Star Wars: The Force Awakens [SPOILERS ABOUND]

Not sure how old your children are but word of caution generally. My son does not really get scared during things, but he can have nightmares or just stress about things while awake in bed at night after the fact. So, he had no problems watching the Star Wars films with me. But then he had trouble sleeping for a few nights and finally admitted that he thought Darth Vader was in his room and was going to chop off his hand (this after TESB, of course). It is always a tough call as a parent as to what your child is ready for (particularly when they are pushing for something), but I felt pretty bad afterwards and not so responsible.

 

This is just setting the groundwork for those weird porn fetishes dood

 

I'm sure most furries start with innocent stuff like MLP and Lion King

 

Eh the whole expanded universe stuff and prequels don't really count. Vader enjoys being the Emperor's thug as he doesn't really have anything better to do other than run the Imperial Navy and personally hunt down everyone who fucks with his boss who seems to treat him pretty well and not be a micromanager. Otherwise what's he going to do? Eat TV dinners and play videogames in his pod? Yeah it's pathetic but he's a crippled cyborg walking around with a built in iron lung.

The dark side isn't just about evil and gaining power over others like Sauron. It's more using the force in your own self interest to fulfill your own emotional desires. The Jedi were supposed to be ascetic stoic samurai hermits. Luke doesn't really want to rule the Galaxy. He just wanted to be a Jedi knight like his dad and defeat the Empire that murdered his family. In Empire, he is not willing to put his own personal interests (his friends) above the good of everyone else by training with Yoda for a few years so he can transcend physical violence and emotion, topple the Emperor spiritually, and restore the Jedi faith. Instead Luke just wants to save his friends and avenge his father by killing Vader. To Yoda, that's just as dark side as Vader hooking up a car battery to Han to lure Luke.

 

I thought Conan the Barbarian, Terminator, and Alien were awesome when I was a kid yet reading about actual medieval beliefs in revenants scared the crap out of me.

 

Yes they do, otherwise Vader makes even less sense. He wasn't even written to be Luke's father in Episode 4! I suppose that means Ep5 and 6 don't "count" either because in those two he's definitely not just the Emperor's thug. Obviously from ESB and on he evolved into something a lot more nuanced than what you're describing. Shit, I hate to be the prequel defender again, but I think a lot of the prequel content (as well as the EU stuff) does a great job setting up Vader if we limit ourselves to looking at it in broad strokes. For anyone not familiar with EU content, a lot of it is not well written even by prequel standards. But it adds a lot of good context to the films. Disney be damned. If good writing is the prerequisite for being canon, then TFA is not-canon by any stretch.

I really don't think the Jedi Order or Yoda are nearly as absolutist as the h8ers make them out to be. There is certainly more grey area to Luke's choice, although it certainly was not the logical one from any grounded POV. Yoda's advice was certainly sage given the circumstances, and not necessarily because it was the "Jedi" thing to do. A week of running around with a muppet on your back hardly qualifies you to take down the most power Sith Lord of all time. Luke could just as easily been slain by Vader if he didn't have plot armor the will-of-the-Force behind him. Things might be different if he was a certain female character I suppose.....

Come on now, the Jedi aren't pacifists. Do you think Yoda expects Luke to defeat the Empire by smoking blunts, listening to Bob Marley, and preaching Jedi principles to the galaxy? The point of Luke's Dagobah training is to mentally prepare Luke for an eventual confrontation so that he doesn't get totally rekt or worse, turned to the dark. Although I think it's well accepted that Luke does not carry a pure Jedi disposition. He nonetheless achieved good through a more mixed approach to the Force, which is to be expected from a force user who received almost no formal Jedi training.

 

I assume Yoda just wanted Luke to walk into the Emperor's throne room, give him a force aneurysm, and be space Marcus Aurelius. There would be nothing the semi-senile Emperor could do if Luke was about 30 and leveled up enough.

Everyone became nerfed, petty, and stupid for the prequels including Yoda. Yoda should be able to tell that some 23 year old is getting laid right away especially a bad actor like Hayden Christiansen. He would know Palpatine was force capable instantly. Palpatine and Yoda certainly wouldn't have a 60 year old man fight since they are both leveled up and can't cause the other to roll a critical failure against head exploding so they both flip around and throw office furniture at each other. Oh wait they did as they went down two standard deviations in IQ since the eighties. I don't consider The Force Awakens to be canon either. What happened in the original movies happened and the new ones are their own story.

 

LOL, I love this scene. Always crack up every time I see it. Trying to imagine what he's saying to himself in his head, "ARE YOU f'ing KIDDING ME?!"

 

This absolutely killed me.

 

Kylo Ren on undercover boss: