Star Wars: The Last Jedi (Post-release)

What did you think of Star Wars: The Last Jedi?

  • It was great. Loved it. Don't miss it at the theaters.

    Votes: 154 26.6%
  • It was good. Liked it very much. Worth the theater visit.

    Votes: 135 23.4%
  • It was okay. Not too pleased with it. Could watch it at the cinema once or wait for home video.

    Votes: 117 20.2%
  • It was disappointing. Watch it on home video instead.

    Votes: 70 12.1%
  • It was bad. Don't waste your time with it.

    Votes: 102 17.6%

  • Total voters
    578
This is from Doug Chiang, I'm not sure if he's talking about the Michael Arndt's draft or George's story treatments here. But it's from early on in production, before TFA had a director.

"[Luke] always had this potential dark side within him, being that his father was Darth Vader," explained Lucasfilm executive creative director Doug Chiang of the character's arc in the early days of Episode VII. "So he is really struggling with that. He ended up secluding himself in this Jedi temple on a new planet, and he's just there meditating, reassessing his whole life. Gradually, over the arc of the movie, he rediscovers his vitality and comes back to himself."

EDIT I should have said pre-production not production

That description fits the Luke of TFA,....not really the way he was portrayed in TLJ,.....in TFA he was there to reassess himself & recharge,...to find meaning in the first Jedi temple & come back reinvigorated,....in TLJ he went there to disconnect from the Force (why go to the first Jedi temple?).....& die

J
 
That description fits the Luke of TFA,....not really the way he was portrayed in TLJ,.....in TFA he was there to reassess himself & recharge,...to find meaning in the first Jedi temple & come back reinvigorated,....in TLJ he went there to disconnect from the Force (why go to the first Jedi temple?).....& die

J

Is it possible that while he reassessing himself is when he comes to the conclusion that the Jedi need to end? Consider this. We see that Luke has thrown his X-Wing into the sea, so as to remove the temptation to return. After all his door on his hut is made from one of the wings, so it had to be on land for a time. Also this indicates that he may have used the Force to put his X-Wing in the water? It would seem that Luke didn't cut himself from the Force right away.

So what Rian did with TLJ was give Luke an active reason for being there. Which is to bring the end of the Jedi. If Luke had just run off to have some "me" time leaving everything and everyone, that would have made him look very selfish. But to turn what Luke is doing on that island into a burden of sorts for him, was very creative. Luke would love to return to the good fight, but he feels that would only perpetuate the centuries long war of the Dark Side and the Light Side.
 
I always thought it was odd that Luke would lose touch with Leia for that long with them being brother and sister and how protective he is about his friends and family.

He cared enough to abandon training with Yoda to go help them, but with things in turmoil against the First Order he just feels it’s best he shuts off the force, goes into exile in shame and just not further communicate.

“They could use a good pilot like you. You’re turning your back on them!” - Luke to Han

And now the very pilot who single-handedly destroyed the first Death Star turns his back on the alliance where could have at least been a strong pilot in the resistance and decided to not do the Jedi thing anymore.

There’s other qualities of his character morale they went totally against that could have been done a lot less sloppily.




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I always thought it was odd that Luke would lose touch with Leia for that long with them being brother and sister and how protective he is about his friends and family.

He cared enough to abandon training with Yoda to go help them, but with things in turmoil against the First Order he just feels it’s best he shuts off the force, goes into exile in shame and just not further communicate.

“They could use a good pilot like you. You’re turning your back on them!” - Luke to Han

And now the very pilot who single-handedly destroyed the first Death Star turns his back on the alliance where could have at least been a strong pilot in the resistance and decided to not do the Jedi thing anymore.

There’s other qualities of his character morale they went totally against that could have been done a lot less sloppily.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I think the film addresses (or tries to address) this by looking at the impact of Luke's actions. Luke has his moment of great failure, and as a result, the Jedi academy is destroyed, his students are slaughtered, other students defect to the Dark Side, and Ben heads off to join the First Order and now terrorizes the Galaxy. Luke has, in his failure, unleashed an incredibly powerful Dark Side user on the galaxy and caused the destruction of the Light Side users that he was training. Not to mention that the Dark Side user is his own nephew. In that, he didn't just fail the galaxy in an abstract sense, he failed his sister and his best friend.

