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The "I've seen The Rise of Skywalker" Thread


Lucas1138
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I've come around on this movie somewhat because there is some good stuff. Still though the decision to make Rey a Palpatine is such a terrible decision. It's hard to even explain how dumb it is. It makes you question how JJ could ever be a successful storyteller if he somehow thinks it was a good idea. It's a poison pill for the entire movie. And if you aren't able to compartmentalize the movies, it's a poison pill for the entire saga. It's just that bad. I was going to make a long post explaining all the reasons it's so bad but I just don't have the heart to do it. Not now at least. There were decisions in this movie I disagreed with like Kylo turning back. I wouldn't even say that was a bad or wrong decision. Just not one I agree with. There were normal just bad decisions, like bringing the Emperor back at all. Thats a bad decision but not so bad that its completely insurmountable. Making Rey a Palpatine is though, its that bad.

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Or just not made decisions that not only walk back great decisions made in the previous movie but also negate the entire message and greatness of the saga?

 

--This is just too much like the Vader reveal. Luke finds out he has this evil heritage/lineage in his family and has to deal with it. Pretty much same thing applies here.

 

--However it's not 1/10 of 1% as good because there is 0 personal stake in this between Rey and Palpatine. By the time Vader revealed he was Luke's father already Luke believed Vader killed his father, actually saw Vader kill his mentor, can probably suss out that the troopers who killed his aunt and uncle and burned down his childhood home were sent by Vader, Vader had tried to shoot Luke out of the sky in the Death Star trench, Vader had captured and tortured Luke's best friends in an attempt to draw Luke out and they had fought and epic lighsaber battle and cut Luke's hand off. This was personal between them already, there were stakes present. It mattered. This with Rey and Palpatine has 0 of that. None at all other than whats manufactured after the reveal has happened. Its stupid.

 

--Most importantly thought it completely and utterly doesn't understand why Star Wars is great. The story at it's heart is about a rag tag group of people fighting against thie evil, mostly faceless enemy (most of the bad guys they deal with conceal their faces) and saying "no, we aren't going to allow you to take away our freedom and the agency we have over our own lives." This reveal flat flies in the face of that. This makes all those people fighting nothing but insignificant peasants whose fates are not in their own hands. They have no agency over their lives. They exist on the whims of a handful of people from 2 bloodlines. They have no ability to make their own futures because their futures are determined by Skywalkers and Palpatines.

 

--Also do we want a story that says people are important based on who their parents or grandparents are? Rey shouldn't be important because of who her mommy or daddy or grandpappy are. She should be important because of who SHE is. Do we want a story that says only people from important families are important? I wouldn't think so but guess what? That;s the story we have now.

 

--Whats funny is JJ somewhat got this idea about ordinary people rising up for themselves. I love the line "it's not a navy, its just people" from the one officer at the end. Whats frustrating is that JJ completely undermines that moment by the much larger story choice he made with making Rey Palpatine.

 

--Even the end with "Rey Skywalker" is a dumb idea. When asked who she was she should have said "Im Rey, just Rey" Why? Because being Rey is good enough! She doesn;t need the name Skywalker.

 

--People will say the trilogy should have been planned. Personally I think we would have gained something but also lost something. I love TFA and TLJ. What Rian Johnson did is completley amazing to me. But if we had a whiteboard somewhere in Lucasfilm with the whole thing planned out we never would have gotten TLJ.

 

--Really though the slight tug of war between the visions would have been ok and possibly even strengthened the trilogy if not for completely dumb ideas JJ went with in this movie. Making Rey a Palpatine isn;t a bad idea because it doesnt mesh with TLJ, its a bad idea because its a bad idea. If it had been revealed in TFA it would have been a bad idea, if it had been revealed in TLJ it would have been a bad idea. Its just an epic mistake that came about because they decided to listen to the loudest morons on Redditt which were the very very last segment of the fanbase that should have been listened to.

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Rey being Palpatine is a symptom of the sane thing as the Holdo line, or Finn no longer being with Rose, and a lot of tiny other details.

 

This script was written to service a reddit poll made by fanbabies.

 

Rey was always supposed to be more powerful than Luke. She was originally written as his daughter, so it made sense. That was lost an a rewrite when Abrams wanted a mystery. I think he still intended for her to be Luke's, as everything pointed in that direction.

