If am being honest, when I saw them in the trailer a few years ago. I really assumed that these were the Resistance version of the Nebulon B Frigate based on the shape
Shoot, I was changing majors in my 3rd year of university back then. Now I'm working a professional job with crazy stories under my belt, and turning 30 in a couple months. Life's crazy
Although it was released in 2017 and it is currently 2026, the movie was released in mid December so it’s been ~8 years and 3 weeks, definitely not 9 yet.
Two reasons: it kinda-sorta looks like a B letter from the side, and B is also an abbreviation for "Blade", which definitely fits. Also, as for out-of-universe reasons A-Wings and B-Wings were simply called "Fighter A" and "Fighter B" in the original movie documentation.
Yes, I thought that as well when I first saw the teaser, although the X-Wings in the scene helped give them scale and made them look more like heavy spacecraft, like bombers.
Seriously. TLJ is the only one of the three with any coherent vision with how to move beyond the Skywalker family and remind everyone that there used to be thousands of space wizards and for millennia and they weren’t dealing with supposed prophetic “chosen ones.”
Snoke wasn't related to Palpatine in any way. He was just another dark side user who saw a power vacuum, and overestimated his ability to cultivate and keep his attack dog on a leash. He may not have been Sith, but he certainly had similar failings and shows that regardless of what we call it, there will always be people out there looking to manipulate and harness other people's vulnerabilities to their own gain.
Luke accepts that hiding and refusing to train a new generation just makes it that much easier for bad actors. That he was wrong. About all of it. His lapse at the school was as natural as Ben's inferiority complex of being the child of galactic legends with magic space powers. That even if he had serious issues with the Jedi, seeing what he thought were the books burning brought clarity. The dogma may have been wrong, but the general doctrine was right and worth saving/living. Worth trying to save the next generation so that hopefully Rey could do what he could not. He also shows that just because he defeated Vader in the cave when he was young, it takes active, conscious, effort to keep those dark thoughts at bay.
Yes, we all have darkness, but it's how we deal with it that matters. The Skywalkers are the epitome of that. Anakin, like Ben, fell to the dark. Luke, like Rey did in TLJ, had to push through his, and they both could only do that through introspection and confronting their own failings head-on.
Rey's parentage doesn't matter. It's what's inside her and how she uses her power that counts, even as she struggles with her own anger/abandonment issues and insecurities.
Kylo is given every opportunity to push back the dark, but the insecurities he's shown since the first scene of Ep7 throw him back down the path of the dark side. Kylo has the special parents and the special blood, but he still fell.
Broom boy is there as a reminder that there's goodness and power inside all of us, just like we had a farm boy a long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away.
Literally, everything is there to set the stage for continued development of a wider world outside of whatever the conclusion of the story was going to be. Everything is there to push forward with the inherent duality in anything with a dark/light duality. There, but for the grace of god, go I. Light, dark, and power reside in all of us in different ways. And the only way to defeat the dark is by first acknowledging it and giving others the chance to grow and move past theirs. Then being prepared to fight or whatever else is necessary to make sure it prevails.
I get it. if you want a surface-level reading of the plotting and themes of TLJ, then it doesn't execute the vision I described. But you don't need a "strong vision" about what a world looks like beyond the Skywalkers, because this was about laying groundwork. The idea is that Ep9 would "yes, and," instead of going, "no, because..."
10000000%. I didn’t love everything about TLJ and really didn’t care for the visual style in particular (I know probably unpopular
Opinion) , but TLJ’s solution to Rey’s parentage was perfect and one of the most exciting parts of the sequels to me.
I went to a midnight showing at Lincoln Square. The theater was packed. The crowd was electric. The opening crawl had us riveted with anticipation.
I vividly remember it all turning when Poe prank called the first order. Audience members started to share nervous glances with one another. Maybe this is just an awkward joke and everything will be fine.
Little did we know it would be all downhill from that moment on. The audience left entirely deflated, mostly stunned silence. No one really knew what to say but the shared disappointed was palpable.
The only reason killing snoke was bad was because they immediately retconned it and made him a palpatine clone. If JJ had made all three movies or Rian had made the last two then I feel like a lot of people would view these films differently
Visually beautiful film, but man did they make so many wrong choices regarding Luke, Canto Bight, Rose, Rey's parents and killing off Snoke.
I personally love most of the creative choices TLJ made, especially around Luke, Rey’s lineage, and Snoke.
Rose and Canto Bight get too much hate. Rose is a wonderful little in-universe fan and acts as the angel on Finn’s shoulder to get him to recommit to the fight. Plus, she has her own mini arc on Canto Bight, which is a fun addition to the world building of Star Wars, adding some moral complexity to the universe.
Not to mention the "Yo momma" joke in the first 5 mins of the film.
Man, back in my day, a “yo momma” joke went like, “Yo momma so X, she Y,” not just a comment that insulted someone’s mother, which has been around in literature since forever.
Such a disappointment and it truly split the fanbase forever.
Forever’s a long time! Can’t help but feel that, like the Prequels, as new generations grow up watching TLJ without the burden of expectation, they’ll have a kinder view of it than a lot of the older fans who were expecting a particular Luke, thought Rey would be related to someone important, that Snoke would be Plagueis, etc.
