*** STAR WARS: THE RISE OF SKYWALKER *** (Spoiler Thread)

167,621 Views | 1435 Replies | Last: 4 yr ago by Brian Earl Spilner
Zombie Jon Snow
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Their mistakes or issues imho were:

1. not laying it out start to finish
2. Giving RJ free reign in TLJ only telling him just don't kill the three main chars, but yeah you can kill luke
3. the unfortunate death of Carrie Fisher


1. If you lay it out start to finish and that is your ending then you:

a. fine kill off Snoke but reveal The Emperor behind it all at the end of TLJ
OR
b. make it Darth Palgueis (played by McDirmand if you want) and he has been the voices of everyone in his head including the Emperors, but still reveal it in TLJ

Either way some explanation is then given (briefly) and fleshed out by the entire fanbase between films and we all know who the big bad guy is going into TROS and can explain the creation of the Final Order fleet too.

2. Reigning in RJ (as opposed to reigning in JJ) would have made a more concise in-line middle film. Keep Luke from being a giant jackass basically and leave out some of the politically correct SJW crap.

3. and if they knew what would happen with Carrie of course they would have killed off Leia in TLJ instead of the dumb space floatie force BS thing, and have Luke still do the force thing vs Kylo but not die and the Leia/Luke moment is her in spirit form. Then Luke is in TROS which makes some sense (and still works with her visit to the island) but he then sacrifices himself to kill Kylo similar to Leia - then Rey resurrects Kylo and he saves her as we saw. Also don't have to shoehorn Leia into TROS.

Those minor differences alone make a much more coherent story. Granted #3 could not be helped.

1 and 2 could have been and I just assumed KK was doing that or the SW staff of experts working between them all.

Anyway it is what it is.
bobinator
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I do think critics are a little harsher now than they were in 2002. Especially because there's much easier access to each other's criticisms than their used to be.

But I also think expectations play a big part. After the Phantom Menace, expectations were pretty low. After The Last Jedi, which you have to remember the critics liked, I think expectations for this movie were pretty high. And not only did this movie not meet those expectations because of those things I listed, the movie also backtracked on some things that the critics liked from The Last Jedi.

Honestly I think it's even as simple as just undoing Rey's storyline.

I think a lot of people, not just critics, I'm certainly one of them, loved the idea that finally there was going to be a force-using main character in this franchise that wasn't part of the 'royal family,' didn't have some kind of mysterious background, she was just a nobody from nowhere who through her own actions and strength of character the force had chosen. I think a lot of people really fell in love with that idea.

And then for this movie to just be like 'lol jk she's Palpys granddaughter' just was really bad to a lot of people. If Abrams hadn't undone that, and had just let Rey be noone from nowhere this movie would be thought of as being at least pretty good. But to undo that felt like just a flat out 'f you' to the previous movie.
bobinator
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DannyDuberstein said:

I don't know. I thought all of that Trade Federation stuff in the first few prequels was kind of convoluted crap.
Yeah, in a way. Certainly if you really tried to talk through why the Trade Federation was blockading Naboo then it gets a little complicated, but what we were seeing on the screen wasn't very complicated. They also really made it simple in the first two movies by making the 'bad guys' droids. We didn't really care about them at all.
Texaggie7nine
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I think JJ felt she needed to be the Emperor's bloodline in order to have such a dramatic pull toward the dark side.
7nine
bobinator
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Maybe, but I still think it was a bad decision. If for no other reason than to me it's just bad form to have one movie in a franchise seem openly antagonistic of another one. Like I said, it kind of took me out of the moment in this movie a couple of times.

Maybe that's what JJ intended during The Force Awakens, but he needed to audible to the new reality after The Last Jedi. Certainly plenty of regular people had been drawn to the dark side before.
TCTTS
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I still can't believe Abrams did that. I would have bet a thousand dollars he'd at least honor the "nobody" angle, of all things. And what's crazy is he could have told basically the same story without making her actually related to Palpatine. Palpatine could have simply recognized her as an immensely powerful Force user that the Force "chose" or whatever. But no, Abrams had to undo one of the truly great things about TLJ in such blatant, disrespectful fashion, serving as the cherry on top of this whole sh*t Sunday.
TCTTS
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Texaggie7nine said:

I think JJ felt she needed to be the Emperor's bloodline in order to have such a dramatic pull toward the dark side.


