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


Lucas1138
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Maybe in the break neck speed of TROS I missed this-- but the Death Star wreckage wasn't on Endor? Did they even mention it was at least in the Endor system? Or is this yet another example of JJ Abrams not understanding space and thinking that a Galaxy and a Solar system are the same thing?

 

 

 

A quick Google search says Kef Bir is another moon of the planet Endor. It's the ocean moon.

 

I don't think it is actually named in the movie. Don't feel bad, though. Just chalk it up to JJ writing, and Disney issuing press releases and Wookiepedia having to go back and explain things post mortem.

 

 

 

 

...and Courescant was in the Hosian system.

 

JJ Abrams doesn't get space.

 

It REALLY should have been Coruscant we saw blowing up....when we looked up in the sky of Takodana! Never mind it would have taken hundreds of thousands, or millions of years travelling at the speed of light to reach Takodana to see the explosion.

 

 

 

Its one of those ones that just keeps getting worse upon reflection. I mean, the new Fast and Furious movie will probably explain how a character came back from the dead better than this one.

Just like EVERY OTHER JJ film ever made, and The Last Jedi before it. At least JJ didn't add a Beastie Boys song to the sound track as Rey leveled-up to defeat the Emperor.

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Well, I'll clarify, TFA is not BAD, but I chalk that up to Lawrence Kasdan being involved. It was a good launching point for the ST, they just dropped the ball afterwards. But TFA never had the re-watchability of ANH and TESB, most of ROTJ, ROTS, R1, and even Solo had...for me. TFA definitely has flaws (I skip over Han and his monsters every time). Plus, I would argue that TLJ and TROS have damaged TFA, in the same way the last season of GOT did for the rest of the series. But shows like Alias, Fringe, and movies like the JJ Trek, Cloverfield, & Super 8 are decent, possibly even good on first viewing, but just fall apart on repeat viewings. Heck, I even liked TROS the first time around, despite the flaws, but after the second viewing and thinking about the movie, as time goes by, I've got from liking, to thinking it was OKAY, to at this point, starting to really dislike it. I am not even sure I will buy it on bluray when it is out. I guess that means my Skywalker Saga collection will stop at TFA.

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I see that point but honestly I'm firmly someone who doesn't believe one film or episode or anything can retrospectively make everything preceding it worse. I mean I'll always think these sequels could have been planned out a lot better but I've still seen good TV shows / movies that haven't been planned out and still made everything seem like they're come together. The prequels didn't make the originals worse and Rise of Skywalker hasn't made the films preceding it worse.

 

I'm actually of the same opinion for things like Game of Thrones, Lost and Battlestar Galactica - I didn't spend years watching something just to see the final episode and for that to dictate how I feel about the entire thing. I'm there for the journey and for the most part, all of them were great with finales that just botched the ending.

 

For me, the Last Jedi is still a great Star Wars movie regardless of how s**t Rise of Skywalker is. The originals are just as good regardless of how terrible the prequels were.

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I'm speaking only for myself, of course. :)

 

From a cinematic perspective, yes, each film stands alone, and are self contained enough to where you can appreciate a film (or not) as a film, based on its own merits.

 

But, as part 1 of a 3-movie story arc, it's hard for me to watch and enjoy TFA (I tried watching it a couple weeks ago, actually) and not realize this trilogy won't end well. It's like reading and liking the first 1/3 of a book, when the rest disappoints. That is how it is for me.

 

Luckily, I see each trilogy as different stories that are connected by the same universe (and characters), so I can still appreciate the OT. I can pick and choose what I like from the entire 9 movie saga, as well, but when I try to binge the entire ST, it's hard to separate TFA from TLJ and TROS.

 

Maybe it's because TFA ends on a cliffhanger, or maybe I'm just weird like that. :confused:

 

PS:

I so wish that Lucas had elected to do episodes 7,8, and 9 instead of the PT. I think aside from the radically different views Abrams and Johnson had, waiting soo long between the OT and ST, and Carrie Fisher passing away really messed things up.

 

As much as I dislike JJ's writing style, and Johnson's penchant for turning things on its ear, the PT would have been a great place to do all that.