 

Then Johnson made sure that wasn't the case. He took the spirit of the idea of the force balancing itself to the max degree and said plainly, Rey had the potential to eclipse Luke.

 

And fandom couldn't handle it. They call her a Mary Sue, they say it's a feminist agenda, etc etc.

 

Disney wanted fandom less polarized so the easiest way to explain her power in a way fans might accept is to say she inherited it from somebody. Obi-Wan was one choice, Palpatine was another.

 

Storytelling via fan desires is a terrible, terrible turn of events.

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Focus groups and relay race writing is what hurt this trilogy. It should have been one person writing (other than JJ) and it should have been mapped out. But it's done. Hopefully lesson is learned and when they get around to doing more movies, they will plan them out better.

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Given that the only SW film to NOT have extensive rewrites/reshoots and studio interference during production is the one that divided fandom into two warring states-- I'd say lesson NOT learned.

 

As much as I hate to point the finger at her, because it's what the toxic brofans do, most of this is on Kathleen Kennedy.

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What If?!

 

Luke doesnt ignite his saber in TLJ expo-flashback until Ben grabs his own. haha, okay, leave TLJ alone... I will just work on ROS.

 

The treasure hunt is not for holocrons or other dumbass Sith stuff. Its the location of a mineral rich planet which is also an intact, mostly, and secret Imperial production facility which was lost to the Imperial remnants after the OT because only super high ups knew of it. This planet IS the Death Star Wreckage Planet. Its not THE DEATH STAR 2, but just the wreckage of a Death Star which lost its orbit and crashed when the production facility went dark (perhaps the Ugnaughts that ran it said, fork this the Emperor is dead, we are not slaves any more lets go).

 

Anyway, the treasure hunt for the location of this mineral rich planet is how Lando is a part of this... hes a former mining magnate afterall. The He and Luke thing was them looking for this world, a mission Luke gave up on out of necessity when he heard/felt rumblings about Snoke and Ben back at the temple. The Rey connection with the ship is that it was owned by a slaver who had dealings with the Empire, and was rumored to know the location of the planet... because it wasnt just ships and guns that were produced there... but troopers and this slaver dealt in flesh.

 

Reys parents were slaves and crew of the ship, the slaver then sold Rey when she was of age to do competent work (the irony being the slaver had no idea the treasure he had in Rey). The dagger is just a dagger, like the swamp cave on dagobah is just a swamp cave. Rey sees a vision with the dagger based on the darkness that surrounds it and the darkness/emptiness in her. The dagger was the slavers and the slaver ended up killing his slave crew (her parents) when they tried to fight him after he sold Rey. The location of the imperial production facility has nothing to do with the dagger, the dagger is not a map to a place, it is a portal (metaphorically) inside of Rey to a piece of her past that then helps her come to terms with herself. The location of the imperial production facility planet is encoded on a datapad on the body of the slaver which also had the dagger, in the snake pit. All of which Lando has been Indiana Jones searching for for decades. Also the code, of course, is one only Threepio can break.

 

Palpatine is not in TROS, its a swerve the new leader of the Knights of Ren is using to instill fear into the galaxy in Snokes place. Fear in Kylo too, this leader knowing Kylos obsession with the past. So ultimately its the Knights of Ren against Kylo and Rey. The Knights of Ren were all Snokes apprentices, whom were several of Lukes apprentices which Snoke turned... and they all were off scouring the galaxy for the secret production facility prior to this. When Snoke dies, they cut their search short and return to get revenge on the betrayer and former top apprentice. There is no Sith World or Sith Heritage nonsense. Kylos motivation here is the same, end the threat to his leadership. The threat now is also supported by the fear the Knights discovered the facility, the fear the Emperor is somehow alive, rumors which also sow division among the Imperial ranks and remaining Resistance.

 

The finale takes place on the Death Star wreckage planet and in its orbit.

 

There was no ultimate weapon(s) just one fleet vs the last tiny fleet the resistance could muster, and of course what they are fighting over is the mostly intact production facility on a planet rich in minerals. The emotional story for Rey and Kylo is their continued haunting by their pasts and them finally overcoming that... which is also mirrored in the production facility and the two remaining fleets of good and evil.

 

...