To be completely honest, I didn't think Rey needed a pull to the dark side at all. Kylo served that concept well enough. It never once crossed my mind, over the course of three movies, that Rey was even remotely tempted by the dark side. She was too pure, too good, and I just didn't buy that struggle at all in TROS. Her trying to find her place and purpose in the universe was enough without the dark side needing to be a legit option.
Texaggie7nine
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bobinator said:

Maybe, but I still think it was a bad decision. If for no other reason than to me it's just bad form to have one movie in a franchise seem openly antagonistic of another one. Like I said, it kind of took me out of the moment in this movie a couple of times.
Well I hated RJ with a passion for what he did to Luke, so anything to flip him off made me happy.
7nine
Wheatables02
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TCTTS said:

Texaggie7nine said:

I think JJ felt she needed to be the Emperor's bloodline in order to have such a dramatic pull toward the dark side.


To be completely honest, I didn't think Rey needed a pull to the dark side at all. Kylo served that concept well enough. It never once crossed my mind, over the course of three movies, that Rey was even remotely tempted by the dark side. She was too pure, too good, and I just didn't buy that struggle at all in TROS. Her trying to find her place and purpose in the universe was enough without the dark side needing to be a legit option.
If you rewatch TLJ, she pulls towards the dark side while she is meditating and Luke is training her. (I'm sure you remember this though)
TCTTS
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I'm not saying it's not there. I'm just saying I never once believed it as a legit threat.
bobinator
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You could have accomplished that, and almost did, with one scene.

Rey losing control of her powers and KILLING CHEWBACCA would have been an amazingly impactful sequence. It would prove to her why Leia was so adamant about not losing control during her training, because she ends up hurting the people she's trying to save (ONE OF THE MAIN BEATS OF THE ENTIRE SERIES). So then after that she's not tempted by the dark side because knows down that path lies only death and destruction.
TCTTS
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Agreed. That was such a cool scene, too.
bobinator
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Maybe this isn't the thread for this, but who cares at this point, but I'm still not sure I totally get why people didn't like what Rian Johnson did with Luke. What exactly were you hoping for/didn't get/did get/etc?
Texaggie7nine
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TCTTS said:

Texaggie7nine said:

I think JJ felt she needed to be the Emperor's bloodline in order to have such a dramatic pull toward the dark side.


To be completely honest, I didn't think Rey needed a pull to the dark side at all. Kylo served that concept well enough. It never once crossed my mind, over the course of three movies, that Rey was even remotely tempted by the dark side. She was too pure, too good, and I just didn't buy that struggle at all in TROS. Her trying to find her place and purpose in the universe was enough without the dark side needing to be a legit option.
I actually kind of appreciated it. Luke was too pure to fall for the Emperors and the Dark Side's temptations. Anakin was tempted and did turn. So now it kind of makes sense in the 3rd act (if you will) of the saga for the protagonist to really be torn both ways, where you could see them go either way.
7nine
bobinator
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Yeah, that was a 'holy ****' moment.
TCTTS
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Buck Compton
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bobinator said:

You could have accomplished that, and almost did, with one scene.

Rey losing control of her powers and KILLING CHEWBACCA would have been an amazingly impactful sequence. It would prove to her why Leia was so adamant about not losing control during her training, because she ends up hurting the people she's trying to save (ONE OF THE MAIN BEATS OF THE ENTIRE SERIES). So then after that she's not tempted by the dark side because knows down that path lies only death and destruction.

You're saying that people would be happier if our main hero killed Chewbacca??
bobinator
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It just never felt like a real possibility to me either. To me the only way this would have been workable would have been to leave out that she trained with Leia and for Rey to basically be completely self taught.

Then she wouldn't really know that there was a "light side" and a "dark side" and you could see how he she could maybe start trending to the dark side because of how powerful it is and how she can channel her emotions into it.

