the pram and complain about absolutely everything."

The rest of your post is a case in point because its ... so bad.

Right, right unless the exact same bad thing already happened to Luke before then the writers get to have Luke react however they want and change his character however they please.
So never mind that the droid Luke chose to buy ultimately caused his aunt's and uncle's death which caused Luke to spring into action.

Whaaaaaaaat - you can't be serious. This is your "exact same bad thing", Luke making a random uninformed purchasing choice for an astromech on Threepio's recommendation (Threepio being the droid his uncle decided to buy, not Luke, but hey you not remembering what happened in any of the movies is a theme of this reply).

It's such a blindingly stupid attempt to draw a parallel it refutes itself, but since you've decided to be that ridiculous, I guess I have to spell it out:

Whoever knew that making a random uninformed suggestion to his uncle that through no conscious failure or act of his own resulted in the Empire coming down on his aunt and uncle is exactly the same thing as failing to prevent the fall of an extremely powerful force user for whose training you were responsible?

Never mind that he got defeated by Vader and didn't manage to save Han which caused Luke to try again next movie.

As stupid an attempt to draw parallels that don't exist as your previous attempt, unsurprisingly. Luke obviously knew that it'd be foolish in the extreme to blame himself for Han's fate simply because he lost a duel to Vader. He didn't put Han in that situation - unless you consider him merely existing. That is entirely different in character to being entrusted with the training of your friend's only child and having him become a murderous monster.

And lets be honest - you know that, too. There's no way you don't. At this stage, given this and your ludicrous "Luke bought the droids" flailing, its painfully apparent you're just throwing shit on the wall. It's bad, chief. Stop.

Never mind that Vader was fighting Luke even up to the very end of ROTJ which still didn't cause LUke to give up on him

See Luke never had to deal with the specific problem of all but 6 of his students dying and therefore his characterization is up for grabs!

Repeating yourself. The two situations are not at all comparable - irrespective of your feeble attempt to dodge the issue by making it about "his students dying" (which is bad enough despite your non content handwaving about it just being a "specific problem") as opposed to the key issue, which is where responsbility for Ben's fall and its consequences lies. Luke does not consider himself personally responsible for Vader's fall, or any of Vader's crimes. That is not the case with Ben.

Further, as to your similarly clueless "Vader fighting Luke" - Ben - unlike Vader - hates Luke. The bond of father and son between Vader and Luke is totally different than that of uncle and nephew between Luke and Ben. There is ample reason for Luke to consider himself the precisely wrong person to attempt to 'save' Ben, if he ever considered himself capable of such a thing.

Hey if in the next movie he looses all but seven of his students instead of all but six is that also a COMPLETELY NEW SITUATION and the writers get to move his character in another nonsensical direction?

Just naked bad faith troll logic at this stage. But then, you tried to argue that creating the next Darth Vader is analogus to making a suggestion to your uncle at the fucking droid shop. It's a miracle you can put your pants on straight at this stage of the argument.

Of course of course it has to be equivalent. If it's not equivalent then the sky is the limit as far as what you can do to Luke's character. Never mind that Luke is much younger in TESB, never mind that the events since that movie served to further strengthen his character. Fuck all of that because he never had to deal with this specific situation so it's totally cool to have him react exactly the opposite of the way we've always seen him react to setbacks.

Different setbacks, different reactions. But let's talk about "further strengthen his character" - I'm sorry that apparently you've been trained by shitty, mediocre literature that heroes just keep getting stronger and stronger in character until nothing affects them, but that's not only dishonest writing, it makes for boring fiction.

But you wouldn't know that because LOL WHO CARES about myths.

Dude it's not a betrayal it's just a shitty movie.
Yeah it was just a taunt! It wasn't as if he was facing a guy that killed Obi-Wan in front of his eyes, attacked the ice base killing who knows how many people, cut off his hand and was throwing spinning lightsabers at him. Oh and at the same time being keenly aware that the Death Star is currently in the process of grinding his friends into dust.

Huh??? Luke is far beyond wanting revenge for Vader killing Obi-Wan, cutting off his hand or attacking rebels on Hoth by the time of their duel on the Death Star 2. Watch the movie with your eyes and ears open - from his talk with Yoda and Obi-Wan and his talk with Leia and of course his very first meeting with Vader, Luke is imploring Vader to come back to the good side and repeatedly indicates that he will not fight Vader. He has no anger about Vader at all, at any point in the entire film, until the taunt about Leia. I mean jesus christ, the film lampshades this so hard:

LUKE
Leia! Leia's my sister.

BEN
Your insight serves you well. Bury your feelings deep down, Luke. They do you credit.
But they could be made to serve the Emperor.

In short, it is becoming more and more apparent that you are really really bad at watching Star Wars movies.

All it took for Vader was to threaten his sister and the guy blew up! Geez talk about my perfect heroic caricature crumbling before my eyes! This is totally no different than Kylo the Idiot rushing at a dude he hasn't seen for years, who is currently making no threatening moves and who can apparently withstand 10 AT-AT concentrating their firepower on him.

This is just incoherent. There's just no argument here that has anything to do with Luke at all.

Yeah I'm just bouncing of the walls crazy man! Between holograms, Jedi mind tricks, Force ghosts it's just cuckoo to point out that a guy surviving all of that could be an illusion. Because we've never seen HD Force ghosts and HD holograms. So it's more reasonable to conclude that Luke was deflecting that firepower.

"The angry impulsive villain isn't being reasonable! Terrible writing! Why didn't he watch TESB and ROTJ and see the Force ghosts!"

He can be obsessed all he wants as long as his character maintains some sense of reality. Otherwise he's just an idiot. As is the script.

Given your ever more grandiose and obvious failures to comprehend the script of this movie nevermind other Star Wars movies, this is rich.

Sure sure it's not like we've seen Jedi blown away by handheld blasters during the Order 66 including that conehead Jedi Master on the bridge that even had his lightsaber. It's not as if Kylo Ren would've learned during his training roughly what Jedi can and cannot do. So there is absolutely no reason for Kylo to doubt that Luke can survive the combined firepower of 10 AT-ATs and that an illusion might be at play.
It's just me and my arbitrary incredulity dude! Because increasing the color palette from 16-bit to 32-bit is no more likely than surviving combined firepower of 10 Abrams tanks. Silly me and my irrational skepticism.

Yeah that's totally how Jedi training works dude. Luke standing in front of a blackboard pointing at a schematic of a blaster and a video of ROTS. "Turn to your textbooks on page 16, you'll see you'll need to perform 50 force rock deadlifts to lift an X-Wing ..."

You mean like he tried it with Snoke and got flicked away like an insect? But now he's going to do it to a guy that can withstand that firepower? Retarded.

"But the power level of Goku is at 9000!"

This is like a compendium of basically every single way fanboys fuck up at basic film literacy. Idiotic, irrelevant rguments about made-up fridge logic rather than anything that's organic to character, narrative or theme.

I fully expect an unironic reference to whether Luke is a Jedi Consular or Guardian next and an appeal to KOTOR's instruction manual.

He's betting that Kylo will order every single AT-AT to fire at him?

Does it matter to Luke's plan how many AT-ATs fire? No, not really, it doesn't at all.

And also bet that after Kylo comes down for the duel he won't simply order the other forces to continue on.

Yes, quite obviously.

Also he knew that Kylo and not Snoke was in command because the midichlorians told him that Snoke was killed 5 minutes ago. Beacause that's how good writers write movies.

Oh yay let's get down to the lowest hanging fruit of all - PLOT HOLES. But wait - its not like Force users can feel the presence of others nearby, its only something that has been a thing since 1977. But sure, its totally reasonable to suppose that the space wizard who is sufficiently powerful to project himself to exactly where Leia and the Resistance is - but otherwise had no idea what was going on at all.

They are not mutually exclusive in discussing the alternatives to cheap parlor trick he pulled.

It's so cheap simulatenously fooling an entire army and a host of sensors that you're there when you're actually across the galaxy.

Yes forced. They dumped some random children we've never seen on screen

We saw them earlier in the movie. They're the slaves that helped Finn and Rose escape the cops. But yeah it'd be great writing if instead of showing that Luke's story is now all over the galaxy by showing it on a planet we saw in the film, we just let it sit there unstated.

You pretend I was literal with my marijuana reference and then immediately talk about "good faith engagement".
And you are strawmaning my point. I was talking about Luke doing something that didn't depend on the utterly idiotic script that called for First Order to completely halt their advance and watch a UFC special between Kylo and Luke. He doesn't necessarily need to be there. Obi Wan wasn't "there" as it encouraged Luke to the Death Star exhaust port from beyond.

Insanely bad writing that Luke predicted how Ben would react. This is ridiculous, characters making decisions about other characters based on their knowledge of them. Especially powerful space wizards with a penchant for seeing into the future. Crazy, crazy stuff.

And since you mentioned droids, guess what, if they were in command they would just continue onward with the mission and stomp on Luke's illusion as it flickers out of existence.

If only droids had been in command, then Luke's plan would've failed! Why didn't the magic space wizard realise that Ben could've actually been replaced by a droid without him realising it! This is Bad Writing! Why didnt the writers preclude this totally realistic and plausible possibility?

I'm not going to write their movies for them dude.

Thank god for that!

Yeah of course the shitty writer decided performing cheap parlor tricks is strenuous in order to try and turn Luke's phoned in parlor trick into some great act of heroism. He did a remote Starlord dance off but it's deadly so it's oh so heroic...not

And it's not just about "coming there personally". Neo didn't confront Smith "personally". But his activity in the Matrix wasn't just an illusion, he could physically affect it. From the narrative perspective it was real, Luke's actions weren't real, he could stop no one and help no one unless the First Order behaved exactly the way he needed them to.

Who cares whether he could or couldn't "physically affect" anything? The consequences of his actions were real, and that's all that matters to the story.

Fortunately the scriptwriters were on his side.

If I was as angry and irrational about the Matrix Revolutions as painfully obtuse, obviously film illiterate whiners were about The Last Jedi:

"The writing is so dumb because Neo just assumed that the machines would let him plug into the Matrix and defeat Smith! They could've just killed him, like they attempted to the entire time he was travelling to the Machine City! Forunately the scriptwriters were on his side!"

I could go all day with this:

"C-3P0 and R2-D2 could've been blown up in their escape pod at the start of ANH! Luckily the scriptwriters were on their side!"

"The Millennium Falcon could've simply had its hyperdrive torn out by the Empire in Cloud City! Luckily the scriptwriters were on their side!"

"The Death Star could've simply appeared right next to Yavin in ANH! Luckily the scriptwriters were on their side!"

Imagine going through life thinking that anything of dramatic consequence or tension in a movie could possibly happen without the scriptwriters being involved. Like its just ... zero film literacy at all.

[KraytKing]

Did you fail to understand my post or are you just raving aimlessly?

Alright, let me try again, a little simpler. Star Wars is as big as it is shown to be in the OT. That is accomplished by showing how big the Empire is. When the First Order is shown to be even bigger, massively so, than what we previously thought was the maximum, then we need some explanation. This is especially true when it comes only a generation after the previous bar was set.

Now that you get it, please go back and reread my previous post. I rather like it.

Yep. Missed my point completely. I was stating that the setting was big, not the objects. Millions of worlds, so who knows who sits around the next corner? The OT shows us a dozen or so characters and a half dozen or so planets. While the Republic and Empire controlled a lot, they clearly couldn't control it all. So I don't see why you're so bamboozled by this space wizard.

Then you missed my point equally completely. If the objects are big, it is suggestive of what how big the state that can build them is. Since a bar was set in the OT, we have a pretty good idea of what galaxy-spanning civilizations are capable of (Death Stars). Now, it isn't unreasonable to assume that some systems fell through the cracks and weren't included in the Imperial war machine. I'm not familiar with the canon map of the galaxy, but even assuming a full third of the galaxy is unexplored as in the Legends map, there are simply not enough systems to increase the industrial capacity of the First Order by multiple orders of magnitude over what the Empire was apparently capable of. Sure, Snoke can exist, but it's stupid to say he exists and also rules the most powerful military state to ever exist with the biggest toys.

Is any of this making sense to you? You haven't addressed any of my points, besides making fun of me for how I seem to be focusing on objects.

[Kane Starkiller]

Yeah, you're note even pretending to engage. It's sad. I mean, this is this exchange, summarized:

"The characterisation is terrible!"

"The characterisation is great. It reflects the experience of mythic figures after their triumph as they grow old. Here's Rian Johnson talking about why he did that."

