What are your favorite moments in TLJ?

Yoda and Luke, its such a good scene. Yoda was as fun as he was in the OT.
Finn and Phasma fight.

 

Favorite TLJ moments:

• Luke asking Rey "Who are you?" It was an interesting scene because there was a sense of mystery and it hinted at something much more than simply 'Rey is Luke's daughter hehehe'
• All of the Rey/Kylo force bond scenes. Whatever you think of their relationship, there's a kind of chemistry there that's captivating
• Rey's force training scenes with Luke
  
• The Throne Room scene (for obvious reasons)
• The post-Throne Room scene between Hux and Kylo where it seems like Hux will kill Kylo, but Kylo abruptly gets up
• Hux and Kylo's interactions on Crait
• Finn racing towards the FO on Crait, even though his ship is practically melting in front of his eyes. It shows how far Finn has come, that instead of easily running away from his problems, he had the determination to face it head on
• Finn calling Captain Phasma "Chrome Dome"
  
• When Luke appears on Crait and his "See you around, kid."
• When Luke says that "I will not be the last Jedi." Scene change to Rey helping the Resistance by lifting the rocks from the exit

There's probably more, but those are the ones I can think of off the top of my head.

 

1) the moment the A-wings appear and BEGIN to fight
2) The Luke face off on Crait
3) the shuttle pilot saying “right away, sir” after Hux gets launched against the bulkhead
4) The reveal of Luke floating above that rock, showing he’d been messing with Kylie after all, and was super powerful
5) the Holdo hyperspace into the fleet moment
6) Yoda still teaching
7) the book reveal at the end
8) the moments Resistance fighters aren’t being slaughtered (also known aa the last 5 minutes)
9) snoke vamping
10) the look on Snoke’s face when the lightsaber ignites
11) the kids playing with action figures at the end (you know, before they get whipped AGAIN)
12) the false hope as the credits rolled that EIX would take all that death and use it to go in an interesting direction that was new and NOT sadistic.

 

- Luke looking out at the horizon, reminiscent of doing the same as a young boy on Tatooine. Such a bittersweet moment, it hurts so good. The most poignant moment of the entire saga, at least so far.

- R2-D2 plays Leia's message, a wave of pure nostalgia sweeps over me every time, the intersection of old and new.

- Yoda's lesson that failure is the greatest teacher, I could write an essay on how much Luke's arc in The Last Jedi resonates with me.

- Holdo's lightspeed maneuver. There have been times in the theater where the crowds have cheered with excitement, and times when I've heard a few tears, but the complete and utter silence after this scene says so much about how amazing it is.

- Kid holding a broom like a lightsaber, we've all done it. Come on, you know you have, and you remembered doing it when you saw this scene and it was awesome. If not, there's still time. Go do it right now. I'm serious.

- Throne room fight, such beautiful cinematography. Light and dark fighting along side each other. Seems pretty significant to me.

- Finn calling himself "Rebel" scum. Finn's arc from the begining of The Force Awakens to the end of The Last Jedi is excellent.

- Leia usung the Force to save herself was breathtaking.

- Chewbacca flying the Falcon through Crait was a masterful piece of piloting.


Some of my favorite funny moments:

- Luke hits Rey with a blade of grass

- Rey cuts the rock that smashes a caretaker's wheelbarrow

- Chewbacca knocks down Luke's door

 

I really like the finger touching scene. Who knew one could make such a powerfully intimate scene out of two people touching each other's fingers? It really was the closest thing to sex we've gotten in a Star Wars movie.

 

1.-Throne Room
2.- Luke vs Kylo
3.- Yoda´s talk
4.- Battle of Crait
5.- Luke´s lessons and flashbacks
6.- Hyperspace

That is awesome, but I also could make a worst moments top

 

When was Yoda fun in the OT? He always seemed solemn, cautionary, disappointed in Luke for enough of the time, and even giving out rather negative (absolute) statements to Luke.

Luke: [tries to show his confidence/worthiness] "I'm not afraid".

Yoda: [with disturbingly dead-eyed puppet face] "You will be".

Besides the moment when he (tries to) encourage Luke to pull out the X-wing again, jokes about his age, and (weirdly enough, I think possibly a moment of positive emotion/happiness right before crawls into bed to die in ROTJ with the matter-of-fact "Forever will I sleep" line).

I liked Yoda in TLJ, but I think that he's radically different than in ESB and ROTJ, where's he feels like a more questionable character.

Anyway, one of my favorite moments is when Ben Solo's head is framed by shell-like layers in the background in the throne room, with the potential "crown" by two towers above the elevator, as if he's the center of the galaxy.

