Film Star Wars Episode IX The Rise of Skywalker [Theories]

[Redlambs]

When I make long posts explaining how I feel as best I can, they get the "tl;dr" treatment and end up ignored. When I try to summarise my feelings and keep them as brief as possible, I get told I haven't explained myself well enough. I can't win.

You can try reading my post again for a start and thinking about it, it's not all about you! I asked about the film and how it's "refreshing" and "mines it's own investigations" and "greater than the sum of it's parts". As in people keep saying Johnson did something different, but is the buffy love and killing Luke to piss the fans off (oh and flying leia) really it?

I finally read one of your posts fully and question you on it, and you miss the point of what I'm asking

 

[Ubik]

That's a lot of words, but you do realise you haven't actually said what it does that makes it "refreshing" or what it actually "mines"? You've told the podcast story before, you've said it's bigger than it's sum before, but through it all your wordy posts you have failed to actually say how. D- at best mate

Anyway I've asked numerous times in SW threads why people think it's actually done anything different, but there's never an answer. It honestly looks like people like it more simply because it's not a nostalgia throwback quite as much as the others (despite still obviously being one) and because Johnson went on and on about changing things (which he actually didn't). I mean I love laughing at manchildren as much as the next guy, but I obviously don't see how it stands out either as a well made film or story.

I think there's two different things at work there - different to previous Star Wars films, and different to the expectations of that particular Star Wars film. It obviously has a lot of similar threads with Empire - not least that it's basically a film about failure - but from the saber-toss at the start, to the Luke/Ben flashbacks, to the parental reveal, to the throne room, to the Luke-Ren showdown, it doesn't quite go *cough* the way you think. You might say "ah but he's just being different at those places for the sake of it", but I don't really agree, all those moments are rooted in character and all of them, to me at least, work. But given the prestige and fanaticism around the Star Wars brand (and I'm talking in kids' film terms here), it would be very easy for a director/writer to come in and basically just go with more or less what the fans expect to happen - Snoke's Plagueis, Rey's a Skywalker, and Luke has only been hiding on an uncharted planet for years after destroying any trace of how to get there because he's trying to come up with some ancient super-jedi skills to rip Star Destroyers from the sky, and has never done anything wrong since ROTJ. And yeah, maybe that would've been good. I doubt it, because that's basically what Rise of Skywalker is and it's not particularly good, but maybe. But Johnson took it in a direction that I think plenty of others would've been afraid to, given the circumstances (Canto Bight is the only bit I find flat-out bad, but I also find Ewoks flat-out bad), and that's what I think most people are getting at when they say "different" or "unexpected". And given the reaction to it, I doubt anyone will ever be given such free reign again, and we're in for some cookie-cutter MCU type stuff from here on out.

I think the big problem is that they had one director/writer framing the beginning of the story who is essentially a producer, whose only actual films have been either sequels or, in the case of Super 8, a (shit) homage. Then to continue the same story, brought in someone who is first and foremost a writer and was bound to find different threads to pull on. And then, even more bafflingly, they hired the guy that did Jurassic World to tie it all up. Which then predictably goes balls up because he's crap. All without anyone overseeing it to make sure it actually fit together as they went on. It's like hiring Lord and Miller to do a film, then getting Ron "Safe Pair Of Hands" Howard to replace them - something is going to get lost in translation.

I'd love to see a Rian Johnson trilogy (doubt that'll happen now). I'd probably be highly entertained by an Abrams one. But the two together is like oil and water and I don't think anyone has ended up particularly satisfied by the result, including Abrams and Johnson.

 

[sullydnl]

That's a lot of words, but you do realise you haven't actually said what it does that makes it "refreshing" or what it actually "mines"? You've told the podcast story before, you've said it's bigger than it's sum before, but through it all your wordy posts you have failed to actually say how. D- at best mate

Anyway I've asked numerous times in SW threads why people think it's actually done anything different, but there's never an answer. It honestly looks like people like it more simply because it's not a nostalgia throwback quite as much as the others (despite still obviously being one) and because Johnson went on and on about changing things (which he actually didn't). I mean I love laughing at manchildren as much as the next guy, but I obviously don't see how it stands out either as a well made film or story.

It's not that there's all that much different to TLJ.

It's the best looking film of the series, it unceremoniously killed off the supposed big bad, it made a point of not having its main character be related to other characters in the way every other fecker in this inbred universe seems to be, it did something fans didn't expect with the Luke Skywalker character and it played around with a meta-narrative about how reverential we should be towards the past. That's mostly it really.

It's all relative though. In the grand scheme of this fairly straightforward series of family-friendly blockbusters, that's enough to make it one of the more interesting ones.

I didn't think this new one was near as good but it was still a perfectly fun watch, as they all are to varying degrees bar maybe one or two. The real interest comes from how furiously people react to them, to the point where the films' directors end up sounding like politicians dealing with the fallout from some terrible election campaign.

 

[Scarecrow]

I think I like the prequels more

 

[robinamicrowave]

You can try reading my post again for a start and thinking about it, it's not all about you! I asked about the film and how it's "refreshing" and "mines it's own investigations" and "greater than the sum of it's parts". As in people keep saying Johnson did something different, but is the buffy love and killing Luke to piss the fans off (oh and flying leia) really it?