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In hindsight that might've given us a better PT and ST. Lucas would've done a better job following up the OT with the original characters and (still young) cast of the OT. And Tank does always say that Kylo Ren is the Anakin we should've gotten in the PT. Just think if that's what we had gotten and the performance JJ or Rian could've gotten out of Natalie Portman.

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guys can we stop talking about this dumbass movie now

Do you even nightly?

 

In hindsight that might've given us a better PT and ST. Lucas would've done a better job following up the OT with the original characters and (still young) cast of the OT. And Tank does always say that Kylo Ren is the Anakin we should've gotten in the PT. Just think if that's what we had gotten and the performance JJ or Rian could've gotten out of Natalie Portman.

Natalie is def one of those actors that can be amazing if the material is good and she has a director to guide her performance. You can't blame her PT performance on her age, she'd been killing it since she was 11.

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In hindsight that might've given us a better PT and ST. Lucas would've done a better job following up the OT with the original characters and (still young) cast of the OT. And Tank does always say that Kylo Ren is the Anakin we should've gotten in the PT. Just think if that's what we had gotten and the performance JJ or Rian could've gotten out of Natalie Portman.

Yeah, and they could have omitted TPM, and had 3 movies during the Clone Wars. What could have been, but never will be. :(

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I 100% agree with Wader about each movie being its own thing. I also think sometimes too much care is spent with fitting pieces together. Lets face it if you were going to make the OT and knew for a fact you could make all three movies you wouldn't have a Death Star in ANH, blow it up, and then have another in ROTJ. You'd just save it for the end. However ANH needed the Death Star attack. They needed THAT movie to be great so you have to throw the kitchen sink at it. Same thing applies with Obi Wan dying. Your plan would never be "lets kill the mentor off then in the first act of the next movie have that guys ghost tell Luke about some other, even better, mentor." You'd never plan it like that. You'd just have Obi Wan survive. Fact is if JJ killed off the mentor and then Rian had his ghost bring up Yoda people would yell and scream "they arent working together!! Rian wanted a mentor still but JJ killed them off!! They need a plan!!"

 

The opposite applies to TPM. If you didn't KNOW that you could finish the trilogy and had to be 100% sure that TPM was great on it's own you'd never make Anakin 8 years old. You'd never have those scenes in the Senate which grind the movie to a halt. George knew hed be making all three so he could just do whatever he wanted. He didn't need TPM to be great on its own and I don't think he even tried to make it so.

 

Obviously you cannot completely ignore whats happened or what may come down the line but I think most of the time you should just take the 2-2.5 hours you are given and make the best god damn movie you can and then worry about the next movie in the next movie.

 

I think it's hard enough to make a good movie without worrying about all that stuff. Just make a good movie.

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Yeah I remember Christopher Nolan saying something like that when the Dark Knight came out. There were rumours they were gonna save the Two Face stuff for the third movie and when asked about it, he said he doesnt save material for a sequel, if it makes the film better now hell incorporate it in.

 

That said, Star Wars is a little different I guess because you need to save some stuff for the next one when youve already dedicated yourself to a trilogy. But that was probably the biggest mistake, continuing the Skywalker saga when it could of just worked better as its own thing.

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I 100% agree with Wader about each movie being its own thing. I also think sometimes too much care is spent with fitting pieces together. Lets face it if you were going to make the OT and knew for a fact you could make all three movies you wouldn't have a Death Star in ANH, blow it up, and then have another in ROTJ. You'd just save it for the end. However ANH needed the Death Star attack. They needed THAT movie to be great so you have to throw the kitchen sink at it. Same thing applies with Obi Wan dying. Your plan would never be "lets kill the mentor off then in the first act of the next movie have that guys ghost tell Luke about some other, even better, mentor." You'd never plan it like that. You'd just have Obi Wan survive. Fact is if JJ killed off the mentor and then Rian had his ghost bring up Yoda people would yell and scream "they arent working together!! Rian wanted a mentor still but JJ killed them off!! They need a plan!!"

 

The opposite applies to TPM. If you didn't KNOW that you could finish the trilogy and had to be 100% sure that TPM was great on it's own you'd never make Anakin 8 years old. You'd never have those scenes in the Senate which grind the movie to a halt. George knew hed be making all three so he could just do whatever he wanted. He didn't need TPM to be great on its own and I don't think he even tried to make it so.

