Absolutely packed with spoilers!!
Hello!!!
Went to see it on day one!
This time round I’m writing down everything about Episode VIII — impressions, analysis, predictions for what comes next, trivia, the lot!!!
My prediction post is here
Honestly? The story is rough lol
Poe’s plan, for instance — feels like the ending would have been exactly the same without it. And I genuinely can’t tell you what Kylo Ren wants either.
But that’s what makes it brilliant!
Yoda being a puppet.
Kylo Ren trying to reduce everything that came before to nothing.
Luke saying it all went wrong because he was a legend.
Put those together and what Lucasfilm seems to be saying is: stop treating the legend of Star Wars as sacred and picking it apart, and go back to enjoying Star Wars as the space opera it is, a toy box tipped out across the floor.
What’s good about the original trilogy is that it’s messy, a bit too convenient, and leaves you enormous room to imagine.
Kylo Ren’s words and actions look like a rejection of Episodes I to VI at first glance, but really this is a film that wants to drop the formality and just have a big loud shootout like the old days.
Ended up loving Episode VIII while writing this review lol
Going again!
Many, many times the screen time he had in Episode VII!!!
This film was Luke’s story!!!!!!
Ohhhhh!!! He is SO cool!!!!!
The fight with Kylo Ren was pure “he’s too strong!!!” A legend, exactly as advertised!!!
And this was playing over it, which is too much!!!!!
That’s Luke’s main theme!!!! Woooooooooo!!!!!
He’s got all the earthy, human quality of Episodes IV, V and VI, and being nothing like the Jedi of I, II and III was the best part!
His life on the island, the milk, the fishing — he looked far too at home doing it, made me laugh lol
Training Rey he recoils at how much raw power she has, then winds her up with a blade of grass — that expressive face is Master Yoda in Episode V all over again lol
You really do end up like your own master, don’t you.
When he turned up at the end of Episode VII I worried he’d become a stubborn, closed-off old man?! But underneath, Luke Skywalker was still visible, and it made me nostalgic.
The reunion with Chewbacca was lovely, I cried
“Where’s Han?”
He uses Han Solo’s first name, which tells you how close they were, plus his assumption that Han would obviously have come along too, plus the fact that he doesn’t know Han died in Episode VII. Such a loaded line…
So sad…
http://theflash.wikia.com/wiki/The_Trickster_(Mark_Hamill)The Trickster (Mark Hamill) | The Flash Wiki | FANDOM powered by Wikia
Say Mark Hamill and everyone thinks Luke, but lately it’s the Trickster on the show The Flash. He’s voiced the Joker in the animated series too — plenty of villain roles on his CV.
The Flash is genuinely great, highly recommended.
Luke sensed the darkness sleeping deep inside Kylo Ren, went to him in his sleep, and tried to kill him.
In the end he was flooded with regret the moment he ignited the lightsaber and stopped, but it was already too late — Ben Solo became Kylo Ren.
Maybe he became a hermit because he was a legend, so the drop from Kylo Ren’s admiration to disappointment was that much further, and because he couldn’t carry everyone’s expectations any more.
And maybe realising that his own mistake made him no different from every Jedi Order before him was part of it too.
He decided that training Jedi was the right thing to do, and produced a darkness called Kylo Ren, exactly as Obi-Wan produced Darth Vader. That is the arrogance and hypocrisy of the Jedi Order in a nutshell…
And even so, that last conversation with Yoda lets him work out what a Jedi actually is, and he saves everybody…
Also, Luke standing over his student in his sleep is basically the same composition as Darth Sidious killing his master Darth Plagueis, just with the roles reversed. Fascinating lol
R2-D2 | Wookieepedia | FANDOM powered by Wikia
Luke and R2-D2 go back more than thirty years, and R2 knew Anakin Skywalker as a boy, so he’s practically a grandfather at this point. A very odd sort of friendship lol
If someone who’d been at your side the whole time suddenly vanished, of course you’d be furious lol
The reunion with R2-D2 happens aboard the Falcon. That look on his face, remembering Episode IV, was lovely.
He must have been quietly thinking, Ben Kenobi was here, Han Solo was here.
At first he had sworn flat out that he would never train another Jedi.
This is a Luke who had shut off his own connection to the Force, and what changed his mind wasn’t the teachings of the Force or the galaxy being in danger or any grand cause like that — it was a hologram R2-D2 played for him. Perfect.
“Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi.” “That was a cheap move, R2.”
Make Your Own Luck With This DIY For Han Solo’s Dice | Geek and Sundry
Those golden dice Luke brings with him are the dice from Episode IV.
Make Your Own Luck With This DIY For Han Solo’s Dice | Geek and Sundry
If I remember rightly they were a lucky charm, the thing that let Han Solo get his hands on the Falcon in the first place.
Solo is out next year, so… maybe… they’ll turn up in that!!!