I finally read one of your posts fully and question you on it, and you miss the point of what I'm asking

For what it's worth, I don't think killing Luke was done to annoy the fans. I thought the idea from the start was that Han, Luke and Leia would pass the torch on in each episode of the new trilogy? So Han would go first as he did during The Force Awakens, then Luke would go during The Last Jedi, leaving Leia to teach Rey and then probably die herself in the final episode. Carrie Fisher's death obviously changed things there (and stopped them doing re-shoots of the flying scene iirc), but it's open secret that Lucas imagined Luke becoming a recluse after being betrayed by one of his students.

As it happens, I think this is part of what made The Last Jedi so refreshing for me. It's easy to forget now, given everything that's happened, that the final shot of The Force Awakens convinced people that Luke was going to come back and send Star Destroyers crashing into suns with his bare hands. Rey was also definitely linked to someone in the original trilogy in some way, Snoke also had to be Darth Plaguies reincarnate, etc. etc. I don't think Rian Johnson abandoned the past and pissed all over Star Wars mythology, but he did strip it quite a lot of it away to have a look at the people underneath.

Of course Luke would be a recluse after Kylo turned on him, of course Rey being a nobody rather than yet another member of Star Wars royalty is a better message to send to the average girl in the audience, of course Snoke was an obstacle on Kylo's rise to power rather than anything greater, etc. As someone who likes Star Wars a lot but was getting bored of the mythology, lore, and exclusivity, all that stuff felt freeing and refreshing to me. Seeing The Rise of Skywalker reverse all of that was ... well.

Aside from all the plot conclusions I enjoyed, I also thought it was a really compelling character drama (which I honestly hadn't felt about a Star Wars film since Luke's time on Dagobah in Empire), it had something to say about the effects of war and capitalism on the general populace (which the prequels tried to do but failed to make it compelling or accessible), and it looked absolutely fecking beautiful from the first second to last (after watching the prequels it was a huge relief). I'm not saying that The Last Jedi is the best Star Wars film and that people who dislike it are alt-right idiots, I'm just saying it's my favourite.

 

[Schmeichel's Cartwheel]

Any good?

 

[Art Vandelay]

For what it's worth, I don't think killing Luke was done to annoy the fans. I thought the idea from the start was that Han, Luke and Leia would pass the torch on in each episode of the new trilogy? So Han would go first as he did during The Force Awakens, then Luke would go during The Last Jedi, leaving Leia to teach Rey and then probably die herself in the final episode. Carrie Fisher's death obviously changed things there (and stopped them doing re-shoots of the flying scene iirc), but it's open secret that Lucas imagined Luke becoming a recluse after being betrayed by one of his students.

As it happens, I think this is part of what made The Last Jedi so refreshing for me. It's easy to forget now, given everything that's happened, that the final shot of The Force Awakens convinced people that Luke was going to come back and send Star Destroyers crashing into suns with his bare hands. Rey was also definitely linked to someone in the original trilogy in some way, Snoke also had to be Darth Plaguies reincarnate, etc. etc. I don't think Rian Johnson abandoned the past and pissed all over Star Wars mythology, but he did strip it quite a lot of it away to have a look at the people underneath.

Of course Luke would be a recluse after Kylo turned on him, of course Rey being a nobody rather than yet another member of Star Wars royalty is a better message to send to the average girl in the audience, of course Snoke was an obstacle on Kylo's rise to power rather than anything greater, etc. As someone who likes Star Wars a lot but was getting bored of the mythology, lore, and exclusivity, all that stuff felt freeing and refreshing to me. Seeing The Rise of Skywalker reverse all of that was ... well.

Aside from all the plot conclusions I enjoyed, I also thought it was a really compelling character drama (which I honestly hadn't felt about a Star Wars film since Luke's time on Dagobah in Empire), it had something to say about the effects of war and capitalism on the general populace (which the prequels tried to do but failed to make it compelling or accessible), and it looked absolutely fecking beautiful from the first second to last (after watching the prequels it was a huge relief). I'm not saying that The Last Jedi is the best Star Wars film and that people who dislike it are alt-right idiots, I'm just saying it's my favourite.

That's not the first time you've said that, what exactly do you mean by it?

 

[robinamicrowave]

That's not the first time you've said that, what exactly do you mean by it?

If you discover Star Wars - or any long-running franchise for that matter - as a relative newbie and find out that nearly every single character has a Wookiepedia page that's a hundred miles long it can feel a little daunting and alienating. In the case of the new film, I have no problem remembering who Palpatine is because I've seen the films loads of times, but would a kid know exactly who he is in all nine films? I know what Endor is and understand why the ruins of the Death Star would be there but would a new fan know? For us, this kind of knowledge is second nature, but for new fans it takes a lot of effort just to keep up the pace. Thankfully one of my best friends has been a Star Wars obsessive ever since he saw The Phantom Menace in the cinemas, so he's my encyclopedia if I have any questions, but even he was stunned by the sheer amount of expanded universe stuff in the new one.

Endless lore and mythology is best left to extended universes and fanfictions, in my view. I'm not a big fan of J.K. Rowling adding things to Harry Potter and retroactively changing things after the fact, but at least the Pottermore site is only important to those who want to access it. In Star Wars (and in bits of LOTR to be fair, which I love), there's always this implication that you need to read about this guy, or that guy, or that city, or that region, or that realm, in order to fully understand what you're watching. That's not fair really. It's one of the things I really appreciated about the later seasons of Game of Thrones, to be honest; you didn't need to be an expert of the books or the show to follow the story, they just narrowed it down to the most important and memorable characters and followed them. The same goes for The Last Jedi really, which has Rey & Luke talking for a while, Poe & Leia arguing for a while, and Finn & Rose off doing their mission, with Kylo & the First Order dropping in to each storyline as the film goes along. There's no teasing towards anything other than what's happening on screen in front of you.

Mythology and lore is fun if you're a fan and want to know more about the universe you're watching, but it's boring and overwhelming if you're not. Mythology and lore should inform the current story, absolutely, but making it crucial is a problem. It's one of the reasons why the prequels are so stuffy and self-indulgent, and it's one of the reasons why The Rise of Skywalker is so insular and regressive. The Force Awakens was a film for today's kids who will grow up to love Star Wars as we all do, and The Last Jedi was further confirmation that this trilogy was for the new audience and the new characters. The Rise of Skywalker comes in at the last second and says "Actually, no. You know what? Today's kids are going to have to know Palpatine's significance. They're going to have to know about Endor's geographical positioning in relation to the Death Star. They're going to have to accept that you have to be Star Wars royalty to be special."

Kids who grew up in the 70s got their complete trilogy. Kids who grew up in the 90s got their complete trilogy. Kids who grew up in the 2010s got two films before the last one was handed to the 70s and 90s kids because they threw a big enough tantrum. I'm not sure that's the best message to be sending out to new fans.

 

[Mr Pigeon]

Would it be wrong to say that despite it being a rehash of A New Hope; The Force Awakens is my favourite SW movie? Those first scenes with Kylo were unbelievable and felt scarier than anything else in the series, and that alone made it my favourite.

It was a rehash but it also had some of its own identity. Feck knows how we went from that film to this thing.

 

[Ubik]

If you discover Star Wars - or any long-running franchise for that matter - as a relative newbie and find out that nearly every single character has a Wookiepedia page that's a hundred miles long it can feel a little daunting and alienating. In the case of the new film, I have no problem remembering who Palpatine is because I've seen the films loads of times, but would a kid know exactly who he is in all nine films? I know what Endor is and understand why the ruins of the Death Star would be there but would a new fan know? For us, this kind of knowledge is second nature, but for new fans it takes a lot of effort just to keep up the pace. Thankfully one of my best friends has been a Star Wars obsessive ever since he saw The Phantom Menace in the cinemas, so he's my encyclopedia if I have any questions, but even he was stunned by the sheer amount of expanded universe stuff in the new one.

Endless lore and mythology is best left to extended universes and fanfictions, in my view. I'm not a big fan of J.K. Rowling adding things to Harry Potter and retroactively changing things after the fact, but at least the Pottermore site is only important to those who want to access it. In Star Wars (and in bits of LOTR to be fair, which I love), there's always this implication that you need to read about this guy, or that guy, or that city, or that region, or that realm, in order to fully understand what you're watching. That's not fair really. It's one of the things I really appreciated about the later seasons of Game of Thrones, to be honest; you didn't need to be an expert of the books or the show to follow the story, they just narrowed it down to the most important and memorable characters and followed them. The same goes for The Last Jedi really, which has Rey & Luke talking for a while, Poe & Leia arguing for a while, and Finn & Rose off doing their mission, with Kylo & the First Order dropping in to each storyline as the film goes along. There's no teasing towards anything other than what's happening on screen in front of you.

Mythology and lore is fun if you're a fan and want to know more about the universe you're watching, but it's boring and overwhelming if you're not. Mythology and lore should inform the current story, absolutely, but making it crucial is a problem. It's one of the reasons why the prequels are so stuffy and self-indulgent, and it's one of the reasons why The Rise of Skywalker is so insular and regressive. The Force Awakens was a film for today's kids who will grow up to love Star Wars as we all do, and The Last Jedi was further confirmation that this trilogy was for the new audience and the new characters. The Rise of Skywalker comes in at the last second and says "Actually, no. You know what? Today's kids are going to have to know Palpatine's significance. They're going to have to know about Endor's geographical positioning in relation to the Death Star. They're going to have to accept that you have to be Star Wars royalty to be special."

Kids who grew up in the 70s got their complete trilogy. Kids who grew up in the 90s got their complete trilogy. Kids who grew up in the 2010s got two films before the last one was handed to the 70s and 90s kids because they threw a big enough tantrum. I'm not sure that's the best message to be sending out to new fans.

Another weird thing is that our introduction to the reality of Palpatine being back is... the opening text crawl It's like a meta-commentary on how pervasive and spoilery modern day trailers are,, that they've actually used the trailer to re-introduce a character whilst making absolutely no effort to do so in the film itself. Kids in a few years watching this all for the first time are gonna be confused.

 

[sullydnl]

This is also a point.

 

[VeevaVee]

Why are people saying Adam Driver is good? I swear he barely does anything in it.

It's a fun film but I just find that Star Wars has suffered from modernisation.

 

[Ramos]

This is also a point.

She essentially got Jar Jar'ed.

