Star Wars Episode VIII "The Last Jedi" Coming December 15, 2017 (1 Viewer)

[Tino]

Imo Johnson attempted to change the parentage of Rey by having Rey(I mistakenly typed Ren) state they nobodies. Also having Snoke tell Ren to “take off that ridiculous thing”. And Ren smashing it to pieces.

But like I said, I have no issues as directors can change what they want as it’s their film.

 

[TravisR]

Abrams has a trilogy to end, I still say he isn't going to waste any of that screen time on answering solved questions. He might have had a different idea for Rey's parents but I doubt he'll try to incorporate that idea when the topic has already been resolved.

 

[Tino]

Maybe. We’ll see.

 

[dpippel]

I still don't see why people think the topic of who Rey's parents were has been "resolved" just because Ren told her they were nobodies. IMO he could have easily been lying to try and manipulate her to join forces with him. Or, if not lying, he could have simply made it up to serve the same purpose. As far as I'm concerned Abrams can do whatever he wants with the issue of Rey's parents.

 

[TJPC]

Does all this really matter? Most of us are going to see part 3 of the new trilogy even if Rotten Tomatoes gives it 3%!

 

[dpippel]

THAT is a given.

 

[Tino]

I still don't see why people think the topic of who Rey's parents were has been "resolved" just because Ren told her they were nobodies. IMO he could have easily been lying to try and manipulate her to join forces with him. Or, if not lying, he could have simply made it up to serve the same purpose. As far as I'm concerned Abrams can do whatever he wants with the issue of Rey's parents.

Remember it was Rey who said they were nobodies. NOT Ren.

 

[dpippel]

He was manipulating her through the Force. He knew that it was one of her greatest fears, if not THE greatest, and all it would take was a nudge from him to get her to go there. In my opinion of course.

 

[Tino]

He was manipulating her through the Force. He knew that it was one of her greatest fears, if not THE greatest, and all it would take was a nudge from him to get her to go there. In my opinion of course.

Maybe but I don’t think so as I believe the force is stronger in her.

 

[MattBradley]

Luke and Leia are her parents.

 

[Tommy R]

What happens on Hoth, gets dumped onto Jakku.

 

[Jake Lipson]

Imo Johnson attempted to change the parentage of Rey

Again, it's not a retcon or change if the first movie didn't answer it. It might be a different answer than Abrams had in mind. But a retcon situation would be if The Force Awakens explicitly stated one thing and then The Last Jedi directly contradicted it. Which is not what happened here.

 

[Tino]

Again, it's not a retcon or change if the first movie didn't answer it. It might be a different answer than Abrams had in mind. But a retcon situation would be if The Force Awakens explicitly stated one thing and then The Last Jedi directly contradicted it. Which is not what happened here.

Let’s just say we interpreted the films differently.

 

[benbess]

Back in 2015 I sort-of liked The Force Awakens, but overall I was not much of a fan. But since I loved The Last Jedi that's made me in retrospect like The Force Awakens a lot more.

 

[SamT]

What bigger retcon than to throwing the previous movie in trash for laughs? Throwing out the lightsaber like that for laughs, there is no bigger symbol. The lightsaber was one of the big mysteries and a driving force of TFA.

On paper many things might sound great, but sometimes they will not work out when executed. There was not just one thing. There were just too many things in TFA that later Rian Johnson decided to throw out and say they don't matter. Maybe there is no easy explanation, Maybe it's his overall style for me. I remember when I saw The Brothers Bloom, all the red flags went up! I remember not liking even one second of the movie.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

With respect, that's not what "retcon" means.

A retcon is when you take something that the audience saw in one work, and change it in a following one. "Spider-Man 3" is a good example. The first "Spider-Man" movie shows the character of Uncle Ben being murdered by one specific identifiable person. But in "Spider-Man 3" it shows us that same event, Uncle Ben being killed, but now shows a different person committing the murder. This is a retcon because it is actually contradicting something that happened in a previous film and changing it to something else.