 

Yoda messed with Luke, then got serious

 

Okay, I suppose that it was fun for the audience to watch and that Yoda might have been having fun while testing Luke. Admittedly, I had forgotten about it. (It still wasn't really fun for Luke to endure Yoda's eccentric actions. He was disgruntled at Yoda making a mess, and he's rude towards Yoda- I think calling Yoda's home a slimy mudhole). Still, Yoda does a 180 as soon as Luke shows that's he's impatient in the hut and starts getting solemn and reminiscing about training Jedi.

Yoda does have fun in TLJ, but it's more in line with the X-wing scene or the brief joke that he makes in ROTJ.

 

What? All the character's introduction was a comic relief in TESB.
Also, Luke is looking for a great master jedi and he founds a tiny talking frog who speaks all in backwards.
TLJ's Yoda = CT's Yoda.

 

I guess my most favorite moment of TLJ is Kylo's realization of what Luke has accomplished by facing his nephew.

Kylo ragefully charges at Luke, only to slide through his uncle-


The score is building as Kylo turns. Kylo slowly realizes what Luke did, even before the audience does-


A simply "no" by Kylo and we know what's going on. Luke vanishes and leaves Kylo-


Kylo turns and just now notices that he failed to get the remaining Resistance fighters, only because of his beef with Luke. Luke played him.

An angry and mad scream while the score reaches its high point-


And that moment is my favorite scene of the movie.

 

The apparition of Luke on Crait and the scene that you described is already my favorite moment in all saga.

 

True, but it's the introduction. A large chunk of the time in ESB Yoda is pretty solemn and disappointed in Luke. He is also quite teacher-esque, which is why he warns and teaches with supposed wisdom (I'd argue that some of Yoda says could be wise, other parts of it isn't).

Moments were Yoda is solemn/disappointed:

Yoda's skepticism /rant about not going to train Luke in the hut and (dismissal of "adventure").
Immediately after the cave scene shows Yoda, who sighs in disappointment.
During the X-wing scene, Yoda initially looks excited as the X-wing partially rises, then closes his eyes solemnly as Luke fails.
"That is why you fail".
Brief moment of heart-break (if this counts) right after Luke finally decides to leave after debating things with Yoda and Obi-wan.
Telling Obi-wan that he was right after Luke leaves.

If the introduction was test, then I would argue that it's a facade or an act put on by Yoda to test Luke for patience. (Also, I'm not sure why Luke should be tested on patience, besides overcoming his recklessness; he was pretty patient/persistent to pull out his lightsaber in the Wampa cave).

 

And that Yoda was almost entirely wrong to be so disappointed.
Yoda and Obi-Wan were so wildly wrong about so many things.

Yoda and Obi-Wan wanted Luke to kill Vader with no exception. If he had listened, he'd have either died by the Emperor's hand or succumbed to the dark side. Their failure was their greatest lesson.

They are largely teaching Luke the same things that led to the failure and destruction of the Jedi in the first place. It's Luke's love and belief in the goodness of Anakin and his friends that ultimately win out. Not killing Vader like Yoda and Obi-Wan wanted.

Now we get a Yoda who knows this. Who sees the folly in what he was trying to accomplish by preserving the old ways. Luke sees this too and explicitly states it in a scene with Rey. Yoda is absolutely solemn when he needs to be with Luke but no more than what is needed now.

 

I don't think in 1980 that was the case. Yoda is also apparently "right" for suggesting that "once you go down that dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny", which is a lie. Actually, why did Yoda even say this in ESB, when he and Obi-wan inferred later on in ROTJ to kill Vader, if killing in anger (or without, perhaps) leads to the dark side? Luke killed plenty-plenty of people on the Death Star after blowing it up (to save the rebellion) and probably in self-defense (or at least assisted in self-defense) He did not turn dark from ANH to ESB; there's no shift in his character toward the dark side. There's his recklessness, but he's always had that in ANH and ESB, and he's seems optimistic before taking on the empire at Hoth with his comment to Dack.

Also, Luke choked Jabba's guards (whether he killed them or KO'ed them is debatable) probably killed or let the guards fall to a painful death near the Sarlacc pit, but didn't really immediately go to the dark side. (His hand is exposed after saving Han and leaving Jabba's barge, and he covers it with a black glove, which possibly shows a partial transition from good to bad, a progressing lack of compassion with the machine metaphor, but the acts don't dominate his destiny. He is clearly able to resist going to the dark side later on after seeing the exposed wires of Vader's arm).

If you kill in anger in SW, even in righteous anger, it's wrong? But if you kill without anger, it's okay, you won't turn to the dark side. (And actually, I think that Luke was upset after Biggs died, which is a probably a secondary and the original reason for turning off his navi-computer. Thus, I think that Luke killed people with a degree of anger).