The general problem of the Sequels is that they each seem to be a reaction to the last movie released, so the whole ends up less than the sum of its parts.
The Last Jedi's decision on Snoke was a very interesting one designed to get the trilogy away from a repeat of the Sidious-Vader dynamic by putting Kylo Ren in charge of the empire and making the question of redemption more complicated.
But The Rise of Skywalker immediately puts that dynamic back in place in an even more heavy-handed way, and does make Rey related to someone famous.
I think it’s fair to say that IX feels reactionary — or, at the very least, like Abrams/Terrio didn’t understand or know how to grapple with Johnson’s more liberal ideas on where to take Star Wars.
But, truthfully, I don’t think TLJ is any more “reactive” to TFA than Empire is to Star Wars — it’s true that Johnson challenges a lot of what we think we know (the general familiarity that TFA engenders) in the beginning of TLJ, but as the film goes on his antithetical approach melds into a synthesis of the familiar with the novel. Which is really what the original Star Wars always was: this synthesis of something familiar made into something no one had seen at the time.
A good second act challenges what we think we knew in the first. In the Empire, Luke suffers defeat after defeat, the Rebellion is even worse off than when they defeated the Death Star, Anakin isn’t dead, he’s Darth Vader, etc. — one could argue it’s a “reaction” to the optimism and archetypal simplicity of Star Wars (and critics did argue that point in 1980), but over time we’ve appreciated Empire for its steps toward making the series more complex, more human, less sentimental.
I think TLJ does the same thing with TFA’s set-ups and milieu, refocusing on the things that matter: what a character does rather than who she is, grounding our heroes in their own humanity, flaws and all, encouraging an open-endedness rather than a foregone conclusion.
That IX fails to follow up on TLJ is fully on the former film than the latter IMO. Most days I just ignore that it exists.
You might disagree with it. But they served a purpouse. I might add a new perspective with this comment, that may make you appreciate these things more than you already do.
Rian Johnson said in an interview that he did base Luke's story on Arthutian legend. Arthur made Mordred through incest, Mordred would later return to kill Arthur. So another way to put it is "Arthur's fall was created by his own sin". Luke's downfall was caused by his own sin, he lost himself to the Dark Side for just a second and that would lead to his world falling apart. And BTW I don't consider this reaction weird to have by Luke. In ROTJ he attacked and almost killed Vader by just Vader threatening to turn his sister to the dark side. In TLJ he basically saw everyone he loved killed by Kylo before his eyes and regained control of his dark side but not before it was too late. So I would say that Luke in TLJ was way more trained than Luke in ROTJ. And I would say that it does show Luke in a human way, Luke is not just another Yoda he's a main character that can go through things that we can.
In Canto Bight the story was basically just to show Finn what to fight for. People, myself included expected Finn to immidiately be loyal to the Resistance for some reason. But if we can remember Finn in TFA he had no loyalty to the Recistance. He was just loyal to Rey. He was even willing to sacrifise the Recistance just to save Rey by entering Starkiller base without knowing how to deactivate the shield. After that his goal was to run to where he could hide from the First Order. Canto Bight showed him that he was fighting for the good guys, what the morals of the galaxy would look like if the First Order was in control to give him a purpouse to fight for.
Killing of Snoke was to change the story from the originals. If we are to remove the Prequels Palpatine's only purpouse was to be a more bad guy than Vader so we could turn Vader to the good side. He was just a story tool to finish Vader's story. Snoke is the same, but if we are to make a new story we can't just have a new master figure serving the exact same purpouse to have in order to turn the bad guy to a good guy like what happened in TROS and ROTJ.
Snoke wasn't really as significant as people thought he was.
But what I really disliked was the potrayal of Hux. He was a coward as shown in TFA but not that as big of a coward.
I was hoping this was the New Republic finally fighting back with some kind of ship we hadn't seen before, boyyy was I in for a surprise when the movie starts with "The First Order reigns..."
Those bombers didn't make any sense in the established lore. They were slow, and moving in a straight line. The ships main batteries should have been able to target them. They didn't need the light anti-fighter systems, the big guns could have fired on them.
You can't shoot fighters with all up turbo lasers because they almost always dodge, DS-1 fight at Yavin was full sized Turbo Lasers (light ones) vs X-Wings and their accuracy wasn't even in the single digits. However against something as large and ungainly as those bombers...
Nothing you've laid out suggests going against "established lore." Bombers are large, slow and heavy, even in real life, and they're as equally exposed to the dangers that you've laid out.
"We count thirty Rebel ships, Lord Vader, but they're so small they're evading our turbolasers."
"We'll have to destroy them ship to ship. Get the crews to their fighters."
―Lieutenant Tanbris and Darth Vader —
I didn't say bombers. I said specifically THOSE bombers.