Star Wars’ Han Solo, Luke and Princess Leia together again for the first time in 32 years
Luke, Princess Leia and Han Solo reunite at a Comic-Con Star Wars panel after 32 years | Overseas entertainment news, the latest film news and gossip, “Yajilabo”
Handing them to Leia must have been about showing the bond between the three of them, Han Solo included.
Whatever happens, the three of them are always together. That’s what came across.
That original trilogy trio really is the best.
YODA!!!!!
Are you serious!!!!!!!!!!
Yoda actually shows up!!!!!!!
And not as CG — the original trilogy puppet!!!!!!!
Right! I’m crying!!! Too much!!!! Far too much!!!! Best director alive!!!!!!
Yoda goes and burns down the Force tree that housed the oldest books on the Jedi.
Luke hesitates for ages, thinking what a waste it would be, and then Yoda appears out of nowhere and calls down lightning on it.
Rey had already quietly taken the books with her, mind… lol
“Page-turners they were not.”
Throw away the Jedi teachings you spent all that time building up.
That scene, with Yoda talking him round, was lovely.
Getting rapped on the head with the stick brings the original trilogy straight back too.
Ah, so this really is goodbye to Luke…
Here’s the bit worth noticing!!!
In Episode V, Luke was training on Yoda’s planet.
Han Solo and Leia end up in trouble, and Luke wants to go and help.
Yoda tries to hold him back with that scene: “You are not ready.”
This time he appears and says “young Jedi” — but the whole mood is the opposite, nudging him to go and help.
Both of them must have been thinking back to Episode V.
Maybe the point is that a Jedi isn’t about the old teachings, a Jedi should be hope for people.
Or that Luke has moved from being the student to being the teacher, and is finally accepted as such.
This exchange with Yoda is a crucial scene — breaking away from the old Jedi teachings, and holding him back once but not this time.
Luke, having spent every last drop of the Force.
That final image follows Episode IV to the letter… I cried
Wonder if Luke was remembering it as well….
And there’s that line of Leia’s.
Hope is the sun.
My reading is that Luke felt it too — protect the hope that is Rey and the Resistance — and went in peace, looking at the sun.
You were magnificent, Luke Skywalker.
When she and Luke meet again, there’s that moment about the hair being different.
That’s there because Han Solo said it to her in Episode VII.
Mmm——such a fine little touch.
She plays a genuinely strong woman, the one commanding the Resistance.
You can really feel her worrying about how recklessly Poe throws himself at things, while still expecting great things from him.
Early on her ship is destroyed and she’s thrown out into space, and then she drifts through open space on the power of the Force, of all things!!
Frankly, I know opinion is split all over the place on this lol
But this scene had to be there.
Because showing her power with the Force here makes the audience think, ah, it’s in the bloodline after all.
And then Rey’s parents turn out to be nobodies. Thanks to this scene, bloodline has nothing to do with it lands that much harder.
Gial Ackbar | Wookieepedia | FANDOM powered by Wikia
Admiral Ackbar, who did so much in the original trilogy, dies in this one…
Sad…
I was convinced Princess Leia would die as a character in this film, and then… she lives…
japanese.engadget.com
And it sounds like she won’t appear in Episode IX either!
W-what happens now….
Carrie Fisher also guested on the show The Big Bang Theory, and she was the daughter of the leading lady of Singin’ in the Rain, so she’s a very familiar face around here. This news is desperately sad.
My condolences.
The way Leia was acknowledged in the closing credits, so carefully done, was lovely.
The scar on his face is the one Rey gave him in Episode VII.
In Episode VII he was rattled from having just killed Han Solo, which is apparently why a complete beginner like Rey beat him lol
You get a glimpse of the piloting he inherited from Anakin and Han Solo too.
Though Snoke tells him he’s not Anakin, he’s Han Solo lol
Never saw the betrayal in the throne room coming…
A lightsaber moved with the Force, and Snoke is dead. H-he’s strong (?)
The fight with the Elite Praetorian Guard had him and Rey working together beautifully.
His reason for turning was never the light side — it was building a new third power that reduces both the light side and the dark side to nothing. That’s my guess.
But Rey turns him down, and he becomes the new Supreme Leader.
Maybe he felt that nothing had fundamentally changed between studying under Luke and now, that only the master had swapped over.
And maybe he’d felt something between himself and Rey, then found out it was Snoke’s scheme, and the whole thing turned ridiculous to him.
On top of that he’s been torn between the light side and the dark side ever since Episode VII. So what he came up with may have been choosing a third power that rejects even the Rebellion vs First Order / Empire framing outright.
But!!!
It might just be staging, but at the end of the film, with Rey aboard the Falcon, the two of them look each other in the face through the Force. They connected without Snoke’s intervention, so perhaps it’s a hint that these two have to settle things between them after all.
“Who killed him?”
Hux asks, and he answers that the girl did it lol
Real small-time energy… lol
And then, the new Supreme Leader!!!