 

[Art Vandelay]

If you discover Star Wars - or any long-running franchise for that matter - as a relative newbie and find out that nearly every single character has a Wookiepedia page that's a hundred miles long it can feel a little daunting and alienating. In the case of the new film, I have no problem remembering who Palpatine is because I've seen the films loads of times, but would a kid know exactly who he is in all nine films? I know what Endor is and understand why the ruins of the Death Star would be there but would a new fan know? For us, this kind of knowledge is second nature, but for new fans it takes a lot of effort just to keep up the pace. Thankfully one of my best friends has been a Star Wars obsessive ever since he saw The Phantom Menace in the cinemas, so he's my encyclopedia if I have any questions, but even he was stunned by the sheer amount of expanded universe stuff in the new one.

Endless lore and mythology is best left to extended universes and fanfictions, in my view. I'm not a big fan of J.K. Rowling adding things to Harry Potter and retroactively changing things after the fact, but at least the Pottermore site is only important to those who want to access it. In Star Wars (and in bits of LOTR to be fair, which I love), there's always this implication that you need to read about this guy, or that guy, or that city, or that region, or that realm, in order to fully understand what you're watching. That's not fair really. It's one of the things I really appreciated about the later seasons of Game of Thrones, to be honest; you didn't need to be an expert of the books or the show to follow the story, they just narrowed it down to the most important and memorable characters and followed them. The same goes for The Last Jedi really, which has Rey & Luke talking for a while, Poe & Leia arguing for a while, and Finn & Rose off doing their mission, with Kylo & the First Order dropping in to each storyline as the film goes along. There's no teasing towards anything other than what's happening on screen in front of you.

Mythology and lore is fun if you're a fan and want to know more about the universe you're watching, but it's boring and overwhelming if you're not. Mythology and lore should inform the current story, absolutely, but making it crucial is a problem. It's one of the reasons why the prequels are so stuffy and self-indulgent, and it's one of the reasons why The Rise of Skywalker is so insular and regressive. The Force Awakens was a film for today's kids who will grow up to love Star Wars as we all do, and The Last Jedi was further confirmation that this trilogy was for the new audience and the new characters. The Rise of Skywalker comes in at the last second and says "Actually, no. You know what? Today's kids are going to have to know Palpatine's significance. They're going to have to know about Endor's geographical positioning in relation to the Death Star. They're going to have to accept that you have to be Star Wars royalty to be special."

Kids who grew up in the 70s got their complete trilogy. Kids who grew up in the 90s got their complete trilogy. Kids who grew up in the 2010s got two films before the last one was handed to the 70s and 90s kids because they threw a big enough tantrum. I'm not sure that's the best message to be sending out to new fans.

Except you don't need to know anything from Wookiepedia to enjoy the films there's no implication you need to read about any of it, you're free to ignore it as the vast majority of people do. They've always been that way even when they were pumping out action figures in the 70's you had the cardboard telling you who these characters that were in for one scene were. You never needed to know it, but it's there if you want it. If something that's been there from the start is an issue for you and leaves you somehow feeling left out or excluded then maybe it was never for you.

I dunno how your friend can be stunned by the expanded universe stuff when Disney scrapped it. None of it even matters at all any more because Disney scrapped the lot. It's no longer canon. Canon now is Rey twats everything. Throwing in anything that was once expanded universe is just chucking more shit at the wall and hoping something sticks. Again, Disney's own fault. Why would you even need to know any of the mythology or lore anyway when they will just throw it out the window when they feel like it? Force ghosts can suddenly catch lightsabers in the new film. Even the GoT argument doesn't work because you didn't need to know anything from the books to enjoy it, knowing stuff from the books arguably made it worse and they changed, contradicted or ignored vast swathes of it anyway. That's just a bizarre argument to me. It's like not being able to enjoy Marvel films because there's also comics.

You keep blaming the fans for the failures of Disney. The fans didn't tell them to spend $4bn then not bother to take the time or care to plan out any sort of story. They didn't tell them to commit to a trilogy with no plot laid out. They didn't tell them to wildly change direction and directors. Disney fecked up, Disney fecked up again trying to claw back from that feck up. People on the internet saying bad things about TLJ didn't cause you to "lose your trilogy" as you never had one, there wasn't a coherent story to tell. Wildly mishandling a $4bn purchase and not having a clue what they were doing with it is the problem here, not people complaining about a film they didn't like. "We don't know what we're doing or where this is going." Wasn't exactly a great message to send out to new fans either to be fair.

It's not like they had a particularly hard job just being better than the prequels and yet here we are where they don't seem to have pleased anyone or even told a passable story. They broke the rules of the universe they bought, broke the films that were actually good and built absolutely nothing from it. They spent 3 films doing random shit with not a god damn care in the world for consistent coherent story telling and somehow in your last paragraph you're implying it's the fans fault for not liking what was being shovelled to them. Have they even written enough for any of the new characters to be called characters? I mean the Mandalorian and Rogue One don't get the same hate and no one seems to care about Solo so is it a whiney fan thing or a bad "trilogy" thing?

I can't get my head around that last paragraph.

 

[OohAahMartial]

Hiring JJ for the TFA was a mistake, which they made another mistake by trying to rectify that by hiring Johnson, only to realise that itself was a mistake, so again made a mistake by re-hiring JJ to correct Johnson's mistakes.

