The title of Episode VIII was revealed to be The Last Jedi. Not too shabby. But I don't like having another movie with Jedi in the title. I'm also curious if it is singular or plural. The translations might reveal that.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BPnOKuLj1FX/

The Truth of the Destruction of Almost All Jedi

I'm not entirely sure I like the theme of the Jedi falling and rising again all the time in these SW trilogies.

Like, in that case maybe Episode 11 should be named "Brink of Re-Extinction" aka BORE.

... wait, no. I've got to use that acronym for one of my projects.

Oh yaas.

Lame. (@OP)

From twitter:

VII: The Force Awakens
VIII: The Last Jedi
IX: We Found Another Jedi

Star Wars Episode XIII: Revenge of the Forgotten Jedi
Star Wars Episode MMD: Somehow there are still TIE fighters?

They should just extract some blood from the Last Jedi and put it into some more people. Or better yet just clone that Last Jedi into a Jedi Army.

Meet the new Jedi. Same as the Last Jedi.

Maybe Episode IX can be Star Wars: No There is Another.

Maybe Episode IX can be juuuuuuuuuuust a bunch of X-Wing and TIE Fighter reskins, so they can sell more LEGO sets.

2020 will also feature LEGO Star Wars: A Star Wars Story, no doubt.

LEGO Batman will make a cameo.

I can't wait, but since I have no option, I actually can and will wait. There are so many fan theories online that I guess one of them is bound to get it right. One that I like is Kylo Ren and Rey doing the old switcheroo with one turning to the light and the other to the dark side of the Force. That could yield some memorable moments of poignant drama.

I would be so pissed if my parents left me in the desert to salvage parts for some ugly alien.

I read something yesterday about how the titles for VII and VIII actually make a complete thought:

The Force Awakens The Last Jedi

Not sure if this was intended, but would be interesting if Luke passes on the last of the original Jedi order to Rey before passing. This is probably the most obvious choice, so perhaps it could mean something deeper.

Luke could literally be the "Last Jedi", period. While training Rey in the Jedi ways, she succumbs to the dark side at the end of Ep. VIII and then joins Kylo Ren. In Episode IX Luke has an epic fight to destroy the dark side once and for all by killing his (likely) daughter and nephew in order to restore peace to the galaxy.

Yeah, doubtful Disney would ever go that direction, but would be really exciting to watch if it actually played out that way.

Luke SKywalker will NOT be the last Jedi. The entire reason for the Disney rehash/feminist PC reboot. Is about a Feminist take on things and money.

A New hope was remade and dumbed down and called the force awakens so we could get a female lead, diversify the cast, and get things going with Rey as the main bread-winner. Episode 8 will essentially be about her learning the Jedi ways. Much akin to Luke in ESB, but far worse. She trains with Luke, fights the knights of Ren but isn't ready. Sits down to meditate with Yoda and Obi-wan as ghosts. Luke may either die or just have a decreased role after passing the torch. But either way Rey is the LAST JEDI that will bring balance and feminism, and PC power to the galaxy and disney movies forever.

You're embarrassing yourself, ZoSo.

And your naive, or too deep in your fanboyism if you dont understand why Disney is doing these movies and how its going to end.

This **** belongs on Facebook.

Why is it that every time there's a non-white or non-male major character in a "nerd culture" piece, people accuse it of being some PC or feminist subversion? Why can't it just be the story they want to tell? Why can't it be because they've already told the 'young male Jedi' story twice, and they're looking for something fresher?

Is this some adolescent power fantasy thing, like you can't stand a plot significant female character because you can't imagine yourself in the same role?

Sorry, but you're the naive one. "Why Disney is doing these movies"? The simple fact is that Star Wars is a cash cow, which is why they chose to revitalize the franchise in the first place.

In terms of plot, Disney really has no advantage to do what you're suggesting. I'm not saying that some people at Disney who in some capacity work on the film might have some sort of agenda, but that is definitely not the motivation behind the overall story arc. Star Wars is a franchise with a bigger following than most companies could ever dream of having. They don't want to completely alienate and abandon the fanbase by pushing some sort of political correctness or agenda down everyone's throats.

That being said, times have certainly changed since the original movies were released, and social norms, etiquette, and what's popular have as well. It would be ignorant to think the movies would not evolve from their original state to what they've become today. I'm not saying Disney is guaranteed to make a movie that everyone will love, but they are going to do everything possible to make Star Wars last as long as they can. This means when in doubt play it safe (Ep. VII), respect your existing fanbase, appeal to the younger generation, and sell a ****load of merchandise.

Which is all Star Wars ever was anyway (Flash Gordon but with exclusive merchandise rights).

Well, that, and an allegorical outlet for "Luc"as' troubled relationship with his father.

I thought beforehand but I really do now, Disney seemed have gotten Star Wars for quite a bargain.

The Nikumubeki once told me that every time a video game has a black protagonist, someone releases a mod to turn them white. I thought that was interesting.