 

This changes the plot to something simpler and coherent throughout, each moment logically moving forward on the same goal for all sides and then coming to a head at the facility. It also does not alter anything in TLJ or more importantly the OT. An idiot on the internet, me, can look at this story and in twenty minutes trim the fat. Why couldnt someone at Disney? Has Star Wars now suffered from even those in power over it holding on to Star Wars as something so totally precious? Like what happens to Superman and Reeve at WB? Maybe this is why Rian was what the franchise needed, maybe he should have been brought back. Or maybe everything in this post is worse. lol I dunno.

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- Saw it again! No real new impressions or changes to the status quo - it's still bad, I still enjoyed it, still think it's the best of the bad ones!

 

- Look. Say what you want about Lucas, sure, go ahead. But when he re-did the Cantina scene three times over in The Phantom Menace (once as competitors in the Ben Hur style pod-race, and then again as staid austere elder statesmen in the Jedi Council, and then a third time as what Patton Oswalt's brother Matt called "C-SPAN with monster masks" for the Republic Senate) he made to sure to put lots of different aliens on the screen, didn't just Ctrl+C the same kind of alien over and over again. When they go to Space Coachella, and Rey sees the kids watching the puppet show, they're all the same kind of elephant-faced kids! The kid that talks to her (this is arguably the most crucial part of the movie, it's what's setting up the ending later on, the last lines of dialogue in this movie are paid off from this set-up) is the same type of kid as the kids on the mat! Just put a bunch of different kinds of alien kids down there - they have all the money in the world and everything looks the same or barely, barely barely different! That's the problem w/the Knights of Ren, too, even the big Avengers two-parter blockbuster extravaganza rendered their disposable second-tier villains visually distinct from each other (that's kind of all they did for them, tho) : one was a big strong growly guy, one was the goth girl, one was a skinny float-y dude. I don't understand this! Half the point of these movies is to sell toys - you gotta make sure there's lots and lots of clearly different kinds of toys to buy! (Don't tell me that I'm missing the point of that scene, that it's about family, blood relations, and that's why they all gotta be the same kinda blobfish elephant people --- and don't tell me the Knights of Ren are all a bunch of look'a'likes because it underlines the sense of conformity and lack of imagination typified by the farcical imitative fascism of the First/Final Order and/or it's because they're all mere reflections of Kylo himself so in fighting them they should all look more like him than not! Don't tell me these things! I can concoct pseudoconvincing explanations for why a movie's flaws are actually strengths fine enough on my own - I don't need your help!)

 

- I liked the little monkey-man fine enough but my real love is reserved for the large, silent, sinister ape-man who Krazy Glued the Dark Helmet back together again.

 

- I assume that Rey's parents' ship only looks so gross & grimey and OT-y because it's been on the run and rusting out for years and it started out all Prequels Trilogy-y, shiny chrome, Chicago Bean-y, full Nubian design.

 

- I don't understand why the one actor I recognize isn't Palpatine's kid and it's instead the actor I don't recognize, her mom should've been Palpatine's daughter, not going to bother looking up who plays Trioculus, nope, sorry

 

- Wait, I was going to do juxtapose these two links as a bit, as a joke, as a lark , as a *cough* *spit* meme, weeks and weeks ago when that interview came out but didn't bother - I even did a search on Twitter to see if anyone else had already done it because it seemed like such an obvious nerd gag to me! This is what I get for not following through on my dumbest ideas! This is what happens!

 

- THAT %^&*ing MEDALLION!

 

Here's how I assume that scene went if we had subtitles for Chewie's growls & groans!
MAZ: Here, Chewie. This is for you.
*she hands him a gold medal from the Leni Riefenstahl scene in A New Hope*
CHEWIE: <Listen up, gingie, you gotta cut this out. Stop calling me your boyfriend. Stop giving me expensive and sentimental gifts. What you want is just never gonna happen! My wife will literally kill and eat you! She'll kill us both! Furthermore, I am in mourning here! My best friend died! My super duper best friend died just a little while back, and his death was closely followed by the death of my other best friend! All my friends are dead! Anyway, do I seem like the kinda guy who wears gold? Or ANYTHING? Here I am, nearly naked to the world, an unfathomably ancient alien creature from a distant arboreal vale, I worship Life itself, bound by debt to the service of destined creatures whom I must watch inevitably perish, and you want me to adorn myself with cold metal dug out from the ground and fashioned by grotesque tools into a mobile testament to self-aggrandizement and the need for an easily liquidatable medium of economic exchange?>

