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Savage Wombat said on December 22nd, 2017 at 11:08 am

THANK you!

Aside from the political-specific whining, I keep reading the complainers and hearing “but that’s not how I wanted it to work.”

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Jess Nevins said on December 22nd, 2017 at 11:14 am

Amen!

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Gwendoline Christie.

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Okay, I’ll ask: how do you solve a problem like Princess Leia?

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This is the best blog post I have read on The Last Jedi! Thank you!

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The political situation really wasn’t well explained, and one shouldn’t have to go to other sources to explain the movie you just watched.

That said, there was enough there that you could get a sense of what you needed to know. The First Order is big in the uncharted territory (presumably, they have charted a chunk), and they are immediately striking at the group that just blew up Star Killer base.

The Republic has been decapitated and is ripe for conquest. The First Order is heading in. The Resistance is in the way. Do you need more than that?

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HUGE props for this. And to Gustopher’s point, I totally agree.
Sure there’s an argument to be made for like one additional line in the opening crawl or tweaking the exposition in TFA (which yeah, parts of the timeline have felt more vague than I’d like), but we know what we need to, and the details are out there for the people who really want them, because it probably wouldn’t be Star Wars without weird, finicky peripheral texts.

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Plugged-nickel thoughts (without watching the video):

1) Ditto Gustopher.

3) When Luke drank the milk he also (if memory serves) looked directly at Rey. I think he was emphasizing that he wasn’t some holy creature made of sunbeams, he was an old guy puttering around a cold rock drinking warm milk from the udders of a bloated cow-thing. “Your second-coming saviour has green dribble in his beard. Go home.”

6) I was disappointed with the lack of Snoke backstory as well, but ultimately he was there for Ben to kill… so Ben could screw up the redemption moment and turn it into a mere coup.

9) Stealing someone else’s line, but it’s almost like the Force is waking.

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Since people have asked, here is a ROT13-encoded answer re: what do to with Leia in Episode IX.

*applause* *throws money*

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Savage Wombat said on December 22nd, 2017 at 4:55 pm

Very nice idea.

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I like the suggestion re: Leia.

As the tech guy: I added a cut for the front page for length and for keeping that YouTube off it.

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Why did Luke leave a map to find him if he came to the island planet to die?

This was explained in the last movie – Luke didn’t leave a map, Leia just deduced that he had gone to find the first Jedi temple and had people track down a map to *that.*

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I haven’t seen the movie, but from what I’ve heard the reveal of Rey’s parents actually uses the word sold. Is this accurate? Because if it is there’s a problem with the story of Rey’s parents whether they were important or not. And that is people who are sold have owners, which Rey did not. She was a scavenger not a slave.

You want to make Rey’s parents no one important fine, but there story shouldn’t be the one is this movie

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And that is people who are sold have owners, which Rey did not. She was a scavenger not a slave.

There are AT LEAST twelve years between the flashback we see in TFA (which is implied – but not stated – to be when Rey is sold) and her time as a scavenger at the start of that film. Plenty of things could have happened in that time to get her out of slavery – bought and then emancipated by a slightly less dickish person, ran away, the Republic sent some forces out to free all slaves on the planet, etc.

Not to mention that sold does not necessarily mean sold into lifelong slavery – perhaps it was a contract of indentured servitude but by the time it was over her parents had drank themselves to death. Alternatively, poor families selling kids to rich families who can’t have kids is a thing, both in fiction and, worse, in reality.

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Jack-Pumpkinhead said on December 25th, 2017 at 5:19 pm

I feel it’s worth mentioning as well that Ben may not be the most reliable narrator, & he sounded desperate to bring Rey to his side. So, take what he says with a grain of salt. But I totally appreciate your thoughts on the film MGK, I enjoyed the hell out of the film.

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Since people have asked, here is a ROT13-encoded answer re: what do to with Leia in Episode IX.

*also applauds*

I will now (no doubt in vain) hope that the actual answer in Episode 9 follows a very similar idea.

*applauds again*

I also like Sok’s take on the milk-the-sea-beast scene. It would be really nice to think that someone behind making a SW movie actually put that level of coherent thought into the actions and motivations of the characters.

Certainly George didn’t in the prequels. Or arguably at all.

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I also have feels and opinions on MGK’s review of TLJ on Letterboxd, but I’ll leave those for sometime when I’m not at work, and give others a chance to comment.

Welcome back, MGK.

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Anticorium said on December 27th, 2017 at 4:30 pm

I got everything I needed to know about Snoke and the First Order from the TFA crawl.

The First Order arose from the ashes of the Empire.

Snoke is their Supreme Leader.

If I ever want more, and want to read a depressing story about concentration camps and brainwashing programs, there’ll be a Snoke novel for that.

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This..is the best thing about this movie i’ve seen on the net in latest week.

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Yeah, Kylo Ren got Rey’s backstory through their force connection, and look how well that sort of thing worked out for Snoke. JJ Abrams just has to say he picked up on her own fears and insecurities, and we’re right back on the destiny train (please don’t, JJ).

And for whatever It’s worth, Shmi Skywalker was a slave with an apartment nicer than my place.

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Shmi also knew she was owned and wasn’t allowed to wander to freely

while it’s possible to get out of slavery, it seems to me she’d know she was one and be less likely to expect her parents to come back for her.

But they can avoid a grand destiny AND slavery fairly easily. Say Rey is from an area where the First Order was abducting all the kids like with Finn and her parents left her on Jakku figuring she had a better chance there than in the Order

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For 200 million dollars you’d think they could afford more than one draft of the script. Edit your movies, people. Finn and Rose could have been cut from this movie entirely and it would be much better. That would also give them a chance to make us care about admiral whatshername and establish her as a character so her death has emotional impact(And disregarding real life concerns, it makes so much more sense narratively for Leia to be the one lightspeed ramming Snoke’s ship).

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This is quite good, but I do have one minor nitpick: being a farmboy is not going to make Luke more likely to drink milk fresh from the cow, because he was a moisture farmer. The only liquid his farm produced was water. (The hermit part is vaild, though.)

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Unsurpassed Travesty said on January 3rd, 2018 at 1:46 pm

Savage and deserved, every last word. Thank you, sir.

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I enjoyed watching the Last Jedi, for all its flaws, except for one element: Poe. I hated him in this movie. He was dumb, ridiculously arrogant and sexist and got a huge number of people killed basically to boost his own ego. If he hadn’t been in the movie, a lot of people would have survived, including possibly Rose’s sister and definitely everyone on the transports trying to escape under cloak, since the whole Cantu sequence wouldn’t have happened and then the Resistance wouldn’t have been betrayed.

For his outright mutiny and misogny (seriously, he dismissed the admiral when she appeared for being a femininely-dressed woman) he is only barely punished with an ‘awww shucks, white-coded male lead, we can’t stay mad at you.’ No female character could ever behave that way and expect to maintain audience sympathy–and I sort of hope BB8 shoves him in a locker in the next movie so the interesting characters can get on with things.

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I also think he drank the milk the way he did to try to skeeve out Rey so she would leave.

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