Question: During the big battle between Kylo Ren and Luke Skywalker (as a force projection), Luke appears with his blue lightsaber. While I assume that a force projection probably appear any way he wants, and he did choose to look younger, Luke had lost his blue lightsaber decades ago during his battle with Vader on Bespin Cloud City. He had already built a new green one by the time Return of the Jedi started, so why would he appear with the blue one? It should have immediately given away to Kylo that he was a force projection and not the real Luke.
Question: I don't understand why Kylo Ren killed Han in the previous movie, but now says that he didn't hate Han?
Answer: As he says, "let the past die. Kill it, if you have to." Han was his past - he didn't hate his father, but his existence was holding Kylo Ren back from reaching his full potential, or so he believes. The principle is demonstrated earlier in the movie when he can't bring himself to kill Leia, but has no issue with the other TIE pilots blasting the bridge and (he thinks) killing her. He wants to free himself from the shackles of his parents, who cause him such internal conflict. Remove the source of the conflict and he believes he can move on to greater things. Of course, arguably his position is a bit naive, and his actions will actually cause him greater problems down the line.
Answer: As we saw in Episode 3, with Anakin Skywalker, turning to the Dark Side profoundly changes one's loyalty to friends and family. Anakin murdered children and nearly murdered his pregnant wife and his lifelong mentor. Kylo Ren seemed to follow the same path on the Dark Side, murdering his father.
Just pointing out that in Episode III Anakin did kill Padme, just not immediately. She gave birth to Luke and Leia and then died.
Question: Why did the writers decide to have Snoke killed just like that? Fans have spent the last two years wondering about so many theories about who he is, so was it really wise to kill him that early on without even the slightest hint as to who he really is?
Answer: According to reports, JJ Abrams had different ideas for each characters' story arcs while he was directing "The Force Awakens"; when Rian Johnson signed on as director for "Last Jedi", he basically decided to ignore Abrams' ideas and create his own direction for every major character, including Snoke. Since there is still one more film left in the current trilogy, though, we may learn more about Snoke's true nature in Episode IX; the possibility also exists that he may return as a Force ghost or in a cloned body, at least according to fan theories.
Answer: I know this caused quite the uproar with a lot of the fans, but looking back at the original trilogy, how much information was known about Emperor Palpatine when he was killed off? None of this was addressed until the prequel trilogy many years later.
Exactly. I have made this same argument so many times. Back when the original trilogy came out, none of us were running around complaining that we never found out the Emperor's backstory.
I was merely asking why they decided to kill off Snoke this early.
To be more to the point of your question, it seems that Rian Johnson believed (in my opinion, correctly) that the Snoke character added very little to the story and his death would be shocking to the audience. As a virtual copy of Palpatine in almost every way, the audience expected Snoke to fill a similar role in this story and last well into the third film. By killing Snoke so early, you get rid of a pretty useless character and also shock your audience, leaving them with no idea what direction the story will take going forward.
Question: Spoilers! Is Luke dead? It was just a hologram of him fighting Kylo Ren but the real Luke seems to have disappeared.
Answer: He is dead. Although a Jedi can still interact with the living as a Force Ghost, so expect to see Luke in Star Wars IX. It wasn't a hologram of Luke, he used Force Projection to be there. However, the act required too much energy and was too strenuous for Luke's body to handle, and the strain is what caused him to die.
Question: Why did Ben destroy the mask?
Answer: Snoke had just insulted him for wearing the mask and belittled him for his feeble attempts to become another Darth Vader. Ben smashed the mask out of anger, feeling he had given everything he had to Snoke and the Dark Side by murdering his father and all he got in return was a rebuke for his incompetence in failing to defeat the un-trained Rey. The smashing of the mask was symbolic of Ben's decision to stop trying to be what he thought Snoke wanted and just be himself.
Question: How did DJ know the resistance was escaping on the little transports?
Question: Why didn't Snoke even try to recruit Rey, as she is stronger than Ben?
Answer: Even if she is stronger, loyalty would also play a part in whether or not he would want to recruit her. Snoke probably knows that like Luke Skywalker, she would never turn to the dark side.
Answer: Snoke, like previous Sith Leaders, is a manipulator who wants to pit the other Force-powerful individuals against one another for amusement, to weed out any hesitancy in his apprentice, destroy potential rivals, etc. He knew that he would accomplish all of these by using Rey to test and torment Kylo Ren, but miscalculated Ren's own ambitions.
Question: Leia said that the first order weren't tracking their little transports. So how did they find them?
Question: Why do those charms disappear at the end? Does Ren use the force to destroy them?
Answer: Luke took them from the Millennium Falcon and gave them to Leia. He wasn't actually there, and was instead a force-projection. When he died and his projection disappeared, so did the illusion of the dice that he had brought with him.
Luke disappears well before the charm. Also, the charm had a physical presence (I.E. you could pick them up) whereas Luke did not.
Luke didn't disappear "well before" the charm. The scene of his death plays out first for the audience but his disappearance and the disappearance of the dice were supposed to be concurrent. It's also not entirely true that Luke didn't have a physical presence. He holds Leia's head and kisses her physically. Presumably he could choose what was physical and what was not and chose to not have a physical presence when he dueled Kylo Ren. This is further evidenced throughout the film when Kylo Ren's hand gets wet from the rain after "force Skyping" with Rey and later on when the two are able to physically touch.
Question: In Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, Luke's replacement hand looks like a normal human one (though it was mechanical). In this film he has a more obviously robotic hand. Other than to remind today's audiences that he previously lost his hand, was there any point to this change?
Answer: The outer skin could have been destroyed when Ben attacked Luke and ransacked the temple. We see Luke's robotic hand rise out of the rubble. Perhaps it had skin before that, and Luke never fixed it as a reminder of his "failure."
Answer: At the beginning of Return of the Jedi Luke gets shot in the robotic hand and just wears a glove over it for the whole movie even though he could have had the skin fixed. Apparently in the many years between the movies he never bothered having any damage to the face flesh and skin fixed.
Answer: After thirty plus years, it could just be the natural degradation of the organic flesh covering the robotic parts.
Answer: He likely downgraded to a simpler, easier to maintain version at some point. Presumably before going off to the island.
The robotic hand Luke has in The Last Jedi has the scorch mark he got from a blaster from Return of the Jedi. It's the same hand, just without the artificial skin covering.
Question: Did Captain Phasma die?
Question: At the end of the movie Finn opens a drawer to get a blanket for Rose. My husband thought he saw the sacred Jedi books in that drawer. Could that be true?
Answer: Yes Rey takes the books. That is why Yoda says that there is nothing in the books that she does not already know.
Actually, what Yoda says is that there's nothing in there (the sacred place) that Rey doesn't already possess. At the time it's assumed he's being somewhat mystical about her being about to learn without the teachings. But as we see with that scene at the end, what he meant was she took the books with her.
Question: Why didn't Poe go with Rose, Finn and BB-8 to find the master code breaker?
Answer: He had to stay, to ensure the fleet would make the jump to light-speed. Finn knew the ship's layout and Rose was needed to disable the tracker. Poe stayed to convince Holdo that it was safe to use light-speed again.
Question: SPOILER Why were Han's dice still in the Rebel base when Kylo entered? Shouldn't they have disappeared when Luke died?
Question: Why does Luke agree to train Rey just cause R2 showed him Leia's message to Obi Wan?
Answer: Rey states that she needs to train in order to help Leia and the Resistance. The message reminded Luke that once he too came to the aid of Leia, and in doing so changed his life forever. It also sparks a pleasant memory for Luke, he loves his sister dearly and the message reminds him of this.
Answer: He knew that his blue lightsaber still existed because Rey brought it to him. He chose to show the blue lightsaber because it belonged to Anakin and Kylo Ren was obsessed with it. He knew that Kylo Ren would be angry at Luke wielding a lightsaber that looked like Anakin's and that rage would help keep him distracted. Here is a quote from Rian Johnson regarding this: "He knows that Kylo's Achilles heel is his rage, and so that's why he kind of makes himself look younger, the way Kylo would've last seen him in their confrontation at the temple, and that's why he decided to bring Kylo's grandfather's lightsaber down there - the lightsaber that Kylo screamed at Rey, 'that's mine, that belongs to me.'"