This is what I was referring to:
While his bloodline is certainly an advantage, Star Wars was not the story of 'only people with special bloodlines do special thinggs'
Not having a special bloodline is the norm, not something that rebels against the status quo.
I mean, that's true but ONLY of the non-Force characters.
The Star Wars films are all about the singular pillar of the Skywalkers and ONLY the Skywalkers against all odds – (because they're The Skywalker Saga). Together, Vader & Palpatine overthrew the entire Jedi Order and supplanted them with the Site. Then Luke (with the help of Anakin) overthrew both of the Sith. The Skywalkers have ultimately always overcome literally everything and been left at the center of the machinations of the whole galaxy
Only the Skywalkers is a vast overstatement. It's amazing how much people play down Palpatine's role in things. Anakin has almost nothing to do with the fall of the Jedi. Take him out of the prequels, and the Naboo Crisis may play out differently, but nothing Palpatine can't spin to his advantage. Anakin didn't orchestrate the Clone Wars, didn't help put together Order 66. He marches into the temple, but he wasn't necessary for that, he just spared the Clones some casualties. When he was sent to eradicate one of the last Jedi, he failed. The climactic duel at the end of Sith, the one that decides the fate of the galaxy, isn't Anakin/Obi Wan at all, it's Yoda/Palpatine. The idea that the films are only about the Skywalkers requires a lot of editing out of other Force users.
So, yeah. The first 6 films HEAVILY establish the idea of an extant Heroic Royal Force Lineage when Episode 6 ends. The Skywalker family have the most raw Force Sensitive potential the galaxy has ever seen, that connection to the Force "runs strong in their family," and they are the only ones who can train anyone else in the Force after them. There is no way anyone can receive more training than the Skywalkers posses or can give out, and no indication that there could EVER be anyone as powerful as them – unless the Cosmic Force decides to Deus Ex knock up another Virgin Mary with a Space Jesus.
So where did Snoke come from?
Here's the thing... Anakin never reached his potential. He never became the most powerful person in the galaxy. He never becomes more powerful than the Emperor. He had perfect lineage, but he might as well be the poster child for the idea that bloodline was not enough. He constantly tries to overpower threats with his perfect lineage, and loses as a result. In the final duel with Obi, the choreography is built around them being entirely equal, including in Force Power (the Force push lock where neither of them can overpower each other.) They're so equal that the tiniest advantage, 'high ground' (another thing that gets unfairly mocked so much) is enough to be decisive, and when Anakin tries to compensate for that tiny, tiny advantage with his raw force powered bloodline ('You underestimate my power') he can't overcome it. Because Bloodline is not everything, and thinking it is is constantly a failing in everyone with that belief. Mr. Perfect Bloodline is defeated because he tries and fails to use it against someone with no known special lineage.
In the OT, Luke specifically does not overpower the Emperor and Vader with the Force. I mean, that's the point. He allows himself to be electrocuted, it's his bond with his father that defeats the Emperor, not his connection to the Force. Insofar as it has to do with the SKywalker blood, it's the family connection that is the important part in that confrontation, not their super connection to the Force.
eah. It also carries them on its own, and the message is about taking them out of an environment where they're literally physically abused for sport. If you're gonna make jokes in the middle of honest points, I'd always amend them with "/sarcasm" or something, because SO many of the points are hyperbolized to ridiculous levels that it's difficult to assume anything like that isn't just being leveled as an actual criticism.
Half a joke, I said. I realise that this one is more a nitpick than the rest, but it's still symptomatic of the thematic confusion that Rose makes a big deal out of removing the saddle only once they're done with it.
"Hey, slaves! I will remove your chains... after you've carried me to safety."
Like the thing where the New Republic is suddenly set up as facilitating the arms trade when everything else in canon explicitly sets them up as people minimising their fleet and disarming as much as possible. It seems like an indication of a theme inserted without being fully thought through.
That's different because (SPOILER) Holdo is in a position where she HAS to be a single, non-heroic sacrifice for them to escape as a part of a well-calculated plan — piloting the ship away to draw the First Order off. It's not a heroic sacrifice or one that involves violence, but once of practical necessity. She is always going to die to make the plan succeed, regardless of how she dies, that's decided in advance.
It's only when all the chips are down and every bluff attempt fails that she takes the Kamikaze attack opportunity. That's even prefaced by Leia saying, "She cared more about saving the light than seeming like a hero." There's a whole explanation about WHEN those sorts of crazy self-sacrifices are acceptable to juxtapose them against all the other other failed or interrupted examples from the film. That's the whole point.