He goes to Ach To to die, but also to read the Jedi texts, and to ponder the fate and failures of the Jedi, and in so doing comes to the conclusion that the Jedi's involvement makes things worse in the galaxy. He unleashed Kylo Ren upon the galaxy. The Jedi of the Old Republic failed to realize the threat Sidious posed, and unleashed Darth Vader upon the galaxy. Compound that with his own personal failures with respect to failing Han and Leia, and I think it makes sense that he'd feel like his involvement will only make things worse. Of course, all of that requires that you accept the turning point of him going to Ben's hut and igniting his sabre. If that's too big a lift, then it doesn't matter if the rest follows logically, since it would rest on a flawed foundation.
 
You know a lot of the issues with Luke being on Achto could have been easily remedied by a very simple change. For me the logical conclusion would have been that Luke was not on a self imposed exile but had been banished. After his screw up with Kylo the people in charge would have told him "thanks but no thanks, we don't need you around anymore if this is the best you can do" For me this would have made better sense and then the people that told him to take a hike would have had to come asking for his help. Easy for me to rewrite a movie once it is out but that is just my 2 cents :)
 
I think the film addresses (or tries to address) this by looking at the impact of Luke's actions. Luke has his moment of great failure, and as a result, the Jedi academy is destroyed, his students are slaughtered, other students defect to the Dark Side, and Ben heads off to join the First Order and now terrorizes the Galaxy. Luke has, in his failure, unleashed an incredibly powerful Dark Side user on the galaxy and caused the destruction of the Light Side users that he was training. Not to mention that the Dark Side user is his own nephew. In that, he didn't just fail the galaxy in an abstract sense, he failed his sister and his best friend.

He goes to Ach To to die, but also to read the Jedi texts, and to ponder the fate and failures of the Jedi, and in so doing comes to the conclusion that the Jedi's involvement makes things worse in the galaxy. He unleashed Kylo Ren upon the galaxy. The Jedi of the Old Republic failed to realize the threat Sidious posed, and unleashed Darth Vader upon the galaxy. Compound that with his own personal failures with respect to failing Han and Leia, and I think it makes sense that he'd feel like his involvement will only make things worse. Of course, all of that requires that you accept the turning point of him going to Ben's hut and igniting his sabre. If that's too big a lift, then it doesn't matter if the rest follows logically, since it would rest on a flawed foundation.

If I may add to what you've said.

Let's not forget the last time Luke ran off to "help" his friends. In ESB we see him react to a vision of his friends suffering. And he decides to ignore the advice of his masters and leave his Jedi training unfinished, choosing the quick and easy path. And what does that lead to? In the end he's so focused on fighting Vader the object of his fear and hate, the man who killed his father and Obi-Wan, he totally forgets about his friends. And in the end he's the one needing rescuing, after being physically and emotionally scarred for life.

Nearly every time Luke pulls out a lightsaber, he kinda mucks things up.
 
When I look at the SW films as a whole it paints a picture of everyone being a complete failure. The Jedi especially, total FUps Rey should toss those books in a fire. Every single Jedi is bonehead according to the ST. Particularly Yoda, completely full of crap. :lol
 
I was just had a thought the other day.

Great importance has been put on lightsabers, particularly by the PT. But has anyone noticed that our heros greatest moments of triumph come when they quit using their lightsabers? Obi-Wan in ANH, Luke in ROTJ, and TLJ.
 
I was just had a thought the other day.

Great importance has been put on lightsabers, particularly by the PT. But has anyone noticed that our heros greatest moments of triumph come when they quit using their lightsabers? Obi-Wan in ANH, Luke in ROTJ, and TLJ.

I don't consider that moment Obi-Wan's greatest triumph. When you look at his character in the OT his greatest triumph is protecting Luke until he let's Vader kill/ make him one with the force. After that he's kind of hit or miss with reliable information. From a writing stand point the force ghost idea is a good way to keep him in the story without having him over shadow Luke's character growth. He can offer advice but not directly effect events. That's why even little details like Yoda's cane in TLJ felt off to me.
 