Actually, making sequels was the mistake. And not plotting out all the arcs of this trilogy before making them, was a mistake. And not contracting one Director, who wasn't JJ or Johnson, to make all three, was a mistake.

Wondering if selling out to Disney was the primal mistake, but then I remember the prequels.

 

[Mockney]

Kids who grew up in the 70s got their complete trilogy. Kids who grew up in the 90s got their complete trilogy. Kids who grew up in the 2010s got two films before the last one was handed to the 70s and 90s kids because they threw a big enough tantrum. I'm not sure that's the best message to be sending out to new fans.

That’s a bingo!

They did it with Ghostbusters too. I’m dreading Gen X taking over from the boomers. They’ll possibly be even more entitled!...Then the Harry Potter Generation will take over from them and actually lynch J.K Rowling for retrospectively tweeting minor lore changes... before the Marvel Generation destroy the world to prevent a gender flipped remake of Ant-Man & The Wasp in 2050.

Nostalgia kills. Quit while you can.

 

[acnumber9]

For what it's worth, I don't think killing Luke was done to annoy the fans. I thought the idea from the start was that Han, Luke and Leia would pass the torch on in each episode of the new trilogy? So Han would go first as he did during The Force Awakens, then Luke would go during The Last Jedi, leaving Leia to teach Rey and then probably die herself in the final episode. Carrie Fisher's death obviously changed things there (and stopped them doing re-shoots of the flying scene iirc), but it's open secret that Lucas imagined Luke becoming a recluse after being betrayed by one of his students.

As it happens, I think this is part of what made The Last Jedi so refreshing for me. It's easy to forget now, given everything that's happened, that the final shot of The Force Awakens convinced people that Luke was going to come back and send Star Destroyers crashing into suns with his bare hands. Rey was also definitely linked to someone in the original trilogy in some way, Snoke also had to be Darth Plaguies reincarnate, etc. etc. I don't think Rian Johnson abandoned the past and pissed all over Star Wars mythology, but he did strip it quite a lot of it away to have a look at the people underneath.

Of course Luke would be a recluse after Kylo turned on him, of course Rey being a nobody rather than yet another member of Star Wars royalty is a better message to send to the average girl in the audience, of course Snoke was an obstacle on Kylo's rise to power rather than anything greater, etc. As someone who likes Star Wars a lot but was getting bored of the mythology, lore, and exclusivity, all that stuff felt freeing and refreshing to me. Seeing The Rise of Skywalker reverse all of that was ... well.

Aside from all the plot conclusions I enjoyed, I also thought it was a really compelling character drama (which I honestly hadn't felt about a Star Wars film since Luke's time on Dagobah in Empire), it had something to say about the effects of war and capitalism on the general populace (which the prequels tried to do but failed to make it compelling or accessible), and it looked absolutely fecking beautiful from the first second to last (after watching the prequels it was a huge relief). I'm not saying that The Last Jedi is the best Star Wars film and that people who dislike it are alt-right idiots, I'm just saying it's my favourite.

Plus it had hilarious face plants and your mum jokes.

 

[RedSky]

I really wanted to love it, but feck me that was just terrible. No plot, shit villain, no character development and the last set piece was surprisingly disappointing. Both me and my sister (who loved Force Awakens and thought RTJ was decent) came out of this film laughing at how dumb it was. The forced love story between Rey and Ben, urgh, I still can't wrap my head around. It felt like a someone falling in love with their stalker, just so fecking strange.

 

[robinamicrowave]

Except you don't need to know anything from Wookiepedia to enjoy the films there's no implication you need to read about any of it, you're free to ignore it as the vast majority of people do. They've always been that way even when they were pumping out action figures in the 70's you had the cardboard telling you who these characters that were in for one scene were. You never needed to know it, but it's there if you want it. If something that's been there from the start is an issue for you and leaves you somehow feeling left out or excluded then maybe it was never for you.

I dunno how your friend can be stunned by the expanded universe stuff when Disney scrapped it. None of it even matters at all any more because Disney scrapped the lot. It's no longer canon. Canon now is Rey twats everything. Throwing in anything that was once expanded universe is just chucking more shit at the wall and hoping something sticks. Again, Disney's own fault. Why would you even need to know any of the mythology or lore anyway when they will just throw it out the window when they feel like it? Force ghosts can suddenly catch lightsabers in the new film. Even the GoT argument doesn't work because you didn't need to know anything from the books to enjoy it, knowing stuff from the books arguably made it worse and they changed, contradicted or ignored vast swathes of it anyway. That's just a bizarre argument to me. It's like not being able to enjoy Marvel films because there's also comics.

You keep blaming the fans for the failures of Disney. The fans didn't tell them to spend $4bn then not bother to take the time or care to plan out any sort of story. They didn't tell them to commit to a trilogy with no plot laid out. They didn't tell them to wildly change direction and directors. Disney fecked up, Disney fecked up again trying to claw back from that feck up. People on the internet saying bad things about TLJ didn't cause you to "lose your trilogy" as you never had one, there wasn't a coherent story to tell. Wildly mishandling a $4bn purchase and not having a clue what they were doing with it is the problem here, not people complaining about a film they didn't like. "We don't know what we're doing or where this is going." Wasn't exactly a great message to send out to new fans either to be fair.