 

- Stilted and stertorous acting isn't out of keeping with this franchise, of course, it really wouldn't be a Star War if there was someone in the picture and they DIDN'T make it seem like they had no idea what's going on. That's smattered throughout the Original Trilogy, the Prequels Trilogy is chock'a'block full of it, and it's in the new ones too. So they might've thought they could get away with what they did, that the audience's affection for Carrie Fisher would smooth away all the bumps and jolts, but not for me. This whole movie's sense of dialogue is v. rapidfire, everyone's constantly bouncing quips off one another, or screaming alien nonsense, the only living person who's not doing the rat'a'tat thing is Ian McDiarmid, everyone else just talks the same and at roughly the same pace (even when they're not, well, their face is, Mark Hamill's face is doing the same goofy business as everyone else's, he got a laugh out of the audience when Daisy Ridley said she was going to do the same thing he did and hide out on Planet Puffin, it's just a teensy little thing but the look he gives her was enough), so her slow and steady performance feels like exactly what it was, a violation of the peace of the grave and a grim harbinger of what's to come. Guess what, John Boyega, you're going to be on the big screen from now until Judgment Day, doesn't matter what happens to you, feel free to speed in light traffic!

[EDIT: 12/31/21 - Yesterday, this guy showed up once again out of the clear blue asking us all about our Star Wars opinions. I decided to live generously, treat his question w/good intent, I guess you could say I’m a saint, I’m one of G-d’s special little angels; real talk, I just try to be helpful if/when I can. So I went looking for our threads, our dumb dumb threads. I wasn’t going to bother to give him an itemized list of every time we spouted off about our Star Wars opinions but I figure it’d be easy enough to let him know where the three (3) threads were where we talked about our opinions of the three (3) movies in the Sequel Trilogy. It’s been twenty years since he joined, no idea how old he was when he signed up, could be the guy’s pushing sixty or whatever! Maybe he doesn’t understand how to look through a message board! I wanted to help! I’m a helper! I’m one of Mr. Rogers’ helpers!

 

So I found those threads! I was skimming through some of those threads! Specifically, this very one you’re reading now. Until I hit some guy making a whole lot of sense. Me! I really agreed with what this guy (me!) had to say about Star The Rise Of Skywalker Wars (2019). Just idly nodding my head at every point this guy (still me!) had to say for himself.

 

And yet I was super duper surprised because I’m pretty sure, ninety-nine percent sure, that I ended this right here post with a series of quotations from how you dumb dumbs (I say it w/affection! I include myself in this! I’m one of us dumb dumbs!) reacted to my first post in this thread. Immediately followed with an image, a little dumb dumb meme image, of the protocol droid Threepio saying one of his lines from the movie.

 

But that’s all gone now! In fact, a lot of what I wrote is gone! Most of what I wrote is gone! It’s not here! Did I remove it!? I don’t think so. Ninety-eight percent sure I didn’t come back here and get rid of those quotations and that image, for instance. Did ... did the message board upgrade remove it automatically!? Is there now some limit on how many times people can quote individual users or something? I don’t think that’s a plausible explanation. Why would it get rid of the image? Do the good folks at Imgur have a problem w/me? Did I get on Alan Schaaf’s bad side!? Forgive me, Alan!!!

 

I have to say, yesterday, I was pretty sure that one of you dumb dumbs (affectionately! I mean it affectionately!) did this. And, as of today, I’m still pretty sure one of you dumb dumbs (w/affection!) edited out those quotations and that little picture of Threepio.

 

I don’t have my copy of Who’s Who : The Definitive Directory To The Nightly.Net Universe handy. I don’t know who’s a moderator or an administrator and much like the aforementioned starwarskater I too don’t understand how to look through a message board so I have no way of checking who would have the POWER to do this. Does this go all the way to the top!? Was it JA? Was it Chris Sherman?

 

Again, I must once again stress that my copy of Who’s Who : The Definitive Directory To The Nightly.Net Universe is simply unavailable to me at this time. I don’t have instantaneous and automatic recall of everybody’s alter ego, occupation, marital status, known relatives, group affiliation, base of operations, first appearance, height, weight, eye and hair colour, y’know? I don’t remember which one of you dumb dumbs (again, said w/affection! I too am a dumb dumb!) has beef w/me about something or other. Don’t know why one of you might do this. Don’t want to speculate!