It's clear from multiple sources that there was no plan, no arc, and that JJ had a completely different vision of where VIII was going than Rian did. Rian hasn't said that his ideas were in any way mandated or influenced by Disney giving him a Lucas idea, so unless he's lying, that's irrelevant. Rian has repeatedly said he arrived at his own ideas and conclusions based on his own process, not on outside influences.
 
The current crop of art-of books have a lot more in the way of story and character tidbits in them than the old ones. Almost like they're mshing up the old separate making-of and art-of offerings. There's a lot of discussion in the TFA art-of book about the characters, the planets, the story beats, and how everything evolved over the course of pre-production and production. Still need to sit down and delve through R1, TLJ, and Solo.

Meanwhile, can we please get away from this?

By all means be tempted, but be tempted somewhere else and get over it. Once you enter a sleeping kids room and draw a weapon on them, you've gone way over the line.

Ben wasn't a kid. He was 25, give or take. And had been being trained in the Jedi arts since he was a baby. In addition to however much Dark Side stuff he'd been being fed by Snoke. Calling him a "kid" is disengenuous. He's younger than Luke, yes. The student-teacher relationship is a power imbalance, yes. He's a blood-relative, yes. And entering a sleeping adult's chambers under less than honorable circumstances is still skeevy. But if it were an actual kid, it'd be that much worse. See, let me fix that for you...

Once you enter a sleeping [person's] room and draw a weapon on them, you've gone way over the line.

...or, to hammer it home more...

Once you enter a sleeping [full-grown and fully-capable adult's] room and draw a weapon on them, you've gone way over the line.

See? Still bad, but not quite as.

That description fits the Luke of TFA,....not really the way he was portrayed in TLJ,.....in TFA he was there to reassess himself & recharge,...to find meaning in the first Jedi temple & come back reinvigorated,....

From where did you acquire this information. It wasn't mentioned in the movie or novelization. I don't remember it from the story-development stuff in the TFA art-of book. What did I miss? All we're given in all versions of TFA is he was looking for the first Jedi temple and he disappeared after one of his students went Dark-Side and destroyed his academy. Anyone with any skill in parsing timelines can sort out you can't be out searching the galaxy from your training academy (unless you're Zarniwoop), so there has to be some lapse of time between those two data points. And, given Kylo didn't know where Luke was and was looking for him, too, he apparently hadn't found it by the time things went to hell. So, since we have no data from TFA to clarify further, I don't find it hard to believe at all that after Ben turned, Luke's reasons for finding the original Jedi temple might have shifted a bit from whatever they were prior.

I always thought it was odd that Luke would lose touch with Leia for that long with them being brother and sister and how protective he is about his friends and family.

If you just lost your sister's kid to the Dark Side after you'd been training him for nearly a quarter of a century, he'd burned down your training center, and killed whoever among your students wouldn't join him, and you blamed yourself -- both for missing or underestimating Snoke's tampering and for the awfully-timed moment of doubt you had that was the straw that broke the camel's back... Would you want to hang around? 'Sides, for the few years Luke's been gone, all she knows is he's on a sort of Jedi Walkabout to get his head right. Dunno if he'd already decided he wasn't coming back, but even if he had, I doubt he would have told her that. Which leads into...

He cared enough to abandon training with Yoda to go help them, but with things in turmoil against the First Order he just feels it’s best he shuts off the force, goes into exile in shame and just not further communicate.

“They could use a good pilot like you. You’re turning your back on them!” - Luke to Han

And now the very pilot who single-handedly destroyed the first Death Star turns his back on the alliance where could have at least been a strong pilot in the resistance and decided to not do the Jedi thing anymore.

The First Order hadn't gone public yet. At the time Leia's true paternity was revealed and she created the Resistance, they didn't have a name yet (that Our Heroes had discovered), and only a couple people who'd been around her took her concerns about this mysterious potential threat in the Unknown Regions seriously. Certainly not a full-on neo-Imperial military force bent on galactic conquest. She probably left him with a similar exhortation to when they parted post-Jabba's-palace: "Hurry. The Alliance should be assembled by now." She trusted him then to go do his mysterious Jedi stuff and come back. We know so little of their parting prior to TFA, we certainly can't exclude something similar.