It's nonsense for Vader to fight Luke in ROTJ, unless Vader's giving his best poker-face routine to the emperor, to sway him away from his real plan of killing the emperor through Luke. Vader should have had a delayed response to Luke swinging his blade against the emperor; it might have worked, if the emperor wasn't expecting it. Vader can turn Luke dark later, considering how well he defeated Luke and cornered him in ESB at key parts (not all the time, but generally Luke was having a hard time resisting). In addition, from Luke's perspective- common sense would be to be kill the emperor to save Luke's friends, since the emperor was giving out the orders to trap and kill.

Also, if Anakin was already good by holding off on killing Luke (and avoiding to choke the general Piett, I think, out of anger because he cared enough about Luke and was upset at the end of ESB), despite being "dark", then what is the point of Vader's sacrifice in ROTJ besides doing another "good" act? Even if Anakin is in the dark side, he cares about Luke to a degree, even if it's selfish.

 

The whole point is, it isn't black and white. There are areas of gray and murky moral reasoning. Yoda and Obi-Wan were very black and white about Vader. Anakin is dead and cannot be saved, Vader must be destroyed.

Luke absolutely would have gone dark if he had killed Vader.
It's not just because he killed. He would have killed his father for no reason other than the selfish reasons Obi-Wan and Yoda gave him to. He refused love to seek death. That's darkness winning. This is heavily implied throughout the film. Even if he didn't go dark immediately, he'd have been alone with Palpatine and he could not have won that fight. He'd either die or succumb.

Vader was, until the very end, on the Emperor's side. It wasn't until Luke was willing to die rather than kill his father did Anakin return and save Luke. He wasn't bluffing in the fight. He wanted Luke to join him or die. This was clear in ESB. He knows Luke *could* turn him. It's why it is so important to him and the Emperor that he be turned or killed.

Conflating the act of killing in the context of "battle" and patricide because the two men who failed your dad told you to kill him, is a pretty weak comparison.

 

Okay, but I don't want to get too off-topic here, so I'll try to tie in a good moment in TLJ with my response. Another moment that I like in the ST is Kylo Ren becoming the supreme leader because its absolutely what ESB Vader would have done with the "rule the galaxy as father and son" line, even though Rey didn't join him.

Even a ray of sparks arcs over him when Hux is choked, signifying that he is the new ruler.

Yeah, but Luke initially tries to kill the emperor, but Vader stops him-only because Lucas thought that Vader gave up or wasn't strong enough on turning Luke to dark side on his own. (I don't know why Vader would give up after trying to mentally contact Luke as he was recovering after the fight in ESB). Besides, Vader wasn't on the emperor's side, he was on his own side in ESB. Even in ANH, Vader disregarded officers when they were blaspheming and only acted as an attack dog for Tarkin, listening to his commands and supporting him. I think that in ROTJ things might have been changed with Vader's "I must obey my master" line, which I presume came after or during the latter part of the Revenge of the Jedi story conference between Lucas, Marquand, Kasdan, and Kazanjian in July 13 to 17 in 1981.



VADER'S MOTIVATION-p. 71, The Making of Return of the Jedi

Kasdan: What is it that Vader wants?
Lucas: Vader's plot is to convert Luke to the dark side, make him an ally, and then topple the Emperor. At this point he and the Emperor want to turn Luke to the dark side. I don't think Vader would care whether he turned Luke to the dark side or if the Emperor turned him, because he feels that once Luke is turned, he can use him for his ally. The Emperor and Vader are in total agreement about what's going to happen. They both want to get a hold of Luke. They both want him converted to the dark side: the Emperor to replace Vader, and Vader to replace the emperor. They are perfect bad guys.
Kazanjian: Wouldn't Vader want to get to Luke before the Emperor for the reason you just stated, before the Emperor can get to Luke and throw Vader out?

..........

VADER's MOTIVATION, p. 73
Lucas: I don't like the idea of Vader saying to Luke, "Come on over to our side." Let's forget what Vader is really trying to do, kill the Emperor.
Kasdan: That's what Vader said at the end of Empire.
Lucas: I know, but I don't think at this point we should bring up that his plot is to get rid of the Emperor. It's going to foretell, in an oblique way, that he's going to kill the Emperor. The way to do it here is to make Vader evil and terrible and turn his son in, and they go before the Emperor and they have a fight.
Kasdan: You're now willing to drop Vader's explicit plan.
Lucas: It's there implicitly. It doesn't have to be an explicit plan. It has to be what is operating in the character's head.
Kasdan: What is operating in Vader's head when he brings Luke to the Emperor?
Lucas: What is operating in his head is: "The Emperor will turn Luke to the dark side because I can't do it, because I am not strong enough; he will turn Luke and then I will be able to..."
Marquand: "...join with Luke and destroy the Emperor..."
Lucas:"...join with Luke and eventually turn him to destroy the Emperor. Once he is on the dark side, then it will be easy; then we are a team, then we are father and son."
Marquand: But it is never spoken.
Lucas: Vader doesn't realize that the Emperor wants to replace him.
........

