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Because it's got the original blue blade?

I do love this one. It's really a "zoom" in of the original poster.
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Which was later redesigned for ATOC toy packaging
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And most recently for a TLJ poster.

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I dig these posters. The first one is so iconic. I really wish more movie posters weren't just lazy photoshopped garbage and they hired artists to paint them ala Drew Struzan. I miss that element of the movie going experience. Seeing all the wonderful artwork as you walked to your theater.

Sorry for the double post. Mods feel free to delete at your discretion.
 
Three versions. Luke recounted his biased one, then Kylo told Rey his crazy-uncle one, then we got a look at what was in Luke's mind as he admitted to Rey he'd toned it down the first time. That last is probably the closest to objective without knowing we're watching it as it happened.

And yes, Luke was already on edge from what he was feeling from Ben's room, what woke him up. When he got close enough and felt the sheer depth of the horrors coming out of Ben's dreams -- horror beyond imagination -- he basically "flinched for his gun". As he said, his impulse was one of "I can end this now." Same as when he gave in and attacked the Emperor in ROTJ, except that he didn't go that far. He didn't immediately attack this darkness that was, to what he sensed, worse. He was looking in surprise at the lightsaber he was realizing he'd just pulled and ignited, dulled a bit by what was still going through his head, and looked back at Ben to see him awake and looking at Luke standing over him with an ignited lightsaber. He reacted before Luke could shut it down and say "Sorry, your dreams totally freaked me out. I think we need to have a loooooong talk -- with an ysalamiri present."

What amazes me is how that was obvious to me on first viewing, remains obvious to me on subsequent viewings, and that others can somehow see that as "Luke contemplating murdering his nephew." A fleeting impulse -- resisted, I might add -- is not "contemplating". Contemplating is what I do when I can't decide what I want at McDonald's, or when choosing what project I'm going to work on today. Serious consideration. Not a there-and-gone "whoa, what was that?" intrusive thought. Luke was as much contemplating killing Ben as I contemplate jerking the wheel and plowing through the guardrail and over a drop off when I'm driving. It pops into my head, it's unsettling, I don't seriously consider it as an option, and I certainly don't act on it. But it is there.
Obviously we all have different experiences with human behavior but getting out of bed, retrieving a weapon, walking to another room and readying (igniting) that weapon over a sleeping defenseless person isn't what I would call a knee jerk reaction. It's disturbing behavior that borders on psychotic. I don't think the intention was to show Luke as a potential murderer but even the best scenario shown in the film makes him look mentally unstable. The whole situation needed a lot more exposition to make it believable (to me) for Luke (a well established character) to behave like that. The film would have been well served to skip the animal rescue stuff and show some background into Luke's relationship with Ben.
 
Obviously we all have different experiences with human behavior but getting out of bed, retrieving a weapon, walking to another room and readying (igniting) that weapon over a sleeping defenseless person isn't what I would call a knee jerk reaction. It's disturbing behavior that borders on psychotic. I don't think the intention was to show Luke as a potential murderer but even the best scenario shown in the film makes him look mentally unstable. The whole situation needed a lot more exposition to make it believable (to me) for Luke (a well established character) to behave like that. The film would have been well served to skip the animal rescue stuff and show some background into Luke's relationship with Ben.

What you described is Ben's version of events. Not what actually happened.
 
I agree. I think there were better ways they could have written it or at least given us more context to their relationship other than having to use flashbacks. In my opinion Rian had to tear Luke down as a character because he couldn't come up with a better way to solve the problems that J.J. established in TFA and that is Rian' failing as a writer because there were better ways to solve the problem. This whole trilogy just feels rushed and to me it feels hollow, like there is no grounding to any of it. Regardless, these are the films we got so there's no changing it now.

More than any other aspect of the movie the way Luke was handled is really what drove a lot of fans away. To me even seeing Luke return on Crait didn't at all feel triumphant, especially when he appeared as a Force vision it just felt cheap. The fact that Mark disagreed with Rian just solidified it to my mind. He begrudgingly went along with it because he is a professional but you can tell that he still doesn't agree with Rian's take on his character.

Like the prequels there were interesting ideas, great costumes and production design (overall) but in execution for me these new films fell flat. I didn't love TFA when it came out, though I really liked it, but I was willing to excuse it's flaws depending on what we were given in TLJ and that's the lynch pin that undid everything for me.

When ROTS came out it felt like the end of an era and it was at the time because Lucas wasn't going to make any more Star Wars films and the saga was over. I was disappointed with the films in the long run but I felt like at least Lucas finished his story and I could respect that even if I didn't like it. So when they announced that Disney was making more, I felt like if you're going to continue the story and bring back the original cast as supporting characters it better be DAMN good because those were my childhood heroes and I love them dearly.