As of TFA, the First Order has only begun nibbling around the fringes of civilized space for less than a year. As of the raid on Jakku, that was the first action those Stormtroopers, on General Hux's flagship, under the personal command of the nominal head of the First Order Stormtroopers, Captain Phasma, had seen. Leia's been actively looking for Luke in hopes of bringing him back for months, certainly. Maybe as much as a year or so. But he had no way of knowing how the situation had shifted. The mental image I'm getting is from Apollo 13, when Ken Mattingly turns off the TV just as the announcement of the emergency on the spacecraft is about to start, takes the phone off the hook so he won't be disturbed, and goes to bed.
 
I don't consider that moment Obi-Wan's greatest triumph. When you look at his character in the OT his greatest triumph is protecting Luke until he let's Vader kill/ make him one with the force. After that he's kind of hit or miss with reliable information. From a writing stand point the force ghost idea is a good way to keep him in the story without having him over shadow Luke's character growth. He can offer advice but not directly effect events. That's why even little details like Yoda's cane in TLJ felt off to me.
Yep, I was referring to Obi-Wan's sacrifice as his greatest triumph.
 
It's clear from multiple sources that there was no plan, no arc, and that JJ had a completely different vision of where VIII was going than Rian did. Rian hasn't said that his ideas were in any way mandated or influenced by Disney giving him a Lucas idea, so unless he's lying, that's irrelevant. Rian has repeatedly said he arrived at his own ideas and conclusions based on his own process, not on outside influences.

Not entirely. It's been stated that what was going to be ep7, got reworked into TLJ.

But unless a full making of book comes out, everything is nothing more then deductive reasoning.
Fun fact, Rian had at least one phone call with George.
 
From where did you acquire this information. It wasn't mentioned in the movie or novelization. I don't remember it from the story-development stuff in the TFA art-of book. What did I miss? All we're given in all versions of TFA is he was looking for the first Jedi temple and he disappeared after one of his students went Dark-Side and destroyed his academy. Anyone with any skill in parsing timelines can sort out you can't be out searching the galaxy from your training academy (unless you're Zarniwoop), so there has to be some lapse of time between those two data points. And, given Kylo didn't know where Luke was and was looking for him, too, he apparently hadn't found it by the time things went to hell. So, since we have no data from TFA to clarify further, I don't find it hard to believe at all that after Ben turned, Luke's reasons for finding the original Jedi temple might have shifted a bit from whatever they were prior.

I got it from what Joeh3rr wrote a few posts back, apparently a quote by Doug Chiang

This is from Doug Chiang, I'm not sure if he's talking about the Michael Arndt's draft or George's story treatments here. But it's from early on in production, before TFA had a director.

"[Luke] always had this potential dark side within him, being that his father was Darth Vader," explained Lucasfilm executive creative director Doug Chiang of the character's arc in the early days of Episode VII. "So he is really struggling with that. He ended up secluding himself in this Jedi temple on a new planet, and he's just there meditating, reassessing his whole life. Gradually, over the arc of the movie, he rediscovers his vitality and comes back to himself."

EDIT I should have said pre-production not production

J
 
I got it from what Joeh3rr wrote a few posts back, apparently a quote by Doug Chiang



J

It interesting that you think that. Because in my mind, except for one point it's almost as if Doug is describing Luke in TLJ. Luke is in a dark place, and at the end he does come back to himself. I think the only thing different is Doug says Luke is reassessing his life. While in TLJ I'd say that Luke has reassessed his life. Though that may not be entirely true either, as he shows doubts about his decision that he made, particularly when he hears that Han is dead. And the fact that he threw his X-Wing into the water, suggests that he was afraid he'd try to return.
 
