Podcast 16: The Last Jedi

Love the podcast and agree with you! I agree as well that Holdo didn't tell Poe because he was too low a rank after being demoted, and they had people deserting. It would have been detrimental to inform the crew of the mission, have one desert and get captured by the First Order, and give up the goods. They had one roll of the dice. In any military organization, they don't inform lower ranking officers except on a need-to-know basis; they need to trust their leadership.

River Eirtree

Exactly. It was just mishandled. Its not that the character was a bad addition, it was the execution that fell flat.

Scott B.

Holdo would work if the movie didn't treat her as a cardoard cutout foil for Poe. It's fine to mislead us into thinking she's a bad guy, but the way to redeem her is not to just kill her off, but to explore just a little bit of her inner life. The rebellion is highly dysfunctional, but the movie pretends that it's all just a little misunderstanding about operational security and mother Leia can just forgive the squabbling children and everything is fine. Leia should have stayed dead and made Poe and Holdo the last best hope for the rebellion, even if they continued to hate each other. One of them souldn't just be written out of the story while pretending her character flaws don't exist - you either lock them in a room and force them to work together or turn it into a fully fledged civil war. What is the most interesting situation: A slow barge chase which has time to visit Atlantic City, or a conflict where the heroes turn on each other?

Great podcast! I gotta say that I agree on all counts, especially when Craven said "Star Wars is stupid." It is, and that's where you should start from. These movies have always been created with a healthy layer of cheese in them, and folks need to remember that, especially us - the fans. Like, we're excited about our Gareth Edwards and our Rian Johnsons, but they're just going to make classier cheesy bullshit, so any real discussion needs to start from that spot. I won't run though your bullets, because I'm pretty much in line with your responses. I'll throw out a couple things because I gave myself a lot of time between first and second viewings specifically because of my reaction after seeing it opening night. Also, wanna point out that I read through the twitter comments Zak mentioned and had them in mind during viewing #2. So, Casino World (Canto Bight, come on, guys) works the second time around with some of those ideas about the military industrial complex and the galaxy at large in mind. My initial impression of that chunk of the story was that it dragged, but second time around, it really didn't. My one main complaint with it is that the fathier escape chase seems too much like the Prequels, and I think that's because only the prequels really had an animal mounted action sequences. It was chicken horse, but cranked up to 11. My second big gripe with the movie was the way Holdo was presented and resolved and its not that I mind what they were trying to do with her whole "teach Poe a lesson in leadership" thing, but you know, when main characters we know freak out about characters we don't, it's hard not to jump on board with them. Holdo is introduced right after Snoke and Hux meet about having the Resistance "tied to a string." Then, Holdo very coldly dressed Poe down. First time, I was sure she was First Order spy or something. When she sacrifices herself for the Resistance, I was like, "well, that's unsatisfying." Second time I watched TLJ, I noticed the music queue and it's pretty sinister, so again, I think Holdo's story wasn't so much wrong or useless, but just...mishandled. I feel Zak's frustration about Finn. I keep hoping for something better for the guy. Like Holdo, I think he's mishandled. He's not deserting, he's just trying to find Rey. And remember, both movies cover the span of like, 6 days, so I feel like Finn is allowed to give Rey priority over the Resistance. It's just unfortunate that a new character dresses him down in such a way. So here's some things to consider when you go see it a second time. Space Leia - pay attention to the "force sensing" between her and Ben. Does Ben warn her? I think she clearly breathes in before the decompression. Holdo takes charge - check the music when she takes over on the bridge. Also, did you guys catch that this is the only Star Wars (episodic) movie where lightsabers don't clash? I thought that was kinda neat. Rey and Ben never face off. Luke is a projection, so he can't. I thought that was pretty interesting, because it reinforces this notion about what it means to be a Jedi. It's not about solving problems with a lazer sword, which Luke notes early on. I know I had big theories for who was what, but I like this idea that Rey is just the universe's response to rising darkness. Ben, as Kylo Ren, is a man with a legacy. His father, his uncle, his grandfather...Ben can't help but be somebody, no matter who he ends up being. Rey should be nobody because Ben needs to learn that you can become something from nothing. I think he's motivated both good and bad by his legacy. If he'd been nobody, he could have turned out like Rey. Ben's legacy gets used against him...both in Luke's response to him as a rising threat and in Snoke's choice to lure him away. I wonder, if there were no Jedi, could there have been a prophesy about a chosen one? What would have happened to Anakin if Qui Gon had never found him? Luke? What will happen when all these people find the Force within themselves with no Jedi Order to dictate a path and only the First Order to rally against?

Scott B.

Agreed on everything. Wish you talked more about the yoda scene though; that was my favorite :]. Great podcast as always!