Though he does get swept along by his emotions a bit easily lol
Hux, standing behind him, is clearly not thrilled about whether this man is fit to lead.
She brushes up against the dark side on Ahch-To, the planet where Luke is, and against the light side as well — the impression is of someone standing in the gap in the Force.
But the way she keeps believing in Kylo Ren, honestly convinced he’ll come back to the light side one day, might be the first time Star Wars has done that shape. Like Naruto and Sasuke in manga.
After Snoke is killed she turns down Kylo Ren’s offer, and although she could have finished him off there, she leaves him lying unconscious — more proof that she still believes.
Her parents were nobodies!
Dumped on Jakku in exchange for drinking debts, apparently!
The Last Jedi, the film’s own title.
That’s Luke Skywalker, and it’s also Rey, who became a Jedi just before he died.
As said above, Rey has no special bloodline, no special birth.
Which is hope, isn’t it — the possibility that anybody could become a Jedi.
She stole the old Jedi texts.
With those books the Jedi Order as it was could probably be revived.
But as Yoda said, you can throw all that away and redefine what a Jedi is, so I’m looking forward to what she does next.
Anakin’s blue lightsaber, split clean in two.
Is that a hint of something too?
Hmm——.
Well, it’s broken now.
She’ll almost certainly have a new lightsaber in the next film.
What colour, though..
Green? Purple? Yellow? lol
Come to think of it, he was badly injured in Episode VII.
Which is why he was asleep lol
And then he immediately tries to run off the ship — oi!!! lol
Was he a spy after all? No. Just a coward… lol
But watching him turn into a warrior as he throws himself into the fight was excellent.
On Cantonica, the gambling planet, he and BB-8 set the fathiers — those horse-like creatures — loose.
Tiny as it is, that act gives him the real feeling of turning a bad situation into a good one, and that’s surely why he goes for the suicide run on Crait at the end.
Glad he lived though lol And he got a girlfriend out of it lol
A shaft of light for a Resistance that had lost so many.
Phasma’s armour is tough!!!
Deflecting blaster fire!!!
According to the Episode VII prequel novel she was rather fond of Finn. Which explains why she was that angry lol
Wanted far more of this fight! lol
Is she dead? Is she?
Feels like she’ll come back with a burned face…
BB-8 | Wookieepedia | FANDOM powered by Wikia
One way or another, the image of him is always glued to Finn.
So cute…
In the opening battle at D’Qar he’s repairing an electrical panel inside Poe’s ship lol
That bit was very funny lol
Rose Tico | Wookieepedia | FANDOM powered by Wikia
The heroine of the film?!
Never expected this girl to carry that much of it…
When she stopped Finn’s suicide run I thought she’d died and nearly cried.
She seems to be alive though, thank goodness.
Paige Tico | Wookieepedia | FANDOM powered by Wikia
Rose’s sister.
She’s a bomber crew member in the battle at D’Qar, and dies a hero’s death.
Genuinely great work from her there.
But Poe reads it as a heroic death, while Leia and the others read it as staying alive being what matters — and that gap becomes the trigger for all the friction between them.
Poe Dameron | Wookieepedia | FANDOM powered by Wikia
A huge step up in screen time from Episode VII!
The dangerous side of his character, the mistakes that come with being young — all dug into properly.
That plan to board the enemy warship to escape being tracked through hyperspace — maybe it didn’t need to happen at all… is what I think!
But!!!
That plan is what gives Finn his growth, and what makes the meeting with the boy on Cantonica possible.
A very Confucian way of putting it, but thanks to that ‘connection’, I have a feeling the boy from Cantonica becomes the ‘spark’ that saves the galaxy.
He learns how important staying alive is here, and there’s no doubt he becomes the leader who carries the Resistance forward.
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Turns out she’s over 1,000 years old lol
Older than Yoda!
Here she gives Poe some advice. The fact that she’s in the middle of fighting something while she does it was hilarious lol
She’s a Force user, and she’s apparently spent her life reading the currents of the Force to keep out of danger.
Killed by Kylo Ren, of all things!
https://www.eiganohimitsu.com/7896.html
According to the article above, he’s a dark side alien from another galaxy!!!
Whaaaaaaat!!!
I had him down as Darth Plagueis or Mace Windu!!! lol
So what was he actually after? Total control of the galaxy, presumably.
And to get there:
That looks like the plan.
He also pulls out Force lightning.
Telling Kylo Ren “I can see exactly what you mean to do” and then getting killed anyway does leave you with questions.
Was he simply an idiot, or is he faking his death like Luke…
The boy they meet in the stable on Cantonica.
At the very end he flicks the broom into his hand with the Force — that got me!!!
A Force user, of all things…
And he had the Resistance ring!!!
Ground down by his employer and able to use the Force puts him in much the same position as Anakin Skywalker… so where does that go?
Fingers crossed for Episode IX.
On July 24, 202…