It's clear from multiple sources that there was no plan, no arc, and that JJ had a completely different vision of where VIII was going than Rian did. Rian hasn't said that his ideas were in any way mandated or influenced by Disney giving him a Lucas idea, so unless he's lying, that's irrelevant. Rian has repeatedly said he arrived at his own ideas and conclusions based on his own process, not on outside influences.

What are the multiple sources though? Like I said, I haven't paid attention to this, really. Are these interviews with JJ himself? Interviews with Rian? Comments from the cast or production team? Or is this, like, people extrapolating from one line from an interview and then running with it? I know that the "Rian changed JJ's ideas" thing is a common refrain, but I'm wondering from where/what it stems.

From where did you acquire this information. It wasn't mentioned in the movie or novelization. I don't remember it from the story-development stuff in the TFA art-of book. What did I miss? All we're given in all versions of TFA is he was looking for the first Jedi temple and he disappeared after one of his students went Dark-Side and destroyed his academy. Anyone with any skill in parsing timelines can sort out you can't be out searching the galaxy from your training academy (unless you're Zarniwoop), so there has to be some lapse of time between those two data points. And, given Kylo didn't know where Luke was and was looking for him, too, he apparently hadn't found it by the time things went to hell. So, since we have no data from TFA to clarify further, I don't find it hard to believe at all that after Ben turned, Luke's reasons for finding the original Jedi temple might have shifted a bit from whatever they were prior.

So, the search for the Jedi Temple was Luke's original goal, but the reason behind the goal may have shifted from "I'm gonna learn how to train students better" to "I'm gonna learn why the Jedi keep f-ing up and whether any of this is worth it...and then I'm gonna let myself die if I don't find anything to tell me how I should fix the Jedi."

The First Order hadn't gone public yet. At the time Leia's true paternity was revealed and she created the Resistance, they didn't have a name yet (that Our Heroes had discovered), and only a couple people who'd been around her took her concerns about this mysterious potential threat in the Unknown Regions seriously. Certainly not a full-on neo-Imperial military force bent on galactic conquest. She probably left him with a similar exhortation to when they parted post-Jabba's-palace: "Hurry. The Alliance should be assembled by now." She trusted him then to go do his mysterious Jedi stuff and come back. We know so little of their parting prior to TFA, we certainly can't exclude something similar.

As of TFA, the First Order has only begun nibbling around the fringes of civilized space for less than a year. As of the raid on Jakku, that was the first action those Stormtroopers, on General Hux's flagship, under the personal command of the nominal head of the First Order Stormtroopers, Captain Phasma, had seen. Leia's been actively looking for Luke in hopes of bringing him back for months, certainly. Maybe as much as a year or so. But he had no way of knowing how the situation had shifted. The mental image I'm getting is from Apollo 13, when Ken Mattingly turns off the TV just as the announcement of the emergency on the spacecraft is about to start, takes the phone off the hook so he won't be disturbed, and goes to bed.

To be fair, a lot of that stuff is -- as you've noted -- from the novelization of TFA and some of the books that precede it. In other words, it's not in the movies. I see that as a mistake in crafting and conveying the narrative (although I understand the impulse behind it), but I lay that more at JJ's feet than at Rian's feet. JJ wanted to thrust everyone into the story in media res, which left a ton of the exposition work for Ep. VIII. Now, maybe that was JJ's plan all along -- to explain stuff in TLJ -- but I still think that's kind of a mistake, given that this is a sequel trilogy. And yeah, I know ANH is technically "Episode IV" but let's be honest: the film was written and structured as the introduction to an existing universe. While it puts you in the story in media res, it also bothers to contextualize a fair bit of stuff that's relevant for the story it's telling. With TFA, though, you're in an entirely different position storytelling-wise.
 
What are the multiple sources though? Like I said, I haven't paid attention to this, really. Are these interviews with JJ himself? Interviews with Rian? Comments from the cast or production team? Or is this, like, people extrapolating from one line from an interview and then running with it? I know that the "Rian changed JJ's ideas" thing is a common refrain, but I'm wondering from where/what it stems.