The issue with established lore isn't that bombers exist, the Y-Wing and the B-Wing were both classified as bombers. We've seen tons of bombers in the lore. The issue is that bombers are not small enough to evade the turbolasers, meaning that the star destroys around the devastator, as well as the devastator itself, should have been able to target them with their main batteries. (not the massive cannon, the deck guns)
Poe went to kill the close it anti-fighter defenses. While handy, given the bomber's obvious shields those lighter weapons may have proven ineffective anyway. The turbolasers on the other hand CAN FIRE AT LARGE, SLOW AND HEAVY targets. That's what they are designed to do.
Meaning the bombers should have popped up, and Hux say "What the heck are those, blast them." and that would have been it following established lore.
TLDR: Those bombers were so large, slow and heavy there was no reason the 3 nearby SD shouldn't have been able to pick them off with turbolasers. Because of that, they make no sense in Lore.
I liked the look, thought they would be some sort of heavy strike craft or missile launcher since the x wings were there for scale. It's kinda what they turned out to be, although I was not a fan at all of them going full WWII bomber with them.
That's the messed up part. Real WWII bombers weren't so slow as to be useless. They were just slow compared to the fighters of the time. They could still outrun the explosions of the bombs they dropped.
These were some of the dumbest spacecraft ever put to screen. A single-use suicide weapon.
To me these things summarize Last Jedi. A lot of painfully contrived, terrible plot ideas all to set up some big payoff scene. In this case, the bomber hitting the release button at the last minute.
Luke Skywalker 'portrayal': no words for that!!
Snoke’s death: no backstory or payoff
Canto Bight stuff: pointless, preachy, no real impact
Holdo vs. Poe conflict: forced misunderstanding, illogical secrecy
Leia space scene: OMG, lame.
Slow fleet chase: weak weak weak internal logic.
Holdo-Ligtjump: Are you kidding me?!
Bomber-Attak
Rey’s parents reveal: wtf, anticlimactic, so sad, effortless
The Bomber attack scene...
Of course, you can like whatever you want, but maybe, just maybe, we should take a more critical view of this “work” as a whole!
This response? This is why the fandom is so divided. An innocuous comment leads to a full paragraph of berating them, and then demeaning them by suggesting (despite words to the contrary) that their opinions are inherently less valuable than yours.
You TLJ haters are so mad that we don’t hate things like you do that you can’t shut up about it. At least the prequel hate was largely fun and good natured. You losers can’t stand for someone to have a differing opinion than you and you always, always, alllllways dive down people’s throats to tell them why they are stupid/not real fans/slip lovers/etc.
Oh my god, you're right! Nobody, in the last eight years, has ever taken a critical view of TLJ or expressed the thoughts you've expressed. You're a genius, honestly, this is newly broken ground.
No but seriously, why such a reactionary reply to someone saying they loved this movie? Christ, not every mention of this movie has to be followed up with this shite. NOBODY CARES, WE GET IT.
Um, no they didn't, they were magnetically ejected and then momentum did the rest. The bit of gravity from the planet had practically zero effect on those bombs.
The movie had some logic issues, but those bombers were fine in their functionality.
I guess the whole visual dictionary where it's described is cope too, huh?
And there's nothing drastically different about TIE Bomber / Y-Wing bombs compared to what the TLJ ones have. They're both variants of proton bombs in different packaging, yields, etc, (torpedoes are variants, too) and neither of those ships have near the payload that the StarFortress does.
As a sidenote, no one raises this kind of fuss when ESB has TIE Bombers dropping their payload straight down on to the asteroid the Falcon was hiding in. But you better believe people's animosity towards the sequel movies will warp their brain.
An object in motion stays in motion. The bombs are shown being dropped through the artifical gravity of the drop bay. Do you expect the bombs to suddenly change direction once they leave the bay?
Let's assume it takes 1 second to drop the bombs in earth like gravity that's 9.8m/s. The bombs hitting space would be traveling 35kph. That's pretty slow.
That's also assuming they had 10m to drop from within the ship.
Too bad they didn't just repo a bunch of old Tie Bombers.
Yeah. The bombs in the movie don't appear to be falling that fast. Besides, the bombs are also on rails to propel them out of the ship, it's a pretty easy thing to see if you watch the scene.
Even beyond that, that's far too much real world physics to apply to a movie where sound travels in space. The universe doesn't operate the same as ours, as it's a fantasy.
The universe doesn't operate the same as ours, as it's a fantasy.
The standard way of dealing with fiction is that you assume things work the same as for us until evidence is provided otherwise (ideally by some cool/insteresting scene).
If you didn't use this general rule, it would lead to fantasy/scifi stories being devoid of tension and/or overburdened with explanations.
But really, in case of this bomber, we needn't assume: we can see the speeds and scales involved - the speed of the falling bombs, the speed of the ships, their distance... and so we come to the conclusion that the bombing run only works because the ships are moving at no more than city driving speed. Which is a waste of an idea, I think. A proper WW2 inspired bombing run at WW2 plane speeds would have made for a more exciting scene, IMO.
In the first scene of the 1977 film "Star Wars" there is sound in space. This is evidence that the fictional universe that is shown in star wars does not operate the same way ours does.
If you didn't use this general rule, it would lead to fantasy/scifi stories being devoid of tension and/or overburdened with explanations.