 

Obviously you cannot completely ignore whats happened or what may come down the line but I think most of the time you should just take the 2-2.5 hours you are given and make the best god damn movie you can and then worry about the next movie in the next movie.

 

I think it's hard enough to make a good movie without worrying about all that stuff. Just make a good movie.

 

Aside from ESB having a cliffhanger, and ROTJ paying those cliffhangers off, the OT managed to have three stand alone films. Even with the connecting themes and character arcs, they all work on their own... but also work as a whole.

 

At the very least the ST could have had very simple prompts to work from.

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Movie making seems to be one of those professions that everyone seems to think they have some degree of expertise in. Probably because we can all tell when something stinks. But most of us couldn't write a good movie to save our lives.

Professional screenwriters know writing. They know how structure works, where to put certain beats, how to compose a story in acts, how to write dialogue that works, and I don't know - I don't even know how to describe what goes into it. But they know a bunch of stuff about writing. I assume.

And as that goes for writing a movie, I would think it goes for a trilogy too. Can professional writers not figure out how to plan out all the beats of a three-part saga? It is what they do for a living.

Maybe Tank can explain it to me.

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They definitely can, I think this is a case of an owner (Disney) flexing their muscles and overriding creative decisions that might have already been in place. There is enough rumours out there that JJ coming back for Episode IX wasnt a Lucasfilm decision but a Disney one, enough that Im inclined to believe it.

 

That said Tank is literally the only professional in the industry here, so I could just be talking out of my arse.

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No-- you're not wrong.

 

There is an underlying problem in Hollywood in that most all the studios are now owned by megacorprations. It's the same issue that has effect mainstream news. Before news outlets were imbalanced, fair, and only interested in the news. Being acquired by giant corporations makes them now beholden to making profits. That's why CNN.com is an absolute ckick-bait joke of a news site. It's why everything gets sensationalized.

The studios no longer want to take risks. People complain about all movies being remakes, adaptions, sequels, and shared universes. That's what gets made because they all technically have built in audiences. After a hundred years studio heads finally had to admit they could not predict what makes a hit. There is still magic in movies, and sometimes you don't know what makes something work and something else not. There's movies with perfect A-lists casts, and award winning writers and directors that fall flat.

 

The only thing the bean counters can do, is market research. If comic book X sells this many issues a month, or this actor has X amount of followers on twitter, or X book has sold a million copies... this is what they look for because it's the only thing an investor/financier can be shown that comes close to being proof of a profit.

 

That dictates content, which leads to execs wanting make the most accessible and non-offensive version of said content, so they give NOTES. i know a lot about writer. I have a college degree and a decent resume. But every project I have worked on, I end up getting notes from an exec that doesn't write, is usually younger than me, and probably is an idiot. They just have to make sure they deliver their boss a product that won't fail. So if they don't get it, they assume the audience won't. If it makes them uncomfortable, confused, offended-- whatever they FEEL, they assume the audience will, and you better fix it.

 

But with Star Wars, you have the biggest studio/corporation of them all with hundreds of million in licensing deals, theme park attractions, and a 4 billion dollar buy in to make a profit from. So if they see fandom divided after TLJ as a problem, you can guarantee they are getting in there and interfering.

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What Tank is saying is what I think most fans were worried about when Disney bought it. Thats why when RJ came in and said he was given very little direction other than "do what comes next" was exciting. It seemed, if anything, Disney was doing the exact opposite. Thats part of the reason Im ok with things maybe not matching up 100% perfect from TFA to TLJ (although I certainly think it meshes better than most seem to) because the idea of talented people being given alot of freedom seemed much more exciting. Not just for TLJ itself but for the overall future of the franchise. An overly managed Lucasfilm is bad for Star Wars long term.

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What Tank is saying is what I think most fans were worried about when Disney bought it. Thats why when RJ came in and said he was given very little direction other than "do what comes next" was exciting. It seemed, if anything, Disney was doing the exact opposite. Thats part of the reason Im ok with things maybe not matching up 100% perfect from TFA to TLJ (although I certainly think it meshes better than most seem to) because the idea of talented people being given alot of freedom seemed much more exciting. Not just for TLJ itself but for the overall future of the franchise. An overly managed Lucasfilm is bad for Star Wars long term.