I will give a few interview excerpts, bear with me:

Q: Was Rey’s fate already planned by J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan as soon as the idea of Episode VII became official ?
Daisy Ridley: Here’s what I think I know. JJ wrote Episode VII, as well as drafts for VIII & IX. Then Rian Johnson arrived and wrote TLJ entirely. I believe there was some sort of general consensus on the main lines of the trilogy, but apart from that, every director writes and realizes his film in his own way. Rian Johnson and JJ Abrams met to discuss all of this, although Episode VIII is still his very own work. I believe Rian didn’t keep anything from the first draft of Episode VIII.

Rian: JJ was really gracious, in just stepping back and giving us a blank slate to work with. The starting point was The Force Awakens script, which is quite a big, expansive, wonderful starting point. In that way, we are drawing directly from his work. But from that point forward it was a blank canvas.”

In Last Jedi, we get the revelation that Rey is the child of no one of significant value. Can you talk about how you came to that conclusion?
Rian: That was like everything else in the movie, something that I came to through a process of breaking the story and figuring it out. The nice thing was I didn’t… I was very thankful there was no slip of paper that was handed to me that said Rey’s parents are so and so. The fact that I had the freedom to figure it out meant that for this story I could figure out the most dramatically potent answer to that question.
But you talked to J.J. [Abrams] about it.
Rian: I did yeah, oh yeah. Yeah. He didn’t, no, he didn’t dictate anything to me.
He didn’t have any idea?
Rian: Well, I don’t know. He might have had thoughts in his head who it was going to be, but he didn’t dictate them to me. He left it open, you know. First of all, I think I enjoy the notion of disconnecting the idea of tapping into this power in yourself and having it. I like the idea of disconnecting that from lineage. I think that feels “anyone can be President.” I think that’s kind of nice.

Rian:
I honestly listed everything I could think of[for Rey's background], even awful possibilities where I said, ‘This is not what we’re going to do.’ I mean the less silly one was, ‘Is she a clone?’ Anything that’s a theory on Reddit now I guarantee was listed on that document. The silliest one was, ‘Is she a robot?

Simon Pegg: I know what J.J. kind of intended or at least was being chucked around[for Rey's parents]. I think that’s kind of been undone slightly by the last one. There was some talk of a relevant lineage for her.

Mark Hamill:
JJ had a much different vision for what was going to happen in VIII. The first thing I said to Rian was, "How are we going to explain me being in my Jedi ceremonial robes when I first meet Rey?"

JJ: I had a bunch of ideas from the beginning, back on VII, of where the story would go. I just never in my wildest dreams thought I would have a chance to execute them.

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I think this paints a pretty clear picture.
 
I will give a few interview excerpts, bear with me:

Q: Was Rey’s fate already planned by J.J. Abrams and Lawrence Kasdan as soon as the idea of Episode VII became official ?
Daisy Ridley: Here’s what I think I know. JJ wrote Episode VII, as well as drafts for VIII & IX. Then Rian Johnson arrived and wrote TLJ entirely. I believe there was some sort of general consensus on the main lines of the trilogy, but apart from that, every director writes and realizes his film in his own way. Rian Johnson and JJ Abrams met to discuss all of this, although Episode VIII is still his very own work. I believe Rian didn’t keep anything from the first draft of Episode VIII.

Rian: JJ was really gracious, in just stepping back and giving us a blank slate to work with. The starting point was The Force Awakens script, which is quite a big, expansive, wonderful starting point. In that way, we are drawing directly from his work. But from that point forward it was a blank canvas.”

In Last Jedi, we get the revelation that Rey is the child of no one of significant value. Can you talk about how you came to that conclusion?
Rian: That was like everything else in the movie, something that I came to through a process of breaking the story and figuring it out. The nice thing was I didn’t… I was very thankful there was no slip of paper that was handed to me that said Rey’s parents are so and so. The fact that I had the freedom to figure it out meant that for this story I could figure out the most dramatically potent answer to that question.
But you talked to J.J. [Abrams] about it.
Rian: I did yeah, oh yeah. Yeah. He didn’t, no, he didn’t dictate anything to me.
He didn’t have any idea?
Rian: Well, I don’t know. He might have had thoughts in his head who it was going to be, but he didn’t dictate them to me. He left it open, you know. First of all, I think I enjoy the notion of disconnecting the idea of tapping into this power in yourself and having it. I like the idea of disconnecting that from lineage. I think that feels “anyone can be President.” I think that’s kind of nice.