This likely Redditard appearing all of a sudden spouting lolboard clichés all the way up to "WAKE UP SHEEPLE" reminds me of two things. First one, the resident conservative at Cantina Cloud who once said that there's only one truth. Second one: an American commenter wherever who said that if black people are chosen for jobs over white people, it's obviously PC diversity bulls*** no matter where it happens. He kindly listed the US, Finland, South Africa and Liberia as examples of this kind of evil.

Gee, I wonder why an entitled white American male would see the entire world through his own entitled existence only (black majority in Africa? Result of Black Power Population Transfers(tm) to take away the land that belongs to the white man). What, you question this? They've got religious literature (optional, considering Reddit) and cherry-picked data from scientific journals, anecdotes and more "here in Peoria" to back them up. Don't believe those? You actually question all of those? Beta male!

Hate always stems from "one natural truth", and the only thing this thread would need right now to continue this awful ride would be Sarn Cadrill with his links.

Oh well. I better go pick up my paycheck for this post SPREADING THE SUBVERSIVE AGENDA from Hillary Clinton.

It absolutely is. So as long as they spew play it safe soft reboots, they stand to make billions without ever giving attention to depth or new characters.

And if you dont think Luke is going to die at some point, or that Rey is infact going to be the last Jedi standing, the last main character just as Luke was. You are naive. you can say thats not their agenda but that is their agenda as they have proven.
And you can say that because Disney is simply taking it in a boring uninspired direction, simply replacing Luke with Rey -- that that makes someone ANTI feminist or a trump supporter or Kathleen Kennedy dick sucker. Fact is they are weak sauce movies just as episode 8 will be.

You Beta fanboys are just as pathetic as the feminist defenders. You think that because someone Disagrees with taking things like star wars, the NFL, or marijuana, that we NEED to make it equal no matter the means. Just because star wars was about a white boy on a desert does not mean its racist or Anti-feminist and needs to have everything changed in it, for the sake of equality. Diverse or not, Girl or Boy, anything is better than the atrocious remake cash grab called TFA. Whats even more pathetic is you fake white knights, who think you are doing gods work defending people who disagree with you, because you think they are anti-feminist for disagreeing with a lead like Mary Rey Sue in a Star wars. Dont worry you fanboys can wait in line to pay disney for the weak reboots for years to come.

Please tell me this is a joke.

Also, your manner of writing suggests you are either an adolescent, and / or take SW far, far too seriously.

Um. Pretty much the only coherent content here is "they are weak sauce movies", which they absolutely are.

I watch movies to see awesome people doing awesome things. I literally do not care whether those awesome people are men or women. The only thing I care about is whether the movie is good (which, just to be totally clear on this, Episode 7 isn't).

Also, literally nobody here cares about your identity politics ****. Take it back to campus, freshman.

Do you guys really think TFA is worse than RotJ? Have you considered that maybe you're blinded by childhood nostalgia?

Yes, TFA is a mostly derivative rehash of ANH. This has been quite well established. But it's a very well thought out rehash, and it's a rehash done well.

And I still think Rogue One is just plain awesome.

Maybe I'm wrong in thinking this. I saw the despeciallized edition of ANH and ROTJ a couple weeks ago, and it was the first time since I was like six-years-old. I remember seeing the re-releases of the OT in theaters, and I freakin' loved them. I'm a member of the Special Edition generation, and I probably have a different take on OT/SE-OT/PT/NT than many of you slightly older dudes.

But I could totally be wrong; I am drunk 60% of the time.

TFA had bad pacing. The action sequences were so packed in that it was exhausting in parts. The plot was driven by happenstance. The characters weren't developed well. Side characters and key plot elements were introduced in a haphazard, confusing way. The villains were lame and underutilized. The big threatening space station didn't seem all that threatening, and the main characters didn't seem to find destroying it all that difficult. We were never given any reason to care about the people the superweapon killed. The movie was, like, turbo-dark; there were a couple of light-hearted moments, mostly involving BB-8, but they were short and always bookended by more sad-dark.

In terms of character development, TFA felt less like a story, and more like speed-dating, where the hero of the next movie is whoever sells the most action figures. Will it be Rey? Cowardly Stormtrooper? Maybe... Shiny Stormtrooper??? Ooh, I'm super excited to find out!

RotJ wasn't a perfect movie. It had problems, but they were different problems than TFA, and imo less acute ones. The Ewoks were just... way, way too much. But the pacing and editing are pretty much legendary: the last third of the movie is like one big action sequence spread across three subplots, but the way the movie alternates between them breaks the tension perfectly. Its plot was driven by the planned and deliberate action of the characters. World-building was kept light, and characters were never introduced abruptly. The villains are among the most iconic in movie history, precisely because they were used so well in that movie. The Death Star was super threatening and was picking off 'good guy' ships, so you could easily understand the harm it was doing. There were lots of light-hearted moments (maybe too many, c/o Ewoks). Like, RotJ was still a kids movie, and I definitely don't enjoy it as much as I did when I was younger, but it's pretty firmly in the cinematic canon, and Episode 7 will pretty firmly never be.

By the way, I absolutely disagree that it was a rehash of ANH. Broad strokes, TFA and ANH both featured a superweapon, and both stories were structured in a hyper-traditional hero's journey kind of way, but the similarities end there. Distilled, ANH is a standard "peasant leaves to rescue a princess, saves her kingdom, returns a knight" story. TFA intentionally runs at right angles to those kinds of primal stories. I think it's one of the (many) reasons TFA has a weak plot, actually.