It's not like they had a particularly hard job just being better than the prequels and yet here we are where they don't seem to have pleased anyone or even told a passable story. They broke the rules of the universe they bought, broke the films that were actually good and built absolutely nothing from it. They spent 3 films doing random shit with not a god damn care in the world for consistent coherent story telling and somehow in your last paragraph you're implying it's the fans fault for not liking what was being shovelled to them. Have they even written enough for any of the new characters to be called characters? I mean the Mandalorian and Rogue One don't get the same hate and no one seems to care about Solo so is it a whiney fan thing or a bad "trilogy" thing?

I can't get my head around that last paragraph.

I don't keep blaming the fans at all. I think The Rise of Skywalker is lacklustre because Disney's cold, dead hands tried to balance J.J. Abrams' inability to answer questions that he himself set up with the fans' demands following The Last Jedi. What you get is what we have. I've referenced this in my posts since seeing the film, it's not my fault if you haven't read them.

The film ... bows out by admitting that its creators weren't big enough or brave enough to stand up to anonymous voices on the Internet expressing their discontent. Regardless of the reasons why, or the behind-the-scenes problems experienced along the way, it will always be remembered as the trilogy that surrendered its creative vision to corporate safety and wilted in the face of criticism.

Older fans can moan and complain all we want but, as you're absolutely right in suggesting, our complaints would come to nothing if Disney had stuck to their guns and carried on making this trilogy for the new generation of Star Wars fans. Instead what they've done is make two films for the new generation before dedicating the final one to people from our generations, and I'm not sure that's fair. This isn't our trilogy (I was a kid when the prequels were out) and whether we enjoy it shouldn't really matter, but Disney have ignored that fact because we're the generations who can vote with our wallets.

I think it's worth stressing again that Palpatine and the Sith had absolutely naff all to do with this trilogy before they were shoved into the opening crawl of the final act. There will have been kids in the cinema this week not knowing who the hell he is or what he's referring to when he says the word "Sith". My dad was always a very big Star Wars fan so I'd already seen the original trilogy on VHS before he took me to see the prequels, so I was just about clued in enough, but there are tonnes of kids my age whose first ever experience with this saga was The Phantom Menace. I think it's safe to assume that there are kids out there who've never seen any of episodes 1-6 and will therefore have no idea of Palp's significance in the overall story (or in the fanbase for that matter).

This is what I mean when I say that bowing to mythology and lore is alienating to new fans. For people our age it's no problem because we know exactly who Palpatine is and what the implications are if someone turns out to be connected to him by blood, but for the kids who only love Rey, Finn & Kylo Ren it's an entire plot point that comes out of thin air. If you look at the entire saga in a linear fashion, nobody has said the word "Sith" for almost 50 years, Palpatine has been dead for an entire generation, and the Jedi have collapsed into myth and exile. The skeletons and memories of the original trilogy are still around but they're decaying landmarks in the background of a story that (until The Rise of Skywalker) was primarily interested in its new characters and didn't just defer to the past.

If in ten/twenty years time, this current generation of pre-teens who love Star Wars remember this trilogy fondly like we do the originals (or have a kind of silly nostalgic affection for it like we do for the prequels) then I'll hold my hands up and say fair enough. I just don't see that happening.

 

[Djemba-Djemba]

So why did they spend 4 billion to buy the rights to Star Wars and then go into this trilogy without any plan or arc worked out? Has that ever been explained?

Feels like they were just blagging their way through it.

I'd have thought that sort of thing would have been obvious.

 

[robinamicrowave]

Plus it had hilarious face plants and your mum jokes.

God forbid that a Star Wars film contains slapstick and cringe comedy. They've never done that before.

 

[robinamicrowave]

So why did they spend 4 billion to buy the rights to Star Wars and then go into this trilogy without any plan or arc worked out? Has that ever been explained?

Feels like they were just blagging their way through it.

I'd have thought that sort of thing would have been obvious.

I suppose that's my point. I think they did enter the creation process of this trilogy with the idea of a clear arc, they just started fumbling it when they fired Colin Trevorrow from the last film and told Rian Johnson that he could write the last episode but not direct it. Then they continued fumbling it when they handed it to J.J. Abrams midway through creation. Then they completely bottled it when they caved in to negativity after The Last Jedi.

 

[acnumber9]

God forbid that a Star Wars film contains slapstick and cringe comedy. They've never done that before.

Usually by secondary characters who play those roles. I don’t remember Darth Vader and the Emperor using the force for prat falls.

 

[Siorac]

I suppose that's my point. I think they did enter the creation process of this trilogy with the idea of a clear arc, they just started fumbling it when they fired Colin Trevorrow from the last film and told Rian Johnson that he could write the last episode but not direct it. Then they continued fumbling it when they handed it to J.J. Abrams midway through creation. Then they completely bottled it when they caved in to negativity after The Last Jedi.

I don't think they had a clear arc in mind to begin with - just look at how different The Last Jedi is from The Force Awakens. It's almost as if the two directors never even talked to each other.

I agree that Disney then continued fecking things up but they started from a fecked-up position to begin with. Frankly, I wish it had been given to Johnson entirely - half the fanbase might have spat blood at the end but that's happening right now anyway, with the overall story being nowhere near as interesting as it might have been.