Rian:
I honestly listed everything I could think of[for Rey's background], even awful possibilities where I said, ‘This is not what we’re going to do.’ I mean the less silly one was, ‘Is she a clone?’ Anything that’s a theory on Reddit now I guarantee was listed on that document. The silliest one was, ‘Is she a robot?

Simon Pegg: I know what J.J. kind of intended or at least was being chucked around[for Rey's parents]. I think that’s kind of been undone slightly by the last one. There was some talk of a relevant lineage for her.

Mark Hamill:
JJ had a much different vision for what was going to happen in VIII. The first thing I said to Rian was, "How are we going to explain me being in my Jedi ceremonial robes when I first meet Rey?"

JJ: I had a bunch of ideas from the beginning, back on VII, of where the story would go. I just never in my wildest dreams thought I would have a chance to execute them.

View attachment 842427


I think this paints a pretty clear picture.


This is why I hope we get some making of books.

While you have people saying there wasn't a plan. On the other hand you have the likes of Pablo Hildago from the Lucasfilm story group saying that what was going to be ep7 became ep8. And The Art of The Last Jedi's first chapter is for concepts of Luke and Kira(Rey) from the early stages of Ep7s development.

So how can we rectify the differences?

Well it all has to do with the timeline shift. Ep7 was going to tell the story of Kira finding Luke, talking him into training her, and bringing him back. But Michael Arndt concluded that every time Luke showed up he kinda took over the story. So everything is shifted, that way Luke isn't found until the very end of TFA. When Rian is brought on, he begins working on his movie, using only the script of TFA as a starting point(the film hadn't been released). And while he isnt forced to follow anything thing. Luke and Rey's relationship had already been roughed out, (and most likely Rian was showed all the concept from before TFA) and since there is really only one good way to go. What was going to be ep7 gets reworked for 8.
Also of interest, in The Art of The Force Awakens, there are a lot of concepts for a "exotic planet". And if I were a betting man, I'd bet these evolved into Canto Bight.

But things like Luke's involvement with Ben's turning, Luke believing that the Jedi need to end, Snoke's death, Rose, Holdo, and such I'd guess are completely from Rian's head.
 
To be fair, a lot of that stuff is -- as you've noted -- from the novelization of TFA and some of the books that precede it. In other words, it's not in the movies. I see that as a mistake in crafting and conveying the narrative (although I understand the impulse behind it), but I lay that more at JJ's feet than at Rian's feet. JJ wanted to thrust everyone into the story in media res, which left a ton of the exposition work for Ep. VIII. Now, maybe that was JJ's plan all along -- to explain stuff in TLJ -- but I still think that's kind of a mistake, given that this is a sequel trilogy. And yeah, I know ANH is technically "Episode IV" but let's be honest: the film was written and structured as the introduction to an existing universe. While it puts you in the story in media res, it also bothers to contextualize a fair bit of stuff that's relevant for the story it's telling. With TFA, though, you're in an entirely different position storytelling-wise.

Agree and disagree. I lay it at George's feet, first and foremost, for compressing the last four Luke episodes into one. Lay out the rough beats for what was to follow the rescue from Jabba's Palace next to what we ended up with and the damage foreshortening the story does to relatability and immersiveness becomes apparent. How many people now went "EWWWW!" at the revelation that Leia was Luke's sister, when they weren't siblings prior to the need to compress things and not introduce Luke's as-yet-unseen sister as originally planned? And so on and so on as I and others have gone into elsewhere.

He had already preemptively compressed the Obi-Wan arc (even prior to McCallum shifting the focus more onto Anakin, also a misstep, IMO) as far back as 1978, when the series went from twelve films to nine in his interviews, and "Episode IV" got hung on Star Wars instead of "Episode VII".

