I kinda don’t. I fully admit it’s not a movie for me. It does what it’s trying to do fairly well, be a bleak, hopeless, struggle for hope. It’s just not my bag and I never felt it was a story that needed to be told. TBH I remember very little of it except that they had Y-wings in it which REALLY confused me as to how those stupid bombers from TLJ came into being.

 

That makes sense. I really liked Rogue One when I first saw it. It's still my favorite of the Disney-era movies by-far (it's really the only one I would put alongside Lucas' movies), but my love for it has gone down a bit recently. It's definitely very hopeless. It's not quite miserable, but it doesn't leave me with a great feeling. I adore the visual style and design work, but I'd rather go back and watch one of the originals. The pacing is also a bit off.

 

This was pretty much my experience. I find myself not caring about the final installment of this trilogy. I wasn't the biggest fan of the prequels but I was hyped for ROTS.

 

I think a big part of the problem is that a lot of aspects in this trilogy sort of feel concluded already. Love the prequels or hate them, ROTS had the promise of seeing Anakin turn into Vader, the Empire rise, the Jedi fall, Obi-Wan go into hiding, etc. There are a few things left, like seeing the First Order get defeated. But most of the important stuff is wrapped up. Luke's dead, Han's dead, Snoke's dead. Leia's still alive, but they're kind of limited after Carrie's passing. The new heroes aren't interesting enough for me to care about who lives and who dies. The thing I'm most interested to see is Kylo's fate, as he's the only somewhat interesting character we have left.

 

I feel the same way. I broke so many of my own rules of thumb in my efforts to justify that The Force Awakens was initially a good movie. “Oh they’ll explain that in the sequel. They’ll develop the characters more in the sequel. They had to make the movie a rehash of A New Hope to show that they can capture the spirit of State Wars.” A movie should not have to rely on other material to justify creative decisions.

 

I figured that TFA was so safe to show everyone that they could get the tone and feeling right, and that the rest of the films would be better. I never thought that it'd all be downhill from there.

 

STAR WARS - General Topic Discussion

 

Yup. I looked at TFA and thought “man I can’t wait to see where they go with this!”

Then TLJ pooed all over it. TBF, TFA is still completely functional as a film, but the “best part” was the excitement of the story progressing. Then it just... didn’t.

I don’t see how any of that applies to TLJ.

TFA may have been a shameless reboot, but none of it was contrary to the universe or simple logic. It just wasn’t creative and played things too safe. TLJ is pants-on-head-dumb and doesn’t make a lick of sense on top of being a shitty story.

 

Yes it is. Try to apply simple logic to "The Map" and everything it implies in order for the plot to work.

 

Yeah. I don't know exactly how large an area the hole in the map covered, but if I was looking for Luke, I would have started there. Do the probe droid drive-by a la ESB (and TPM).

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that Rey (with all of her other seemingly innate abilities) is the first human character who can fluently understand droid speak. All other times (that I can recall, I may be wrong) either a protocol droid or another translation device was needed (ESB showed Luke's X-Wing having R2's beeps translated into text on the control panel).

 

What makes it even worse is that we know how Obi Wan found Kamino in Attack of the Clones just by examining the gravitational pulls within its vicinity. Surely they could have done something similar over 40 years later

 

Okay. The set-up for TLJ via TFA is exactly the same. If anything can be said of TLJ it’s the story doesn’t progress but the characters do. Everything from TFA is present and you were apparently fine with it. FO destroys the Republic via the Starkilller base. I see a lot of subjective observations in your comment, that’s about it. How does the story “not make sense?” Not liking it, fine.

What’s your issue with the map.

Don’t both Luke and Anakin understand R2? Am I remembering that wrong?

 

Kamino was a planet missing from the Jedi archives, the whole system was still there. So Obi-Wan could see the solar system. This is an entire portion of a map, not just one planet.

 

Don't think I've ever seen such a universally loved franchise have such a sense of fear for the next installment of the series as the NuTrilogy.

 

I don't think so, but like I said, I may be wrong. What instance(s) were you referring to? Because across the films, I don't think it was ever demonstrated other than through C3P0, or through the text translator inside Luke's X-Wing (you could probably assume that any fighter with a R2 co-pilot would have a similar set up).

 

Binary

Nah Luke and Anakin definitely understand R2. They talk back and forth there is even a deleted scene with Anakin actually speaking droid *edit binary.

