Would someone who has no clue about star wars or it's lore and has not seen any of the movies be able to enjoy the this movie as a stand alone one?
The story was supposed to be Luke training Rey while reluctant to do so while the First Order move in on a defenseless republic. I haven't seen it yet, but does that not happen?
Not quite sure how I feel about the film yet. I felt very similar about TFA after the midnight screening two years ago. This will need a second viewing or two as absolutely crazy. Don't totally disagree with all your points, though I think they're relatively minor, but sorry, the Mary Sue thing is just sexist nonsense, mostly coming from fans who think Star Wars is a poorly written novel from the expanded universe or a cut scene from a 90s PC game. They were absolutely right to abort those timelines and the incredibly uneven quality of their content, these films follow the spirit of the cinematic universe, whether this one gets it right or not yet, I'm not quite sure.
Not it's not at all. Mary Sue is to a female what Marty Stu is to a male. The cinematic reference/term refers to a character type, not a character gender.
He's referring to the fact that when male characters are Mary Sue's nobody cares, but as soon as a female lead does it everybody is up in arms. It's either sexism, or just outright hypocrisy.
You mean the same Luke who struggled for months with Yoda on a planet to do even the slightest thing as far as force control is concerned, yet, Rey with zero training as a Jedi can perform force functions because the plot requires it to move the story forward? It's a deus ex machina at best.
Firstly, no, I mean the same Luke who with zero training as a fighter pilot, flew an X-Wing evading Anakin who had extensive experience flying, then blew up the death star in near impossible shot with the power of his mind despite having no experience or training whatsoever in doing that and who then went one on one with a lightsaber vs one of the best duelists in the galaxy single handedly responsible for wiping out most of the other jedi and fully fledged in his training - with pretty much no combat training at all vs Rey who didn't do anything in TFA remotely close to what Luke did in the original trilogy and pretty much only managed to tie/almost lose a duel with a petulant child who still had his training to complete, who was holding back and was severely wounded and clutching his chest the whole time. The jedi mind trick I'll grant you, though there may well come out a plausible reason for that too. The TFA books and parts of the TFA film hint at prior training for Rey and so we'll have to see how that fleshes out.
It's a long time since I watched it but doesn't Luke get saved by Solo just before he gets zapped by a Vader he'd ultimately failed to evade? I also recall him getting tonked in his first duel with Vader and losing a hand, saved by Obi wan from Tuscan whatsits, saved again by him in a bar, saved by R2D2 in a crusher. He constantly gets saved by his mates. IIRC (I've only seen it once) my beef with Rey was that she was perpetually doing the saving and everything seemed to come to her without much struggle at all. If Rey had had an arc like Jen's (Jyn?) I'd have been a lot happier.
He holds his own the entire way until he gets his arm chopped off when in reality he should had his hand cut off in less than 5 seconds and shouldn't have been able to do anything vs quite literally the most dominant and unstoppable force in the galaxy at that particular time. The second time he goes into a rage and beats him down effortlessly after spending a few months doing handstands with Yoda. The sheer gulf between him and Vader at that time should have been over a hundred times larger than between Rey and Kylo. He was literally a farm boy vs one of the most powerful Sith lords alive in the galaxy. Everybody overlooks how stupid that is, also that a farm boy can pilot an X wing like he's Poe Dameron's instructor and pull off a near impossible shot with no training whatsoever.
I think you've got some of the narrative backwards. I think Luke gets instructed by Yoda before he gets his arm chopped off, not after. I also recall the idea that in the first encounter Vader wasn't so much looking to give him a good hiding as looking to test him and attempt to convert him to evil.
I really don't see her being better than everyone at everything all the time. It's been a while since I saw the film I'll admit, but she literally got captured when she went off on her own, getting bested by Kylo who froze her and then captured her and took her away and then got bested by Kylo in a lightsaber duel despite him clutching his side the whole time in great pain after she put up a tiny bit of a fight, and despite him holding back and trying to convert her to the dark side. The only thing that people complained about that I can remember are the force trick which ok fair play, and them somehow thinking she dominated Kylo in the lightsaber battle which never happened. That completely pales in comparison to Luke's death star feat, and him holding his own and beating Vader (someone who was infinitely better at everything than Kylo) after a few months training.