So the inheritors of the kingdom hewed to that, rather than counter the Will of Lucas and let the story be told in as many episodes as were needed. There's in media res, Latin for "telling us bugger-all and tossing us in the deep end"... but after reading Bloodline, I feel that needed to be a film prior to TFA. As it was, there's too much the audience needs to know that's either not available at all, or available in non-film sources. Above all, we need a smoother transition from ROTJ to the new era. We need to see the "new normal" established at the end of the OT get disrupted, not come in after the anthill has already been kicked over and try to figure out what happened from too few pieces of information. Never mind whether it was intended to have been part of Episode VIII as the story in Episode VII shifted more to what we got -- filling in all of that after the audience is well and truly lost is just bad storytelling.

Analogy: When we were put into the setting in Star Wars, we didn't know the backstory, but we were told what we needed to know within the first hour. When the Prequels came out, they ended on the note that leads into the OT -- Empire founded, Jedi wiped out, Luke taken to live with family on Tatooine, Ben going into hermitage. How jarring would it be to watch through for the first time, in sequential order, end with Ankin and Padme falling in love and Obi-Wan foiling a plot to build a secret army, things are looking good... and then come into A New Hope trying to figure out what the hell happened to Anakin, why Obi-Wan's hiding in the desert, what these Clone Wars are that apparently happened in the couple decades between films that we didn't see, what happened to the Republic and what's this Empire everyone's talking about, why were the Jedi wiped out, where'd this Death Star thing come from, and so on.

We didn't need everything spelled out in the first hour of TFA, but we needed more -- in that first hour of that film, not later and not elsewhere -- than we got.

And even then, my post was more about getting frustrated when people still either don't know, ignore, or misconstrue the info that is out there and has been discussed in these threads. Those of us who absorb all the ancillary material -- the comics and novels and young-adult stuff, the Clone Wars and Rebels, the magazines and DVD featurettes and making-of and art-of books... We've done the legwork and distilled the information for those who haven't or couldn't. Late December 2015/17? Perfectly reasonable to be somewhat at sea on these points. Now? Not so much. :behave We have a rough timeline of the ROTJ-TFA span. We have more specific timelines for the few years immediately after the former and before the latter. We have a lot of missing info that will hopefully be filled in at some point (never mind arguments over what "should" have been shown in the first ST installment). But we know approximately a lot of the things that have been being asked or misrepresented recently. And I can only watch people being wrong on the internet for so long before I need to say something. :angel
 
This is why I hope we get some making of books.

Rinzler was fired and his finished book on TFA was never released. Probably never will be.

While you have people saying there wasn't a plan. On the other hand you have the likes of Pablo Hildago from the Lucasfilm story group saying that what was going to be ep7 became ep8. And The Art of The Last Jedi's first chapter is for concepts of Luke and Kira(Rey) from the early stages of Ep7s development.

So how can we rectify the differences?

Well it all has to do with the timeline shift. Ep7 was going to tell the story of Kira finding Luke, talking him into training her, and bringing him back. But Michael Arndt concluded that every time Luke showed up he kinda took over the story. So everything is shifted, that way Luke isn't found until the very end of TFA. When Rian is brought on, he begins working on his movie, using only the script of TFA as a starting point(the film hadn't been released). And while he isnt forced to follow anything thing. Luke and Rey's relationship had already been roughed out, (and most likely Rian was showed all the concept from before TFA) and since there is really only one good way to go. What was going to be ep7 gets reworked for 8.

You say there was only one way to go, but Rian has spoken at great length about his writing process and the reasons behind his decisions. He's specifically said that he didn't have any directive and didn't have or use anything given to him, written by Lucas or otherwise.

Also of interest, in The Art of The Force Awakens, there are a lot of concepts for a "exotic planet". And if I were a betting man, I'd bet these evolved into Canto Bight.

It's very doubtful, especially since the designs for Canto Bight were thrown out late in TLJ's development because KK said they didn't look like SW to her.

But things like Luke's involvement with Ben's turning, Luke believing that the Jedi need to end, Snoke's death, Rose, Holdo, and such I'd guess are completely from Rian's head.

That's the thing, according to Rian the whole thing is from his head, with no direction besides the framework present in TFA's script.
 
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