In fact I was kind of hoping they were going to only show up only in the very beginning to pass the lightsaber to the new generation and bow out gracefully so that the new generation could fight the new threat. My hope was to see the original cast reunited for one scene and once they gave their stamp of approval to the new cast to live the rest of their lives in peace after having fought and defeated the Empire.

Alas I can dream.....
 
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I don't think you understand what analogy means. ;)
The analogy I was making was to witnessing someone you think you know and understand suddenly do something you would consider extremely out of character. Analogies are something of a hobby of mine, in fact. It's a good way to annoy friends and family if you make a habit of it.

SSB
 
The analogy I was making was to witnessing someone you think you know and understand suddenly do something you would consider extremely out of character. Analogies are something of a hobby of mine, in fact. It's a good way to annoy friends and family if you make a habit of it.

SSB
Gotcha, I just didn't think it was an apt analogy.

Here's all three versions from the movie.
 
behavior but getting out of bed, retrieving a weapon, walking to another room and readying (igniting) that weapon over a sleeping defenseless person isn't what I would call a knee jerk reaction.

This. It did not happen this way. Luke goes to confront Ben, about the Dark Side growing in him. You act as if Luke went to Ben's hut with the intention of killing, right from the start. Like he was planning it or something. He was not prepared for what he sees in Ben. What he did was an reaction. Luke's fear gets the better of him.
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This one doesn't chop out a bunch of the scene.
 
This. It did not happen this way. Luke goes to confront Ben, about the Dark Side growing in him. You act as if Luke went to Ben's hut with the intention of killing, right from the start. Like he was planning it or something. He was not prepared for what he sees in Ben. What he did was an reaction. Luke's fear gets the better of him.
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This one doesn't chop out a bunch of the scene.
Again Joe, he woke, went to Ben's hut with his saber and ignited it over a defenseless sleeping student. I don't see how any of the details in my original post were off. I didn't describe Ben's version, just what we see Luke do in the film.
 
Again Joe, he woke, went to Ben's hut with his saber and ignited it over a defenseless sleeping student. I don't see how any of the details in my original post were off. I didn't describe Ben's version, just what we see Luke do in the film.

You only cut out the part about him seeing his loved ones being killed. Kinda important ain't it?
 
Good point. I need to go back and re-watch again and pay attention to the wording. Did Luke actually say Ben's dreams woke him up? Or just drew him to Ben's room? Because he was fully dressed. If I felt dreams of death and destruction jolt me out of sleep, I don't think I'd bother getting out of my jammies.

Also, pay attention to Luke's eyes in that clip. They are fixed on Ben as he unhooks and ignites his saber. Then he comes back to himself and looks over at the saber, realizing where his impulses were pulling him, and not giving in. As opposed to the first minute of this:


For those saying that moment of feeling pulled to kill Ben before he could do all that stuff in his dreams negated his growth in the OT, I say the very fact that he didn't do the same thing as in that clip above is evidence that he has grown. But he's still a Skywalker and still has rash impulses, and even though he checked himself, it wasn't in time to prevent consequences for a momentary lapse.

And Psab keel, I so utterly agree. I hate the use of flashbacks or visions -- visible to the audience, anyway -- in Star Wars. They weren't used in the OT. We saw people remembering, but not what they were remembering. We saw Luke having visions of "a city in the clouds", but we didn't see his vision. The closest we got was the Force nexus of the cave on Dagobah, where we saw the hints of Cloud City architecture and the Vader-image he fought. And that made it all the more obvious that was a weird special place where the normal rules don't apply. I'm still unclear on the Force ghosts at the end of ROTJ, and that I lay on Lucas. If they're visible to the naked eye, Leia should've seen them. If they're only visible to Force-sensitives, Leia should've seen them. If they're only visible to who they choose to be visible to, that sorta needed to be established better. *shrug*

But all the visions we see in the PT are jarring to me, given that prior precedent. The flashbacks in Rogue One irk me. And when you remove them, it becomes even more obvious Cassian is the main character, not Jyn. I don't like the mystical weight JJ (and whomever else) have given Anakin's lightsaber for the ST. It never seemed to be a Dagobah-cave level of Force nexus before. If part of the "long story" of it coming into Maz's possession included it being imbued with more juju, that should've been conveyed somehow. If it wasn't, we shouldn't have seen Rey's vision. Keeping the visions unseen by the audience lends more impact when they are, such as the "long-distance calls" between Kylo and Rey in TLJ.