 

Regardless of the reasons why, well, whoever it is, whoever it may have been who committed this crime against me, against the holy holy holy practice of posting, against the message board, well, I offer you my forgiveness and I beg your forgiveness in turn. Sincerely!? Quasi-sincerely!? No, absolutely, for real, sincerely. I mean it! (I really do mean it, BTW).

 

I was just going to let it go, no harm, no foul, but I figured in the interests of capital-T Truth I had a capital-D Duty to clarify the situation. If I hadn’t had noticed, sure, it wouldn’t have mattered. Hate that I noticed! Hate that it matters to me! Hate that I care about something so small & trivial! Hate that the REAL explanation is probably just something way way way way way way more reasonable, like, maybe my post was too long and it was automatically truncated once the message board upgraded! Maybe the censor works differently now, maybe it removes the offending paragraph and all subsequent words from the post!??? Maybe it was the musical notes emojis!???????

 

Good luck trying to stay alive, all! Happy new year! Sorry I ended up not bothering to let you, starwarskater, know where these threads are. That’s on me! That’s my burden! That’s my cross to bear! I failed you, starwarskater, in your hour of need!]

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So can we talk about what this sequel trilogy does to Chewbacca?

 

The guy swears a life debt to Han Solo and then out lives Hans entire family.

 

I imagine Chewie, translated, sounds like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Last Action Hero when he cries about a writer ****ing up his life because its fun and entertaining to people.

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I think the idea that if they hired one guy or one team in 2012 to write this whole thing out that it would be some kind of panacea is just misguided. What if they had hired te wrong people? What if Episode 7 is just a disaster and gets 17% on Rotten Tomatoes and does poorly at the box office due to word of mouth and no repeat viewings? Guess what? they are gonna fire those guys and hire new guys to change up what they are doing anyway.

 

It also ignores the fact that there are many stories, even very good stories, written by a single person that have inconsistencies, dropped plot points and can feel uneven. Hiring a single guy doesn't guarantee any of these things wont happen. Im not even sure it would make it less likely.

 

Here is the problem: its not about the different takes. Its about JJ making literally the wrong choice on every important narrative decision. He didn't even follow through with 2 of his own big emotional moments from this movie: Chewies "death" and 3po;s memory wipe. He walked his own decisions back because he was so scared of upsetting people.

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It's not about having one guy write the whole thing out. It's about having a unified IDEA of where to take the trilogy. What beats happen in each film.

 

It's like they stumbled into the whole thing blind.

 

Also, I'd take JJs narrative decisions over RJs any day of the week.

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Forget about any of the ideas that differ from TLJ. Look at some of the decisions in this movie that are completely gutless.

 

1-Chewie's "death": Outside of obviously the emotion that killing off a beloved character would have this just walks back what should have been a key scene for Rey. This should be a huge lesson for her about the consequences and limits of her powers. It should even play into the (stupid) reveal of her as a Palpatine. That maybe she can't control this evil in her and it has a propensity towards evil cause of who she is. But no we find out fairly quickly that Chewie is fine. What should have been one of the key scenes, if the THE key scene in the whole movie is undone.

 

2-Threepios memory wipe. He has the memory taken away which could have been a beautiful scene for many reasons. His line about looking at his friends for one last time. His line about "everything we've been through would be for nothing" which is especially powerful from a character who has been in all 9 movies. Then even the message it would have sent that the memory of the previous movies isn't as important as what is happening here and now and saving the day in this movie. But again, no, he gets his memory back at the end of the movie. Besides his lack of memory is played nearly exclusively for laughs in the time before it is restored.

 

3-The Destruction of Kajimi. Beyond the fact that JJ I guess didn't feel it was possible to make a Star Wars movie without some old man evil Lord and blowing up a planet he just walks back the actual consequences of it anyway. Choosing a planet we've been to recently should have a big impact on us, we know characters who live there. But again, nah!!!!, the 2 characters we met on Kajimi are totally fine and got off the planet before it was destroyed so who cares?