"LOOOOOL WHO CARES"

All I can do is shrug.

I gave you plenty of examples containing life changing tragedies and setbacks Luke suffers through the original trilogy which you dismiss as irrelevant but then turn around and link to fucking red carpet interviews where Rian Johnson talks about characters that are not even part of the Star Wars movies. Not only that but he only discusses them in the most vague manner as "fallen heroes". So you can shrug all you want but you have no argument.

"No rhyme or reason" - again, lying about what the films tell us. A character suffering an extremely hurtful failure that he thinks he's responsible for, creating a lot of death and destruction and failing his friends in a deeply personal way, is a reason.

Again - you just don't like that this is what ended up happening. So yes, "refusal to take the movie at its word" is accurate. It's just a classic bad fanboy reaction - "I didn't get the story I wanted [Luke running around being heroic], therefore I'm going to throw all my toys out of the pram and complain about absolutely everything."

The rest of your post is a case in point because its ... so bad.

Yes it's a reason...a reason to clean up your shit. Not spending a decade wallowing in self pity. Nothing, absolutely nothing, in the original movies suggests that this is the way Luke would react to tragedy and setback of which he had plenty.

Whaaaaaaaat - you can't be serious. This is your "exact same bad thing", Luke making a random uninformed purchasing choice for an astromech on Threepio's recommendation (Threepio being the droid his uncle decided to buy, not Luke, but hey you not remembering what happened in any of the movies is a theme of this reply).

It's such a blindingly stupid attempt to draw a parallel it refutes itself, but since you've decided to be that ridiculous, I guess I have to spell it out:

Whoever knew that making a random uninformed suggestion to his uncle that through no conscious failure or act of his own resulted in the Empire coming down on his aunt and uncle is exactly the same thing as failing to prevent the fall of an extremely powerful force user for whose training you were responsible?

Let me first note that there was no real reason for you to chop up that relatively small paragraph into small pieces. All these examples work together and reinforce each other and paint a trajectory for Luke's character.
As for the point in question Luke is the one that picked out R2D2 wasn't he? The droid with the plans right? Of course he wasn't actually responsible for the death of his aunt and uncle but the point is that any decent person would always ask himself a question "could I have done something different". This is perhaps the most devastating thing that ever happened to Luke seeing as how he lived a relatively sheltered life and suddenly both of his practically parents are smoking skeletons. And he didn't spend years wallowing in self pity.

As stupid an attempt to draw parallels that don't exist as your previous attempt, unsurprisingly. Luke obviously knew that it'd be foolish in the extreme to blame himself for Han's fate simply because he lost a duel to Vader. He didn't put Han in that situation - unless you consider him merely existing. That is entirely different in character to being entrusted with the training of your friend's only child and having him become a murderous monster.

And lets be honest - you know that, too. There's no way you don't. At this stage, given this and your ludicrous "Luke bought the droids" flailing, its painfully apparent you're just throwing shit on the wall. It's bad, chief. Stop.

Luke knew it'd be foolish in the extreme did he? When did he told you that? Did you have a cup of coffee together?
Luke was trying to talk Han into joining the rebellion in ANH wasn't he?
"Well, take care of yourself, Han. I guess that's what you're best at, isn't it?"
Guilt tripping him into joining the Rebels in a suicidal fight against the Empire? Which put Han into Vaders' crosshairs and he ended up on the torturers table as a bait for Luke. No guilt there?
It's just great how you can dismiss these traumatic events Luke went through but then turn around and make up whatever bullshit you want. "He knew it was foolish in the extreme to blame himself. Source: dude trust me."

Repeating yourself. The two situations are not at all comparable - irrespective of your feeble attempt to dodge the issue by making it about "his students dying" (which is bad enough despite your non content handwaving about it just being a "specific problem") as opposed to the key issue, which is where responsbility for Ben's fall and its consequences lies. Luke does not consider himself personally responsible for Vader's fall, or any of Vader's crimes. That is not the case with Ben.

Further, as to your similarly clueless "Vader fighting Luke" - Ben - unlike Vader - hates Luke. The bond of father and son between Vader and Luke is totally different than that of uncle and nephew between Luke and Ben. There is ample reason for Luke to consider himself the precisely wrong person to attempt to 'save' Ben, if he ever considered himself capable of such a thing.

The only one handwaving is you: with Rian Johnson vague interviews, making shit up about how Luke felt about Han or demanding some kind of similarity between personal tragedies in order for there to be consistency in Luke's reaction.
Now you are filling in the blanks of the script and making more shit up about how the bond between nephew and father is different and how that would somehow make Luke react in a completely uncharacteristic manner.

Just naked bad faith troll logic at this stage. But then, you tried to argue that creating the next Darth Vader is analogus to making a suggestion to your uncle at the fucking droid shop. It's a miracle you can put your pants on straight at this stage of the argument.

Yet more attempts to "objectively" compare personal tragedies. He made the suggestion to his uncle, his aunt and uncle were killed over that droid. It's absolutely reasonable to suggest that the thought of "it's all my fault" would have crossed his mind.
If anything the fall of Kylo Ren happens to a much more mature and hardened person than the one whose main worry was getting the "power converters from the Toshe station". You've done absolutely nothing to show where this new self pitying person comes from other than "fall of Kylo Ren" is a separate event from "seeing what are practically your parents killed".

Different setbacks, different reactions. But let's talk about "further strengthen his character" - I'm sorry that apparently you've been trained by shitty, mediocre literature that heroes just keep getting stronger and stronger in character until nothing affects them, but that's not only dishonest writing, it makes for boring fiction.

But you wouldn't know that because LOL WHO CARES about myths.

Of course. Diffferent setbacks, different reactions. No need for consistency. I guess if he cried when his uncle died and then laughed when his aunt died that's cool beacuse "different setbacks different reactions".
No one is saying that fall of Kylo Ren shouldn't have affected Luke. I am saying that nothing we've seen so far suggests it would've caused him to become a self pitying nihilist. But yeah having a character grow and toughen up under adversity and then do a 180 offscreen between movies is such a great mythmaking.

Huh??? Luke is far beyond wanting revenge for Vader killing Obi-Wan, cutting off his hand or attacking rebels on Hoth by the time of their duel on the Death Star 2. Watch the movie with your eyes and ears open - from his talk with Yoda and Obi-Wan and his talk with Leia and of course his very first meeting with Vader, Luke is imploring Vader to come back to the good side and repeatedly indicates that he will not fight Vader. He has no anger about Vader at all, at any point in the entire film, until the taunt about Leia. I mean jesus christ, the film lampshades this so hard:

LUKE
Leia! Leia's my sister.

BEN
Your insight serves you well. Bury your feelings deep down, Luke. They do you credit.
But they could be made to serve the Emperor.

In short, it is becoming more and more apparent that you are really really bad at watching Star Wars movies.

Never said he wants revenge against Vader. What it's not enough to make stuff up about the movies now you have to make stuff up about what I said?
Sure he wants to save Vader, that was my point remember? How does this change the fact that this is still the man that caused so much pain to him? You think Luke forgot all of that even if he forgave? No no it's just threatening his sister. As if that itself is not way beyond anything that Luke did to Kylo on the salt planet.

All it took for Vader was to threaten his sister and the guy blew up! Geez talk about my perfect heroic caricature crumbling before my eyes! This is totally no different than Kylo the Idiot rushing at a dude he hasn't seen for years, who is currently making no threatening moves and who can apparently withstand 10 AT-AT concentrating their firepower on him.

This is just incoherent. There's just no argument here that has anything to do with Luke at all.

I was sarcastically mocking your claim that Luke blowing up at the person that caused so much pain to him and was apparently in the process of trying to kill him is in any way similar to Kylo Ren rushing at a person who made no threatening moves and who apparently possesses power way beyond anything we've seen so far. Does that clear it up a bit.

"The angry impulsive villain isn't being reasonable! Terrible writing! Why didn't he watch TESB and ROTJ and see the Force ghosts!"

Well maybe he was too busy watching Rian Johnson red carpet interviews about Beowulf and King Arthur so he didn't have time to watch TESB and ROTJ.
Really it's great how I don't get to point to concepts from the original trilogy and that it's somehow ridiculous to expect that Luke would've introduced those concepts to his own student and nephew but you get to link to fucking director interviews.
Also "not being reasonable" is not the same as being a certifiable idiot.

Given your ever more grandiose and obvious failures to comprehend the script of this movie nevermind other Star Wars movies, this is rich.

You won't mind pointing out those grandiose and obvious failures then.

Sure sure it's not like we've seen Jedi blown away by handheld blasters during the Order 66 including that conehead Jedi Master on the bridge that even had his lightsaber. It's not as if Kylo Ren would've learned during his training roughly what Jedi can and cannot do. So there is absolutely no reason for Kylo to doubt that Luke can survive the combined firepower of 10 AT-ATs and that an illusion might be at play.
It's just me and my arbitrary incredulity dude! Because increasing the color palette from 16-bit to 32-bit is no more likely than surviving combined firepower of 10 Abrams tanks. Silly me and my irrational skepticism.

Yeah that's totally how Jedi training works dude. Luke standing in front of a blackboard pointing at a schematic of a blaster and a video of ROTS. "Turn to your textbooks on page 16, you'll see you'll need to perform 50 force rock deadlifts to lift an X-Wing ..."

Yeah strawman me some more dude.
Suggesting that a Jedi might know what their limits are is totally the same as suggesting they have a fucking 1000 page physics book complete with differential equations about the Force. I guess the Jedi just run around like headless chicken completely unaware of their own abilities? It's a russian roulette? You go into battle against a human,droid,AT-AT, Stardestroyer and maybe you live maybe you die.

"But the power level of Goku is at 9000!"

This is like a compendium of basically every single way fanboys fuck up at basic film literacy. Idiotic, irrelevant rguments about made-up fridge logic rather than anything that's organic to character, narrative or theme.

I fully expect an unironic reference to whether Luke is a Jedi Consular or Guardian next and an appeal to KOTOR's instruction manual.

An obvious dodge by you. You claimed Kylo wasn't an idiot for trying to attack Luke with a lightsaber. I pointed out that Snoke swatted him like a bug and now Luke apparently withstood the combined firepower of 10 AT-ATs without a scratch. How can he think, angry or not, that he can take him on without being retarded? Can you answer that point?

Does it matter to Luke's plan how many AT-ATs fire? No, not really, it doesn't at all.

Of course it does. If the rest of the First Order continues on with the mission of destroying the Resistance it's all over. His plan to buy them time fails. It only works if all of them wait for the fight to be resolved.

And also bet that after Kylo comes down for the duel he won't simply order the other forces to continue on.

Yes, quite obviously.

Well then he's quite obviously an idiot whose plan only succeeded because Kylo behaved like an even bigger idiot.

Oh yay let's get down to the lowest hanging fruit of all - PLOT HOLES. But wait - its not like Force users can feel the presence of others nearby, its only something that has been a thing since 1977. But sure, its totally reasonable to suppose that the space wizard who is sufficiently powerful to project himself to exactly where Leia and the Resistance is - but otherwise had no idea what was going on at all.

He didn't know what happened to Han, he didn't even know Chewbacca was on the planet before he burst through the door but yeah he knew some dude called Snoke was killed half a galaxy away.
Hey wait a minute...is that why he chose to appear? Because Snoke was dead? What a chickenshit.

It's so cheap simulatenously fooling an entire army and a host of sensors that you're there when you're actually across the galaxy.

Oooh sensors. Are they X-band or S-band? I thought you're not into the nerd shit. It's irrelevant how far away he was, it's irrelevant how many sensors there were from any kind of dramatic or narrative perspective. Would it increase the drama to know he was on the nearby moon as opposed to the other side of the galaxy? The only thing that matters is that it was an illusion that was completely powerless other than the possibility of fooling someone for a few minutes. And even if it succeeded in fooling someone only if that someone decided to react exactly in the manner you need them to react.

We saw them earlier in the movie. They're the slaves that helped Finn and Rose escape the cops. But yeah it'd be great writing if instead of showing that Luke's story is now all over the galaxy by showing it on a planet we saw in the film, we just let it sit there unstated.

Yeah Luke's story is all over the galaxy.
"Hey did you hear what that guy that destroyed the Death Star and killed Darth Vader and Emperor just did? He,like, stood in front of the bad guy and the bad guy, like, hesitated for 2 minutes so the 10 people that were hiding in some cave managed to escape and then the bad guy killed him".
What a goddamn legend. What a hero for the ages. The legend is reignited. The hope lives on. The son of the suns.