I think you're right in plenty of cases. The scene in question just isn't one of them. Because most people, for something as small as bombs falling out of ships that are built with the intent of dropping bombs, should be able to understand how those ships can drop bombs even in an environment that doesn't have the same rules as real life.
What are you referring to? These bombers needed gravity to drop their payload, while the Proton Torpedos that X-Wings fire are, well, shot and then curved into towards the middle of the nearest large mass
I suppose I was being a bit cheeky but it feels like we’re both making assumptions on how gravity works in this fictional fantasy universe. I think my point was intended to be that it’s pointless overthinking it in either scenario and that for me, both of the examples work, but I’m no physicist so YMMV
No they don't. They propel the bombs "downward" by a rail system.
And even if that weren't true, there's gravity on the ship which would accelerate the bombs and they'd keep their exit velocity once exposed to the vacuum.
Technically they are being shot out, just vertically from the bottom of the ship. But yeah, from a visual perspective it does seem like gravity did the work. On my first viewing, I assumed they had the ships artificial gravity letting the bombs go and then they just carried on their way through space.
Regardless, from a ammo dump perspective, it makes sense. If you were going to shoot them out like a railgun, you'd need loading mechanisms and such. Wasted space and mass that could be used for even more bombs.
I don't have a problem with the bombs but people need to stop using this excuse. What people are discussing is internal logic, suspension of disbelief.
Sounds in space is done for immersion reasons, there is an understanding for many decades in this art that it's okay to have them in the overwhelming majority of scifi movies.
If they made Luke shoot force lightning from his eyes while he rides a talking velociraptor would you still say "Yeah but sounds in space who cares"?
If they made Luke shoot force lightning from his eyes while he rides a talking velociraptor would you still say "Yeah but sounds in space who cares"?
Nah, I'd remind you that it's a fantasy setting where Force powers are constantly being revealed in new and interesting ways and Jedi have already ridden dinosaurs. You're presenting a farcical idea but I'd accept it as a logical extension of the franchise.
Fantasy doesn't mean a free pass to do anything, stories have their internal rules. The Star Wars Story Group in Lucasfilms exists for that reason, to make sure someone doesn't decide to put elements that don't fit the universe.
Fantasy does mean a free pass to do anything and nothing I've said violates those internal rules. Listen, we're talking about a franchise where by the second movie, we'd introduced telekinesis and enhanced acrobatics, the third movie, we established lightning hands, the 4th we got superspeed, and it only got wilder from there. My favorite Star Wars game introduced a power where if a Jedi meditates really well, everyone does really well in a fight.
And golly, if George wants a setting where our heroes ride dinosaurs, then he's gonna make sure Obi-wan is riding one that makes the weirdest wark wark sound. Because as the writer, he defines what elements fit the universe.
Bold of you to assume I remember something from 9 years ago.
I'm sorry - what?
Yep is almost a decade with this thing...Jesus Christ, back then i just graduated secondary now i have job...
Shoot, I was changing majors in my 3rd year of university back then. Now I'm working a professional job with crazy stories under my belt, and turning 30 in a couple months. Life's crazy
For me was 3 years of college, 4 years of uni and now almost 2 year with my job at almsot 27.
My favorite color is clear.
Although it was released in 2017 and it is currently 2026, the movie was released in mid December so it’s been ~8 years and 3 weeks, definitely not 9 yet.
The trailer came out well before that
I may have missed that particular word in the title, my bad
They reminded me of B-Wings at first glance.
Okay real talk though, why are they called that?
X wing is understandable. So is Y wing, A Wing, etc.
Which part of a B wing looks like a B?
Two reasons: it kinda-sorta looks like a B letter from the side, and B is also an abbreviation for "Blade", which definitely fits. Also, as for out-of-universe reasons A-Wings and B-Wings were simply called "Fighter A" and "Fighter B" in the original movie documentation.
Blade wing
It also kinda helps to think b-wing, with the cockpit at the loop.
The B-wing looks a lot like the letter 'b' before it deploys the wings. Then it looks a bit like a 't'.
B Wings from America
same.
Yes, I thought that as well when I first saw the teaser, although the X-Wings in the scene helped give them scale and made them look more like heavy spacecraft, like bombers.
I thought they were frigates yea, or some sort of heavy defense in depth fighters
I thought they were some kind of heavy B-Wing variant
Visually beautiful film, but man did they make so many wrong choices regarding Luke, Canto Bight, Rose, Rey's parents and killing off Snoke.
Not to mention the "Yo momma" joke in the first 5 mins of the film.
Such a disappointment and it truly split the fanbase forever.
To be honest I prefer TLJ’s approach to Rey’s lineage to what we got in TROS
Yeah. Rey having no special lineage/backstory was the one concept in the movie that I really liked.
Not only this but “Just Rey” would’ve been so much better of an ending line if nothing else changed than “Rey Skywalker”
Seriously. TLJ is the only one of the three with any coherent vision with how to move beyond the Skywalker family and remind everyone that there used to be thousands of space wizards and for millennia and they weren’t dealing with supposed prophetic “chosen ones.”
It does, but I'd argue it doesn't execute that vision well enough for it to matter.