This is why the repeat or parallel scenario with Rey and Kylo Ren is much better. There's less of this hang-up idea of "going to the dark side", and there's common sense involved with seizing power.

He refused love to seek death.

Do you mean Luke or Vader here? If it's Luke, then okay, I guess he loves Vader to not kill him, even though he's really only been involved with him for a few hours before he dies. If anything his reaction to Vader being his father in ESB wasn't a slow, eventual realization of his love for Vader or knowing that's still good.

Also, Luke gave up on his friends in ROTJ by trusting that they were okay in the care of the Ewoks and remaining rebels, simply because he thought that Vader might have some good in him due to being his father, who he knew for a few hours, even though he alerted Vader that he was at least on the planet and would attract his attention.

Worse yet, Luke's act of throwing away the lightsaber in ROTJ implied that he gave up on killing the emperor, which he initially tries to do before Vader parries the swing.

This is a betrayal far, FAR worse than Luke's retreat in TLJ by letting the Jedi die in TLJ, which was a misguided attempt to prevent more damage (more people from turning to the dark side and hurting people and causing suffering) not so much by refusing to kill Vader (if we are to believe that somehow Vader's good and could be convinced to stop hurting the rebellion, despite his loyalty to the emperor), but the emperor by throwing away his lightsaber, who was controlling the acts on the rebels from the empire.

A heroic line on the surface level-"I am a Jedi like my father before me", but a pointless one if it means sentencing his friends to the tyranny of the emperor.

Imagine if the emperor didn't want to electrocute Luke if he realized that Luke wouldn't kill him.

Emperor: So, you're not going to kill me.
Luke: Nope, or else I will turn to the dark side (somehow, and even though the emperor's death might save my friends from trouble, torment, death, and the tyranny of the empire), and I don't want that.
Emperor: Cool beans. Then, I can do whatever I want.
Luke: As long as I don't kill you. My friends and I can still imprison you.
Emperor: But I am powerful in the force and so is Vader, who is loyal to me (as long as I don't try to kill you), and I have an armada to support me.
Luke: Well, I guess I'd be hard pressed to do anything about it, then.

But I guess the emperor's selfish for wanting Luke for extra power/youthful energy/more body parts to accomplish things, even though Vader is still effective enough at enforcing the emperor's bidding, so he decides to kill Luke for defiance.

Conflating the act of killing in the context of "battle" and patricide because the two men who failed your dad told you to kill him, is a pretty weak comparison.

But Luke barely even knows Vader as his dad, only up to a few hours in the films and still a relatively short time in the full SW canon, considering the comics. He is only familiar with the "idea of his father", which he's had in snippets from his aunt, uncle, and Obi-wan. And a kill is still a kill, even in battle. To be honest, Luke only knows Vader a little more than the random stormtroopers that he glimpsed on the Death Star before killing them.

Rinzler, J. W. The Making of Star Wars: Return of the Jedi. Del Rey, 2013.

 

The whole point is, it isn't black and white. There are areas of gray and murky moral reasoning. Yoda and Obi-Wan were very black and white about Vader. Anakin is dead and cannot be saved, Vader must be destroyed.

Isn't it black and white if "Once you go down that dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny"? It seems like stay light, or you're doomed to be dark. I feel that there's a lot about a black and white-type reasoning with Obi-wan and especially Yoda.

Luke absolutely would have gone dark if he had killed Vader.
It's not just because he killed. He would have killed his father for no reason other than the selfish reasons Obi-Wan and Yoda gave him to. He refused love to seek death. That's darkness winning.

Okay, I think I understand now. I don't think that it's a refusal of love as it is a refusal of compassion, though. And Obi-wan and Yoda didn't want Luke to turn evil; they were warning him about it. But the weird thing is that Yoda said that Luke wasn't a Jedi until he killed Vader, or implied it. That's disturbing. (And Luke never technically became a Jedi according to the standard of becoming a Jedi from Yoda. He's not a Jedi Master at all in the ST if it means that he needed to kill Vader). And I can't say if there's a lack of love from Luke during the film, although he isolates himself from the group for a little reason than to mull over his connection with Vader.