Basically Rey would have needed to not realize she was being pulled to the dark side for it to work to me.
TCTTS
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I agree that the general concept needed to be present in this trilogy. But I felt like Kylo already fulfilled it, and in a great way we hadn't seen before (being tempted by the light instead of the dark). So it felt shoehorned to me to make it Rey's struggle as well.
bobinator
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'Happier' isn't really the right word. But her killing off a beloved character by accident because she lost control would have been really impactful rather than the fakeout we got instead, especially if it led to her being aware that she can't be tempted to the dark side.

We've certainly forgiven other characters for worse.
Not a Bot
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I think Ben Shapiro has a pretty reasonable take. To me it's worth a listen.

Texaggie7nine
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bobinator said:

Maybe this isn't the thread for this, but who cares at this point, but I'm still not sure I totally get why people didn't like what Rian Johnson did with Luke. What exactly were you hoping for/didn't get/did get/etc?
It's not what he "didn't" give us, It is what he did give us with Luke's story, and it was a big steaming pile of "f*** your heros of the past, I'm the captain now and these are your new heros".

Even Hammill openly hated it. What RJ turned Luke into is something Luke of the original saga would not have become. And to top it off, he kills him in such a weak way.

If you ask me, RJ did a FU to what JJ wanted to do. TFA obviously wanted to give the original SW fans a last taste of what they wanted, while giving them and the newer fans something new to enjoy as well. We got to see one last mission from Solo where he was back in action. WTF can't Luke have that? RJ teased us with a "OMG Luke is going to get to fight too!!!" Then RJ says "syke!!! it was all an illusion. Now luke is going to die."

I could go on, but I'll spare everyone the extra space for them to skip over on the thread.
7nine
M.C. Swag
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Regardless of what TLJ did, the rise of skywalker was not good. period. full stop. It's a bad movie with good actors and a high budget.

Bobinator nailed it. You can't just plop Palpatine into existence and not even attempt to show your work. TLJ had nothing to do with that decision and it was crippling.
bobinator
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I think The Force Awakens kind of backed Rian Johnson into a corner a little bit on what to do with Luke.

JJ sidelined him for the first movie, literally starting the crawl with "Luke Skywalker has vanished!" so Rian had to come up with something that made that make sense, and him 'cutting himself off from the force' was really about the only way to do that.

Why else would Luke have not come back when the First Order wiped out like five planets. So, working from that standpoint 'what happened to Luke Skywalker that he would cut himself off from the force...' I can kind of see why the story went the way it did.

I personally didn't love it either, but I don't think it ruined the entire franchise and I can see why Rian Johnson decided to go that way.
Ulrich
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I liked the idea of Rey being a nobody, the problem is that in TFA several characters knew who she was. I thought she would end up having been trained and then her brain erased, which would have explained why people knew her and why she learned the force so easily. TLJ cut that path off though, so JJ had to explain why she was so OP. I'm not a huge fan of the direction he went though.

Might have been cool if Snoke had been training her to be a Knight of Ren and Luke rescued her and stashed her on Jakku.
Beat40
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bobinator said:

Maybe this isn't the thread for this, but who cares at this point, but I'm still not sure I totally get why people didn't like what Rian Johnson did with Luke. What exactly were you hoping for/didn't get/did get/etc?
I will let him answer for himself, but this is my take on why people didn't like the direction they took Luke and believe it boils down to two things:

1) Luke being so disenfranchised with the force and "acting out of character."
2) Not getting to see Luke physically go HAM with his lightsaber in a duel.

For #1, there were tons of complaints about Luke being tempted to kill Kylo because he saw what he could/would become. Lots of that's not Luke's nature to be tempted that like that even though he was tempted by the darkside in ROTJ. Additionally, we had the entire OT building up to Luke being the return of the Jedi, so people probably felt like how can he be so disenfranchised with the force after that, especially seeing Anakin redeemed. The interesting thing is this more on JJ than it is on RJ.

For #2, pretty simple. One of the more fun things about the PT is getting to see Yoda, Obi-wan, Anakin, and other Jedi/Sith going hard at it in duels. I think many fans were excited to see what more Luke had learned. I think many, many fan were let down the lightsaber "duel" between Kylo and Luke was entirely a fake out and just wanted to see him physically fight. This is more RJs fault.

