10 Unforgettable 2017 Movie Scenes
1. Snoke's Throne Room - Star Wars Episode VIII
In hindsight, The Force Awakens was very eager to please. It zipped from action scene to action scene, seemingly terrified to lose its audience for even a moment. Because of this, the payoffs in the film came frequently, and didn't make as much of an impact. By contrast, The Last Jedi was an exercise in patience. After the opening battle, there's a near 40 minute stretch of the film with almost no action in it. But because of this, the payoff is exhilarating.
Rey & Kylo Ren's confrontation with Snoke is one of the most perfect sequences in a Star Wars movie. In it, the enigmatic Supreme Leader reveals his master stroke - manipulating Rey into giving herself up willingly by engineering the force bond between her and Kylo Ren. It's a satisfying twist that effectively conveys how terrifyingly powerful the Supreme Leader is. Any other movie would be satisfied with that reveal, but The Last Jedi had an ace up its sleeve.
Mere moments later, Kylo Ren outsmarts and murders Snoke, and all hell breaks loose as Snoke's guards attack Rey and Kylo (not pausing once to think they're all out of a job even if they do kill the assassin). It's a glorious fight scene that makes us root for both the hero of the series and the villain at the same time.
In writing this film, Rian Johnson made a very smart choice: to slowly bring Star Wars away from the fun but uninspired pastiche of The Force Awakens. In the Throne Room sequence, we get reminded of why we love Star Wars, while at the same time seeing something we'd never seen before in a Star Wars film: A hero and villain fighting side by side, because they are both struggling to find their place in this uncertain universe.