Yeah, wasn't the plan to capture him in that freezing chamber, not kill him?
A Mary Sue (A crap phrase) is a character defined by an unbelievable level of perfection - not simply the ability to perform miraculous feats. It's not the ability for people to accomplish an unreasonable thing I have a problem with (the thing you're focusing on), my personal issue is with a character never needing help and never demonstrating a weakness they require help in overcoming. Even when Rey is captured she requires no help in the escape that I can remember. She works out how to do the jedi mind trick, then climbs out of her place of captivity - She basically saves herself.
I think that's easily explained by Luke being a farmer, and Rey being a scavenger who scavenges every day to earn a living. Those traits are not unusual. If I remember rightly (I might be wrong) she already says she has experience of flying when they steal the Falcon. It's also a bit unfair to focus on the first 40 minutes - at the end of the film Rey has been captured, and struggles to hold her own against Kylo who is busy trying to stop his insides from falling out where as Luke who was a farmer, frees princess Leia from a highly guarded Imperial facility and then despite having no experience whatsoever, pilots an x wing to the Death Star without any issue at all, handles it without a problem and pulls off an impossible shot by using the force, something he barely has any experience in whatsoever to direct a missile through a tiny hole to blow it up. I feel like of the two outcomes there, Luke has displayed way way way more of a leap in ability than Rey who built on some kind of base experience.
This. He toyed with both of them with one hand all while trying to hold his insides in place with one hand until he got slashed. He then immediately put Finn down and then bested Rey in seconds until he said 'join me' and she had a second of clarity and knocked him back. Then the ground opened up. He didn't lose or get his ass kicked or anything like that. It's just an exaggeration by people who have the Mary Sue issue with Rey.
How different is it from TFA? Hope Rian Johnson mixed things up a bit.
She say's she's no idea how she managed the feat - she just does it (she alludes to flying some simple thing but discounts it). I couldn't be bothered going further than 40 minutes TBH. I do think that the first 40 is enough to get the tone of each movie though. All Rey's capabilities are to some extent explainable by her situation, sure. The problem for me is that she's demonstrated nothing but extreme competence at everything and has required next to no help whatsoever - other characters in her orbit have so far been reduced to vehicles by which Rey can demonstrate this competence. She's rapelled through a starship, surfed a dune, comunicated in whateverish and droidango, beaten up two dudes, floored her co-star, rescued him, flown a spaceship, outrun an imperial fighter and fixed said spaceship. Her co-star's fallen over twice, been knocked to the ground, set up for a turkey shot and passed her some tape.
Yes id say the film is trying to appeal to those
He definitely did. Didn't all pay off, it's a bit too long and some bits will have you scratching your head but when it works, it really works.
That's the type of thing I wanted to hear. Thanks.
Fair enough, I think where we disagree on the Mary Sue thing is that those things are not particularly spectacular and are grounded in logic. You would expect a scavenger to be able to rapel into a starship. Hell, I can rapel and I've done it once before. It's not that difficult. Speaking languages, Anakin Skywalker could do that as a 10 year old kid or whatever he was. For all we know it's normal when you're immersed on a world that speaks that many languages. People on Earth do that. With Luke, there is no logical reason at all how he can go from a farmer to piloting an x-wing and blowing up the death star from nowhere, or holding his own against Darth Vader who was at the height of his power. That just came from literally nowhere. That's much worse than anything Rey ever did.
Yeah, I thought 10 year old Anekin (and Anekin in general) was a worse character than Rey tbh. I agree that Luke did spectacular stuff, just think his demonstrable weaknesses compensated for it whereas Rey's more consistent brilliance irked me more. I'm not going to hijack this thread any further though, I'll agree to disagree.
His mask works really well when his hood is up, but when his hood was down and the mask on he looked ridiculous.
I would say it is awkwardly different. Many of the mysteries set-up by Abrams and Kasdan in TFA have no meaningful payoff here because Johnson has gone off on his own path.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with Mark. The Luke in this film is a disservice to the Return of the Jedi's hero of compassion and non-violence.
