Hey guys, I’m Dev and ‘The Last Jedi’ is not going to go the way you think.
I mean, there’s no telling what surprises director Rian Johnson has in store for ‘Episode VIII,’
and the Disney machine is keeping things locked up tight.
There’s no spoilers, because we haven’t seen the movie,
but we’ve come up with what we believe is
Everything You Should Know Before 'The Last Jedi.'
Now, ‘Episode VIII’ takes place immediately after the ending of ‘The Force Awakens,’
so we really don’t have to worry about what happens in between the two movies.
But a lot went down between ‘Return of the Jedi’ and the sequel trilogy, so we’re going to run through
The Story so Far
[STAR WARS MUSIC NOISES]
We’re assuming you’re familiar with the last six ‘Star Wars’ movies.
Just like J.J. Abrams did with ‘The Force Awakens’
but he left a lot of unanswered questions at the end of it.
Where the hell did the First Order come from?
When did Luke, his sister and the nerf herder go their separate ways?
Who is this giant silver stormtrooper that surrenders at the drop of a hat?
Those questions would be answered in the books, comics, and games of Disney’s rebooted expanded universe,
and we’re gonna do our best to summarize them here.
The Galactic Civil War doesn’t officially end after the Emperor’s death at the Battle of Endor,
but the Rebellion celebrates as if that was the case.
In-between burning dead bodies and listening to Ewok music played on severed Imperial heads,
Han and Leia get married in a quiet ceremony on the forest moon.
That's sweet.
Meanwhile, the Imperial remnant activates a contingency plan in the wake of Palpatine’s death:
Operation: Cinder is to begin at once.
It’s a scorched-earth campaign to annihilate the Empire’s former territory and terrorize the remaining citizens into submission.
Because blowing up planets sure scared people away from the Rebellion the first time, right?
Two defectors help put a stop to the plan,
and with the Empire on the verge of total defeat,
the Rebel fighting force reorganizes into the New Republic and reconvenes the Galactic Senate on the planet Chandrila.
Right? Chandrila?
That’s the nerdiest thing I’ve ever said.
During this time, Luke goes on a secret mission to retrieve two fragments of a force-sensitive tree that once lived in the Jedi Temple on Coruscant.
He keeps one for himself, and gives the other to his partner Shara Bey,
who raises her son Poe Dameron in its shadow.
After peace talks disintegrate, the last of the Imperial military attacks the Republic in a final battle on the planet Jakku,
resulting in the decisive end of the original Empire.
The Imperial survivors retreat into the Unknown Regions of the galaxy, where they quietly rebuild their forces into the First Order.
Around this time, most of the new characters from the ‘Force Awakens’ start to enter the picture.
The First Order abducts a boy who we’d come to know as Finn,
while General Hux recruits a warrior named Phasma from a primitive tribe called the Scyre.
Leia and Han have a son named Ben Solo, who they send to his uncle Luke for Jedi training,
Doesn't end well...
and a girl named Rey is born, though we still have no clue who her parents could be...or just the source of her DNA?
As the First Order amasses wealth and power through shady underworld dealings,
the New Republic faces a political scandal when Leia is outed as the monstrous Darth Vader’s daughter.
Do not want
She leaves the Senate and forms her own paramilitary group called the Resistance,
just as another faction leaves the Republic to swear fealty to the First Order.
We'll remember this as the last day of the Republic!
And if things weren’t bad enough, young Ben Solo is corrupted by the Dark Side of the Force and destroys Luke’s first class of new Jedi.
Heartbroken, Luke sets out in search of answers at the first Jedi Temple,
and the Resistance tasks Poe and his Black Squadron with tracking him down.
On Jakku, an ally named Lor San Tekka gives Poe a map that he hides in an adorable little droid,
who finds himself under the protection of a young scavenger named Rey,
[BLEEPING]
her friend Finn, the ex-Stormtrooper,
Stop taking my hand!
and two former Rebels named Han and Chewie.
[CHEWBACCA NOISE]
Under the leadership of the mysterious Snoak, The First Order obliterates what’s left of the New Republic with their superweapon, Starkiller Base.
This machine which you have built, upon which we stand, will bring an end to the Senate, to their cherished fleet...
And all remaining systems will bow to the First Order!
The Resistance shuts it down, but not without a cost.
Finn is badly injured,
and some old scoundrel dies at the hands of his son, now going by Kylo Ren,
But, on the light side, Poe and his pilots manage to destroy the Order’s hidden fortress and save the day.
The movie ends with the iconic shot of Rey on the lonely planet Ahch-To,
offering an older, sadder, more withered, defeated, concerningly isolated Luke Skywalker his original lightsaber.
And that, literally, brings us to the start of ‘The Last Jedi.’
Fun fact: The first word of the movie is “We’re.”
Revealed by the director himself.
It could be 'we're Jedi,' 'we're ghosts...'
We're boned.
But that’s pretty much all we got.
We haven’t been able to piece together much of the plot,
but we do know that Rian Johnson is adding some great
New Faces
to the ‘Star Wars’ galaxy.
In a world of space wizards, ace pilots, and giant monsters,
it seems unusual that the most important new addition is a humble mechanic.
But that’s just how Rian Johnson describes Kelly Marie Tran’s character Rose Tico.