 

4-Palpatine being back. Ok I don't love him coming back from the start so I am biased but still the way its handled is moronic. We get zero explanation for it. Which could be ok. I dont want/need an explanation for everything. However they hyped this as the finale for it all and that finally defeating the Emperor is key to that. Why is he finally beaten though? Why can't he just return again? In Harry Potter we get an explanation for how Voldermort returns with the Horcruxes. That way when all the Horcruxes are destroyed and Voldermor killed it is a final victory. The reason he was immortal is taken away from him. Nothing in this movie suggests Palpatine can't simply return again. So why is defeating him any more important? I mean the movie is almost laughable at the beginning when Poe is like "somehow Palpatine has returned" "Somehow". It reminds me of a Simpsons where Homer writes a script "its about a killer robot driving instructor who goes back in time for some reason." "Some reason" "Somehow". Basically the same.

 

It's like "some of the big emotional moments of the movie, don't worry about them. Its cool, they will all turn out fine. Let's spend some more time going over how important a lightsaber is." The movie almost soulless, its themeless. It has no point to make, no lesson to teach. It's literally scared of itself.

 

I brought up earlier a Simpsons episode, Im thinking of another. There is one where the are doing "David vs Goliath". Ralph's character is killed by Goliath 2. Then at the end he shows up again. Bart is like "I thought you were dead." Ralph responds "nope". Thats pretty much all the big supposedly emotional moments of this movie "nope".

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This quote from a JJ interview in Slash Film from 2015 plays into alot of the "its not coherent", "JJ and Rian are playing tug of war" idea

 

"I really feel that the assumption that any character needs to have inherited a certain number of midichlorians or needs to be part of any bloodline, Im not saying that isn't part of the canon, but thats not where my heart was when I was 11 years old. It's always seemed to me that the Force is more inclusive and stronger than that."

 

Beautiful thought, great quote from JJ Abrams. And I'd say it feels 100% perfectly in line with the ideas put forth by TLJ with Rey being a "nobody". Doesn't it? When you read that quote you can't think that Johnson wasn't building on an idea that JJ believed in, right? He obviously was. The question is what changed for JJ between that interview in 2015 and when he wrote this movie? It certainly wasn't the movie that came in between because that movies central idea is 100% in line with this quote.

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I saw it two days ago and I enjoyed it. I'll have to see it again before I can really say a lot of conclusive things about it, but, while it wasn't perfect and had too much going on in it, I thought it did a pretty good job wrapping things up, especially given the difficulties with where TLJ left off. I liked that movie, too, but it definitely left way too much to do to wrap up the trilogy. My family, who all enjoy Star Wars, but aren't anywhere near as into it (or movies, in general) as me, all really enjoyed it.

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3-The Destruction of Kajimi. Beyond the fact that JJ I guess didn't feel it was possible to make a Star Wars movie without some old man evil Lord and blowing up a planet he just walks back the actual consequences of it anyway. Choosing a planet we've been to recently should have a big impact on us, we know characters who live there. But again, nah!!!!, the 2 characters we met on Kajimi are totally fine and got off the planet before it was destroyed so who cares?

 

Unless I'm remembering wrong, didn't they mention it was really difficult to get off the planet? I was surprised they were at the end but never any context as to why.

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Arguing whether JJ or RJ is the better Star Wars story writer is like debating whether Roland Emmerich or Michael Bay is better at making films: it really comes down to who you like personally. They both have their strengths, but neither strikes me as someone who specializes in writing. I think the ST would have been better off hiring people who specialize in writing to come up with a more coherent story that wasn't so ret-conny.

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I think we can get into some of the pacing in the middle part of the movie and the casino scenes and some other stuff. However I think the big ideas of the movie. What the movie is actually trying to say is many factors better in Johnsons movie. Ideas like anyone can be the hero, he/she doesn't need to come from any kind of special bloodlines. The idea that The Force does not belong to the elite Jedi but belongs to everyone. The idea that even great heroes are still human beings that can suffer from the same doubts and insecurities as the rest of us. These ideas are the heart of Star Wars and really at the heart of all great fantasy tales. The ideas that this movie walks back arent bad simply because they walk back ideas presented in the previous movie. What's bad is that the ideas in this movie just aren't as good as the ideas in the previous movie.

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Also, everyone talks about the movie walking back TLJ. Then obviously it walks back ROTJ just by having Palpatine back. But really it walks back ROTS and Anakin's entire fall. The main reason Anakin falls is the desire to save Padme from dying. This is presented as something bad, unnatural, something he should not bee seeking the ability to do. Something that the Sith try to do, not the good guys.