 

[RedSky]

I don't even accept the "TLJ backed JJ into a corner" argument. What TLJ actually did was provide a clean slate, all plot points to that point were neatly crossed. Kylo Ren benefitted the most from the film, setting himself up as the chief villain with a decent emotional bond to Rey. Rey had Jedi training like Luke did in Empire and she was more prepared to face her enemy. The Rebels were flying around on the Falcon free to go anywhere in the universe having setup the First Order as the main power.

Perhaps what it needed to do was actually have more story unanswered to force the plot of this film into a direction linking the two films together. It doesn't really feel like a Triology when I think about it, just a series of bad standalones.

 

[Ødegaard]

Very few people would have taken Kylo Ren seriously as the main antagonist. People would have laughed at Vader if the prequels came out before the original trilogy.
TLJ was horseshit. Now let the past die and hope for better Star Wars in the future.

 

[RedSky]

Very few people would have taken Kylo Ren seriously as the main antagonist. People would have laughed at Vader if the prequels came out before the original trilogy.
TLJ was horseshit. Now let the past die and hope for better Star Wars in the future.

Kylo Ren was a joke in the first film but was much better in the 2nd and 3rd films. His character saved the trilogy to a degree, but his redemption arc was pretty poorly handled ultimately. But I thought his and Reys story in the 2nd film was brilliant and saved TLJ personally. Just a shame that film had that awful casino diversion (which wasn't as long on 2nd viewing but still annoying). It suffered from a very bad middle arc.

This film didn't overly have a good act, the first was passable but it went downhill fast after Bens redemption. The final 3rd was so underwhelming, the tone of the film had been set by the numerous 'near deaths'. At that point it was pretty clear Rey was going to be fine and none of the 'Good' cast would die.

As for ranking of films, Rogue One by far the best of the films and has been the only beacon of light from the new stuff.

 

[Ødegaard]

Kylo Ren was a joke in the first film but was much better in the 2nd and 3rd films. His character saved the trilogy to a degree, but his redemption arc was pretty poorly handled ultimately. But I thought his and Reys story in the 2nd film was brilliant and saved TLJ personally. Just a shame that film had that awful casino diversion (which wasn't as long on 2nd viewing but still annoying).

I liked-ish his character, but couldn't have taken him seriously as the main villain due to how much of a child he was. He didn't come across as if it was normal sith rage to me but a child throwing a tantrum. Which is fine for a secondary villain.

 

[CassiusClaymore]

It's shit. I've not watched it but it's definitely shit.

 

[RedSky]

I liked-ish his character, but couldn't have taken him seriously as the main villain due to how much of a child he was. He didn't come across as if it was normal sith rage to me but a child throwing a tantrum. Which is fine for a secondary villain.

He was certainly like that in the first film.

 

[kps88]

I liked-ish his character, but couldn't have taken him seriously as the main villain due to how much of a child he was. He didn't come across as if it was normal sith rage to me but a child throwing a tantrum. Which is fine for a secondary villain.

The main villain doesn't always have to be 100% evil or intimidating. Someone like Ren who has his own internal struggle and isn't just comically evil like Palpatine would have been more interesting to me. Like it or not, that's the villain they spent the last two movies building up and it felt like all that groundwork was wasted for this one in exchange for a cartoon villain.

 

[Djemba-Djemba]

I liked the idea that Kylo Ren couldn't match up to Darth Vader as a villain and knew it himself. In fact doesn't Rey taunt him about that in the first film?

It made him different from yet another " cool, bad ass" villain like fecking Darth Maul. The idea of Kylo Ren trying to be evil but struggling with it was a decent concept I thought and Adam Driver played it off really well.

It just didn't really seem to go anywhere after that first film. It really felt like the directors were going tit for tat in ignoring or contradicting each others work

 

[Walrus]

I just rewatched the original lightsaber duel between Obi Wan and Vader, back in Episode IV. My god, its truly awful compared with modern standards

 

[Ødegaard]

The main villain doesn't always have to be 100% evil or intimidating. Someone like Ren who has his own internal struggle and isn't just comically evil like Palpatine would have been more interesting to me. Like it or not, that's the villain they spent the last two movies building up and it felt like all that groundwork was wasted for this one in exchange for a cartoon villain.

You can have a internal struggle without having to act like a child.

 

[Ubik]

I just rewatched the original lightsaber duel between Obi Wan and Vader, back in Episode IV. My god, its truly awful compared with modern standards

Did you ever catch the fan-made update of that? It's not bad.

 

[Walrus]

Did you ever catch the fan-made update of that? It's not bad.

Wow. I have no idea how people manage to do that sort of thing - really impressive. Again, compared with the original fight its utterly night and day. Also think the update captures the character of the situation better - the old Jedi whose powers are on the wane, vs Vader who clearly outpowers him.

 

[Mockney]

So sad.

 

[robinamicrowave]

So sad.

I'm calling a truce, guys. @Redlambs + @Art Vandelay.