Insanely bad writing that Luke predicted how Ben would react. This is ridiculous, characters making decisions about other characters based on their knowledge of them. Especially powerful space wizards with a penchant for seeing into the future. Crazy, crazy stuff.

Yes, yes Luke's knowledge of Kylo Ren told him specifically how he will organize the attacking force on the salt planet and how he will delegate to his subordinates. He's a powerful space wizard don't you know.

If only droids had been in command, then Luke's plan would've failed! Why didn't the magic space wizard realise that Ben could've actually been replaced by a droid without him realising it! This is Bad Writing! Why didnt the writers preclude this totally realistic and plausible possibility?

The point is Luke's plan would've been thwarted if someone just put a brick on the gas pedal of the AT-ATs. He needed Kylo to react in exactly the specific manner he did. Also known as "Bad Writing".

I'm not going to write their movies for them dude.

Thank god for that!

Then why did you ask me to write their movie for them in the first place?

Who cares whether he could or couldn't "physically affect" anything? The consequences of his actions were real, and that's all that matters to the story.

The consequences were real because the bad guys reacted exactly the way he needed them to react upon his decidedly unreal shenanigans. He needed the First Order to react like idiots and they obligingly did. It's an anticlimactic showing for the most famous character in the entire Star Wars universe.

If I was as angry and irrational about the Matrix Revolutions as painfully obtuse, obviously film illiterate whiners were about The Last Jedi:

"The writing is so dumb because Neo just assumed that the machines would let him plug into the Matrix and defeat Smith! They could've just killed him, like they attempted to the entire time he was travelling to the Machine City! Forunately the scriptwriters were on his side!"

I could go all day with this:

"C-3P0 and R2-D2 could've been blown up in their escape pod at the start of ANH! Luckily the scriptwriters were on their side!"

"The Millennium Falcon could've simply had its hyperdrive torn out by the Empire in Cloud City! Luckily the scriptwriters were on their side!"

"The Death Star could've simply appeared right next to Yavin in ANH! Luckily the scriptwriters were on their side!"

Imagine going through life thinking that anything of dramatic consequence or tension in a movie could possibly happen without the scriptwriters being involved. Like its just ... zero film literacy at all.

First I was talking about the original Matrix, Neo suddenly being able to destroy the machines in the real world was one of the stupidest things I've seen.
Even so the crucial difference was that Neo wasn't betting on the Machines being idiots the way Luke was betting that First Order were idiots. It made sense for the Machines to accept the bargain: they had nothing to lose by having Neo attempt to destroy Smith and could've destroyed Neo's body at any time while he was in the Matrix if something goes awry.

Further when people talk about scrpitwriters "being on someones side" what they mean is there is no logical reason for something to happen other than the scriptwriter willing it. Any movie will have contrivances in it, the question is how unlikely is it and how many of them are there in the movie.

The Imperial gunners didn't blow up the escape pod because they didn't detect any lifesigns on it and saw no reason to blow it up. Was it lucky for the droids? Yes. But there is clear logic behind it.

Not disabling the Millenium Falcon could be considered an oversight but are militaries usually in the business of disabling the engines on a vehicle whose crew was already captured in the case they escape and make a run for that same vehicle? That's not really much of a contrivance if it is one at all.

Sure the rebels lucked out by having the Death Star jump in on the wrong side of the planet. But what are the chances of that? 50-50? 70-30? That's not exactly winning the jackpot.

Meanwhile in The Last Jedi you have:

First Order Dreadnought firing on the Resistance base first instead of the main cruiser for no logical reason I can think of.

First Order not jumping ahead of the Resistance fleet during the chase. I wouldn't even complain about this if we didn't see Resistance ships hyperjumping from and to the fleet several times during the movie. If they can why can't the First Order?

Finn and Rose just happen to end up in a cell where another super hacker that can hack into Snoke's ship happens to be holed up.

Every major and minor character on board Snoke's ship survives the hyper ramming.

Something I forgot about: Luke doesn't even reveal his plan to the Resistance, Poe figures it out and leads them to the back entrance. What if he didn't figure it out? The best part is when Poe says "There's got to be a way out of this mine! Hell how did he [meaning Luke] get in here." So basically he starts from the completely mistaken assumption that Luke needed a physical entrance but then it turns out there actually is another entrance.

[Vympel]

I gave you plenty of examples containing life changing tragedies and setbacks Luke suffers through the original trilogy which you dismiss as irrelevant but then turn around and link to fucking red carpet interviews where Rian Johnson talks about characters that are not even part of the Star Wars movies. Not only that but he only discusses them in the most vague manner as "fallen heroes". So you can shrug all you want but you have no argument.

Imagine being so willfully ignorant that you think myths have no application to our experiences unless they're about characters in a Star Wars movie - as if writers are somehow only allowed to write something by reference to characters in previous Star Wars movies. Why, because they're "canon"? You're like a parody of a Star Wars nerd, at this stage.

Yes it's a reason...a reason to clean up your shit. Not spending a decade wallowing in self pity. Nothing, absolutely nothing, in the original movies suggests that this is the way Luke would react to tragedy and setback of which he had plenty.

It's almost as if Luke, the now 60-year old man, has had things happen to him since the original movies, that the original movies are not the sum total of his experiences, and he's not frozen in time as the perfect version of himself you imagined in your mind purely because you want that to be so.

In short - grow up, ffs.

Let me first note that there was no real reason for you to chop up that relatively small paragraph into small pieces. All these examples work together and reinforce each other and paint a trajectory for Luke's character.

Oh no, there's a reason. Each of your examples are fucking stupid as shit, and deserve to be called out individually.

As for the point in question Luke is the one that picked out R2D2 wasn't he? The droid with the plans right? Of course he wasn't actually responsible for the death of his aunt and uncle

That's right, he's not! So your attempt to claim this as relevant to how Luke will behave is stupid as hell. It's so obviously different from basically creating a new Vader that it shouldn't have to be pointed out.

Luke knew it'd be foolish in the extreme did he? When did he told you that? Did you have a cup of coffee together?
Luke was trying to talk Han into joining the rebellion in ANH wasn't he?
"Well, take care of yourself, Han. I guess that's what you're best at, isn't it?"
Guilt tripping him into joining the Rebels in a suicidal fight against the Empire? Which put Han into Vaders' crosshairs and he ended up on the torturers table as a bait for Luke. No guilt there?
It's just great how you can dismiss these traumatic events Luke went through but then turn around and make up whatever bullshit you want. "He knew it was foolish in the extreme to blame himself. Source: dude trust me."

I'm trying to imagine being dumb enough to think that you need a 'source' to engage in basic reasoning skills about why a character didn't behave as you suggest. At what point in the films did anyone infantilise Han to the extent that anyone could reasonably infer that Han was not responsible for his own choices? Was Luke responsible for Han's care? When did that happen?

The level of bad faith troll logic on your part just gets worse and worse. You're so desperate to stick your heels in you've now decided to shit all over ANH, debasing Han's heroic choice to help his friends and Luke's plea for help and turning it into an exercise in manipulation.

The only one handwaving is you: with Rian Johnson vague interviews, making shit up about how Luke felt about Han or demanding some kind of similarity between personal tragedies in order for there to be consistency in Luke's reaction.
Now you are filling in the blanks of the script and making more shit up about how the bond between nephew and father is different and how that would somehow make Luke react in a completely uncharacteristic manner.

LOL, 'the blanks of the script'? That Ben hates Luke is in the fucking movies! We see it for ourselves. That Vader's goal is to turn Luke to the dark side - not kill him - is in the fucking movies! But hey, you don't remember multiple other basic plot points so of course you fuck this up, as well.

Yet more attempts to "objectively" compare personal tragedies. He made the suggestion to his uncle, his aunt and uncle were killed over that droid. It's absolutely reasonable to suggest that the thought of "it's all my fault" would have crossed his mind.
If anything the fall of Kylo Ren happens to a much more mature and hardened person than the one whose main worry was getting the "power converters from the Toshe station". You've done absolutely nothing to show where this new self pitying person comes from other than "fall of Kylo Ren" is a separate event from "seeing what are practically your parents killed".

Because it is a seperate event, entirely different in both context, content and consequences. Comparing personal tragedies doesn't have to be "objective" you just have to have some really basic level of emotional intelligence and film literacy.

Let's compare:

For many years, there was balance...
and then I saw...
Ben.
My nephew...
with that mighty Skywalker blood.
In my hubris...
I thought I could train him,
that I could pass on my strength.

...

Leia...

trusted me with her son.

...

It was me.
I failed.
Because I was Luke Skywalker.
Jedi master.
A legend.

Let's write some similar dialog for your "shopping with Jawas" dumbassery:

For many years, I was happy
and then I saw...
R2-D2
A random astromech droid ...
which beeped.
It happened to be there when the astromech my uncle bought blew its motivator.
I thought it would be a good worker ....

...

My uncle ... trusted me not to pick a droid holding the plans to the Death Star ... because that's definitely a thing ...

I failed.
Because I was Luke Skywalker.
A random farm boy with no power and no responsibility.

Man, its like poetry. It rhymes.

Of course. Diffferent setbacks, different reactions. No need for consistency. I guess if he cried when his uncle died and then laughed when his aunt died that's cool beacuse "different setbacks different reactions".

That'd be the same setback, because they were killed in exactly the same circumstances, lol.

No one is saying that fall of Kylo Ren shouldn't have affected Luke. I am saying that nothing we've seen so far suggests it would've caused him to become a self pitying nihilist. But yeah having a character grow and toughen up under adversity and then do a 180 offscreen between movies is such a great mythmaking.

You are saying that, actually. Repeatedly and with great fervor. Every single stupid-as-shit argument you deploy to rail against Luke as he actually is illustrates that handily. You wanted a Luke who was mildly upset by it but otherwise - in every way that really matters - unchanged. Cheap, dishonest, and totally lacking any sort of meaningful character arc.

Never said he wants revenge against Vader. What it's not enough to make stuff up about the movies now you have to make stuff up about what I said?
Sure he wants to save Vader, that was my point remember? How does this change the fact that this is still the man that caused so much pain to him? You think Luke forgot all of that even if he forgave? No no it's just threatening his sister. As if that itself is not way beyond anything that Luke did to Kylo on the salt planet.

Stop fucking lying, you know exactly what I meant. And yes, Luke was not interested in any of that. How do we know this? Because at no stage in ROTJ's script is it stated or implied that this is part of Luke's thinking at all. It's just something you've made up. Again, this is that total lack of film literacy we're talking about. It's Luke's feelings about Leia that are the danger, as Obi-Wan warned him.

I was sarcastically mocking your claim that Luke blowing up at the person that caused so much pain to him and was apparently in the process of trying to kill him is in any way similar to Kylo Ren rushing at a person who made no threatening moves and who apparently possesses power way beyond anything we've seen so far. Does that clear it up a bit.

It clears up that you can't make a coherent argument? I mean, we were talking about Luke's characterisation and all of a sudden you're whining about Ben. Did you forget they're two different characters?

Well maybe he was too busy watching Rian Johnson red carpet interviews about Beowulf and King Arthur so he didn't have time to watch TESB and ROTJ.
Really it's great how I don't get to point to concepts from the original trilogy and that it's somehow ridiculous to expect that Luke would've introduced those concepts to his own student and nephew but you get to link to fucking director interviews.
Also "not being reasonable" is not the same as being a certifiable idiot.

It's pretty funny watching you try and talk about writing but scoff when the writer talks. Almost as funny as thinking that its reasonable to think about the force ghosts of dead people in the context of Luke's appearance on Crait.

You won't mind pointing out those grandiose and obvious failures then.

But I have. Don't worry, more to come below.

Yeah strawman me some more dude.

Where's the strawman? That's the kind of granular technical dumbassery you'd have to think constitutes Jedi training for your argument to make sense. Remember in TESB how Yoda told Luke "you can't lift that X-Wing because you need to know your limits"?

Oh wait, that never happened, because TESB wasn't written by a fucking video game developer.

An obvious dodge by you. You claimed Kylo wasn't an idiot for trying to attack Luke with a lightsaber.

I never said that at all. I said he was being irrational. Learn to read maybe.

Of course it does. If the rest of the First Order continues on with the mission of destroying the Resistance it's all over. His plan to buy them time fails. It only works if all of them wait for the fight to be resolved.