 

Then at the end Kylo has this power. Unless Im completely misreading the scene Rey is dead when Ben brings her back. This act then causes him to die and he actually disappears, signifying he is redeemed and one with The Force.

 

So the whole power, the whole reason Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader. This power that he should absolutely not seek because it is unnatural becomes something that not only does Ben Solo attain with seemingly little or no effort (which isn't my real issue) but also is seen in this movie as a good thing that is part of his redemption.

 

People say TLJ broke Star Wars but in reality it just made you look at the saga differently. This movie literally undoes the end of the PT (Ben has the power that Anakin wa seeking which caused his fall), it undoes the end of the OT (Palpatine isn't killed and is back) and the movie that precedes it.

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On the Knights of Ren...Kylo Ren is this bad ass force user who can freeze and hold a laser bolt in midair for a long period of time, play tug of war with a ship already in midair and force duel another person who is not really in the same spot he is. But he gets his ass kicked by a group of guys who are using nothing but bats and other low tech weaponry. It isnt until Rey hands him the lightsaber that hes able to overpower them.

 

What was up with Rose? It felt like they just threw her in just because she had been a big part of TLJ. But IMO they made her into a joke. The pilot reports to Leia what is currently happening. Then Rose chastises him for not being positive. So he changes the way he says his report...to finish with a but we are doing great! I read a story stating this is already becoming a point of contention with the #JusticeForRose and #RoseTicoDeservedBetter hashtags.

 

The way I saw Hans scene was that Ben was just replaying the events of TFA in his head (Han mentions hes a memory) and fixing how it should have gone. Ben says the same line, I know what I must do but dont know if I have the strength to do it. Except this time he throws the lightsaber away rather than using it to kill Han. So this to me wasnt Han being a ghost, it was just Ben doing what many people do when a loved one has passed away - if only that person was still here, this is what I would say to them now.

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Choc-- I disagree that concept and ideas excuse bad filmmaking. Execution is everything. In theory, the PT is full of great story ideas-- but they are executed so poorly I find them unwatchable. For me TLJ went wrong on a structural and pacing level. Much like the PT, any time I watch it there is a lot of fast forwarding.

 

As for retcons-- you're 100% on the money.

 

Literally every Star Wars movie retcons something before. Even ANH has retcons thanks to the PT. I'm sure the justification of changing Rey's parentage was that it was done in ESB, so it must be cool.

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I think we can get into some of the pacing in the middle part of the movie and the casino scenes and some other stuff. However I think the big ideas of the movie. What the movie is actually trying to say is many factors better in Johnsons movie. Ideas like anyone can be the hero, he/she doesn't need to come from any kind of special bloodlines. The idea that The Force does not belong to the elite Jedi but belongs to everyone. The idea that even great heroes are still human beings that can suffer from the same doubts and insecurities as the rest of us. These ideas are the heart of Star Wars and really at the heart of all great fantasy tales. The ideas that this movie walks back arent bad simply because they walk back ideas presented in the previous movie. What's bad is that the ideas in this movie just aren't as good as the ideas in the previous movie.

 

Also, everyone talks about the movie walking back TLJ. Then obviously it walks back ROTJ just by having Palpatine back. But really it walks back ROTS and Anakin's entire fall. The main reason Anakin falls is the desire to save Padme from dying. This is presented as something bad, unnatural, something he should not bee seeking the ability to do. Something that the Sith try to do, not the good guys.

 

Then at the end Kylo has this power. Unless Im completely misreading the scene Rey is dead when Ben brings her back. This act then causes him to die and he actually disappears, signifying he is redeemed and one with The Force.

 

So the whole power, the whole reason Anakin Skywalker became Darth Vader. This power that he should absolutely not seek because it is unnatural becomes something that not only does Ben Solo attain with seemingly little or no effort (which isn't my real issue) but also is seen in this movie as a good thing that is part of his redemption.

 

People say TLJ broke Star Wars but in reality it just made you look at the saga differently. This movie literally undoes the end of the PT (Ben has the power that Anakin wa seeking which caused his fall), it undoes the end of the OT (Palpatine isn't killed and is back) and the movie that precedes it.