Snoke wasn't related to Palpatine in any way. He was just another dark side user who saw a power vacuum, and overestimated his ability to cultivate and keep his attack dog on a leash. He may not have been Sith, but he certainly had similar failings and shows that regardless of what we call it, there will always be people out there looking to manipulate and harness other people's vulnerabilities to their own gain.
Luke accepts that hiding and refusing to train a new generation just makes it that much easier for bad actors. That he was wrong. About all of it. His lapse at the school was as natural as Ben's inferiority complex of being the child of galactic legends with magic space powers. That even if he had serious issues with the Jedi, seeing what he thought were the books burning brought clarity. The dogma may have been wrong, but the general doctrine was right and worth saving/living. Worth trying to save the next generation so that hopefully Rey could do what he could not. He also shows that just because he defeated Vader in the cave when he was young, it takes active, conscious, effort to keep those dark thoughts at bay.
Yes, we all have darkness, but it's how we deal with it that matters. The Skywalkers are the epitome of that. Anakin, like Ben, fell to the dark. Luke, like Rey did in TLJ, had to push through his, and they both could only do that through introspection and confronting their own failings head-on.
Rey's parentage doesn't matter. It's what's inside her and how she uses her power that counts, even as she struggles with her own anger/abandonment issues and insecurities.
Kylo is given every opportunity to push back the dark, but the insecurities he's shown since the first scene of Ep7 throw him back down the path of the dark side. Kylo has the special parents and the special blood, but he still fell.
Broom boy is there as a reminder that there's goodness and power inside all of us, just like we had a farm boy a long time ago in a galaxy far, far, away.
Literally, everything is there to set the stage for continued development of a wider world outside of whatever the conclusion of the story was going to be. Everything is there to push forward with the inherent duality in anything with a dark/light duality. There, but for the grace of god, go I. Light, dark, and power reside in all of us in different ways. And the only way to defeat the dark is by first acknowledging it and giving others the chance to grow and move past theirs. Then being prepared to fight or whatever else is necessary to make sure it prevails.
I get it. if you want a surface-level reading of the plotting and themes of TLJ, then it doesn't execute the vision I described. But you don't need a "strong vision" about what a world looks like beyond the Skywalkers, because this was about laying groundwork. The idea is that Ep9 would "yes, and," instead of going, "no, because..."
10000000%. I didn’t love everything about TLJ and really didn’t care for the visual style in particular (I know probably unpopular Opinion) , but TLJ’s solution to Rey’s parentage was perfect and one of the most exciting parts of the sequels to me.
Agreed 100%.
When that “joke” dropped in the theatre just shook my head and knew we were in for a shitty movie
Same, the whole scene reminded me of this one from the 2nd Family guy Star Wars special and it ruined the whole movie for me. https://youtu.be/d-soVTWVDEo?si=psuKL-Cos2LxO9Gr
I went to a midnight showing at Lincoln Square. The theater was packed. The crowd was electric. The opening crawl had us riveted with anticipation.
I vividly remember it all turning when Poe prank called the first order. Audience members started to share nervous glances with one another. Maybe this is just an awkward joke and everything will be fine.
Little did we know it would be all downhill from that moment on. The audience left entirely deflated, mostly stunned silence. No one really knew what to say but the shared disappointed was palpable.
My exact experience to a t
Just not what the post was about though, is it?
I felt killing snoke was a great move
The only reason killing snoke was bad was because they immediately retconned it and made him a palpatine clone. If JJ had made all three movies or Rian had made the last two then I feel like a lot of people would view these films differently
Agreed
Like many things in the sequel trilogy, great idea, horrible execution (not the actual scene, but how to develop the story after)
I'm with you.
so sad, thank God for Andor
What was the yo mamma joke? I'm not about to watch that movie for the third time just to hear it
Poe says to Hux over the comm links:
"Tell General Hux i have a message... about his mother".
Lmfao copy, nowhere near what I was expecting
I personally love most of the creative choices TLJ made, especially around Luke, Rey’s lineage, and Snoke.
Rose and Canto Bight get too much hate. Rose is a wonderful little in-universe fan and acts as the angel on Finn’s shoulder to get him to recommit to the fight. Plus, she has her own mini arc on Canto Bight, which is a fun addition to the world building of Star Wars, adding some moral complexity to the universe.
Man, back in my day, a “yo momma” joke went like, “Yo momma so X, she Y,” not just a comment that insulted someone’s mother, which has been around in literature since forever.
Forever’s a long time! Can’t help but feel that, like the Prequels, as new generations grow up watching TLJ without the burden of expectation, they’ll have a kinder view of it than a lot of the older fans who were expecting a particular Luke, thought Rey would be related to someone important, that Snoke would be Plagueis, etc.
The general problem of the Sequels is that they each seem to be a reaction to the last movie released, so the whole ends up less than the sum of its parts.
The Last Jedi's decision on Snoke was a very interesting one designed to get the trilogy away from a repeat of the Sidious-Vader dynamic by putting Kylo Ren in charge of the empire and making the question of redemption more complicated.
But The Rise of Skywalker immediately puts that dynamic back in place in an even more heavy-handed way, and does make Rey related to someone famous.