JJ had his way with TFA and Rian had his with TLJ-- but then fandom imploded and Solo bombed. So I am not shocked at all Disney got involved. I mean-- we don't know for sure if Bob Iger was REALLY the one that insisted Abrams be brought back. I don't know that notes came from him, or some consultant he hired, or maybe he was just pressuring Kennedy every day, so in turn she questioned everything Terrio and JJ were doing. It's impossible to say for sure-- but when you look at TROS, and the walking back of TLJ stuff, the pacing, the insane amount of ADR-- all of these things are surefire evidence of a director and/or writer taking notes from more than one power, and not having the freedom to ignore them.

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No-- you're not wrong.

 

There is an underlying problem in Hollywood in that most all the studios are now owned by megacorprations. It's the same issue that has effect mainstream news. Before news outlets were imbalanced, fair, and only interested in the news. Being acquired by giant corporations makes them now beholden to making profits. That's why CNN.com is an absolute ckick-bait joke of a news site. It's why everything gets sensationalized.

The studios no longer want to take risks. People complain about all movies being remakes, adaptions, sequels, and shared universes. That's what gets made because they all technically have built in audiences. After a hundred years studio heads finally had to admit they could not predict what makes a hit. There is still magic in movies, and sometimes you don't know what makes something work and something else not. There's movies with perfect A-lists casts, and award winning writers and directors that fall flat.

 

The only thing the bean counters can do, is market research. If comic book X sells this many issues a month, or this actor has X amount of followers on twitter, or X book has sold a million copies... this is what they look for because it's the only thing an investor/financier can be shown that comes close to being proof of a profit.

 

That dictates content, which leads to execs wanting make the most accessible and non-offensive version of said content, so they give NOTES. i know a lot about writer. I have a college degree and a decent resume. But every project I have worked on, I end up getting notes from an exec that doesn't write, is usually younger than me, and probably is an idiot. They just have to make sure they deliver their boss a product that won't fail. So if they don't get it, they assume the audience won't. If it makes them uncomfortable, confused, offended-- whatever they FEEL, they assume the audience will, and you better fix it.

 

But with Star Wars, you have the biggest studio/corporation of them all with hundreds of million in licensing deals, theme park attractions, and a 4 billion dollar buy in to make a profit from. So if they see fandom divided after TLJ as a problem, you can guarantee they are getting in there and interfering.

This is exactly what I have thought has gone on in Hollywood and TV for a long time now. So to read someone on the inside confirm it is almost...I dont even know the word. But it just makes me think its any wonder that we can get a good movie at all nowadays.

 

What Tank is saying is what I think most fans were worried about when Disney bought it. Thats why when RJ came in and said he was given very little direction other than "do what comes next" was exciting. It seemed, if anything, Disney was doing the exact opposite. Thats part of the reason Im ok with things maybe not matching up 100% perfect from TFA to TLJ (although I certainly think it meshes better than most seem to) because the idea of talented people being given alot of freedom seemed much more exciting. Not just for TLJ itself but for the overall future of the franchise. An overly managed Lucasfilm is bad for Star Wars long term.

It would have probably worked better had they given JJ or Rian the whole trilogy first AND THEN given them the freedom to have at it. Hiring a different writer/director combo for each film and then giving them the freedom to take the story wherever they wished seems to be putting the cart before the horse.
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Its come up a bit here regarding why Arndt wanted a year to work on the script - read something today, that while a rumour, makes a lot more sense. Again no evidence but inclined to believe it.

 

He wanted to work on the trilogy as a whole and plan it all out, not just develop Episode 7. Makes the one year thing a bit more respectable in retrospect, but when youre working on a stringent timeline, probably not what Disney wanted to hear.

 

Edit: though, again rumoured, he was aiming for a yearly release ala LoTR. Which actually would have benefited the franchise in a way, shoot back to back and less interference from Disney since majority is in the bag.

 

But I think this is where Lucas always had the best approach - three year releases, reducing over saturation.

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