 

Choc-- I disagree that concept and ideas excuse bad filmmaking. Execution is everything. In theory, the PT is full of great story ideas-- but they are executed so poorly I find them unwatchable. For me TLJ went wrong on a structural and pacing level. Much like the PT, any time I watch it there is a lot of fast forwarding.

 

As for retcons-- you're 100% on the money.

 

Literally every Star Wars movie retcons something before. Even ANH has retcons thanks to the PT. I'm sure the justification of changing Rey's parentage was that it was done in ESB, so it must be cool.

 

 

 

Choc, the broad strokes of TLJ are fine. I like Luke being a hermit. I like Rey and Kylo's story. What I didn't like was the pacing and finer details (or lack thereof), and inappropriate side quests like the slow motion chase and Canto Bite. I felt Poe's mutiny was inappropriate and a distraction from the story. I hated DJ as a character. And quite simply I felt that RJ just did not have a fundamental understanding of Star Wars in general, at least where the Skywalker story was concerned. Had this been a different story set in the Star Wars universe where the Skywalkers are not involved, those things would not have been a problem for me. RJ I have to say probably is a better writer than JJ, and I think he would be a lot better at creating a new story within the star wars universe, but I did not like how he took the ST, let alone the Skywalker saga in a different direction that was inconsistent in feel with the previous movies about the Skywalkers. It was clear that JJ was setting up the ST and expected RJ to continue what he established, but RJ for whatever reason, swerved in a different direction that didn't work for me.

 

That is not to say JJ is immune to criticism, because while he is a good director and producer and knows the nuts and bolts of movie business (IMHO), he is a weak writer and his style is like video game cut scenes. Where did snoke come from? Palpy grew him in a test tube. Where did the Knights of Ren come from? Who knows? How did Luke's saber get recovered? Another story for another time that we probably won't get. How did Paply survive? Who cares! Also, I wish JJ didn't make Rey a Palpatine (made zero sense to me Palpatine would have a son). Also, JJ "killing" off C3p0, Chewie, and Rey, only to bring them back is a cheap thing to do, and really had zero emotional impact.

 

That is why I am saying that LFL should have hired someone specifically to do the story of all three movies, and just left it to JJ (or whomever they picked to do each film) to produce and direct. Maybe that is wrong-headed on my part, and I am not even sure that films are even done this way, but writers should write and not direct, directors should direct and not write, and corporations should just let it happen without interfering and CEOs trying to dictate story lines. That is what I feel happened with the ST and that is why I felt it wasn't as good as it could have been.

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Disney has been pretty hands off-- the futzing has always been at the Lucasfilm level. Marvel, Lucasfilm, Pixar, The Muppets-- they all operate independently, and as long as they meet their deliverables schedule and things make a profit, Disney will stand hands off and just rule the merchandising/theme park/licensing angle for the money.

 

But after Solo didn't perform, and TLJ split fandom, rumors have it that Disney did interfere this time around-- with Bob Iger insisting on bringing JJ back of Rian Johnson once Treverrow was out. Not sure if that rumor is true, but it wouldn't shock me.

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Disney has been pretty hands off-- the futzing has always been at the Lucasfilm level. Marvel, Lucasfilm, Pixar, The Muppets-- they all operate independently, and as long as they meet their deliverables schedule and things make a profit, Disney will stand hands off and just rule the merchandising/theme park/licensing angle for the money.

 

But after Solo didn't perform, and TLJ split fandom, rumors have it that Disney did interfere this time around-- with Bob Iger insisting on bringing JJ back of Rian Johnson once Treverrow was out. Not sure if that rumor is true, but it wouldn't shock me.

I guess we just have LFL to blame for mishandling the ST, then? I know a lot of people blame Kathleen Kennedy and all, but is that really fair, though? Being LFL president how much does she really have control of when it comes to story? Isn't her job just basically to ensure money is raised for the films, hire people who can do the jobs of writing, directing, and making sure stuff is done on time? Shouldn't the blame be more on JJ and RJ, (and in the case of TROS, Iger's, because they were the ones directly responsible for the stories? I mean on paper, it made sense to hire them I suppose, but if they fail, who is to blame? I mean if I do a poor job, is it my fault, or my boss's? Unless my boss's boss tells me to do something that fails, then is it my fault or the boss's boss?

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