I mostly agree with everything you just said, Jon. At the end of the day, TFA wasn't a great movie in its own right (as a stand-alone film). From a fan-service point of view I'd say that it pretty much did what it had to do. In fact, the entire movie was basically fan-service as they continued to call back to things from the previous movies in every other scene, just for the "Hey, I remember that!" factor.

They could have easily squandered all of this as well by abusing the OT characters and killing them off right away, but instead they chose to keep all of them (with the exception of Han) as a part of the plot moving forward. Of course the passing of Carrie will likely have an impact on how they intended the story to go, especially with all of the rumors of her increased involvement in Ep. 9, but we'll just have to see how they handle that since they've already ruled out CGI.

I don't agree with everything ZoSo said, but I still think TFA was more than a little ham-fisted with its feminism, as I have already said. And I am the one who's eager for more women in Star Wars. I think early outlines for Rogue One were based on the same appeal, but ends up being a much less generic movie. Jon'Cs also right that TFA was a choose your own sequel film--just that yall are downplaying the overbearing feminism in the movie. I felt talked down to, it was so bad. There are pieces of media I love that almost everyone here would call modern liberal smut, so someone like ME saying it was heavy handed with corporation approved "feminism" is saying something.

The reversal of gender roles as Finn becomes a male damsel in distress who is saved by her female prince Rey was more annoying because of it was so self-conscious a reversal of gender roles, rather than because its had an odious message. It's just bad art.

Maybe it's a complete faux pas to bring this up, but I actually thought that the Ghostbusters movie was a much worse offender as an identity politics movie. Most of the debate that I was aware of happened before the movie was released, and it seemed to end because a bunch of people decided that 71% on rotten tomatoes was a good aggregate review score, and therefore "discussion over, the movie's good, deal with it". (Maybe it's still raging on. I don't know; I never engaged with it.)

But while the debate before release centered largely around making the Ghostbusters female, what nobody would know until the movie was released was just how many anti-male sentiments it contained. They depicted the antagonist as an alienated, socially-awkward white male nerd, who's "pathetic" because he lives in his mother's basement, and who's mentally and emotionally twisted, because he's torn apart by feelings of resentfulness, of feeling excluded, of being ineffective and of being unrecognized for his achievement. It seemed unfortunate that the antagonist was the exact type that defenders of the movie accused critics of being, but it also betrayed the adversarial spirit that undergirded much of the movie.

It seemed indicative how this new wave of feminism often operates, when it's at its least benign. Although it claims ostensibly to pursue equality, that's not what it actually does.

It doesn't seek to upend prejudice. Rather, it prefers to turn the social hierarchy upside-down, by heroicizing females, and creating harmful stereotypes of males, who, because they are perceived to be "privileged", have no right to be offended or to criticize.

And the Magic Mike-inspired dance scene towards the end solidified the fact that the idea wasn't just to include women in Ghostbusters fandom; universalist, egalitarian "inclusion" wasn't the goal. It was to make a movie that was intended for a primarily female audience.

The great failure of so much of contemporary identity politics is that it too perceives "privilege" as a zero-sum game. Rather than trying ensure that all people enjoy the rights that those with the most rights enjoy, it's locked into a restrictive post-colonial framework which sees things in terms of oppressor and oppressed; it often tries to bring down the 'oppressor' while elevating the 'oppressed' over them. It's deeply counter productive. And illiberal, really.

But as our current White House press secretary says, maybe we don't want to "re-litigate" that whole discussion here.

I like to think that the whole debate over female Ghostbusters was something the producers invented to distract people from the actual debate, that they never should have rebooted the ****ing franchise in the first place.

People always say this, but I don't remember it happening. There were a few moments when Finn is saved by Rey, but also a few moments where Rey is saved by Finn. This is besides the one major plot-related abduction and rescue, which is when Rey gets captured by Kylo, and Finn rushes off to save her. They "subverted" the damsel-in-distress trope by making her escape on her own, but that didn't seem like "pro-feminism" so much as "ahaha, now those *****es on tumblr can't complain". Same with the junk lines they threw in just to make TFA pass the Bechdel test; it passes the letter of the test, not the spirit.

I'll agree that it's bad art, tho

yeah, I thought something like that is the animating idea of the scene you're describing.

When Luke saves Leia in ANH, and then they do the damsel in distress gender role reversal there, it doesn't seem nearly as aesthetically disagreeable to me. In that scene in ANH, they're taking the dominant political/social/cultural views of the day, and making them part of the subtext in a scene, so that you can discern that they're doing it, and congratulate yourself for agreeing with something that reflects "progressive values", as they do in TFA. It doesn't seem like they were trying to make as pronounced a statement in that scene with Leia in ANH.

It's too bad you edited this out, because "I don't know why it seemed so distasteful" is a really good observation.

It did seem distasteful. A lot of people felt that way, including me. But why tho?

Oh yeah. Well I still stand by the fact that I don't get why it seemed so distasteful. :p