And all of this discussion further highlights the need to have had more content for the in-between years to transition us to the ST. Show us Luke confronting his nephew in the objectivity of the camera, then, later, each of their skewed stories, before Luke breaks down and tells on himself -- without reusing the objective footage from when the training center was destroyed. No flashbacks "just because". We already saw it. Having him talk about it would be fine.

And lastly, one thing that's been niggling me for a while... Arndt said he had to remove Luke from the Episode VII script because he kept overshadowing the new characters once he showed up. But that's kicking a problem down the road, and introducing another facet of the same problem. From opening crawl to final shot, TFA is all about Luke Skywalker. He overshadows the whole movie with his frikkin' absence. Poe's looking for him, the First Order is looking for him, Han talks about him, Rey and Finn have heard stories about him, Rey finds his old lightsaber, and -- as soon as she's freed from First Order custody and the Starkiller destroyed -- goes looking for him.

Just like George's handling of the Prequels, I feel like there's an interesting story here, but the camera's always on the wrong people at the wrong moments, and not where it should be, or when. It's been my complaint since TFA hit that there's a lot more story we-the-audience need to have seen before we got to that point. Luke overshadows the ST, and Han and Leia not far behind, because we didn't get to see even broad strokes of how they got to where they are at that point, so we need to have time spent on them, when the story is ostensibly supposed to be about the new crowd. Insert my rant about letting go of the trilogy model here. Nine episodes per central character, rather than three, and a lot of these issues evaporate. Dammit, George...
 
You only cut out the part about him seeing his loved ones being killed. Kinda important ain't it?
I didn't cut it out, I just described Luke's actions, you said my description was Ben's version of events, clearly from the videos we both posted my description of the events was accurate. I'm not misrepresenting the scene (as you suggested) just pointing out why it didn't work for me. Other than an eminent threat, there's no excusable reason for Luke to take out and ignite his saber.
It doesn't work for me, not because I don't understand his motivation but because it's out of character for him
 
Good point. I need to go back and re-watch again and pay attention to the wording. Did Luke actually say Ben's dreams woke him up? Or just drew him to Ben's room? Because he was fully dressed. If I felt dreams of death and destruction jolt me out of sleep, I don't think I'd bother getting out of my jammies.

Also, pay attention to Luke's eyes in that clip. They are fixed on Ben as he unhooks and ignites his saber. Then he comes back to himself and looks over at the saber, realizing where his impulses were pulling him, and not giving in. As opposed to the first minute of this:


For those saying that moment of feeling pulled to kill Ben before he could do all that stuff in his dreams negated his growth in the OT, I say the very fact that he didn't do the same thing as in that clip above is evidence that he has grown. But he's still a Skywalker and still has rash impulses, and even though he checked himself, it wasn't in time to prevent consequences for a momentary lapse.

And Psab keel, I so utterly agree. I hate the use of flashbacks or visions -- visible to the audience, anyway -- in Star Wars. They weren't used in the OT. We saw people remembering, but not what they were remembering. We saw Luke having visions of "a city in the clouds", but we didn't see his vision. The closest we got was the Force nexus of the cave on Dagobah, where we saw the hints of Cloud City architecture and the Vader-image he fought. And that made it all the more obvious that was a weird special place where the normal rules don't apply. I'm still unclear on the Force ghosts at the end of ROTJ, and that I lay on Lucas. If they're visible to the naked eye, Leia should've seen them. If they're only visible to Force-sensitives, Leia should've seen them. If they're only visible to who they choose to be visible to, that sorta needed to be established better. *shrug*

But all the visions we see in the PT are jarring to me, given that prior precedent. The flashbacks in Rogue One irk me. And when you remove them, it becomes even more obvious Cassian is the main character, not Jyn. I don't like the mystical weight JJ (and whomever else) have given Anakin's lightsaber for the ST. It never seemed to be a Dagobah-cave level of Force nexus before. If part of the "long story" of it coming into Maz's possession included it being imbued with more juju, that should've been conveyed somehow. If it wasn't, we shouldn't have seen Rey's vision. Keeping the visions unseen by the audience lends more impact when they are, such as the "long-distance calls" between Kylo and Rey in TLJ.

And all of this discussion further highlights the need to have had more content for the in-between years to transition us to the ST. Show us Luke confronting his nephew in the objectivity of the camera, then, later, each of their skewed stories, before Luke breaks down and tells on himself -- without reusing the objective footage from when the training center was destroyed. No flashbacks "just because". We already saw it. Having him talk about it would be fine.