The thing about that is, even though Poe is called out on trying to be a hero, that's not what he's doing. It't not like he disagreed with her plan, he wasn't told there was one, and after watching every other ship in the fleet (including at least some of their crews) be destroyed, after begging his CO to give him something to believe they weren't just delaying the inevitable, decided to do something about it. His plan doesn't even interfere with hers, except through a contrived scenario where DJ hearing the word 'transports' somehow figures out not only that they are cloaked, but exactly how to detect them, which Poe could not possibly have known in any way because he didn't know any of that.
And the point is that she openly calls him out where those lessons aren't accurate.
(SPOILER)
1. That's a lesson about the nature of the Force itself, and an important one. It's also about the dogmatism of the Jedi being problematic, but it's a lesson that teaches Rey about what the Force really is. It's not JUST a lesson about failure at all. It's primarily about the true nature of the Force.
2. This is where he gets into the problems of the Jedi and hubris, which are important. At the same time, she also uses it to call him out by pointing out that while it was a Jedi Master who trained Darth Vader, it's also a Jedi Master who saved him. She's showing that the Jedi are more than just their checkered, dogmatic, legacy.
3. You're VASTLY misrepresenting the lesson here. The deleted scene is he tells her that raiders are coming to the Caretaker village, and so long as they allow it to happen some will die, but it will be minor, but if they intervene, the raiders will send even greater amount of troops and the situation will escalate. Rey runs down anyway, and discovers that they aren't raiders at all, but they're actually just the males returning from their long journeys out to sea where they get food for their families. It's a lesson about thinking that you know what to do and violence as a solution. HOWEVER – Given that it's all based on descriptions of hearsay at this point, there's no point in trying to dissect the message from the Third lesson until the novelization of The Last Jedi is released in March, since that part WILL be included there.
It's worth noting that Luke failed to lift an X-Wing out of a swamp, and also in the Dark Side cave, so teaching through forms of failure really isn't anything too new. Luke's issue in 5 on Dagobah all came down to one exchange: "I don't believe it" – "and THAT is why you fail."
Rey's different. She intrinsically believes in her own abilities. She's just afraid of them, and learning how to control them. That's why what NOT to do is the most important lessons for Luke her – especially since she is LITERALLY the foil to Ben's power. Rey's story is all about Luke's own hubris and shortcomings, that have presented an issue that Rey has to overcome, while Ben's focus has always been to overcome what Vader failed to do, and how those two things conflict with one another but need to find balance.
Okay, let's leave out lesson 3.
Everything she learns that's useful happens against his will. She does her own sparring. She goes to the darkside cave against his will. She takes the books against his will. She beats the true story out of him. It was a Jedi Master who saved Vader...by going against what he had been taught, what Obi and Yoda wanted him to do.
He warns her against going to Snoke. She goes... and ends up getting him killed. Luke Skywalker is wrong about everything, down to the merits of lifting rocks.
Contrast to Empire, where Luke goes off to confront Vader against Yoda's advice... and gets the tar kicked out of him. Yes, Luke had failures, but they were not the only things he was taught. We see some lessons of many. With TLJ, there are only three lessons and they are all about why the Jedi suck. She abandons him as a failure, he goes to destroy the books, and Yoda essentially says. 'Yup, you're a failure, but your bad example can teach her something at least.' Then Luke projects to Crait, confesses his failures to Leia and Ben, and dies. It plays more like an attempt at redemption than an acknowledgement of any merits of the old Jedi.
showed Luke that they were worth keeping the Jedi for. It's not a rejection of everything that's happened since then at all. It's embracing the values that the Jedi stood for, rather than tossing them away because of what they actually were.
As soon as she leaves, he tries to destroy the last Jedi teachings, which he doesn't know survived. He doesn't know she has anything of the Old Jedi teachings with her, it seems like it outlook is more 'She's going to remake the Jedi without any of our teachings, maybe she won't screw up like we did.
Rey is left with about as much formal training as Luke had somewhere between Empire and RotJ.
No, she explicitly got three lectures about failure. There isn't even a timeskip between films where she can practice by herself, Luke had actual training time with two Jedi masters which is implied to be more than we see.
There was no reason to engage the Juggernaut then and there – and again – he was explicitly commanded not to by his superior officer. It only ends up being the right choice, because the First Order could track them in real-time through Hyperspace, which NO ONE was expecting.
When the Dreadnought is destroyed, it is right in the process of charging it's supergun for a shot aimed directly at the Raddus. Poe got demoted for saving the fleet. Poe and Finn keep getting called out for motivations they don't have. Finn isn't destroying the gun because he hates it, he's trying to save the Resistance.