I think it’s fair to say that IX feels reactionary — or, at the very least, like Abrams/Terrio didn’t understand or know how to grapple with Johnson’s more liberal ideas on where to take Star Wars.
But, truthfully, I don’t think TLJ is any more “reactive” to TFA than Empire is to Star Wars — it’s true that Johnson challenges a lot of what we think we know (the general familiarity that TFA engenders) in the beginning of TLJ, but as the film goes on his antithetical approach melds into a synthesis of the familiar with the novel. Which is really what the original Star Wars always was: this synthesis of something familiar made into something no one had seen at the time.
A good second act challenges what we think we knew in the first. In the Empire, Luke suffers defeat after defeat, the Rebellion is even worse off than when they defeated the Death Star, Anakin isn’t dead, he’s Darth Vader, etc. — one could argue it’s a “reaction” to the optimism and archetypal simplicity of Star Wars (and critics did argue that point in 1980), but over time we’ve appreciated Empire for its steps toward making the series more complex, more human, less sentimental.
I think TLJ does the same thing with TFA’s set-ups and milieu, refocusing on the things that matter: what a character does rather than who she is, grounding our heroes in their own humanity, flaws and all, encouraging an open-endedness rather than a foregone conclusion.
That IX fails to follow up on TLJ is fully on the former film than the latter IMO. Most days I just ignore that it exists.
You might disagree with it. But they served a purpouse. I might add a new perspective with this comment, that may make you appreciate these things more than you already do.
Rian Johnson said in an interview that he did base Luke's story on Arthutian legend. Arthur made Mordred through incest, Mordred would later return to kill Arthur. So another way to put it is "Arthur's fall was created by his own sin". Luke's downfall was caused by his own sin, he lost himself to the Dark Side for just a second and that would lead to his world falling apart. And BTW I don't consider this reaction weird to have by Luke. In ROTJ he attacked and almost killed Vader by just Vader threatening to turn his sister to the dark side. In TLJ he basically saw everyone he loved killed by Kylo before his eyes and regained control of his dark side but not before it was too late. So I would say that Luke in TLJ was way more trained than Luke in ROTJ. And I would say that it does show Luke in a human way, Luke is not just another Yoda he's a main character that can go through things that we can.
In Canto Bight the story was basically just to show Finn what to fight for. People, myself included expected Finn to immidiately be loyal to the Resistance for some reason. But if we can remember Finn in TFA he had no loyalty to the Recistance. He was just loyal to Rey. He was even willing to sacrifise the Recistance just to save Rey by entering Starkiller base without knowing how to deactivate the shield. After that his goal was to run to where he could hide from the First Order. Canto Bight showed him that he was fighting for the good guys, what the morals of the galaxy would look like if the First Order was in control to give him a purpouse to fight for.
Killing of Snoke was to change the story from the originals. If we are to remove the Prequels Palpatine's only purpouse was to be a more bad guy than Vader so we could turn Vader to the good side. He was just a story tool to finish Vader's story. Snoke is the same, but if we are to make a new story we can't just have a new master figure serving the exact same purpouse to have in order to turn the bad guy to a good guy like what happened in TROS and ROTJ. Snoke wasn't really as significant as people thought he was.
But what I really disliked was the potrayal of Hux. He was a coward as shown in TFA but not that as big of a coward.
No it didn't split the fanbase forever. Did you miss the fanbases response to the prequels?
I don't really mind a "yo mama" joke in a franchise that already has burp and fart jokes.
I thought it was more like an armed cargo ship. Certainly not a slow bomber that goes as fast as an old woman on her way to church.
We all thought they were anything other than what they were…
…because the idea of bombers in space is fucking stupid.
You can see the scale of them in that photo, because of the X-Wing just beside it.
I was hoping this was the New Republic finally fighting back with some kind of ship we hadn't seen before, boyyy was I in for a surprise when the movie starts with "The First Order reigns..."
Yeah I thought the same- I assumed we'd be getting a big fleet battle and these were as you said the new Nebulon-B or something
I hoped because what we got was... bad.
Those bombers didn't make any sense in the established lore. They were slow, and moving in a straight line. The ships main batteries should have been able to target them. They didn't need the light anti-fighter systems, the big guns could have fired on them.
You can't shoot fighters with all up turbo lasers because they almost always dodge, DS-1 fight at Yavin was full sized Turbo Lasers (light ones) vs X-Wings and their accuracy wasn't even in the single digits. However against something as large and ungainly as those bombers...
Nothing you've laid out suggests going against "established lore." Bombers are large, slow and heavy, even in real life, and they're as equally exposed to the dangers that you've laid out.
"We count thirty Rebel ships, Lord Vader, but they're so small they're evading our turbolasers."
"We'll have to destroy them ship to ship. Get the crews to their fighters."
―Lieutenant Tanbris and Darth Vader —
I didn't say bombers. I said specifically THOSE bombers.
The issue with established lore isn't that bombers exist, the Y-Wing and the B-Wing were both classified as bombers. We've seen tons of bombers in the lore. The issue is that bombers are not small enough to evade the turbolasers, meaning that the star destroys around the devastator, as well as the devastator itself, should have been able to target them with their main batteries. (not the massive cannon, the deck guns)
Poe went to kill the close it anti-fighter defenses. While handy, given the bomber's obvious shields those lighter weapons may have proven ineffective anyway. The turbolasers on the other hand CAN FIRE AT LARGE, SLOW AND HEAVY targets. That's what they are designed to do.