 

Are there really people in the middle? That’s surprising l thought everyone picked a side already. My biggest fear is JJ will go out of his way to appease everyone.

 

I think you took my comment a little too far. Of course there are people in the middle, your "normal general viewing" star wars fan probably doesn't care, but you can't deny there is a very real sense of worrying about this last installment and what it's impact will be for the franchise and its legacy.

 

I do remember that deleted scene, now that you mention it, but that was probably cut for a reason (aside from it looking really corny). Also, Anakin also didn't seem to definitively know what R2 was saying. It almost seemed like he was being sarcastic or jokey (IMO). But throughout what was actually shown in the films, I still don't think it was never demonstrated that anyone could understand them. They would talk at them, but I can't think of a single scene where they could 100% understand a response, let alone have a full on conversation.

 

Early in the adventure, when it's just "the map to Luke Skywalker," it's fine. But it has some really weird implications once Rey links up with the Resistance, and the writers had to come up with reasons she can't go find Luke right away. So now we learn it's only part of the map, and it doesn't have Luke's location on it--it's useless. Surely the other cells of the Resistance would have checked it before sending Lor San Tekka to die for nothing? We learn at the same time that this is not a map to Luke Skywalker specifically. Rather, Leia believes Luke went off to the first Jedi temple, but nobody knows where that was. So, any map that doesn't have this info is just a regular map of the galaxy, whole or otherwise. Surely maps of the galaxy are common if people are cruising around it at will. How are the Resistance and First Order not flipping their wigs over every incomplete ordinary map that turns up?

Also, we have no idea where the map came from, why it's in fragments, or why R2 has it, unless we turn to the extra materials outside the film. Trying to glean what's going on from the film, it just looks like a giant ass-pull. I'd argue this doesn't stand up to logical scrutiny because there's simply no logic at all given. It's a giant plot hole. The canonical answer fills the hole, but it's more of a screwy, convenient retcon. R2 has the map because it was in the Imperial archives, a copy of which happened to be on the Death Star when Luke, Obi-Wan, Han, and Chewbacca were captured. When R2 accessed the Death Star's computer, he just went ahead and downloaded the whole thing.

R2 never revealed this information to anyone before because..? I mean, he's quirky, willful, and temperamental, but he at least wants to help his friends and the Rebellion, right? Surely there were times when access to the entire Imperial body of knowledge would have been immensely helpful in fighting the Empire and its remnants. But he didn't because... just because. And he was depressed enough to go into "low power mode" because he was separated from Luke. He's surrounded by old friends who want to go find him, but only a complete stranger like BB-8 can convince him to produce the information. Logic.

And Palpatine went out of his way to erase Ach-To from public records, but he just leaves the information where a common (plucky, but common) astromech repair and navigation droid can access it? If R2 can get it just by poking around for a moment, surely this secret information was available to the countless storm troopers and Imperial officers aboard the Death Star? Bit of a stretch that it would just be lying around like that if it's so secret, but OK.

So why does the First Order need to find the map again? Surely Palpatine didn't relocate the entire Imperial archive to the Death Star and only there. There are bound to be generals and admirals and administrators that had copies of the archive and therefore the map. Surely at least one of them was absorbed into the Imperial remnant known as the First Order and brought their ship, base, computer, or whatever along with them. Even if the Emperor really did move the Imperial archive to the Death Star and not have a backup, there would be other copies. I mean, we already know there was at least one. R2 was able to copy the whole thing in about a minute without anyone knowing. Gotta be some sly Imperial officers who wanted a copy. We know there were rebel spies on the inside. The odds that nobody but R2 thought to grab a copy are about nil. The Resistance should already have the map (technically, they did). The new Republic should even more certainly have the map. The First Order should 100% for sure have the map.

...and we know someone does, because otherwise how did Luke find it?

And wait, why did Palpatine erase Ach-To's existence in the first place? We're meant to just accept that he did, because he did that to Kamino. But he didn't have any secret stuff happening on Ach-To like he did on Kamino. The Rebels and the Resistance appear to know where other Jedi temples are, so one would expect that the Ach-To temple must hold some special secret. And yet we haven't been given any indication that it does.

Finally, without all that info from books and interviews about Palpatine erasing Ach-To and the Imperial archive being on the first Death Star, we're left with no reason that a regular map of the galaxy shouldn't show where Ach-To is. This creates the awkward and illogical implication that nobody has a map of the galaxy they're jumping around through hyperspace in.