If they wanted to throw away most of the characters and conflicts from The Force Awakens, they shouldn’t even have wasted any time on them this time - rather than giving them pointless cameos like Maz and Phasma get here. The reason Luke doesn’t work so well with audiences is that there’s not enough time to explore his relationship to Kylo, and flesh out how Luke changed into what he is now, and how he feels guilty about causing the whole conflict. In the podcast you had to do a pretty insightful analysis of the original trilogy and rely on a lot of related materials and archetypes to make Luke’s character arc work. Cutting the whole space chase, mutiny and casino stuff would have made more space for believable drama. Empire Strikes Back works as a stand-alone movie; I know since it was the first Star Wars I saw. Lots of kids watched the prequels first and loved them. But if you’re making a movie as tightly related as episode 5 and 6, you can’t just base the movie on making jokes about the last movie, spend most of the time on some side plot and then have Vader sudenly appear to save the day at the end for no apparent reason except “I decided off screen that the dark side is bad”. Casual audiences who don’t care about minor details, will still care about errors in characterization. If you need to read a novel or reddit post to explain the actual plot, then maybe they should have showed that in the movie.

And I totally caught on about the force use being physically demanding and why it caused him so much strain to pass on. However you mentioned that he was younger in his projection and I noticed that, and at first thought "wow really? He had time to do a Mcgruber hair cut montage?" But it bothered me that if he WAS trying to appear as Kylo remembered him, whyyyyy the hellll did he have his blue lightsaber??? I have a lot of pet peeves about what they've been doing with that lightsaber. Like how Maz got it and the activation button change, and the sounds of it and how it basically becomes a full blade instantly instead of rising to its length. Like why didnt Luke show up with his green lightsaber? Kylo has never seen the blue one... Also how'd you feel about Yoda blasting the force tree? I know Yoda did it because to show luke he needs to move on but I thought it was very clever for the writer to give him the line "she already possesses what you want to teach her". At first you're thinking its about how to use the force but at the very end in the Falcon you see she stole the fuckin Jedi texts. Luke probably didn't know but Yoda did. Typical Yoda with the big picture and showing ppl what they need to see. Kind of a Matrix Oracle move telling neo one of them is going to die so neo saves morpheus.

YOU guys didn't even talk about the possibility of weaponized light speed... but one thing I wished they had expanded on was the reveal that (well reveal if you didnt already know enough about the lore) that weapons manufacturers sell to both sides. That honestly is why i thought Finn was so conflicted about the total war and wanted to sacrifice himself. YKnow like "why the hell does it matter if I switched sides anyway, there's no clear good and evil from an objective perspective so I'll just end it with the side I want to be on." Like his own existential crisis, piloting his Lincoln MKX into the laser ram.

Rotten Tomatoes call a professional review “fresh” even if it’s just a 2 out of 5 score. That 90% of reviewers avoided giving it a 1 out of 5 isn’t exactly a ringing endorsement. Also those audience scores are real - but audiences tend to either like or hate movies to a higher degree, so they tend to give more 1 or 5 star reviews.

It does seem like they were contractually obligated to put Finn, Poe, Maz and Phasma in the movie, but were given full freedom to throw away and ignore everything else from episode 7. This is not like Babylon 5 or even the prequels where there’s a big story arc to tell - this is more like a saturday morning cartoon where Hasbro demands that you introduce at least one new toy each week and doesn’t care if the charater description on the packaging fits the plot of the show. Those shows could also reset from one week to the next - so “that was just a dream” is perhaps an option that episode 9’s director has. Xenu help us.

If you guys go watch it again, keep an eye on some details of TFA. I liked that Rey came from nowhere, but all of the solos in TFA have one or two moments where they seem to know who she is. It's a hole for me, for sure. Leia had never met Rey at the end, but totally ignores chewy walking by and goes and hugs her -- a nobody. Kinda weird. Kylo also seemed to be on the lookout for a girl when she was mentioned during the escape from Jakku. Maz asked Han "who's the girl" and it conveniently cuts away... I dunno, it all seemed to be pointing at something that's not there now.

In Ep 9 the resistance will recreate a new flotilla of starships, and the thousands of rebels needed to operate them, in only two years of time (if it was that easy why aren't there already 4,5 or 6 armadas of rebel starships?) and Kylo Ren, the supreme leader of the entire First Order, will be sulking in his black room listening to records while Hux continues to froth at the mouth.

David Anderson

Haha fair enough. Although Lucas notoriously LOATHED video games, especially ones about Star Wars. I find it hard to imagine Lucas taking inspiration from a game. I think that one might be coincidence.

Auralnauts

Don't knock the prequels for including force speed. That power was introduced via Lucasarts video games (Dark Forces 2 was the first, iirc). That was such a hype moment of fan service for me. And if you want to have a debate about doing force speed all the time, I'd like to see you play a game and find out where that actually gets you.

Ninja Tweak

That's one of the best 90 minutes I've spent recently. Thanks for your analysis guys. Not to be a sycophant but I pretty much agree with most of what you said. Keep it up and can't wait for Episode 6.

Graham Dallas

We gotta comedian over hee-ah!

Auralnauts

I tend to listen to them from my chair and you're right, it's available!