Give Me Those Star Wars Special: THE LAST JEDI Teaser Reaction

SPECIAL REACTION EPISODE! Ryan Daly welcomes a special guest Neil Daly, the one who helped Ryan take his first steps into the larger universe many years ago, to discuss the brand new teaser trailer to STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI. Warning: plenty of spoilers abound in their conversation.

If you haven't seen the teaser yet, watch it right here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zB4I68XVPzQ&t=3s 

Let us know what you think! Leave a comment or send an email to: RDalyPodcast@gmail.com.

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Music: "Star Wars Main Theme" and “End Title” by The Evil Genius Orchestra (with Ryan and Shag).

Thanks for listening, and May the Force Be With You!

15 responses to “Give Me Those Star Wars Special: THE LAST JEDI Teaser Reaction

  1. Great episode! Welcome Neil. I personally love your music. Nice to hear you here!

    I think Luke’s line of “The Jedi Must End” may refer to bringing true balance to the Force. Maybe the Jedi and the Sith both have to end at last, and something new will be created. It would tie into Kylo’s potential redemption as well.

    But Rey better not turn. Millions of little girls (including my own) would be crushed!

    Chris

    1. I think you’re right. Maybe Luke is still depressed over the destruction of the New Jedi Temple, but maybe he also sees something about the conflicts that arise by having two extremes. It sure seems to me that he wants to build something new.

  2. Ryan – curious — if this does have a big familial reveal at the end of it, just like ESB, do you think that would put you off any? Given the criticism that TFA is too narratively similar to Star Wars (something I understand but don’t particularly regard as bad), would this be going to same well too many times for you?

  3. Fun episode, well talked out, blah blah blah, onto my rant.

    I don’t know how much conviction I have that what I’m about to lay out is actually the case, but it occurred to me while listening and I want to throw it out there. What if everybody who complained that Rey is too good with the force that she becomes a Mary Sue has it backwards? What if Kylo Ren just isn’t very gifted in the force? I mean think about it. You can see him strain whenever he does… pretty much anything force related. His lightsaber is janky. He’s had YEARS of training and yet was taken down by somebody just discovering her power for the first time.

    We’ve all made this assumption that because he’s part of the Skywalker lineage that he’ll be this massive badass with the Force. He’s clearly got the passion for it but what if he just doesn’t have much natural skill in it? And what if Luke and Leia made the same mistake we as the audience made? What if his parents poured all these expectations of greatness into him and Luke lavished all this extra training attention on him because of who his parents are but he just isn’t the most talented? It’s almost an inverse of Anakin. Rather than knowing he was super powerful and feeling like he was being held back, he’s been built up as this great thing but just can’t back up the hype. If that sunk in over time it would certainly feed that rage he can’t seem to keep a lid on. With a bit of pushing from Snoke would it be that hard to make the leap from “I’m not the greatest force apprentice,” to “well, I would be if all the other apprentices were dead?” This would also feed into Snoke wanting Rey if he (just like everybody else) made a false assumption and ended up with a lemon apprentice that he’s now stuck with.

    I also think that this would justify Luke’s apparent guilt much more. That if he hadn’t filled Ben’s head with expectations he couldn’t live up to then maybe this wouldn’t have happened. It would make him much more directly culpable in what went down if out of familial pride or whatever he’d been going “No, really Ben, you are a great Jedi, just keep at it, you’ll get there” even while knowing in the back of his head that it wasn’t true.

    Kylo Ren – Jedi School Crap-Out. Pissy little privileged “I was told I’d be the best” whiny baby. A perfect villain for the modern times? Guess we’ll find out.

    1. Reminds me of this quote from 30 ROCK:
      “The first generation works their fingers to the bone making things; the next generation goes to college and innovates new ideas. The third generation snowboards and takes improv classes.”

  4. The end line could be taken out of context – shaming Rey’s lack of discipline, for example – but I hope it heralds the creation of a third Force warrior that works towards Balance as opposed to Light/Dark.

  5. My guess is that it’s mostly ‘The jedi were wrong as wrong can be with their no-attachments concept’ (and Luke was wrong to try to recreate it), with a hint of ‘there are more than two sides to the force’ in there.

    As far as Rey goes, I’ll take the extreme long-shot pick: Yoda’s daughter/direct descendant. (Yoda, in this theory, is human. When he said ‘when 900 years old you are see if you look so good’ he was being literal, looking like Yoda is what happens after using the force to live for centuries.)

    I have less than zero interest in a Kylo Ren redemption arc.

    Also, if you really haven’t watched Brick, do so as soon as humanly possible.

  6. I was considering a Film and Water minisode on this but you guys pretty much covered it.

    This did exactly what a “teaser” is supposed to–fleeting images and a hint of the major thrust of the film, no more than that. I like how, but letting us hear Luke, it lowers the expectations for what his first words will be–after all, there are no words they could come up with that could live up to two years of fevered fanboy imaginings. Now that we’ve heard him already, the First Words don’t need to be the most amazing thing ever.

    I really like Nathan’s theory above that Kylo might mostly be all talk, but since he comes from a prominent family everyone assumes he’s more. Hard to imagine a more timely theme to hit in 2017.

    I find all of Johnson’s three previous films to be worthwhile–BRICK, BROTHER’S BLOOM, and LOOPER. Even when I don’t think they completely work, they’re never boring and anything less than engaging. I’m heartened by the news he wrote both Chapters 8 and 9.

    I think we’ve hard Patrick and Neil on your shows, why don’t you give the youngest Daly brother Shemp a chance?

  7. I pretty much know before I even type this that this will be an unpopular opinion, but I already consider this the best episode yet simply for cutting off that awful bad-karaoke theme before it got started this time. Never has there been another podcast that has so tempted me to stop listening to it entirely on the basis of its theme.

    Cue the folks telling me I need to get a sense of humor….

  8. Great episode and really fun hearing your brother on the show! He was a lot kinder than I expected. You must have editing out all the usual sibling, “Stop touching me” and “stay off my side”.

    Not sure how to explain it, but your coverage put me in some sort of Zen-like state and I had a revelation. These numbered movies are about the Skywalker legacy. Of course Rey is a Skywalker. Duh. We’ve been thinking, re-thinking, and over-thinking this. We all assumed from the trailers that she is the daughter of Han and Leia. We were probably right. We’ve just been over-analyzing this. They want us wondering and thinking about the mystery. She’s got to be of Skywalker descent. That’s the only thing that makes sense. Then her and Ben’s rivalry will be based in family, just like Star Wars should be.

    Bottom line… Rey is a Skywalker (probably Leia and Han’s daughter), however, we just don’t know yet how she ended up far away from the family. And we keep talking ourselves out of that obvious answer. It will all make sense after Episode 9.

  9. I think the ‘Jedi must end’ line means that there is going to be some fundamental shift in the Force and how it is used. There will be a time of peace. We won’t need knights any more. The Jedi will end because there won’t be a need for folks wielding swords anymore.

    As for this movie, I get the sense we will get a ‘Rey, I am your mother’ moment. It is a new world but we will still riff on the old.

  10. As everyone has said this trailer did its job perfectly. Got us more intrigued but did not really give anything way. Which is rare in the times we live in when teaser trailer and trailer release dates are as coveted and hyped just as much as the movies they are advertising.

    What did we learn from it and what does it mean in terms of the on-going Stars Wars story…. well.. I simply have no fricking idea!! So many theories and suggestions that when you hear them all have creditable aspects and sort of “sound” like they could be right. So many in fact I can’t decide which theory to put my money on (I would be a terrible gambler…) So I’m going to very boring and say, we will just have to wait and see…

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