Her sister Paige is a Resistance gunner,
but it seems like the lowly maintenance worker Rose will have a much bigger role in the story.
She accompanies Finn on a secret mission deep behind enemy lines
to the shiny casino city of Canto Bight.
A luxury resort isn’t something you typically see in the grimy, used future of ‘Star Wars,’
but its seems like a great opportunity to debut some cool new aliens, Cantina-style.
The Casino Night Zone is probably where they’re going to run into Benicio Del Toro’s new character.
He doesn’t have an official name, but the crew is simply calling him ‘DJ’ for now.
and all we know is that he’s a shady scoundrel with a talent for slicing, or hacking computers in Star Wars terminology.
I'm getting hacked!
Oh, this is no good.
Laura Dern makes her ‘Star Wars’ debut as Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo, the purple-haired leader of the Resistance,
She’s been described as a bit of an oddball, which might be where Leia got her rebellious streak from,
since Holdo and Leia were friends from the before the war.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a ‘Star Wars’ movie without some fantastic new creatures,
and the trailers have already introduced us to three native Ahch-To species.
I’m not going to weigh in on the highly-divisive [REDACTED] issue.
In fact, I’ve been told not to discuss [REDACTED].
I can’t even say [REDACTED].
They’ll bleep out [REDACTED] if I say [REDACTED].
[REDACTED]
Apparently, “those things” are related to another new species called the Caretakers.
The nun-like creatures are more advanced than their cuter cousins.
They can communicate with Luke and lumber around the island on their tiny legs keeping everything in order.
We know even less about the mysterious crystal foxes,
but apparently, this is cool, they’ve been feeding off the planet for so long that their fur has transformed into the same crystal substance as the surface.
I think that's cool. They look good!
It's like an Eevee evolution gone right.
Which, I know the Jolteon stans out there are gonna have a problem with in the comments...
Those are the most concrete new creations we know about, but I’m sure ‘The Last Jedi’ has plenty of surprises left for us.
Like Finn’s weird horse/ostrich thing,
BB-8’s evil twin, BB-9E
Or the First Order’s AT-M6 gorilla walkers and the new Praetorian Guard,
There’s a lot of new stuff here, but I’m sure it’ll fit perfectly in Rian Johnson’s
Deeper, Darker Story
‘The Last Jedi’ is the longest ‘Star Wars’ movie so far,
but we won’t just be watching Rey’s lightsaber training for two and a half hours.
The galaxy is in a pretty rough state at the end of ‘The Force Awakens.’
The Resistance is in tatters, despite their victory,
Leia is dealing with the loss of billions of lives courtesy of Starkiller Base,
on top of the devastating personal grief over Han’s murder at the hands of their son.
Now how much we fought, I always hated watching you leave.
That's why I did it. So you'd miss me.
She's having a bad time right now.
Finn is recovering in a bacta suit from his brutal injury at the hands of Kylo Ren,
and Rey is hurt and puzzled by Luke’s reluctance to take her under his wing.
I've seen this raw strength only once before. It didn't scare me enough then.
It does now.
He won't take it. Dude, just take it.
When someone does this... you take the ancient 30-year-old artifact, y'know?
Even Kylo is having a hard time dealing with the aftermath of his patricide.
And as the second act of a trilogy, things are probably going to get a lot worse before they get better.
Just like ‘Empire Strikes Back’ ended with our heroes down a man and a hand,
Johnson approached ‘The Last Jedi’ by writing the names of each character and thinking:
“What’s the hardest thing they could be faced with?”
And the answer is pretty clear:
Guilt over our past misdeeds,
the temptation of the Dark Side,
and all-out war.
John Boyega has said that no other ‘Star Wars’ movie explores the messy, morally grey side of war like ‘The Last Jedi,’
which is saying a lot after ‘Rogue One’ depicted Rebel heroes killing civilians and nuked all our favorite characters at the end.
-You almost shot me! -You're welcome.
Despite the heavy nature of the story,
and the real-life tragedy of Carrie Fisher’s untimely passing,
Johnson insists ‘The Last Jedi’ will still be plenty of fun.
Hopefully he’s got more up his sleeve than the Porgs,
but either way,
It’s Probably Going to be Really, Really Good.
We know that Lucasfilm isn’t shy about firing directors they’re not happy with.
We did a whole video about it, actually.
And if talented directors like Lord and Miller or Colin Trevorrow couldn’t make the cut,
not to mention less-fantastic picks like Josh Trank,
there’s no way Rian Johnson would still be behind the camera if he wasn’t making an awesome movie.
Even though J.J. Abrams is returning to direct ‘Episode IX,’
He saved Star Wars. Now we will ask him to save our country.
the studio is clearly quite satisfied with the ‘Looper’ creator.
After he finished ‘Episode VIII,’ producer Kathleen Kennedy and the bigwigs
at Disney approached him and basically said “let’s keep this party going.”
And now, Johnson is developing his very own ‘Star Wars’ trilogy
with a fresh setting and brand-new cast of characters.
It’s a huge responsibility to give to one director, and it speaks to the faith Lucasfilm has in Rian Johnson.
And it’s also a pretty big indication that ‘The Last Jedi’ is going to blow us all away.