Oh sorry, I must've missed how "all the AT-AT's firing" was actually a reference to "if the rest of the First Order continues on with the mission". How silly of me, to expect your sentences to make some kind of sense.

But yes, it's a good thing he was right about what Ben would do then, isn't it!

Well then he's quite obviously an idiot whose plan only succeeded because Kylo behaved like an even bigger idiot.

"Stupid idiot, made a plan relying on him knowing how his opponent would react!"

He didn't know what happened to Han, he didn't even know Chewbacca was on the planet before he burst through the door but yeah he knew some dude called Snoke was killed half a galaxy away.
Hey wait a minute...is that why he chose to appear? Because Snoke was dead? What a chickenshit.

Hey, remember how I mentioned "grandiose and obvious failures"? This is one of them. I mean, we had an entire scene where Rey opens herself up to the Force and realises at the end of it that ... Luke is nowhere to be seen. Because he cut himself off from it. He only reconnects to it much later in the film - we see him do it - and the first thing he does is call out to Leia.

But hey, they're only major plot points of the film, you can't be expected to remember them when you're busy trying to come up with LOL PLOT HOLES to bitch about.

Oooh sensors. Are they X-band or S-band? I thought you're not into the nerd shit.

Ah yes, it's "nerd shit" to notice that C-3P0 saw Luke as well as anyone else did - a very deliberate moment that is impossible to miss (but hey, you missed the entire thing about Luke cutting himself off from the Force, so why should I be surprised bout this?) Film literacy, what is that?

It's irrelevant how far away he was, it's irrelevant how many sensors there were from any kind of dramatic or narrative perspective. Would it increase the drama to know he was on the nearby moon as opposed to the other side of the galaxy? The only thing that matters is that it was an illusion that was completely powerless other than the possibility of fooling someone for a few minutes. And even if it succeeded in fooling someone only if that someone decided to react exactly in the manner you need them to react.

Trying to imagine what it would be like to think that a plan working because it relies on character traits organic to the opponent is bad.

Yeah Luke's story is all over the galaxy.
"Hey did you hear what that guy that destroyed the Death Star and killed Darth Vader and Emperor just did? He,like, stood in front of the bad guy and the bad guy, like, hesitated for 2 minutes so the 10 people that were hiding in some cave managed to escape and then the bad guy killed him".
What a goddamn legend. What a hero for the ages. The legend is reignited. The hope lives on. The son of the suns.

What a shame he didn't throw the AT-AT's around with the Force or whatever dumb, regressively violent shit would've gotten your jollies up. Oh but wait, you won't say what you wanted because you'd rather not open your free-style bad faith complaining to any kind of specific criticism.

Yes, yes Luke's knowledge of Kylo Ren told him specifically how he will organize the attacking force on the salt planet and how he will delegate to his subordinates. He's a powerful space wizard don't you know.

Way to miss the point!

The point is Luke's plan would've been thwarted if someone just put a brick on the gas pedal of the AT-ATs. He needed Kylo to react in exactly the specific manner he did. Also known as "Bad Writing".

I wonder, how does someone who's so film-illiterate they think "But things could have happened differently!" is a meaningful film criticism survive in day to day life? Are you able to meaningfully enjoy any form of constructed entertainment, or are you just constantly deconstructing every little scenario put before you and trying to think of all the ways it would turn out differently if something really stupid and random happened?

Then why did you ask me to write their movie for them in the first place?

To point out your inability to come up with anything that wouldn't be easily torn apart by your own patent bad faith, of course.

The consequences were real because the bad guys reacted exactly the way he needed them to react upon his decidedly unreal shenanigans. He needed the First Order to react like idiots and they obligingly did. It's an anticlimactic showing for the most famous character in the entire Star Wars universe.

Sorry you didn't get your self-indulgent power fantasy climax. Maybe try Justice League for that.

First I was talking about the original Matrix, Neo suddenly being able to destroy the machines in the real world was one of the stupidest things I've seen.
Even so the crucial difference was that Neo wasn't betting on the Machines being idiots the way Luke was betting that First Order were idiots. It made sense for the Machines to accept the bargain: they had nothing to lose by having Neo attempt to destroy Smith and could've destroyed Neo's body at any time while he was in the Matrix if something goes awry.

And the Machines thought that way (despite trying to kill Neo the entire time before this) because the scriptwriters were on Neo's side! Bad writing! See, this dumbass argument is so easy.

Further when people talk about scrpitwriters "being on someones side" what they mean is there is no logical reason for something to happen other than the scriptwriter willing it. Any movie will have contrivances in it, the question is how unlikely is it and how many of them are there in the movie.

The Imperial gunners didn't blow up the escape pod because they didn't detect any lifesigns on it and saw no reason to blow it up. Was it lucky for the droids? Yes. But there is clear logic behind it.

What 'clear logic'? You've simply asserted it, you certainly haven't illustrated it. What, the gunners don't know droids are a thing in the Star Wars galaxy? Good thing the scriptwriters were on their side!

Not disabling the Millenium Falcon could be considered an oversight but are militaries usually in the business of disabling the engines on a vehicle whose crew was already captured in the case they escape and make a run for that same vehicle? That's not really much of a contrivance if it is one at all.

Oh great, another movie you didn't watch properly. The Empire specifically deactivated the hyperdrive, so they clearly were concerned that the crew would escape. R2-D2 turned it back on in a second.

Sure the rebels lucked out by having the Death Star jump in on the wrong side of the planet. But what are the chances of that? 50-50? 70-30? That's not exactly winning the jackpot.

Wait, who says its random chance? You? Why? Are the Empire idiots? They don't know where the moon is when they jump in?

Good thing the scriptwriters were on their side!

Meanwhile in The Last Jedi you have:

Who the hell cares. You think the random contrivances I brought up are the only ones that exist? The only relevant difference is your willingness to allow for them and place them in a context which exists beyond "lol this is dumb" is directly proportional to your personal biases.

[The Romulan Republic]

Or they just used Imperial iconography for legitimacy. Lots of regimes have done that throughout history.

Isn't that worth pointing out in some way narratively, or does that get in the way of the space horses being rescued as a side plot?

You know, "Show, don't tell", used to be a maxim of good film making. But since the Sequels came out, apparently films are supposed to spoon-feed viewers everything in order for it to make sense.

Also, what is the obsession with "Wahhh, they rescued space horses!" Is it just some stupid "Hur dur, stupid animal rights hippies" thing, or is there some reason why you feel that scene actually damaged the film?

[FaxModem1]

Or they just used Imperial iconography for legitimacy. Lots of regimes have done that throughout history.

Isn't that worth pointing out in some way narratively, or does that get in the way of the space horses being rescued as a side plot?

You know, "Show, don't tell", used to be a maxim of good film making. But since the Sequels came out, apparently films are supposed to spoon-feed viewers everything in order for it to make sense.

Also, what is the obsession with "Wahhh, they rescued space horses!" Is it just some stupid "Hur dur, stupid animal rights hippies" thing, or is there some reason why you feel that scene actually damaged the film?

Storywise, Canto Blight brings up nothing but failed moral complexity into a story that was struggling with their moral deconstruction of Star Wars without it. With it, it points to the events of the Original Trilogy as something that didn't really do jack squat for the humdrum of the galaxy, and only made the rich jerks of the galaxy richer. As in other threads, it shows that Luke, Leia, and Han didn't really seem to make an impact for Joe Blow citizen in his dealings, but they still request help anyway.

And because of how it's not given the best touch in execution, we have the unintended moral of the story. It's a sideplot that seems to say, "Boy, weapons trafficking and child slavery sure are evil, but you know what will even the scales? Making the rich bastards who gamble here have an inconvenient couple hours by acting like we're in a 90s kids movie, meanwhile the child slaves are still stuck here, and the space horses are brought back to the stable by some guards."

We know this, because the final scene is the child slaves being forced to go back to work, hoping that one day, some other heroes will come to them, and pay more attention to the space horses than them, and declare victory about doing nothing to help them.

What do the child slaves get out of it? They don't know, the space horses don't know. All they know is that people keep on coming and asking for their space horses:



And I'm sorry that I like a little exposition in my films. I guess movies should just be random images and sounds to amuse people, having as much thought put into them as theme park rides. Actually having a grasp on what's going on and having it be coherent is just asking for things to be spoon fed, and that's bad.

[The Romulan Republic]

You may like exposition, but that doesn't make it a bad film if it doesn't exposit on every background detail, and it doesn't make those who disagree with you idiots who just want "random images and sounds to amuse people".

Also, the point of that scene on Canto Bight was not "the horses are more important than the children". We're clearly meant to sympathize with the slave children, to see their treatment as wrong, and as one of the reasons why Canto Bight is corrupt beneath its shiny exterior. I don't doubt for a minute, watching that scene, that Finn and Rose would save the kids if they could. But they can't. They don't have the resources for a full-scale slave evacuation/revolt, and no this doesn't need to be explained in depth because its obvious, or at least it should be. Freeing the horses killed two birds with one stone, as it provided transport and cover for their escape as well as disrupting the city. What would bringing the children along have accomplished, except to make them targets in the line of fire?

Also, I don't see the films' ending as the slave children being left to hope for another hero to come along and save (or fail to save them). I take it more as symbolically implying that Luke's legend will inspire them to rise up, and save themselves.

I mean, TLJ is a movie that relies heavily on ambiguity and misdirection. Which means that you can pretty easily interpret it a lot of different ways. You can interpret every scene in the movie to be as awful and franchise destroying as possible if that's what you're bent on doing. I'm just not sure why you'd want to. And that is your interpretation, not objective fact.

[FaxModem1]

You may like exposition, but that doesn't make it a bad film if it doesn't exposit on every background detail, and it doesn't make those who disagree with you idiots who just want "random images and sounds to amuse people".

Also, the point of that scene on Canto Bight was not "the horses are more important than the children". We're clearly meant to sympathize with the slave children, to see their treatment as wrong, and as one of the reasons why Canto Bight is corrupt beneath its shiny exterior. I don't doubt for a minute, watching that scene, that Finn and Rose would save the kids if they could. But they can't. They don't have the resources for a full-scale slave evacuation/revolt, and no this doesn't need to be explained in depth because its obvious, or at least it should be. Freeing the horses killed two birds with one stone, as it provided transport and cover for their escape as well as disrupting the city. What would bringing the children along have accomplished, except to make them targets in the line of fire?

Also, I don't see the films' ending as the slave children being left to hope for another hero to come along and save (or fail to save them). I take it more as symbolically implying that Luke's legend will inspire them to rise up, and save themselves.

Unfortunately, the lesson they take from it is a bit different:

Rose: We're trapped.
Finn: It was worth it though, to tear up that town, make them hurt.
(Rose tears off the saddle from one of the space horses, the space horse rejoins it's herd)
Rose: Now it's worth it.
(BB-8 and DJ come in on a stolen ship)
DJ: Need a lift?

Let's face it, the film is pretty much telling us that the space horses being free in the wilderness counts as a victory in our heroes' minds. The children are forgotten about, and are only shown at the end as a footnote to show that Luke's tale has inspired a few of them. And that they're still enslaved.

I mean, TLJ is a movie that relies heavily on ambiguity and misdirection. Which means that you can pretty easily interpret it a lot of different ways. You can interpret every scene in the movie to be as awful and franchise destroying as possible if that's what you're bent on doing. I'm just not sure why you'd want to. And that is your interpretation, not objective fact.

Which is due to bad execution. And because the film is taking as many chances as it can to take the piss at Star Wars, then tries to course correct by saying no, really, it's okay. But by then, it's hard to reconcile with the plot problems the film has introduced.

[The Romulan Republic]

Unfortunately, the lesson they take from it is a bit different:

Rose: We're trapped.
Finn: It was worth it though, to tear up that town, make them hurt.
(Rose tears off the saddle from one of the space horses, the space horse rejoins it's herd)
Rose: Now it's worth it.
(BB-8 and DJ come in on a stolen ship)
DJ: Need a lift?

Let's face it, the film is pretty much telling us that the space horses being free in the wilderness counts as a victory in our heroes' minds. The children are forgotten about, and are only shown at the end as a footnote to show that Luke's tale has inspired a few of them. And that they're still enslaved.

Where in that quote do they say "Well, we freed the horses, so all problems are solved because the children don't matter?" Nowhere. They did a good thing. They're happy that they did a good thing. It doesn't mean they imagine all problems are solved forever. Heck, the fact that Finn thinks it's worth the failure of their mission to wreck Canto Bight says something about how much we're supposed to despise that place and its practices (including the child labour).

Also, the film shows that Luke's last stand has inspired the children, and implicitly may lead them to resist in the future. You can call it "a footnote", but that's just you trying to downplay the scene's significance. One must presume that there's a reason that they chose to end the film on that note. Perhaps because it is meant to be a significant one- the film's final conclusion.

Again, this just comes off as you deliberately going out of your way to put the most negative possible spin on every scene.

Which is due to bad execution. And because the film is taking as many chances as it can to take the piss at Star Wars, then tries to course correct by saying no, really, it's okay. But by then, it's hard to reconcile with the plot problems the film has introduced.

"Deliberately ambiguous" is not "bad execution". Like TLJ or hate it, one thing Johnson is NOT is a sloppy or incompetent director. Just because you don't personally like the choices he made does not mean that they were not made with care.

Also "taking as many chances as it can to take the piss at Star Wars"? Right, because if it isn't the film you want, then it must be a deliberate malicious attempt to destroy the franchise.

[The Romulan Republic]

Since one of the key themes of the film is the worship of the past as people attempt to recreate it in the present, I thought it obvious.

No, not really. While the theme is there, the theme runs into the issue of the narrative reality. Someone had to fund the construction of all their ships, someone had to hire all those soldiers and indoctrinate them, someone had to kidnap or pay scientists to make Starkiller. So either this is all one big plot by unseen bad guys to turn heads and make them fight the New Republic, and will be revealed in Episode IX, or this is all just lazy iconography to ape the original trilogy with no thought behind it, and defending itself as, "It's the theme of aping the past, dude."

EDIT: And before you complain about the Original Trilogy not doing this, the bad guys were the state, so we can assume that poor people like Owen and Beru Lars were paying taxes to fund the Imperial War Machine. The Prequel Trilogy even does this, and established that the Seperatists were made up of very powerful corporations funding their own military.

The First Order is also a state. It's not an insurgent group.

[tezunegari]

[...]

Where in that quote do they say "Well, we freed the horses, so all problems are solved because the children don't matter?" Nowhere. They did a good thing. They're happy that they did a good thing. It doesn't mean they imagine all problems are solved forever. Heck, the fact that Finn thinks it's worth the failure of their mission to wreck Canto Bight says something about how much we're supposed to despise that place and its practices (including the child labour).

Also, the film shows that Luke's last stand has inspired the children, and implicitly may lead them to resist in the future. You can call it "a footnote", but that's just you trying to downplay the scene's significance. One must presume that there's a reason that they chose to end the film on that note. Perhaps because it is meant to be a significant one- the film's final conclusion.
[...]

And all they accomplished will be undone within the very night (or over the next few days).
The space-horses are back in their stables, the slave children punished for letting them escape and the hotel/casino will get the damages replaced by insurance.

Nothing Rose and Finn did on Canto Bait except meeting DJ has any impact on the plot.

The kids reenacting the final battle of Luke? That's not from their actions.

The whole Canto Bait arc could be reduced to a few minutes instead of the 15 minutes it takes in TLJ without loosing any impact on the story.

-- Finn and Rose arrive, Finn is blinded by the oppulance while Rose is excited to get the job done
-- then the balcony scene, Rose turns somber and points Finns attention towards the racetrack, Finn realises the oppulence is bought with blood and suffering
-- BB-8 arrives and tells them "Found the meatbag with the red thingy!"
-- they get arrested and meet DJ
-- DJ picks the lock and leaves, they follow him instead of going a different way to start the bloody chase scene.
-- cut to the three being on the ship flying towards the FO fleet

[Vympel]

Also "taking as many chances as it can to take the piss at Star Wars"? Right, because if it isn't the film you want, then it must be a deliberate malicious attempt to destroy the franchise.

It's baffling how many of the people who are irrationally angry at the film are determined to draw wild, idiotic sounding inferences about it's intent. "Take a piss at Star Wars"? The movie's a fucking love letter to Star Wars. The movie's throughline is getting Luke Skywalker to the point where he resumes the mantle of a legend and saves everyone, confidently asserting he won't be the last of the Jedi, ffs. Anyone watching the film thinking that it's actually being deliberately insulting is on drugs.

And all they accomplished will be undone within the very night (or over the next few days).
The space-horses are back in their stables, the slave children punished for letting them escape and the hotel/casino will get the damages replaced by insurance.

Nothing Rose and Finn did on Canto Bait except meeting DJ has any impact on the plot.

Who cares? Movies are not plot delivery machines. Everytime someone complains about 'plot' as if this is the only thing that's important to a story I roll my eyes. Stop watching Cinema Sins and read about film. It's fun.

The scene with the fathiers isn't actually one I like, because I'm not into chase scenes generally. TPM's pod race similarly bored me to tears (more than the rest of the movie). But the scene does have a very clear and essential point that ties in to the climax of the film. Rose and Finn's exchange about what makes it "worth it" ties in directly to Finn and Rose and the battering ram cannon. Finn treats the destruction wrought by their escape as being "worth it" (destroying what we hate). Rose says no, it's freeing the abused creature that's more satisfying (saving what we love). It's a pretty obvious moral message.

The kids reenacting the final battle of Luke? That's not from their actions.

That's not important. The kids are important because we've met them and interacted with them personally through Rose and Finn's escape.

[Gandalf]

Yes, because I want to see Accountant wars.

No, I want a sense of who and/or what the FO are, because as presented, they are supposed to seem like the Empire 2.0, without any justified reason why they are Empire 2.0. Are they as powerful as the Empire? Are they not? Iunno, do you?

Because if they aren't the state, which the New Republic was, what are they? And where are they getting their wonderful toys?

Could Jabba, before being strangled by Leia with a chain, have made such an organization if he was so inclined, and been the main antagonist? Is it that easy in the Star Wars galaxy?

That's the issue, we're not given a sense of what exactly they are, aside from what they're masquerading around as. They're not the government, they blew up that. They're not a private military hired by some corporations as far as we know, because we don't have any statements regarding that. They're not some illicit underground group, because they don't seem to be using the same storytelling tools that are used for that.

So, what are they? If they're supposed to be the equivalent of North Korea, as stated earlier in the thread, who is funding their superweapons? And why doesn't the NR have better defenses against such things?

They may not be the government, but they're certainly a government, hence their blowing up of planets in order to quickly strike and seize control of things. As for funding, I don't see why they couldn't be a space autarky sitting on some of whatever that stuff from Solo was. A small and dictatorial state sitting atop some sort of resource can usually find itself with some easy access to weapons. The New Republic was evidently caught sitting on its arse. Like when ISIL arose a few years ago.

Then you missed my point equally completely. If the objects are big, it is suggestive of what how big the state that can build them is. [1] Since a bar was set in the OT, we have a pretty good idea of what galaxy-spanning civilizations are capable of (Death Stars). [2] Now, it isn't unreasonable to assume that some systems fell through the cracks and weren't included in the Imperial war machine. I'm not familiar with the canon map of the galaxy, but even assuming a full third of the galaxy is unexplored as in the Legends map, there are simply not enough systems to increase the industrial capacity of the First Order by multiple orders of magnitude over what the Empire was apparently capable of. [3] Sure, Snoke can exist, but it's stupid to say he exists and also rules the most powerful military state to ever exist with the biggest toys.

Is any of this making sense to you? You haven't addressed any of my points, besides making fun of me for how I seem to be focusing on objects.

That's ridiculous, so let's break it down.

[1]: Within reason, yes. It's also heavily dependent on other factors for which we have no information.

[2]: A big state can build a Death Star. But you're treating that as a limit for some reason. Between New Hope and Jedi we get a waaay bigger Death Star, though I assume that didn't bother you. The problem with your whole point is that you seem to treat each act as though it's some sort of peak feat, when there are other reasons for things to be as they are. For the first Death Star, why make it any bigger than it needed to be? It needed to blow up one planet occasionally while serving as a part of a much larger and legitimate state apparatus. The Empire was already running the former Republic when it was built. Starkiller was way the fuck different and operating in a different circumstance, which to the seemingly fanatical lot of FO guys, called for what we saw on the screen. They would need to fight for the territory, and what better way to start that campaign than a strike from a bigger and scarier version of one of the Empire's biggest and scariest weapons?

[3]: Pointless assumption, even ignoring your use of a non-Canon map.

[tezunegari]

Also "taking as many chances as it can to take the piss at Star Wars"? Right, because if it isn't the film you want, then it must be a deliberate malicious attempt to destroy the franchise.

It's baffling how many of the people who are irrationally angry at the film are determined to draw wild, idiotic sounding inferences about it's intent. "Take a piss at Star Wars"? The movie's a fucking love letter to Star Wars. The movie's throughline is getting Luke Skywalker to the point where he resumes the mantle of a legend and saves everyone, confidently asserting he won't be the last of the Jedi, ffs. Anyone watching the film thinking that it's actually being deliberately insulting is on drugs.

And all they accomplished will be undone within the very night (or over the next few days).
The space-horses are back in their stables, the slave children punished for letting them escape and the hotel/casino will get the damages replaced by insurance.

Nothing Rose and Finn did on Canto Bait except meeting DJ has any impact on the plot.

Who cares? Movies are not plot delivery machines. Everytime someone complains about 'plot' as if this is the only thing that's important to a story I roll my eyes. Stop watching Cinema Sins and read about film. It's fun.

The scene with the fathiers isn't actually one I like, because I'm not into chase scenes generally. TPM's pod race similarly bored me to tears (more than the rest of the movie). But the scene does have a very clear and essential point that ties in to the climax of the film. Rose and Finn's exchange about what makes it "worth it" ties in directly to Finn and Rose and the battering ram cannon. Finn treats the destruction wrought by their escape as being "worth it" (destroying what we hate). Rose says no, it's freeing the abused creature that's more satisfying (saving what we love). It's a pretty obvious moral message.

That scene with Finn exclaiming it was worth it because it "made them hurt"... Finn was definitively wrong because it accomplished nothing but making things worse. Rose was right in that moment that it only makes it worth it if you save people.

In the scene with the death star ram on the other hand Finn was right and Rose takes her own position to the foolish extreme.

Those two scenes are completely opposites - Canto Bait shows that Finn still partially thinks with First Order mentality at the time.
Krait shows that he is doing things TO PROTECT people instead of hurting the enemy.

[Vympel]

In the scene with the death star ram on the other hand Finn was right and Rose takes her own position to the foolish extreme.

No, Finn was wrong. The idea that Finn could've succeeded exists entirely outside the film - the script and the direction is entirely uninterested in making us believe his attack could've succeeded. That's why they tell Finn that its "too late", that its a "suicide run", and showed his craft literally melting under him.

Finn was exhibiting the exact same problem he was exhibiting on Canto Bight - elevating hurting the bad guys above saving people. The entire scene on Crait is constructed to illustrate that Finn is throwing his life away on a pointless suicide run that isn't going to work, and worse, even if it had succeeded (and died), would've changed absolutely nothing about the ultimate outcome.

Those two scenes are completely opposites - Canto Bait shows that Finn still partially thinks with First Order mentality at the time.
Krait shows that he is doing things TO PROTECT people instead of hurting the enemy.

No he wasn't. That's why Rose says what she says in the first place. He's motivated by hatred of the First Order.

[KraytKing]

At the time of his suicide run, we know nothing of the eventual escape of the Resistance. More importantly, neither does Finn. The point of Rogue One was that sometimes you sacrifice even if you know failure is the only realistic option, because you have no other option. Given that the First Order was reliant on the Starcraft laser drill to break through the door of the Resistance fort, hurting the FO in this manner WOULD be protecting what he loves, and is the only thing anyone knew of that could save them. I'm not sure why Rose thinks ramming him is going to save anyone but him. If anything, it shows her shortsightedness and unwillingness to sacrifice for the greater good.

It also brings up the question of why Rose was willing to ram him at high speed if his vehicle was in such shit condition, or how in the fuck they could expect to escape when both of their vehicles are disabled and they are hundreds of meters of barren plain from friendly lines.

[Vympel]

At the time of his suicide run, we know nothing of the eventual escape of the Resistance.

We don't need to. As noted, the movie proffers absolutely nothing to indicate that Finn is going to succeed. Everyone is telling him to do the opposite. That the Resistance would escape regardless thanks to Luke is just gravy, and would've made Finn's death nothing but a joke.