Meaning the bombers should have popped up, and Hux say "What the heck are those, blast them." and that would have been it following established lore.
TLDR: Those bombers were so large, slow and heavy there was no reason the 3 nearby SD shouldn't have been able to pick them off with turbolasers. Because of that, they make no sense in Lore.
I liked the look, thought they would be some sort of heavy strike craft or missile launcher since the x wings were there for scale. It's kinda what they turned out to be, although I was not a fan at all of them going full WWII bomber with them.
That's the messed up part. Real WWII bombers weren't so slow as to be useless. They were just slow compared to the fighters of the time. They could still outrun the explosions of the bombs they dropped.
These were some of the dumbest spacecraft ever put to screen. A single-use suicide weapon.
Me when I first saw them in the film:
"What did they do to the B-Wing?"
To me these things summarize Last Jedi. A lot of painfully contrived, terrible plot ideas all to set up some big payoff scene. In this case, the bomber hitting the release button at the last minute.
Thought these were the newest model of Nebulon B.
I wonder which one is hauling General Hux's mom.
I love this movie tbh.
Ok! What did you like the most?
Luke Skywalker 'portrayal': no words for that!! Snoke’s death: no backstory or payoff Canto Bight stuff: pointless, preachy, no real impact Holdo vs. Poe conflict: forced misunderstanding, illogical secrecy Leia space scene: OMG, lame. Slow fleet chase: weak weak weak internal logic. Holdo-Ligtjump: Are you kidding me?! Bomber-Attak Rey’s parents reveal: wtf, anticlimactic, so sad, effortless The Bomber attack scene...
Of course, you can like whatever you want, but maybe, just maybe, we should take a more critical view of this “work” as a whole!
I don't think leaping onto a comment as benign as "I love this movie" to launch into a rant of complaints matches with this sentiment.
This response? This is why the fandom is so divided. An innocuous comment leads to a full paragraph of berating them, and then demeaning them by suggesting (despite words to the contrary) that their opinions are inherently less valuable than yours.
You TLJ haters are so mad that we don’t hate things like you do that you can’t shut up about it. At least the prequel hate was largely fun and good natured. You losers can’t stand for someone to have a differing opinion than you and you always, always, alllllways dive down people’s throats to tell them why they are stupid/not real fans/slip lovers/etc.
Grow up.
Oh my god, you're right! Nobody, in the last eight years, has ever taken a critical view of TLJ or expressed the thoughts you've expressed. You're a genius, honestly, this is newly broken ground.
No but seriously, why such a reactionary reply to someone saying they loved this movie? Christ, not every mention of this movie has to be followed up with this shite. NOBODY CARES, WE GET IT.
Honestly I love half it and hate the other.
Revealed my exact thoughts for the movie.
Visually beautiful to look at.
And that's about it...
Same. It was a great continuation of TFA.
lol, terrible movie
You didn’t like Rose? /s
Is this the only ship design in the sequel trilogy that’s not just a blatant rehash of an OT ship?
I sure as hell didn't think they were "bombers".
I figured they were some small corvette but nope, space B-17s
As much as that whole scene made zero sense, those stupid bombers were actually my favorite ship design from the ST
Yeah, definitely thought they were frigates
Or out of fuel B-wing type of fighters? 🤪
I thought it was frigates. Was expecting a large space battle. But obviously didn't make sense given the power of the First Order navy.
Idk but whenever I try to delete this movie from my brain Reddit always comes back with more!
Didn't mind them at all and the way the bombs fell out of them fully made sense to me
Ahh the space bombers that need gravity.
Um, no they didn't, they were magnetically ejected and then momentum did the rest. The bit of gravity from the planet had practically zero effect on those bombs.
The movie had some logic issues, but those bombers were fine in their functionality.
That's cope.
Tie Bombers had charged bombs. So did Y-Wings.
I guess the whole visual dictionary where it's described is cope too, huh?
And there's nothing drastically different about TIE Bomber / Y-Wing bombs compared to what the TLJ ones have. They're both variants of proton bombs in different packaging, yields, etc, (torpedoes are variants, too) and neither of those ships have near the payload that the StarFortress does.
As a sidenote, no one raises this kind of fuss when ESB has TIE Bombers dropping their payload straight down on to the asteroid the Falcon was hiding in. But you better believe people's animosity towards the sequel movies will warp their brain.
The sequel visual dictionary that was on clearance at Ollie's? Must have missed that one.
Womp womp
Yeah for all the Sequel merchandise that's on clearance.
An object in motion stays in motion. The bombs are shown being dropped through the artifical gravity of the drop bay. Do you expect the bombs to suddenly change direction once they leave the bay?
Go back and watch ESB.
Why? An object in motion stays in motion. That applies to both movies.
Good thing the ship has gravity on it so it can drop the bombs.