And lastly, one thing that's been niggling me for a while... Arndt said he had to remove Luke from the Episode VII script because he kept overshadowing the new characters once he showed up. But that's kicking a problem down the road, and introducing another facet of the same problem. From opening crawl to final shot, TFA is all about Luke Skywalker. He overshadows the whole movie with his frikkin' absence. Poe's looking for him, the First Order is looking for him, Han talks about him, Rey and Finn have heard stories about him, Rey finds his old lightsaber, and -- as soon as she's freed from First Order custody and the Starkiller destroyed -- goes looking for him.

Just like George's handling of the Prequels, I feel like there's an interesting story here, but the camera's always on the wrong people at the wrong moments, and not where it should be, or when. It's been my complaint since TFA hit that there's a lot more story we-the-audience need to have seen before we got to that point. Luke overshadows the ST, and Han and Leia not far behind, because we didn't get to see even broad strokes of how they got to where they are at that point, so we need to have time spent on them, when the story is ostensibly supposed to be about the new crowd. Insert my rant about letting go of the trilogy model here. Nine episodes per central character, rather than three, and a lot of these issues evaporate. Dammit, George...

Oh I am so on board with you. We needed a better set up to this new trilogy. Hell if they'd set it up for two trilogies they could have taken the time to do it right and give us that context of what has elapsed from the end of Return of the Jedi until The Force Awakens.
 
I didn't cut it out, I just described Luke's actions, you said my description was Ben's version of events, clearly from the videos we both posted my description of the events was accurate. I'm not misrepresenting the scene (as you suggested) just pointing out why it didn't work for me. Other than an eminent threat, there's no excusable reason for Luke to take out and ignite his saber.
It doesn't work for me, not because I don't understand his motivation but because it's out of character for him

Your right Luke is out of character. OT Luke would have ignited his saber and attacked his nephew, probably killing him.
 
I just heard that Peter Mayhew died on April 30...................Star Wars day won't be quite as bright this year.
 
You're just being a troll now Joe. No need to get butt hurt, we just have different opinions.
I'm just saying. In ESB when Luke meets the source of his fear. The focus of his hate, he doesn't hesitate to draw his lightsaber and attack. Royally failing that test. Then later when he had a vision of his friends suffering, he runs off to "save" them. Ignoring Yoda warning when he tells that if he leaves he will become an agent of evil, just like Vader. And ROTJ when learns that his friends are in very grave danger, and that Endor is trap. He gives into his anger and attempts to kill the Emperor, knowing that if he does he will complete his journey towards the Dark Side. And later when his father threatens to turn his sister to the Dark Side, he lashes out with his rage and attacks his own father. So in TLJ he sees everything he loves is going to be destroyed(including his sister) at the hands of his nephew , he reacts out of fear and anger and contemplates killing his nephew for whopping 15 seconds. Am really the only one who sees a pattern here?
 
I'm still unclear on the Force ghosts at the end of ROTJ, and that I lay on Lucas. If they're visible to the naked eye, Leia should've seen them. If they're only visible to Force-sensitives, Leia should've seen them. If they're only visible to who they choose to be visible to, that sorta needed to be established better. *shrug*

I just wanted to mention - I wish I could present a source, but I don't have one ready at the moment - that the appearance of the Force ghosts in the OT was based upon Luke's growing strength in the Force. The first time he experiences Obi-Wan's spirit, he can only hear him, first on the Death Star as they're escaping, then during the space battle. At that time he'd barely received any training. When ESB opens, we get a glimpse of how Luke has started making Jedi baby steps by being able to Force-pull (with difficulty, but he also had a concussion) his lightsaber to himself in the wampa cave, so it follows that when Ben appears to him, he's able to see him now, but he's a faded image. By the end of his short training under Yoda, he then sees Ben a lot more clearly, and once again in ROTJ when he speaks with Ben again his spirit is as easily visible as a living person. This progression is meant to indicate how the more attuned Luke becomes to the Force, the more he's able to perceive and interact with Force ghosts.* On top of that, he had an established relationship with Obi-Wan, however short it was before Obi-Wan died.

We see Leia already starting to get in touch with the Force by her declaring, "I can feel it," when Han brings up Luke surviving the second Death Star. But at that point she's barely become aware of her ability for a few hours, much like Luke in ANH. Moreover, she never interacted with Obi-Wan or Yoda in person, and never knew Anakin the way Luke did, even briefly. It makes sense that Leia doesn't see the Force ghosts in the Ewok village; it would take some time for her to start opening up sufficiently to the Force in order to experience them in the same way.

*In early drafts of ROTJ, the whole "Force ghost progression" was supposed to be a lead-up to Obi-Wan actually returning from the dead and regaining a living body again out of the netherworld of the Force so that he could join Luke in fighting the Emperor/Vader, but I know that's a side note.
 
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