Given that the First Order was reliant on the Starcraft laser drill to break through the door of the Resistance fort, hurting the FO in this manner WOULD be protecting what he loves, and is the only thing anyone knew of that could save them.

Temporarily at best, if it had even worked, an idea which the film is not interested in advancing. Through word and 'deed', the movie says the attack will fail. It is blaring out at the audience: "this attack is futile".

I'm not sure why Rose thinks ramming him is going to save anyone but him. If anything, it shows her shortsightedness and unwillingness to sacrifice for the greater good.

A pointless sacrifice isn't worth much.

It also brings up the question of why Rose was willing to ram him at high speed if his vehicle was in such shit condition, or how in the fuck they could expect to escape when both of their vehicles are disabled and they are hundreds of meters of barren plain from friendly lines.

She's weighing up the possibility that Finn will definitely die by committing a pointless, suicidal act and the chance that he might live. It's not a clinical decision, she has feelings for him.

[Kane Starkiller]

Imagine being so willfully ignorant that you think myths have no application to our experiences unless they're about characters in a Star Wars movie - as if writers are somehow only allowed to write something by reference to characters in previous Star Wars movies. Why, because they're "canon"? You're like a parody of a Star Wars nerd, at this stage.

One, they can have an application but you have to show how instead of vaguely namedropping famous characters from other stories.
Two, an interview with the director after the movie is over is irrelevant to whether the movie itself works.
That you continually try to pretend that my differentiation between "movie" and "not movie" as some kind of nerdy nitpicking about "canon" only shows that you have no argument.

It's almost as if Luke, the now 60-year old man, has had things happen to him since the original movies, that the original movies are not the sum total of his experiences, and he's not frozen in time as the perfect version of himself you imagined in your mind purely because you want that to be so.

In short - grow up, ffs.

"Things happen to him". "He is 60 years old". What a compelling reason for a 180 turn! And it's not my imaginations that Luke never reacted to setbacks and tragedy the way he reacted in TLJ. That's a demonstrable fact.

Oh no, there's a reason. Each of your examples are fucking stupid as shit, and deserve to be called out individually.

No the reason is you are aware the examples work synergistically with one another and paint a clear trajectory of Luke's character. Next to that his reaction from TLJ sticks out like a sore thumb and you know it. So you decide to chop up the overarching point into little paragraphs where you can pretend each one of them exists on its own.

That's right, he's not! So your attempt to claim this as relevant to how Luke will behave is stupid as hell. It's so obviously different from basically creating a new Vader that it shouldn't have to be pointed out.

No he's legally not. He won't be found guilty at the Hague tribunal.
It's still reasonable for him to feel some guilt and it's still one of the most devastating things that can happen to a person.
Of course he also wasn't guilty for "creating a new Vader" objectively speaking was he. He ignited a lightsaber once, that explains Kylo rampaging through the galaxy murdering people? That's Luke's fault objectively speaking?

I'm trying to imagine being dumb enough to think that you need a 'source' to engage in basic reasoning skills about why a character didn't behave as you suggest. At what point in the films did anyone infantilise Han to the extent that anyone could reasonably infer that Han was not responsible for his own choices? Was Luke responsible for Han's care? When did that happen?

The level of bad faith troll logic on your part just gets worse and worse. You're so desperate to stick your heels in you've now decided to shit all over ANH, debasing Han's heroic choice to help his friends and Luke's plea for help and turning it into an exercise in manipulation.

It's a bad faith argument from me to suggest that Luke might feel guilty about a guy he was talking into joining the Rebellion and who was being tortured specifically to bait him? But your suggestion that Luke won't feel guilty because he won't "infantilise" Han is NOT a bad faith argument? I love how you suggest he will just emotionlessly and logically absolve himself from any responsibility of his aunt's and uncle's death and Han's capture but will then break down and wallow in self pity for decades over Kylo Ren.
And you haven't even begun to address the point that beyond any guilt he might've felt over it the death of his aunt and uncle or the revelation that the guy who just cut of his hand is his own father should've pushed him into self pity and despair as much as anything.
You just keep repeating how it's not the same event. Well no, no tragedy is going the be the same as the one before. Certainly in a movie saga that shouldn't repeat itself. How does that absolve the moviemakers from making consistent characters?

LOL, 'the blanks of the script'? That Ben hates Luke is in the fucking movies! We see it for ourselves. That Vader's goal is to turn Luke to the dark side - not kill him - is in the fucking movies! But hey, you don't remember multiple other basic plot points so of course you fuck this up, as well.

What does Vader's motivation have to do with this? This entire line of discussion started when you claimed that Luke blowing up at Vader in the middle of a seemingly life and death fight is the same as Kylo rushing at Luke for no apparent reason.
You tried to claim that Luke, who was wronged by Vader so many times and was in the process of fighting him AND was being taunted about his sister AND was being taunted by Palpatine about how the Rebel alliance and all his friends will die, had no more of a reason to lash out at Vader than Kylo Ren did. That's quite obviously horseshit.

Because it is a seperate event, entirely different in both context, content and consequences. Comparing personal tragedies doesn't have to be "objective" you just have to have some really basic level of emotional intelligence and film literacy.

Let's compare:

For many years, there was balance...
and then I saw...
Ben.
My nephew...
with that mighty Skywalker blood.
In my hubris...
I thought I could train him,
that I could pass on my strength.

...

Leia...

trusted me with her son.

...

It was me.
I failed.
Because I was Luke Skywalker.
Jedi master.
A legend.

Let's write some similar dialog for your "shopping with Jawas" dumbassery:

For many years, I was happy
and then I saw...
R2-D2
A random astromech droid ...
which beeped.
It happened to be there when the astromech my uncle bought blew its motivator.
I thought it would be a good worker ....

...

My uncle ... trusted me not to pick a droid holding the plans to the Death Star ... because that's definitely a thing ...

I failed.
Because I was Luke Skywalker.
A random farm boy with no power and no responsibility.

Man, its like poetry. It rhymes.

Yeah it sure would've been shitty if ANH Luke was as mopey and self pitying as TLJ Luke. Thank's for proving my point.
But shouldn't the TLJ script be changed to this to match the awkwardness of your invented ANH dialogue:
"Leia trusted me not to come up with the idea of executing her sleeping son over something that might happen even after I refused to write off Darth Vader over things that did happen. Excuse me while I spend the rest of my life in self righteous isolation and self pity instead of cleaning up the shit I feel responsible for creating."

That'd be the same setback, because they were killed in exactly the same circumstances, lol.

Whoa there let's not be too hasty now. Owen has XY chromosomes and Beru has XX. She has longer hair. Her body did not lie in the same position. I think there is plenty of room for Luke to react in a completely different manner.

You are saying that, actually. Repeatedly and with great fervor. Every single stupid-as-shit argument you deploy to rail against Luke as he actually is illustrates that handily. You wanted a Luke who was mildly upset by it but otherwise - in every way that really matters - unchanged. Cheap, dishonest, and totally lacking any sort of meaningful character arc.

I wanted Luke that behaved consistently with what was established. There is plenty of room between "unchanged" and doing a 180. You failed to address any of my arguments except to insist they are not the same as the incident from TLJ therefore Luke gets to be portrayed however the director pleases with absolutely no consistency with previous movies.

Stop fucking lying, you know exactly what I meant. And yes, Luke was not interested in any of that. How do we know this? Because at no stage in ROTJ's script is it stated or implied that this is part of Luke's thinking at all. It's just something you've made up. Again, this is that total lack of film literacy we're talking about. It's Luke's feelings about Leia that are the danger, as Obi-Wan warned him.

I've made up things that happened in the movie? I've made up that the throne room scene is the culmination of the three movies and all the history between Luke and Vader? I've made up that Emperor was busy goading Luke into rage?
Look dude I know it's awkward that the original trilogy set up all this rich history for me to choose from and TLJ gives you fucking nothing to work with but that's no reason to accuse me of making things up.

It clears up that you can't make a coherent argument? I mean, we were talking about Luke's characterisation and all of a sudden you're whining about Ben. Did you forget they're two different characters?

No you brought up Luke's attack on Vader and claimed it was somehow equivalent to Kylo's decision to land his shuttle and engage Luke in TLJ. I showed in quite a bit of detail how the situations were not remotely similar.

It's pretty funny watching you try and talk about writing but scoff when the writer talks. Almost as funny as thinking that its reasonable to think about the force ghosts of dead people in the context of Luke's appearance on Crait.

I am talking about the writing in the movie. Directors interviews outside of the movie are irrelevant to the quality of the movie. How long will you continue to pretend otherwise?
Force ghosts and force projections are not happening outside of the movie. They are a huge part of the original trilogy and even a huge part of the TLJ. That Kylo didn't even consider it after seeing Luke accomplish something never seen before is stupid. And that Luke was banking on Kylo not suspecting that it was a trick was doubly stupid.

But I have. Don't worry, more to come below.

I await with baited breath.

Where's the strawman? That's the kind of granular technical dumbassery you'd have to think constitutes Jedi training for your argument to make sense. Remember in TESB how Yoda told Luke "you can't lift that X-Wing because you need to know your limits"?

Oh wait, that never happened, because TESB wasn't written by a fucking video game developer.

You ask where the strawman is but then double down on it.
The strawman is you pretending that knowing the difference between a large gun mounted on a heavy armored vehicle and a hand held rifle is some kind of super nerdy overanalysis. The moviemakers went to great lengths to establish the difference in size and power.
TESB was written by people who assumed that the audience won't take statements by Yoda made in a certain situation to goad his student into action and use them to justify logical plotholes in other movies.
Are we going to take "size matters not" literaly? Why didn't Luke pick up a Himalaya sized chunk of the salt planet and throw it into Snoke's ship then? Whay didn't he concentrate and blow up the Starkiller base with his mind since the "ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force"?

I never said that at all. I said he was being irrational. Learn to read maybe.

And I said that attacking someone with that much apparent power is the behavior of an idiot. And hinging your plan on someone being an idiot is also idiotic.

Oh sorry, I must've missed how "all the AT-AT's firing" was actually a reference to "if the rest of the First Order continues on with the mission". How silly of me, to expect your sentences to make some kind of sense.

But yes, it's a good thing he was right about what Ben would do then, isn't it!

Yeah, almost as if he read the script before time.

"Stupid idiot, made a plan relying on him knowing how his opponent would react!"

Yes stupid idiot made a plan relying on knowing the exact way how Kylo Ren will arrange his forces, split up his forces, delegate mission objectives to subordinates. Oh but he "knew him" so it's cool.

Hey, remember how I mentioned "grandiose and obvious failures"? This is one of them. I mean, we had an entire scene where Rey opens herself up to the Force and realises at the end of it that ... Luke is nowhere to be seen. Because he cut himself off from it. He only reconnects to it much later in the film - we see him do it - and the first thing he does is call out to Leia.

But hey, they're only major plot points of the film, you can't be expected to remember them when you're busy trying to come up with LOL PLOT HOLES to bitch about.

Oh right right his TCP/IP ports were closed.
See when the movies needs him not to know who is behind the door he doesn't know who is behind the door and when the movie needs him to know what happened to Snoke on the other side of the galaxy he knows what happened on the other side of the galaxy. Yeah he "cut himself off" from the Force. But he uses the Force when he's training Rey. So he just switched off the long range communications array? Gotta love the endless contrivances and conveniences in this movie.
But we agree on one point right? That he's a chickenshit who only showed up after finding out that Snoke was dead?

Ah yes, it's "nerd shit" to notice that C-3P0 saw Luke as well as anyone else did - a very deliberate moment that is impossible to miss (but hey, you missed the entire thing about Luke cutting himself off from the Force, so why should I be surprised bout this?) Film literacy, what is that?

Yes it's nerd shit. All that matters is that in essence he's an optical illusion. The fact that he also fooled C-3P0 adds absolutely nothing in any kind of dramatic terms.

Trying to imagine what it would be like to think that a plan working because it relies on character traits organic to the opponent is bad.

Yes yes character traits allow you to predict the exact enemy order of battle. "I know Kylo Ren so I know exactly how many TIE figters and AT-ATs he has attacking the base and how he will split them up". Hey didn't you complain about me going into too much detail as to what constitutes Jedi training? Are you saying Luke discussed fucking mechanized troop tactics with Kylo?

What a shame he didn't throw the AT-AT's around with the Force or whatever dumb, regressively violent shit would've gotten your jollies up. Oh but wait, you won't say what you wanted because you'd rather not open your free-style bad faith complaining to any kind of specific criticism.