The lightsaber being thrown away at the beginning of The Last Jedi doesn't change anything from the previous film. It doesn't suggest that something we saw onscreen in the previous film didn't happen. It might not be what some audience members expected to happen, but it doesn't actually change what we saw onscreen in The Force Awakens. Nothing in The Force Awakens is invalidated by The Last Jedi. Rather, The Force Awakens asks questions and creates mysteries, which the audience expects to be answered in one way; The Last Jedi just provides different answers than the audience was expecting.

 

[Tommy R]

I think Rian was doomed to criticism no matter what his "answers" ended up being. People can be VERY possessive about Star Wars, myself included. When TFA hit the screen, it turned out to not be the Star Wars I was looking for, but I was okay with that. It was entertaining enough and I wasn't viscerally pissed off at it simply existing. On the other hand, I LOVED TLJ, and in a small degree made me even more "okay with" the existence of TFA (though I still see it's flaws, both as an Episode VII and as a film in general).

Regardless of what Rian came up with to follow TFA, J.J.'s "mysteries" were clearly not conceived with any answers in mind. So personally, I have no problems with how Rian handled it and even really liked how the answers sort of down-played the hype formed around certain plot points. But I say that as a film goer who just doesn't like the gimmicky stuff like setting up "mysteries". I was positively flummoxed after TFA with how many people just wouldn't shut up about who Rey's parents were. It never crossed my mind about who they were, and had it been revealed in Episode VIII that she was a Skywalker or a Kenobi I would have been rolling my eyes. Now if they bring her parents back into the picture to some capacity, with the consistency of who they are said to be in TLJ, then I'd be fine with that, as long as it feels organic and not forced. But we'll have to wait and see.

 

[JimmyO]

This won't be a reply to any specific person in the thread, but it's been interesting reading all of these comments. I agree there wasn't a lot if any retconning going on in Last Jedi.

But what I felt happened was just as bad, if not worse.

A short list of things that excited people about Force Awakens were things like:

- Wow, that's Luke's light saber. And it's talking to Rey! What's that all about? Are they related? Did Luke leave Rey on Jakku?
- Rey is going to see Luke! Will he train her? That is going to be awesome to see.
- This Snoke guy seems pretty important! What's his backstory? How and why is he involved?

IMHO, these things were all disposed of. The lightsaber was tossed away like garbage, we never found out how Maz got ahold of it. Huge opportunities for great training sequences and exploration of Rey's force powers were ignored. Snoke was disposed of like a throw away storm trooper. Luke's character was turned into ...well..someone else.

It seemed to me that surprises were planted throughout the movie for the sheer sake of surprise, at the expense of these fairly big questions in the minds of a lot of audience members.

Of course the film makers can do whatever they like. I'm not a rabid Star Wars fan, I'm just a little disappointed that all of these great opportunities for rich story telling were tossed.

I didn't hate the movie. But it fell so short given the opportunities to pay off some of these things. There were things I definitely liked. The whole subplot about the casino and all that was definitely not one of them. That time could have been used SO much better.

I will say that the sequence at the end with Luke facing off against Ren was very, very well done - even though it was completely telegraphed by making Luke's hair darker/less aged looking in the battle. I knew right away when I saw him walk in that it wasn't really him.

 

[Jake Lipson]

A retcon is when you take something that the audience saw in one work, and change it in a following one.

Yes - thank you! Your entire post articulates clearly the point and distinction I was trying to make in my discussion with Tino yesterday.

I do not expect J.J. Abrams to spend any of his movie changing what happened in The Last Jedi. I expect him to follow up The Last Jedi as he sees fit, but I don't expect him to go out of his way to change anything that Rian Johnson established. Just like Johnson didn't change anything Abrams established (except for the location of Ren's scar.)

 

[TravisR]

- This Snoke guy seems pretty important! What's his backstory? How and why is he involved?

If any of that is important to any viewer, they can read the inevitable novel that will tell that story. Kylo Ren is the much more interesting character so TLJ made the right choice in getting rid of Snoke because it lets there be one villain for Rey to face off against in Episode IX.