Let's assume it takes 1 second to drop the bombs in earth like gravity that's 9.8m/s. The bombs hitting space would be traveling 35kph. That's pretty slow.
That's also assuming they had 10m to drop from within the ship.
Too bad they didn't just repo a bunch of old Tie Bombers.
Yeah. The bombs in the movie don't appear to be falling that fast. Besides, the bombs are also on rails to propel them out of the ship, it's a pretty easy thing to see if you watch the scene.
Even beyond that, that's far too much real world physics to apply to a movie where sound travels in space. The universe doesn't operate the same as ours, as it's a fantasy.
The standard way of dealing with fiction is that you assume things work the same as for us until evidence is provided otherwise (ideally by some cool/insteresting scene).
If you didn't use this general rule, it would lead to fantasy/scifi stories being devoid of tension and/or overburdened with explanations.
But really, in case of this bomber, we needn't assume: we can see the speeds and scales involved - the speed of the falling bombs, the speed of the ships, their distance... and so we come to the conclusion that the bombing run only works because the ships are moving at no more than city driving speed. Which is a waste of an idea, I think. A proper WW2 inspired bombing run at WW2 plane speeds would have made for a more exciting scene, IMO.
In the first scene of the 1977 film "Star Wars" there is sound in space. This is evidence that the fictional universe that is shown in star wars does not operate the same way ours does.
I think you're right in plenty of cases. The scene in question just isn't one of them. Because most people, for something as small as bombs falling out of ships that are built with the intent of dropping bombs, should be able to understand how those ships can drop bombs even in an environment that doesn't have the same rules as real life.
Like the gravity that affected the X-Wing’s bombs?
What are you referring to? These bombers needed gravity to drop their payload, while the Proton Torpedos that X-Wings fire are, well, shot and then curved into towards the middle of the nearest large mass
They are also guided torpedoes so they move on their own.
I suppose I was being a bit cheeky but it feels like we’re both making assumptions on how gravity works in this fictional fantasy universe. I think my point was intended to be that it’s pointless overthinking it in either scenario and that for me, both of the examples work, but I’m no physicist so YMMV
No they don't. They propel the bombs "downward" by a rail system.
And even if that weren't true, there's gravity on the ship which would accelerate the bombs and they'd keep their exit velocity once exposed to the vacuum.
I didn't get why the bombs would act like there was gravity in space.
*someone made a video about it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT8Lvzfz7iw&t=14s
The bombs used magnetic rails to leave the ship and from there it's just momentum. Think of the physics closer to a slow railgun than it is a B-52.
They didn't even need magnetic rails. The film goes out of its way to show there's gravity in the bomb bay.
see this makes more sense if they were shot out rather than dropped like a ww2 bomber.
They've bombs, not missiles, so if you shot them forward, you'd fly into them.
i meant like propelled downwards as opposed to falling
That's exactly how they work. The person you originally replied to explained it.
Technically they are being shot out, just vertically from the bottom of the ship. But yeah, from a visual perspective it does seem like gravity did the work. On my first viewing, I assumed they had the ships artificial gravity letting the bombs go and then they just carried on their way through space.
Regardless, from a ammo dump perspective, it makes sense. If you were going to shoot them out like a railgun, you'd need loading mechanisms and such. Wasted space and mass that could be used for even more bombs.
i found a youtube video about it with some possibilities, the dude makes some good points
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VT8Lvzfz7iw&t=14s
Especially since things in space only "drop" toward a large body like a planet or sun.
Star Wars literally has sounds in space 🤦♂️, people are really just nitpicking over nothing these days
I don't have a problem with the bombs but people need to stop using this excuse. What people are discussing is internal logic, suspension of disbelief.
Sounds in space is done for immersion reasons, there is an understanding for many decades in this art that it's okay to have them in the overwhelming majority of scifi movies.
If they made Luke shoot force lightning from his eyes while he rides a talking velociraptor would you still say "Yeah but sounds in space who cares"?
Nah, I'd remind you that it's a fantasy setting where Force powers are constantly being revealed in new and interesting ways and Jedi have already ridden dinosaurs. You're presenting a farcical idea but I'd accept it as a logical extension of the franchise.
Fantasy doesn't mean a free pass to do anything, stories have their internal rules. The Star Wars Story Group in Lucasfilms exists for that reason, to make sure someone doesn't decide to put elements that don't fit the universe.
Fantasy does mean a free pass to do anything and nothing I've said violates those internal rules. Listen, we're talking about a franchise where by the second movie, we'd introduced telekinesis and enhanced acrobatics, the third movie, we established lightning hands, the 4th we got superspeed, and it only got wilder from there. My favorite Star Wars game introduced a power where if a Jedi meditates really well, everyone does really well in a fight.
And golly, if George wants a setting where our heroes ride dinosaurs, then he's gonna make sure Obi-wan is riding one that makes the weirdest wark wark sound. Because as the writer, he defines what elements fit the universe.
Tell that to the Star Wars Story Group, which specifically exists for the opposite of what you claim.
Does it ? Or is it just for the audience ?
1) The bombs are propelled by rails out of the ship.
2) even if they weren't there gravity on the ship and they would keep their velocity when exposed to the vacuum.
No one???