Whoa whoa whoa dude. Didn't you watch TESB when Yoda said "size matters not". You pointed this out to me remember? So it's cool. Just pick up AT-ATs and juggle with them. Rip the planet in half. Size matters not. Don't get caught up in "granular technical dumbassery" on me now.
"Regressively violent". The guy that blew up the fucking Death Star reduced to David Copperfield shenanigans because anything else would just be oh so violent. In a fucking action adventure.

Yes, yes Luke's knowledge of Kylo Ren told him specifically how he will organize the attacking force on the salt planet and how he will delegate to his subordinates. He's a powerful space wizard don't you know.

Way to miss the point!

You have no point. You keep pretending that knowing someone's character traits translates into predicting military tactics in detail.

I wonder, how does someone who's so film-illiterate they think "But things could have happened differently!" is a meaningful film criticism survive in day to day life? Are you able to meaningfully enjoy any form of constructed entertainment, or are you just constantly deconstructing every little scenario put before you and trying to think of all the ways it would turn out differently if something really stupid and random happened?

As I've pointed out already there is a difference between "things didn't necessarily have to go this way and there was an element of luck" and "things had to go exactly this way for the plan to succeed".
And there is a difference if this happens once or ten times in a single movie.

To point out your inability to come up with anything that wouldn't be easily torn apart by your own patent bad faith, of course.

I can point out that Tacoma-Narrows bridge was badly designed without knowing how to design one myself right? Rian got 100 million dollars and 2 years to come up with the movie.

Sorry you didn't get your self-indulgent power fantasy climax. Maybe try Justice League for that.

You mean another movie where they butchered a well known character in order to be more "adult".

And the Machines thought that way (despite trying to kill Neo the entire time before this) because the scriptwriters were on Neo's side! Bad writing! See, this dumbass argument is so easy.

As I said when people say "scriptwriters were on their side" they are fully aware that everything in the film happens because the scriptwriters wanted it. The point is that there needs to be more logic beyond "the scriptwriters decided it".
The Machines had nothing to lose, Neo had nothing to lose. Neo's plan didn't hinge on the Machines being idiots, his plan hinged on Machines taking up his offer that cost them nothing.
This is not equivalent to Luke betting on the entire First Order acting like idiots.

What 'clear logic'? You've simply asserted it, you certainly haven't illustrated it. What, the gunners don't know droids are a thing in the Star Wars galaxy? Good thing the scriptwriters were on their side!

Dude they literally spell it out. They detected no lifeforms and concluded it short circuited. Maybe they should've thought of the droids, maybe they should've blown it up anyway just in case. It certainly is nowhere close to, for example, Finn and Rose assuming that the Resistance fleet is only being tracked from the "lead ship" and other ships would only engage their trackers when the one on the lead ship is disabled.

Oh great, another movie you didn't watch properly. The Empire specifically deactivated the hyperdrive, so they clearly were concerned that the crew would escape. R2-D2 turned it back on in a second.

My question stands. Are militaries usually in the business of disabling the engines on vehicles whose occupants are already apprehended? Empire actually did disable it but what they didn't go at it with a hammer? And this is some kind of great convenience that is comparable to what happens in TLJ?

Wait, who says its random chance? You? Why? Are the Empire idiots? They don't know where the moon is when they jump in?

Good thing the scriptwriters were on their side!

You have some evidence that they deliberately exited on the other side of the planet?

Who the hell cares. You think the random contrivances I brought up are the only ones that exist? The only relevant difference is your willingness to allow for them and place them in a context which exists beyond "lol this is dumb" is directly proportional to your personal biases.

You don't have to care of course. You can take your own advice and simply admit you like the movie regardless of it's many logical flaws and contrivances. And the original movies don't have nearly as many jarring contrivances as the TLJ the most egregious of which I listed but you ignored.

[FaxModem1]

Unfortunately, the lesson they take from it is a bit different:

Rose: We're trapped.
Finn: It was worth it though, to tear up that town, make them hurt.
(Rose tears off the saddle from one of the space horses, the space horse rejoins it's herd)
Rose: Now it's worth it.
(BB-8 and DJ come in on a stolen ship)
DJ: Need a lift?

Let's face it, the film is pretty much telling us that the space horses being free in the wilderness counts as a victory in our heroes' minds. The children are forgotten about, and are only shown at the end as a footnote to show that Luke's tale has inspired a few of them. And that they're still enslaved.

Where in that quote do they say "Well, we freed the horses, so all problems are solved because the children don't matter?" Nowhere. They did a good thing. They're happy that they did a good thing. It doesn't mean they imagine all problems are solved forever. Heck, the fact that Finn thinks it's worth the failure of their mission to wreck Canto Bight says something about how much we're supposed to despise that place and its practices (including the child labour).

Also, the film shows that Luke's last stand has inspired the children, and implicitly may lead them to resist in the future. You can call it "a footnote", but that's just you trying to downplay the scene's significance. One must presume that there's a reason that they chose to end the film on that note. Perhaps because it is meant to be a significant one- the film's final conclusion.

Again, this just comes off as you deliberately going out of your way to put the most negative possible spin on every scene.

What the hell do you think 'worth it' means? Are you interpreting it as, "All our friends are dying on the run from the First Order, and we failed our mission, but we freed some horses, so it's okay?"

Because that seems like how we're supposed to interpret it.

Which is due to bad execution. And because the film is taking as many chances as it can to take the piss at Star Wars, then tries to course correct by saying no, really, it's okay. But by then, it's hard to reconcile with the plot problems the film has introduced.

"Deliberately ambiguous" is not "bad execution". Like TLJ or hate it, one thing Johnson is NOT is a sloppy or incompetent director. Just because you don't personally like the choices he made does not mean that they were not made with care.

Also "taking as many chances as it can to take the piss at Star Wars"? Right, because if it isn't the film you want, then it must be a deliberate malicious attempt to destroy the franchise.

Or he makes non-sensical plots in an attempt to subvert expectations, without thinking through how things will work once the movie isn't hiding behind a reveal, and all the cards are on the table. Same as how Looper was an interesting film, but one that leaves you more questions than answers, and has Bruce Willis telling the audience to shut up about asking questions in the diner scene.

[Vympel]

One, they can have an application but you have to show how instead of vaguely namedropping famous characters from other stories.
Two, an interview with the director after the movie is over is irrelevant to whether the movie itself works.
That you continually try to pretend that my differentiation between "movie" and "not movie" as some kind of nerdy nitpicking about "canon" only shows that you have no argument.

It's pretty obvious that you haven't even bothered to read what I or Johnson actually said or why I referred to it. It's pretty normal, when discussing writing, to look at what the writer says about his own work and why he made the choices he made. People who aren't film illiterate don't need to have it beaten over their head in the actual film. But you are, as we've established, which handily explains why you rail so much at the quite conventional idea that mythic heroes are not fixed points in space and so complaining that "waaaaah but in the previous movie from 40 years go he didn't act like this" is stupid.

"Things happen to him". "He is 60 years old". What a compelling reason for a 180 turn! And it's not my imaginations that Luke never reacted to setbacks and tragedy the way he reacted in TLJ. That's a demonstrable fact.

Only if you lobotomise yourself with an ice cream scoop and try and argue - with a straight face, amazingly - that making a random choice of astromech droid as a know-nothing teenager is equivalent in both responsibility and consequences to failing as a Jedi Master to prevent the fall of your own family.

No the reason is you are aware the examples work synergistically with one another and paint a clear trajectory of Luke's character. Next to that his reaction from TLJ sticks out like a sore thumb and you know it. So you decide to chop up the overarching point into little paragraphs where you can pretend each one of them exists on its own.

Of course it sticks out like a sore thumb, because its so much worse, and there's so much more tied up with it than "something happened to make Luke sad". Writing!

No he's legally not. He won't be found guilty at the Hague tribunal.
It's still reasonable for him to feel some guilt and it's still one of the most devastating things that can happen to a person.
Of course he also wasn't guilty for "creating a new Vader" objectively speaking was he. He ignited a lightsaber once, that explains Kylo rampaging through the galaxy murdering people? That's Luke's fault objectively speaking?

Who the fuck said anything about "objectively" in this context? The only person who introduced 'objective' into this entire discussion is you, because you're apparently incapable of analysing anything that's organic to character or narrative. And you're a liar too - you even put objectively in " " "quotes when you first introduced this irrelevant concept, as if you were quoting me.

But sure, let's continue the Kane Starkiller Naked Bad Faith comedy hour! Luke was responsible for training Ben Solo but let's divorce that context and instead make a ludicrous argument that someone, somewhere, is pretending that Luke's sole failure was igniting his lightsaber! And that this is "objective" and not something that Luke subjectively feels to be the case!

It's a bad faith argument from me to suggest that Luke might feel guilty about a guy he was talking into joining the Rebellion and who was being tortured specifically to bait him? But your suggestion that Luke won't feel guilty because he won't "infantilise" Han is NOT a bad faith argument? I love how you suggest he will just emotionlessly and logically absolve himself from any responsibility of his aunt's and uncle's death and Han's capture but will then break down and wallow in self pity for decades over Kylo Ren.

Oh, shifting the goalposts now are we? How convenient. No, your bad faith - apart from making Han to be an easibly manipulated dupe who Luke somehow tricked - was attempting to pretend that the relationship between master/student and uncle/nephew (Luke and Ben) is somehow at all equivalent to the relationship between Luke and Han, two grown men who are responsible for their own choices. Why the hell would Luke despair over the fact that Han is being made to suffer merely because Luke exists? That's the only reason Han's being pursued - the mere fact that Luke exists. What wrong choice did Luke make that would make him feel responsible for Han's pain that he would decide the galaxy would be better off without the Jedi, as he did with Ben? None. So you're completely full of shit.

Oh - and the whole Jedi issue - kind of important. Luke's self-imposed exile isn't about "oh, something bad happenened to him, so he is sad" - as you so stupidly continue to imply with your desperate attempts to find something equivalent in the OT (which doesn't exist). It's inextricably linked with his status as a Jedi Master and legend. That would be why the dialog in TLJ focuses so much on this issue and his own hubris.

And you haven't even begun to address the point that beyond any guilt he might've felt over it the death of his aunt and uncle or the revelation that the guy who just cut of his hand is his own father should've pushed him into self pity and despair as much as anything.

Why the fuck would he despair about the revelation that the guy who cut off his hand is his father? Did he make Vader adopt him?

You just keep repeating how it's not the same event. Well no, no tragedy is going the be the same as the one before. Certainly in a movie saga that shouldn't repeat itself. How does that absolve the moviemakers from making consistent characters?

"LOL, all tragedies are of the same magnitude irrespective of their not being the same event"

What does Vader's motivation have to do with this? This entire line of discussion started when you claimed that Luke blowing up at Vader in the middle of a seemingly life and death fight is the same as Kylo rushing at Luke for no apparent reason.

I guess we can add "can't read" to "can't watch Star Wars properly" to your ever widening library of incompetence:

Further, as to your similarly clueless "Vader fighting Luke" - Ben - unlike Vader - hates Luke. The bond of father and son between Vader and Luke is totally different than that of uncle and nephew between Luke and Ben. There is ample reason for Luke to consider himself the precisely wrong person to attempt to 'save' Ben, if he ever considered himself capable of such a thing.

Anyway:

You tried to claim that Luke, who was wronged by Vader so many times and was in the process of fighting him AND was being taunted about his sister AND was being taunted by Palpatine about how the Rebel alliance and all his friends will die, had no more of a reason to lash out at Vader than Kylo Ren did. That's quite obviously horseshit.

Kylo Ren lashed out at who? What are you talking about now?

Yeah it sure would've been shitty if ANH Luke was as mopey and self pitying as TLJ Luke. Thank's for proving my point.
But shouldn't the TLJ script be changed to this to match the awkwardness of your invented ANH dialogue:
"Leia trusted me not to come up with the idea of executing her sleeping son over something that might happen even after I refused to write off Darth Vader over things that did happen. Excuse me while I spend the rest of my life in self righteous isolation and self pity instead of cleaning up the shit I feel responsible for creating."

There's a reason "refusing to engage with the material" comes up so often with idiots who make bad faith criticisms of TLJ, and this is yet another reason for it - you divorce the moment Luke and Ben's relationship exploded from all of its context - that Ben is Leia's son, that he's incredibly powerful in the Force - all the responsbility he was saddled with, all the expectations that were upon him - then you make light of the visions the Force gave him, like they're some sort of suggestion, in an attempt to cheapen Luke's experience and Luke's pain.