Personally, I thought Luke projecting himself across the galaxy to save what was left of the resistance was pretty cool, but I can understand why some would be let down.

I do not get hating a person for doing something you don't like though.
bobinator
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Nobody knew who she was. Several people seemed interested in who she was, but nobody knew anything about her unless there's some deleted scene I'm not remembering.
Ulrich
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I walked away from TFA certain that Han and Kylo already knew who she was. Probably related to why Han's ship (Kylo's dad's ship) was stashed in a junkyard a few hundred feet from where Rey lived.
M.C. Swag
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bobinator said:

I think The Force Awakens kind of backed Rian Johnson into a corner a little bit on what to do with Luke.

JJ sidelined him for the first movie, literally starting the crawl with "Luke Skywalker has vanished!" so Rian had to come up with something that made that make sense, and him 'cutting himself off from the force' was really about the only way to do that.

Why else would Luke have not come back when the First Order wiped out like five planets. So, working from that standpoint 'what happened to Luke Skywalker that he would cut himself off from the force...' I can kind of see why the story went the way it did.

I personally didn't love it either, but I don't think it ruined the entire franchise and I can see why Rian Johnson decided to go that way.
Here's where I disagree. You have a whole team of creative writers. You can make it work. Or better yet, change nothing but don't have Luke casually toss a lightsaber over his shoulder and drink blue alien tit milk. Those 2 scenes were weird and did nothing but shatter my immersion as a viewer.

Like, Rian bears some blame too. He didn't have to ressurect the First Order. He could have started anew with Snoke/Kylo being alone with a victorious Rebellion running the show. There was literally no reason to build TLJ around a chase scene in space. Abrams had nothing to do with that.
The Collective
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Leadership failed the directors from a cohesion standpoint in this one. They focused way too much on feeling in Episode VII instead of story.
TCTTS
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Not a single character in TLJ save for Unkar Plutt knew who she was, and even he probably didn't have close to the whole story. Others were curious, but no one knew anything. Where are you getting this from?
M.C. Swag
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Also, as it relates to Rise of Skywalker, Carrie Fisher died a full year before the release of TLJ. You don't get to use that as an excuse for why Ep. 9 sucked.
bobinator
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I'm not saying he was completely backed into a corner. There are plenty of things about The Last Jedi that I still think are stupid. Including the milk sequence. I think they thought that was going to be funny, but it was just awkward.

I'm just talking about Luke's story arc. I think he really had to work backwards from a place of "why would Luke not have come to help during the first movie..." so I can see why he landed where he did. Something went so wrong that Luke cut himself off, well what could have possibly gone that wrong, Luke failed someone he loved... and if it went that wrong, he's obviously going to be really hesitant to come back just because a stranger is asking him to.

Again, definitely not defending the whole movie, i still think the Canto Bight sequence is possibly the dumbest part of the entire 9 movie series, but just talking about Luke specifically.
Beat40
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TCTTS said:

Not a single character in TLJ save for Unkar Plutt knew who she was, and even he probably didn't have close to the whole story. Others were curious, but no one knew anything. Where are you getting this from?
I thought there was couple of moments with Han by himself, and then Han and Leia, where it was implied they had an idea of who Rey was. At least that's the feeling I got. Maybe I read into the scenes too much.

One of the scenes is with Han and Rey in the cock pit I think when or around the time they land on Maz's planet.

The other is when Han and Leia are on the jungle planet.

I did walk away from the movie as well thinking at least a few people had an idea who who she was.

I believe that's where a lot of the speculation of is she Kylo's sister, is she Han's daughter from someone else, is she Luke's daughter, etc came from prior to TLJ.
Ulrich
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TCTTS said:

Not a single character in TLJ save for Unkar Plutt knew who she was, and even he probably didn't have close to the whole story. Others were curious, but no one knew anything. Where are you getting this from?

Han from his facial expressions at certain times. Kylo because he cared way too much about some random scavenger girl. The Falcon was also too much of a coincidence.
 
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