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One of the most visually impressive things of the new Star Wars movie The Last Jedi is the depiction of the planet Crait.

At a first sight, its likeness is of an ice crust covering a bloody soil. At least, I suppose that this was the effect that the production wanted to achieve, surely it is was I first thought on the first sight at the movie theater, and a character's statement seemed to confirm this (see below).
I could not explain to myself how a planet could "bleed", so I also made the assumption that the whole planet could be a living organism, somewhat tied to the "ice foxes", that seemed to be creatures made of ice themselves.

Well, once home, I searched for more information about this, and I discovered that in reality the planet surface was made of salt, and the underlying soil was only red dust, and the foxes were made of crystal, not of ice. Pretty boring, if compared to my first impressions.

Anyway, there is a scene, just before the First Order attack, when a soldier came out form the trench before the metal doors, and another one touches the red footprint, tastes his finger, and say something that, in the italian dub, sounded very clearly like "Uhm... Sangue"; but I might also have misheard this and what he really said was "Uhm... Sale".

Now, these two words mean respectively blood and salt; in italian they have a similar, albeit noticeably different sound, but like I said I could have been mislead by my assumptions. In english, these two words are pretty different and there could be no chance to take one for the other.

What the soldier really said in the original english version? And if he said blood, did he meant that the soil was also made of blood, or that the soil (containing salt, and given by its color, also oxidized iron) reminded him the somewhat salty ad metallic taste of blood?

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    If you are talking about Finn, he says "it's salt"
    – NKCampbell
    Commented Dec 24, 2017 at 17:41
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    No, I talk about a soldier, I think that he was an unnamed one.
    – Sekhemty
    Commented Dec 24, 2017 at 17:42
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    In English, the soldier said 'salt', referring to the white stuff. Underneath the salt it appears to be some sort of red crystal, which you can see more of when the Millenium Falcon flies through a cave.
    – DaaaahWhoosh
    Commented Dec 24, 2017 at 17:48
  • How could downvoting without a single line of comment be helpful in any way?
    – Sekhemty
    Commented Dec 27, 2017 at 13:31

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The film's Visual Dictionary identifies the red stuff under the salt as crystalline rhodochrosite, the entire reason for there to have been a mining base emplaced there in the first place.

DESOLATE WORLD

The Resistance fleet crawls at sublight speed towards this moonless, highly reflective planet. Crait's surface is covered in barren salt flats, with steppes of halite breaking up the terrain. Just beneath the salt is a thick crust of red crystalline rhodochrosite a moderately valuable commodity. An underground briny ocean seeps through the softer minerals, creating an enormous cave network.

For the record, the line spoken by the Rebel trooper is

"Salt"

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  • Weirdly, in the credits, the guy who says "salt" is listed as "Resistance Trench Sergeant 'Salty'." Maybe he flubbed his line.
    – Ryan Veeder
    Commented Dec 24, 2017 at 19:17
  • Thank you. Like I said, in italian the two words have a similar sound, I think that I misheard the sentence.
    – Sekhemty
    Commented Dec 25, 2017 at 15:59

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