I wanted Luke that behaved consistently with what was established. There is plenty of room between "unchanged" and doing a 180.

No, there really isn't. Consistency is antithetical to change. You don't want him to behave in a manner that allows for any meaningful character arc at all. Nothing to make his intervention in the story so he can actually be the legend he's intended to be (i.e. face down an army with a laser sword) actually have any sense of catharsis, meaning or payoff. It's fundamentally impossible.

But by all means, prove me wrong. I'd love to hear your idea for how Luke can somehow be 'changed', in exile on an island but somehow not sufficiently changed so as not to upset you:

“There’s also just an adjustment because Luke is different,” Johnson continues. “He’s not the same as Obi-Wan, but he’s the Obi-Wan of this trilogy. He’s not the Luke of this trilogy. More than that, where he was coming from in The Force Awakens meant that it would have been weird and dishonest to just have him be exactly the way he was in his twenties. Obviously these 30 years have changed him, otherwise he wouldn’t have exiled himself on that island. So there was a certain amount of asking where his head is at now and why is it there. Mark was maybe coming into it more expecting what some of the fans might have been expecting – that it was just going to be 20-year-old Luke, except with a beard [laughs]. Because I respected the character and wanted to take that character’s arc seriously to figure out why he’s doing what he’s doing, it was never going to be that.”

It was never going to be that in George Lucas' treatment either, btw. Luke being in exile and training no students was a concept carried over from well before Lucas even sold the rights (2012 at the latest, actually).

No version of this film - by any writer - was ever going to be Star Wars: The Fuller House Reunion Special. Because self-indulgent fan service isn't a good story.

You failed to address any of my arguments except to insist they are not the same as the incident from TLJ therefore Luke gets to be portrayed however the director pleases with absolutely no consistency with previous movies.

I've addressed all of your arguments in turn, you just don't like what I have to say. Why are you wasting time with these obviously false rhetorical flourishes? Just to pad out post length?

I've made up things that happened in the movie? I've made up that the throne room scene is the culmination of the three movies and all the history between Luke and Vader? I've made up that Emperor was busy goading Luke into rage?
Look dude I know it's awkward that the original trilogy set up all this rich history for me to choose from and TLJ gives you fucking nothing to work with but that's no reason to accuse me of making things up.

Yes, you have. I've already pointed out all the ways your "culmination of three movies" argument is complete bunk - Luke has no anger towards Vader whatsoever by the time he crosses blades with him. At all. That's amply borne out by the film's script - over and over and over again. Worse, you're so incompetent at watching movies you think "the Emperor goading Luke into rage" is somehow relevant to how he feels about Vader. The Emperor goaded Luke into striking the Emperor down. It had nothing to do with his father.

No you brought up Luke's attack on Vader and claimed it was somehow equivalent to Kylo's decision to land his shuttle and engage Luke in TLJ. I showed in quite a bit of detail how the situations were not remotely similar.

????? No I didn't, what the fuck are you on about? Quote me where this happened.

I am talking about the writing in the movie. Directors interviews outside of the movie are irrelevant to the quality of the movie. How long will you continue to pretend otherwise? Force ghosts and force projections are not happening outside of the movie. They are a huge part of the original trilogy and even a huge part of the TLJ. That Kylo didn't even consider it after seeing Luke accomplish something never seen before is stupid. And that Luke was banking on Kylo not suspecting that it was a trick was doubly stupid.

"The quality of the movie"? LOL. This tangent started when I said that the reason Luke's characterisation is so good was because the way it reflects other mythic stories. It's not hard.

You ask where the strawman is but then double down on it.
The strawman is you pretending that knowing the difference between a large gun mounted on a heavy armored vehicle and a hand held rifle is some kind of super nerdy overanalysis. The moviemakers went to great lengths to establish the difference in size and power.
TESB was written by people who assumed that the audience won't take statements by Yoda made in a certain situation to goad his student into action and use them to justify logical plotholes in other movies.
Are we going to take "size matters not" literaly? Why didn't Luke pick up a Himalaya sized chunk of the salt planet and throw it into Snoke's ship then? Whay didn't he concentrate and blow up the Starkiller base with his mind since the "ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force"?

You seem very confused at this stage. I mean, you're throwing in Vader quotes in a discussion about Yoda, for one. But no - the point - which you missed, as usual - was that the Force has never been presented as some sort of technical art, like being a Jedi is like going to fucking Hogwarts. The Force is mysterious, not well defined, and it functions on a level of self-belief and feeling.

So yes, when you whine about "but how could he think he could defeat him because ZOMG HIS POWEEERRRRS ARE SO HIGGGGHHHH", you sound like an idiot.

And I said that attacking someone with that much apparent power is the behavior of an idiot. And hinging your plan on someone being an idiot is also idiotic.

Talking about "power levels" in Star Wars discourse at all is the behavior of an idiot.

Yeah, almost as if he read the script before time.

Things happening as the heroes plan they will often seem like that!

Yes stupid idiot made a plan relying on knowing the exact way how Kylo Ren will arrange his forces, split up his forces, delegate mission objectives to subordinates. Oh but he "knew him" so it's cool.

Man, what a terrible Star Wars movie, the climax of the film was based on character motivation and narrative and not "how did he delegate the mission objectives with the TO&E and OOB of all the weapons systems in the battlespace".

Oh right right his TCP/IP ports were closed.
See when the movies needs him not to know who is behind the door he doesn't know who is behind the door and when the movie needs him to know what happened to Snoke on the other side of the galaxy he knows what happened on the other side of the galaxy. Yeah he "cut himself off" from the Force. But he uses the Force when he's training Rey. So he just switched off the long range communications array? Gotta love the endless contrivances and conveniences in this movie.

Of course that's what you retreat to. Incompetent at watching the film, so when called out on an obvious fuckup, instead of just admitting it and dropping the point you just effortlessly shift gears to complaining about how the thing - the thing you didn't know about until two seconds ago - is dumb with a bunch of derisive, bad faith euphemisms - and making up even more lies. Luke never used the Force when teaching Rey - that's simply not a thing that ever happened.

But we agree on one point right? That he's a chickenshit who only showed up after finding out that Snoke was dead?

Yeah dude, if there's one thing that's clear in the film's narrative, it's definitely that Luke is afraid of Snoke. This is definitely a thing the movie is selling. It's not at all about what would be the most meaningful thing to happen for the story or would advance and give the film's actual antagonist/joint-protagonist something to do, no, it's your out-of-fucking-nowhere made-up inference that Luke must be a "chickenshit".

You're almost like a literal child at this point. It's so embarassing. I feel bad for you.

Yes it's nerd shit. All that matters is that in essence he's an optical illusion. The fact that he also fooled C-3P0 adds absolutely nothing in any kind of dramatic terms.

Yes we've been over your chain of illogic multiple times. It goes like this:

- It's an optical illusion
- Optical illusions are cheap because they're not satisfying to Kane Starkiller
- Therefore Luke is lazy
- Therefore Luke dying from the effort is bad and wrong

It's airtight!

Yes yes character traits allow you to predict the exact enemy order of battle. "I know Kylo Ren so I know exactly how many TIE figters and AT-ATs he has attacking the base and how he will split them up". Hey didn't you complain about me going into too much detail as to what constitutes Jedi training? Are you saying Luke discussed fucking mechanized troop tactics with Kylo?

LOL, "Order of Battle"

Whoa whoa whoa dude. Didn't you watch TESB when Yoda said "size matters not". You pointed this out to me remember? So it's cool. Just pick up AT-ATs and juggle with them. Rip the planet in half. Size matters not. Don't get caught up in "granular technical dumbassery" on me now.
"Regressively violent". The guy that blew up the fucking Death Star reduced to David Copperfield shenanigans because anything else would just be oh so violent. In a fucking action adventure.

Annnnnnnnnd there it is. Remember a while ago, when I pointed out that Luke's sacrifice dovetailed beautifully with Jedi ideals because of Yoda's lessons to Luke about what a Jedi is supposed to use the Force for, how its about knowledge and defence, and not attack? How his triumph in the OT is the moment he throws his lightsaber away in ROTJ and refuses to kill his father?

Well to you none of that matters because "its a fucking action adventure" and "he blew up the fucking Death Star". So basically you simply never understood what the culimination of Luke's arc in the OT was - so when it's pointed out that for Luke's sacrifice to involve violence would be a regression of the character (hence "regressively violent") - out comes this load of verbal diahrrea.

Heck, you're so blinkered that you apparently think me arguing that it is wrong for Luke to do a thing is actually about whether he technically can do a thing. I'm talking about what is right for the character, you're here talking about superpowers. Again - a parody of the worst kind of Star Wars nerd.

You never got the character at all, and you don't get Star Wars at all. To you and everyone else who felt 'cheated' out of your cathartic exercise is telekinesis and acrobatics and god knows what other juvenile power fantasy fan-service bullshit, he's just a space warrior who destroys his enemies with his awesome powers. And it didn't happen, so you're lashing out in the most juvenile way possible.

You have no point. You keep pretending that knowing someone's character traits translates into predicting military tactics in detail.

No, I just don't give a fuck about "military tactics in detail" because this is a goddamn Star Wars movie.

As I've pointed out already there is a difference between "things didn't necessarily have to go this way and there was an element of luck" and "things had to go exactly this way for the plan to succeed".
And there is a difference if this happens once or ten times in a single movie.

The only difference is the one you've made up in your head to justify your wild double-standards.

I can point out that Tacoma-Narrows bridge was badly designed without knowing how to design one myself right? Rian got 100 million dollars and 2 years to come up with the movie.

It doesn't matter, since its easy to tell what sort of garbage you would've made up in his place. It would've involved "orders of battle" and "military tactics" and "ripping AT-AT's in half" and god knows what other character and narrative irrelevant bilge.

You mean another movie where they butchered a well known character in order to be more "adult".

I might know what that means if I cared at all about Justice League?

As I said when people say "scriptwriters were on their side" they are fully aware that everything in the film happens because the scriptwriters wanted it. The point is that there needs to be more logic beyond "the scriptwriters decided it".
The Machines had nothing to lose, Neo had nothing to lose. Neo's plan didn't hinge on the Machines being idiots, his plan hinged on Machines taking up his offer that cost them nothing.
This is not equivalent to Luke betting on the entire First Order acting like idiots.

Keep telling yourself that, whilst not-so-artfully dodging the way the Machines conveniently decided to stop trying to kill Neo long enough for them to hear his offer for absolutely no reason.

Dude they literally spell it out. They detected no lifeforms and concluded it short circuited. Maybe they should've thought of the droids, maybe they should've blown it up anyway just in case. It certainly is nowhere close to, for example, Finn and Rose assuming that the Resistance fleet is only being tracked from the "lead ship" and other ships would only engage their trackers when the one on the lead ship is disabled.

This paragraph is fun because you're like "they literally spell it out" (they don't - they just conveniently forget droids exist) and then proceed to complain about something that is ... quite literally spelt out. They determine its a kind of active tracker, and that therefore the other ships would only engage their own trackers because that's a known principle of how active trackers behave. It's axiomatic to both of them.

My question stands. Are militaries usually in the business of disabling the engines on vehicles whose occupants are already apprehended? Empire actually did disable it but what they didn't go at it with a hammer? And this is some kind of great convenience that is comparable to what happens in TLJ?

You can't read? They did disable the engines on a vehicle whose occupants were already appreheneded. What about this concept do you not get? But sure, there's nothing convenient about a military disabling a hyperdrive by doing something that can be reversed by an astromech droid (which it learned from the city central computer - why does it know this, again?) in approximately one second when they could easily have just disabled it in a more permanent way, or simply seized the ship.

You have some evidence that they deliberately exited on the other side of the planet?

Why does that matter? Either they didn't care what side of the planet they came out on - giving all of the high value enemy agents ample time to escape if they were so inclined - or they did care but didn't bother to check first. Either way - damn those script writers *shakes fist*

You don't have to care of course. You can take your own advice and simply admit you like the movie regardless of it's many logical flaws and contrivances. And the original movies don't have nearly as many jarring contrivances as the TLJ the most egregious of which I listed but you ignored.

That would be because I don't actually give a shit about contrivances. It's film criticism for ignroamuses who hate film criticism. I just like watching people who think they're worth jack shit apologise for them and generally look silly as they try and distinguish about how only some plot coveniences are somehow special and kosher.