I know the footage in this will have been selected to make the movie look good, but in the positive reactions we do see there's still a beautiful innocence to all of them that's made me think about things. Why don't we react to movies like that anymore? Nowadays, I feel like these people would be ripped to shreds on social media for daring to be so openly elated about a dumb movie. Either that or they'd go home and feel compelled to argue like crazy with people on the Internet about whether it was a good or bad idea to redeem Vader before he died. Maybe we're all just too invested in things now, or too aware of other peoples' reactions, or too post-modern and aware of our own imaginations, or just less impressed and harder to please? Going into The Rise of Skywalker (or Endgame even, or the Game of Thrones finale) it felt like the world was waiting with baited breath to see whether they'd fail or succeed just so they could then rip into the other team. In this video there are kids saying they hope Vader kills Luke and such, but I doubt there's anywhere for them to go for that to become properly invested in that opinion and turn it into part of their identity. This is something I'm absolutely guilty of so I apologise. I'm backing away from the argument!

 

[Fortitude]

I really wanted to love it, but feck me that was just terrible. No plot, shit villain, no character development and the last set piece was surprisingly disappointing. Both me and my sister (who loved Force Awakens and thought RTJ was decent) came out of this film laughing at how dumb it was. The forced love story between Rey and Ben, urgh, I still can't wrap my head around. It felt like a someone falling in love with their stalker, just so fecking strange.

Finally, someone says it! Me and the OH were laughing at the absurdity of this weirdo following her all over the place like Pepe Le Pew and finally having her succumb to evident Stockholm Syndrome.

----

The film wasn't very good. Whether hyper-analysed or left at a paragraph or sentence, the only reason to even make note of how bad it is is because it's Star Wars. This 'trilogy' has been butchered and is completely incongruous to the point the audience have no emotional connectivity threaded through onscreen events.

They had a real problem with the Force in this film, to the point it became farcical in itself. Palpatine; Luke; Leia; Rey; Kylo; Finn all being wildy erractic with it in such a way you don't try and make sense of it after a point: one minute, Rey and Kylo are playing drone wars with giant ships in mid-flight, the next moment, they're back to normal. Palpatine brings down a fleet with a point of his fingers and the next he's struggling whilst doing Nosferatu impression as Rey walks him down... the same guy who held both her and Kylo in stasis just a bit before that. A guy whose only limitation with the Force is his mind? Luke's ghost is so strong it begs the question of why he's not more involved than he is. Finn is Force sensitive, or is he? Who cares? The writers sure as shit didn't!

One of, if not the worst failing of the film, is its lack of identity. It doesn't know what it wants to be, so how can the audience? It tries to appease too many people it shouldn't, which completely offsets the pacing and structure as instead of constructing an immersive world, the viewer is quickly swished from X to y to Z as too much is crammed in that has no business being in the film in the first place. There is no exposition; you are just told or dumped into a myriad of scenarios that you neither care about or have any doubt whatsoever that nothing particularly bad, or certainly nothing permanent has occurred, which in turn means you're not given a chance to emote before being whisked off to the next bit of irreverence that doesn't mean anything or have any tangible worth.

It's impossible to look at these films objectively as a grown adult, however, which lends itself to the question of what viewers in the age range that Star Wars is supposed to capture you at thought of the film and the trilogy itself. I should imagine they've watched it and wondered what all the hype and bluster was about. They've not been given a Vader, a yoda a Luke, Chewbacca, R2D2, C3PO, Hans, Lando Leia of their own... or have they? Rey seems like a character so strong and independent that she doesn't need anyone; practically all of her moments of realisation come from self with no real struggle or impact - she fecks off and leaves her crew on a whim, all the time, with no explanations or deliberation, what purpose do they serve for her? As far as this film is concerned, she only needed Kylo, and more for him to fill in the blanks for her than anything much else. Luke was troubled and constantly guided by yoda, Hans, Leia and even his dialogue with Vader was deeper-seated than anything conveyed to Rey. It feels like she needed a lot more exposition than she got, but by this film, I don't think anyone was thrown by anything she could do. The problem with not padding her out is you're left with a hollow Jedi avatar, Force savant who can do anything moreso than a character you've been on a journey with who can surprise you by exceeding their own limitations or what have you - as Rey is written, she has no limitations, no adversity and her only constraint is herself, not the world around her. They could have done so much more with the character, but that wasn't to be.

Anyway, if Disney keep this up, they're going to kill a cash cow they could've milked for literal decades. I don't think a new Star Wars brings with it anything like the hype and excitement it did post Jar-Jar. They need to take a step back, map out a world, get the directors on board and tell a coherent story, these disjointed, sorta fan service, sorta not, movies won't do - there should be a lot more to a Star Wars movie than the main protagonist and antagonist, and I really don't feel as though the peripheral characters in this got anything like the attention and importance attributed to them as those in the original trilogy did. Being Rey's cheerleaders is pretty undignified in a fight for the galaxy. Those I mentioned in the previous paragraph all became icons in their own right - ten years from now, will anyone but Rey and Kylo be given any reference or reverence at all? How many youngsters watching ESB or RotJ wanted to be Hans or Lando or even fecking Boba Fett? How many mimicked yoda or Vader? These can never have the same cultural impact, but I doubt they'll even have a fraction of that, which is pretty huge for Star Wars, which probably has the most avid fanbase of any movie franchise.

 

[balaks]

I enjoyed it a lot and also got a little emotional at certain parts but that is standard for me with Star Wars. It's not a perfect film by any stretch but I have better thoughts about it than TLJ - I'm looking forward to seeing it again so I can make a proper judgement on it.